And so the annual obligatory wrap-ups have... well, wrapped up. Join me, will you, as we put the lid on TV, games and music released in 2022!
Games
I'm slightly embarrassed of the number of games I didn't pick up this year. The biggest absence was probably Elden Ring, but I tend to pick up FromSoft games well after release for a cheaper price and when someone has written a comprehensive guide on how to cheese every boss because I am indeed a little babby. Anyway, this shouldn't particularly be an indication of the quality of gaming this year, just a view into my headspace of loving interesting little indie games and the monolith that is the Pokémon franchise. Speaking of...
5. Pokémon Scarlet & Violet
Don’t mistake this low placement for a lack of love for this franchise; I had a good time with Pokémon Violet, but I wouldn’t go beyond ‘good’. Despite a really fun opening few hours and one of the best final chapters of any Pokémon game, Generation 9 suffers from a middle game that lacks weight outside of its open world exploration. Towns feel devoid of character and the world as a whole feels a bit dead. Raids are a lot of fun, but absolutely require you to learn EVs and IVs to have any success. And good god, the performance; this excuse just doesn’t stick considering the plethora of games that run flawlessly on the Switch with far more content. I can’t tell you how many times my traversal was interrupted because a Pokémon spawned literally under my feet. Again, don’t get me wrong, I had fun collecting the new ‘mons and some of the designs of the creatures and the characters are wonderful, but it just feels like such a lesser product compared to the other mainline Pokémon entry we got this year. Now, that’s a hugely unfair comparison if ever there was one! But, I am not the one calling the shots at The Pokémon Company, so the comparison between the two titles is entirely of their own making. A good game made badly by a company who proved they can do better.
4. Metal: Hellsinger
Originally I had High On Life in this spot, but given the ongoing dumpster fire that is Justin Roiland’s career burning up like a dying star, I’ve made a late game substitution. I like rhythm games quite a bit, but previous attempts to gel real time action and rhythm mechanics have not worked well for me in the past. I failed to get on with Crypt of the Necrodancer and BPM: Bullets Per Minute, but thankfully Metal: Hellsinger has broken that trend. It’s got Doom-like shooting with forgiving rhythm bonuses and effects, but doesn’t skimp on the challenge. If you’re a living metronome, you could probably clear the game inside 3 hours, but the shorter length is actually somewhat welcome. It helps the game to feel more like a playable album rather than an overbearing campaign. And it helps that the music is pretty great and definitely amps you up as you play and encourages you to become the badass the lyrics are telling you that you are. A smaller experience, but concentrated fun from start to finish.
3. Stray
That’s right, the game where you are a cat made the podium. It’s effortlessly charming from cover to cover and really quite excellently animated. Your feline avatar slinks and sneaks around like a believable feline and has all the cuteness you would want. The verticality within the levels is also vastly appreciated, given that since you play as a cat you’ll want to jump and scale things. It’s another of the shorter titles on this list, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with a finely crafted but shorter experience. It looks gorgeous on the PS5 as you might expect, the art style gives you a real sense of a reclaimed but thriving post-apocalypse underworld. It is also weapons grade adorable seeing the little kitty cat bond with all the robot people. A cosy game with a fun journey of satisfying depth and length.
2. Sifu
Few games are able to get so much content and satisfaction out of so little, but above all the Soulslikes and fighting games out there, few have come close to the feeling that mastering Sifu has given me. Make no mistake, this is a hard game. Its 5 levels offer branching paths with some seriously challenging fights in them. But instead of the crushing feeling that Soulslikes tend to give me or the rage that an unfair fighting boss can bring on, Sifu manages to motivate players to pick up and try again. The combat is more of a rhythm game than it is button masher, so flailing like a madman will get you exactly nowhere. Instead, it uses the gorgeous 70’s kung-fu flick aesthetic to reward the player with some seriously satisfying animations every time you get that rhythm right. And that little bell ring you hear with every successfully landed counter or guard break was like cocaine to my sweet little ears. I’ve never had such a fun time failing upwards through a game and eventually being convinced to go back to earlier levels to beat the game with a better age score, a mechanic that delivers the right amount of risk and reward right up until the last boss goes all out on your ass. A game that for sure will not be for people with little patience, but like a good martial artist will teach you to learn from your mistakes and get better.
