Nintendo and Pokemon reined king for me in 2022 with the release of one of the best Pokemon games of all time, Pokemon Legends of Arceus, and the newest mainline game which felt expansive, Pokemon Scarlet & Violet.
Let's get Playstation out of the way first.
I played through Judgment and most of the Lost Judgment this year. Judgment is a new game from Ryu Ga Gotoku studios (makers of the Yakuza game series). It was a bit long, but follows the adventures of Yagami, a former Lawyer, now private detective. You go around real-Tokyo-location Kabukicho trying to uncover a conspiracy of murders and their connections to the Yakuza and Police. It was a pretty great experience with a few unexpected twists. The story is completely standalone and concludes in the end.
The sequel is a new adventure and new case that Yagami follows. You also go to a new location in Yokohama. The story is about a murder involving a high school. While the story isn't as important as the first game, visiting the school and talking with students and teachers is pretty fun. Ultimately, I did not finish it.
I played through the Judgment games at the beginning of the year, but once Pokemon Legends was released in February, it was the only thing I played for months, and I never really returned to Playstation after that.
The reason Pokemon Legends Arceus is one of the best Pokemon games of all time is the freedom of movement, the fast paced method of catching and collecting Pokemon, and the sense of exploration through the uncharted world. One of my favorite things about Pokemon is completing the Pokedex, and the main story goal of Legends is to do just that. It's so fun.
After playing the game for month, I went back to Let's Go Eevee to clean up more shiny Pokemon I had yet to capture. I bought a turbo controller to automate trading for shiny Alolan pokemon.
And, in November, Pokemon Scarlet / Violet were released. Again, I played the game from nearly sun up to sun down. It was a much more expansive experience than Sword and Shield, but unfortunately took none of the lessons from Pokemon Legends. In fact, it's a far worse experience in almost every way. The performance is terrible where it can take up to 4 seconds for some pokemon to spawn in. There's only a visual indication on whether or not a pokemon is shiny, so you really have to pay attention when shiny hunting. Movement is a bit slower compared with Legends, too.
But, Scarlet and Violet are still quite excellent. I would put them in the upper tier of Pokemon games.
Anyways, here are my stats for the year:
The individual stats above I thought were the most informative and interesting. Below are the additional images the page gave me, but they're very light on details and information.
I stream almost all the games I play on Twitch these days, and Twitch had some year-end stats, too. I streamed 229 days out of the year, which is pretty impressive.
