What taken it upon ourselves to help you separate the wheat from the chaff — to recommend our favorite games from the slew of ambitious titles that come out as the months go by. We’ll be updating this page throughout the year, with the most recent releases toward the top, so you can stay up to date with all of the excitement (or at least as up to date as possible). We’ll also be doing the same for the best movies, the best anime, and the best TV shows of 2022.
If you’re furious with a friend, colleague, or significant other, there’s a chance it’s because of this game. Neon White has reinvigorated the chase for top leaderboard spots, and reinforced the importance of milliseconds, because sometimes, a millisecond is all it takes to climb one spot higher than your friend.
Developer Ben Esposito of Angel Matrix has called Neon White a “smoothie” of inspirations, one that pulls as much from friction-defying Counter-Strike surf maps as it does from gravity-defying Half-Life and Quake jump maps. Neon White is also, in a small but important way, a deck-building card game. If this is a smoothie, then it is equal parts sweet, tangy, satisfying, and also dripping down your face, because in the time it took you to read this paragraph, your friend has just beaten your score again. That Neon White can be so elegant and simple, while also imparting such strong grudges and woefully cramped wrists, is quite the achievement for a game about jumping from one platform to another. Video games are dumb as hell. Let’s go get smoothies. —Mike Mahardy
When Foot Clan soldiers aren’t barreling by on motorbikes or in cars, they’re manning the cash register at a pizza joint before flinging themselves into the action while wielding shopping bags as deadly weapons. Shredder’s Revenge is loud and chaotic, but never so much that it’s distracting, making it an absolute blast of an homage to a series of classic games. It’s relatively short, but with seven different characters — the four turtles plus April O’Neil, Splinter, and Casey Jones — there’s a lot of value in replaying the levels and mastering each character’s moves. And while it’s faithful to its predecessors, it’s decidedly modern, with more satisfying combat against hordes of enemy soldiers and character upgrades to boot. Nostalgia may be its vehicle, but pure fun is its fuel. —Nicole Carpenter
This was no easy task, considering that the newest outing brings the franchise to World War II-era France, quite possibly video games’ most rote destination. But developer Rebellion Developments has found new ways to make the beaches of Normandy exciting. There are elements of IO Interactive’s Hitman trilogy on display here, as the roguish Karl Fairburne is forced to sneak into bunkers and cobblestone alleys, trading his trusty sniper rifle for a silenced handgun and close-quarters know-how. There are also abundant reminders of Arkane’s Dishonored games, with multiple approaches to every objective, ranging from non-lethal to what I can only describe as very lethal. Sniper Elite 5 has elevated an already fantastic franchise to the pantheon of the immersive-sandbox greats. —Mike Mahardy
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