The Best Game of 2022 -Pokémon Legends Arceus
It’s been so nice of The Pokémon Company to wholesale rip-off my idea and sell it to me. You know what though, if this is the kind of thing that we are capable of willing into existence, I am more than okay with my very profitable concepts being taken from me. Legends Arceus is a true evolution (zing!) of the main game formula. A true single player experience that focuses on catching them all. You know, that call to action that we’ve been hearing since 1996? The Meiji era-inspired setting makes it feel a world apart from the traditional Pokémon without it feeling like a different game with the logo slapped on it. And it’s the word ‘world’ I want to focus on there; there is a very real sense of this world being charted, but dangerous. Alive, but rarely explored. The joy, then, was found in being the person to brave this strange new world. And I loved that the Pokémon felt like wild animals for really the first time ever. There was danger in the adventure, from being assaulted by angry Sneasels, to being horrifically outsped by a level 80 Garchomp in the much snappier turn based battles. I spent hundreds of hours in this game striving to complete the Dex, fighting God with my bag of potpourri, and shiny hunting for anything that appeared in the daily alerts. I even got my very coveted shiny Scizor out of this game, so all the more special. It’s my 2nd favourite Pokémon game of all time, behind only my personal Gaming Hall of Fame entry HeartGold & SoulSilver. A game that despite some performance issues was absolutely worth every bit of the hype and made for one of my favourite gaming experiences of recent memory, maybe even ever.
TV
Just as a preface, I'm not including any show I have not seen OR finished. So stuff like Stranger Things Season 4 or The Boys Season 3 won't be in this list, please and thank you. Anyway, I managed to get a lot of TV seen this year, presumably the streaming wars ramping up means I'm interested in more shows.
10. Our Flag Means Death
Based loosely on the real life friendship of Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach (And also presumably the wonderful feature-length shitpost Internet Historian video), this series’ choice to re-contextualise the partnership as a gay romance works wonders to heighten the heartwarming romantic comedy genre in new and exciting ways. It’s also hysterical, which you might expect from something involving Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi (to a much lesser extend after Thor: Love and Thunder). It's not a particularly complex choice, I just like well written alternative comedy, and this is pretty great in that regard.
9. Pistol
I’ll say up top, I respect the brass balls on FX to promote this miniseries the same weekend as the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. The only one-up would have been doing a publicity push following The Queen’s death. Hey, it wouldn’t have been above Malcolm McLaren, as we now know. Despite accusations that the series was a sanitised version of events, or just false if you believe Johnny Rotten, I appreciated the focus on Steve Jones (Toby Wallace) and his experience in being dragged through the fame hedge and how the anarchic punk movement would dramatically alter his life. It helps that the cast is well rounded in being charmingly repulsive, with special notice paid to Anson Boon’s turn as Johnny Rotten. The writing can sometimes be a little on the nose, but punk wasn’t exactly known for nuance. It was loud, crass and hard to ignore, so in many way the series gets the spirit right.
8. Inside Job (Series 1 Part 2, but also Series 1 as a whole)
Netflix finally had an adult animated comedy that could rival the output of Adult Swim, and of course they shit-canned it because we can’t have nice things. Luckily, it does mean that despite the story not being finished, Inside Job ends with two halves of a great first part, with smart dialogue between its colourful cast of asshole weirdos. Reagan especially has sharp edges to her character aided by a manic delivery from Lizzy Caplan, making her the perfect imperfect fit for Clark Duke’s ever positive and uncontrollably lovable Brett Hand. I’m gutted that the show won’t be returning, as it makes for a great watch and better than the vast majority of workplace comedies we have out there.
7. Smiling Friends
It’s likely you might not have seen or even heard of this animated show, so if you haven’t seen Smiling Friends, I absolutely recommend it. Now, that does come with the caveat of liking very irreverent comedy, because Smiling Friends is close to, if not the most chaotic TV show I’ve seen in a long while. Its creators are prominent online animators who cut their teeth on Newgrounds back in the day, so you know to expect nonsensical and slightly edgy humour, but it absolutely lands and bursts with creativity. I love the nonchalant voice acting that juxtaposes the outlandish mad-lib scenarios that the crew find themselves in. It’s also a who's-who of cameos, ranging from Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard to The Angry Video Game Nerd himself. Give it a go, you might like it, you might be supremely confused by it. Either way, you’re seeing something unlike anything else on TV right now.
