2022 GOTY Scoreboard: Elden Ring, Vampire Survivors, God of War: Ragnarok, and More

After wandering in the wilderness during the early part of the PS4 era, the God of War franchise came back in a big way with God of War (2018). With a new pantheon to slay, Kratos slashed his way into our hearts, and he helped Sony Santa Monica collect a decent chunk of accolades from reviewers and players alike during the 2018-2019 “Game of the Year” season (including a sweep at all five of the major year-end awards shows).

But it’s been five long years since Kratos first brought his unique brand of godly violence to the Norse realm, what could the Ghost of Sparta do for an encore?

God of War: Ragnarok, which was released this past November, answered that question with spectacular battles against the one-eyed Allfather, Odin, and the Mighty Thor himself. But not even the end of the world could topple From Software’s Elden Ring, which has steamrolled the competition.

Elden Ring was named “Game of the Year” by dozens of publications and took home the statuette at three major awards show. Only one game managed to break through From Software’s stranglehold on voting bodies across the industry, with Poncle’s Vampire Survivors taking the last major year-end award.

You can see more of last year’s most-acclaimed titles in the 2022 GOTY Scoreboard after the break.

Elden Ring

Vampire Survivors

Genshin Impact

God of War: Ragnarok

Horizon: Forbidden West

Immortality

Marvel Snap

Midnight Suns

Norco

Stray

Wordle

Unranked Lists

 
A lot of people have tried to paint 2022 as something of an off year for big games, and with delays to a pretty extensive selection of anticipated titles (including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Starfield, Redfall, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League) there’s definitely some merit to that claim.

But that’s ignoring the hundreds of fantastic games from last year that might not have scored a “Game of the Year” honor, but did appear further down at least one list…

2022 GOTY Scoreboard (Expand)

This isn’t every “Game of the Year” list from 2022 (and more links will be added as I find them), but it certainly paints a pretty representative picture of what the best games of the year were.