Our individual Game of the Year articles allow our lovely team of writers to share their own personal PS5 and PS4 picks for 2022. Today it’s the reviewer’s turn John Cal McCormick.

I really enjoyed my time with Cult of the Lamb. I have 8/10 appreciated according to my opinion. It’s macabre, dark and bloody, and I named my in-game cat friends after my real-life cats, and then they died horribly and it made me sad. That one is on me though. I really should have seen this coming. Name your followers after people you dislike. That’s my advice. I should have given them the names of people who wronged me, like that kid who bit me at a football game in 1989. Yes you. Timothy. Son of…

I enjoyed Ragnarok a lot but I’m not as hot as a lot of people – especially other reviewers, it seems, given Metacritic’s staggering score. I think the combat is great and some of the characters are fantastic – Odin, Thor, and Freya, in particular – but when it was all over I felt more like “oh, it’s over” than anything. Still, the bosses are much improved from the previous game and the highs are generally higher than this game as well, although there are more lows. I do not know. Its good.

Oh look, this is PlayStation’s answer to a question no one asked. £70 for a remake that isn’t even a full remake of a game that’s not even ten years old and has already been remastered once? Yes, we all moaned about it. But like millions of other idiots, I bought it anyway and it was fantastic. Did I want it? No. Did I need it? No. Did I pay £70 for this and get the full benefit? Yes I did it. What can I say ? It’s just a great game and now it’s even better than before. Completely useless, but great nonetheless.

Horizon often looks like the redheaded son-in-law of the PlayStation family. People really sleep on it or get soaked in it, maybe because it’s just another check-in open world game or maybe because Aloy has red hair. Maybe they should have sold it and made it blonde. Either way, this game is, for me, one of the best PlayStation titles of all time. The robot dino battles are fantastic, the game is absolutely beautiful, I really like Aloy as a character, and the story of this one is so crazy it made me laugh out loud at one point given because of the sheer audacity of the narrative. . To like.

Yeah, I know. But sometimes you just have to face the facts. Elden Ring is one of the easiest 10/10s I have ever played. It’s a game that feels special from the first moment and the map keeps getting bigger and the secrets more rewarding and the boss encounters more exciting. It’s awesome, in the literal sense of the word. It’s a game that inspires true wonder, repeatedly, for dozens of hours. I think I’ll do it again right away, and I’ve already beaten him twice this year. Every year this game would be in the conversation for game of the year, and in many of them it would win. An all-time great.

What do you think of John’s personal picks for Game of the Year? Feel free to wholeheartedly agree or relentlessly reprimand in the comments section below.