6. Under The Banner of Heaven
Oh boy, this series was tense as hell. Screw pelvic floor exercises, this will give you all the abdominal workout you will need as you are perched on the edge of your seat wondering what mental shit will happen next. This series seems to have flown under a lot of folks' radar, as at the end of the year it didn’t seem that anyone was talking about it in the best of wrap-ups. Andrew Garfield continues his redemptive arc with yet another stellar turn as Jeb Pyre, a police detective grappling with a storied murder case that will challenge his impartiality and own shaking religious beliefs. The series' biggest strengths are the web of intrigue it weaves as the blame is passed around a dubious Mormon family and the pitch perfect pacing that makes each hour plus episode fly by and always leaves you wanting more answers. There is a stumble in the delivery of the resolution, but given that it was based on a real case and the strength of the atmosphere the creatives crafted over the series, I doubt there was any outcome that would have been satisfying save for an actual doomsday event. Regardless, I highly recommend this one.
5. Moon Knight
I thought about this again after recording the Best of the Rest of 2022 podcast and I’ve decided that the boredom that episode 3 creates in an otherwise really well put together series has to knee-cap this out of a medal position. One boring episode aside, Moon Knight is wonderfully well constructed in its unreliable narrative, brought to life by Oscar Isaac to phenomenal effect. The Marc/Steven dichotomy plays out far better than I had anticipated it might and the portrayal of DID does, to the best of my knowledge, portray the disorder with some basis in realism and with empathy. The supporting cast do fine, but the show works best when it’s just Isaac acting opposite himself for a full episode exploring the fragmentation of this character's mind. Once again, Marvel’s best output is on TV where more risks can be taken. Perhaps they’d do well to replicate this level of creativity when it comes to the movies, where the quality is in the gutter.
4. The Umbrella Academy Season 3
You won’t find a person more upset that this excellent series will conclude with series 4 in the next few years, but I understand it’s best to preserve the quality of the show. That quality has, for the first time, dipped ever so slightly in this show, primarily due to the lack of a compelling antagonist compared to the first two seasons, and to one of the biggest character assassinations I’ve seen in recent memory. So why is it here, just outside of a medal position? Once again, the unbridled chemistry of the ensemble cast can bring the series hurtling into the top ten. Despite the plot calling for one of the Hargreaves siblings to become a morally questionable psychopath, you can’t argue with the interplay the scripts allow for these characters. Klaus (Robert Sheehan) once again comes out of it as the MVP, with his story branch concerning his second power and reconciling with his alternate reality father proving to be the most entertaining story. Here’s hoping series 4 ends this thoroughly enjoyable romp on a high note.
3. Wednesday
I mean yeah, no duh, it’s only one of the biggest viral hits of the winter. Fronted by the fantastic Jenna Ortega, Wednesday aims to collide the words of The Addams Family with Harry Potter and shades of Percy Jackson, with startling effect. There isn’t a duff episode in the entire run and it is largely entertaining fare. The gothic feel runs suitably throughout the production design which makes everything feel aged and lived in. As you might expect given the virality of the series, there are a number of memorable scenes, chief among which is the now infamous school dance set to The Cramps’ Goo-Goo Muck. The thing that keeps you coming back is that core mystery, which does a good job of throwing just enough misdirection, either through contextual clues or even external factors such as casting. And I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll say it again; If Marvel does not reach out to Hunter Doohan to play Harry Osbourne in the MCU, this world is pointless and we can start from scratch until we get it right. I suspect this will launch a good number of fruitful acting careers going forward.
2. Peacemaker
I have been, and will continue to be, the biggest James Gunn simp this side of the Atlantic and will not apologise for this. Once again, Gunn spins gold with this The Suicide Squad spin-off that aims to flesh out the blockhead, jingoistic super solider Peacemaker (John Cena). Where that could have gone for very low hanging fruit to make an overtly nasty and edgy nightmare no-fun time (read: Velma), instead the show is very smartly written and is oddly more of an empathetic look at the effects of toxic masculinity and generational trauma. Whilst also being a crude, gory show about a dude who murders people for money and has a pet bald eagle. It’s once again another perfect balance between the gross, the heavy and the heartfelt, becoming somewhat of a hallmark of a James Gunn production. Every single character gets an absolutely stand-out moment, but I want to pay particular attention to Freddie Stroma’s turn as Vigilante, who not only gets MVP status for his prison scene, but continues to steal the show as the foil to a Peacemaker that is realising his existence as a tool for hatred. Plus, he’s dressed very purposefully like a Kamen Rider, which I’m assuming is meant to be a sign that James Gunn is me from a parallel dimension who is trying to tell me I should be a Hollywood big shot or something. Anyway, the show's good.
The Best TV Show of 2022 - The Bear
I save these words for very specific occasions, but this is one of those occasions: The Bear is flawless. There is not an ounce of fat on this show, not one out of place scene, not one uninteresting episode, not one moment failing to work towards building on this show's story and characters. Honestly, it’s awe-inspiring to see a show this intricately done. Of course I have to highlight “The Review”, a one-take episode that somehow was not conceived as such until weeks before shooting. How do you even do that? There are big budget movies that try and fail to accomplish a convincing one-shot scene with years of preparation, yet this FX sitcom can come in a slam-dunk it on a second thought? It’s the finest half hour of TV this year, absolutely no contest. What I love above all that though, is the clear paths that each member of The Beef’s crew are going with the inevitable second season. The stories and development of each of these people are clear, informed and based in challenge and self actualisation. With the show itself being about pressure and growth, and how the imperfections in between are where you are taught about who you are, it makes sense then that The Bear is able to build you up, knock you down, break your heart and fill you with optimism within the space of 30 minutes each time you start an episode. 8 episodes made for the perfect starter, now bring on the main course.
Music
Oh God this has already gone on long enough. Look, I could be here all day explaining y very specific likes and dislikes when it comes to music or I could just link you to some music videos. I think we all want the latter. Right, Top 5 tracks of the Year or whatever. But not before...
Obligatory EuroVision Honorable Mentions: Subwoolfer - Give That Wolf A Banana / Citi Zeni - Eat Your Salad
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Both tracks are my most played EuroVision entries from the 2022 contest; Citi Zeni have earned the title of Best First Line of a song in EuroVision and I like the eco-jazz vibe. I’m ashamed with how much I replayed Give That Wolf A Banana, given that it is a dumb song about two comically named wolves’ dietary habits, but I think I just like weird shit. Never change, Europe.
5. OneRepublic - I Ain’t Worried
Continuing the ‘I’m a dumb bitch for liking Top Gun: Maverick this much” trend, I listened to this a bunch and it was the feel good hit of the summer. It fits the beach football scene perfectly, but you do look a bit of a tit openly expressing your fondness for OneRepublic as a 30 year old man.
4. Måneskin - Supermodel
Hey look, more EuroVision! I know they’re a proper band now, and boy are Måneskin out to prove it, with collaborations with Iggy Pop and Tom Morello and a great new album, but it was their second single from this new album that landed best with me. Glam is properly back and I am all for it.
3. Steel Beans - Molotov Cocktail Lounge
Not going to lie, I saw a TikTok/YouTube short of multi-instrumentalist Steel Beans performing this absolute bop and knew it was entering general rotation. It has that early White Stripes feel, you know like a proper rock song.
2. Don Broco - Fingernails
I don’t know what it is about Don Broco releasing singles after a full album that exists as standalones, but they always seem to hit it out of the park when they do it. First Half Man Half God and now this. The video is also spectacular, carrying on the band's trend of producing fun short films with tongue firmly in cheek. Just play them live please, lads, I want the full experience.
The Best Song of 2022 - Bo Burnham - Five Years
Bo Burnham released new music this year and that is entirely enough reason for it to go in straight at the top spot. It helps then that the song is hysterical with it’s Drake-style rip-off beat and inane subject matter of ordering takeaway and dealing with a house spider. As with everything Bo does, it’s all very intricately put together and wonderfully executed. I love the Inside period of his work, but I worry he will never top it.
2022 is done and so is the article, you'll be glad to hear. I certainly know I am. Shall we meet up and do this again next year? Yes, I think we might. Anyway, see you in two months for the Oscars and a lot more uninteresting opinions.
2022 is done and so is the article, you'll be glad to hear. I certainly know I am. Shall we meet up and do this again next year? Yes, I think we might. Anyway, see you in two months for the Oscars and a lot more uninteresting opinions.
By Mike Owen
@ThatMikeOwen
The Editor in Chief of Foul Entertainment, Mike edits most of what you see on the site. He runs the production of our podcasts, and currently pens Pop Culture Club articles.
@ThatMikeOwen
The Editor in Chief of Foul Entertainment, Mike edits most of what you see on the site. He runs the production of our podcasts, and currently pens Pop Culture Club articles.