Luckily, gaming contains multitudes.
We asked the Otago Daily Times games writers to tell us about little moments they simply enjoyed in games in 2022, even in older or smaller titles.
Here's what they came up with.
Ben Allan
Working for a living
Deep Rock Galactic
Rarely has mining for a living been as fun as it is in Deep Rock Galactic.
You and your fellow space-dwarf players are blue-collar joes tasked with a dirty, dangerous job, extracting the precious resources from alien-infested caverns.
Your rapacious capitalist bosses regard you as entirely expendable.
So once you've pickaxed enough valuable crystals off the wall, raided alien nests for their rare eggs, or constructed some oil pumps to suck the very rock dry _ fighting off various slavering insectoids all the way _ those resources you worked so hard for will be heading back up to the safety of orbit soon, with or without you.
And that's when the bugs get really angry ... cue heroic sacrifices, last stands, memorable escapes and possibly even more memorable failures _ each no doubt just a note in a ledger for your corporate paymasters, but also a great night of fun multiplayer gaming with friends.
Getting back to the surface with both kids alive
Minecraft
More caves, more mining.
The world's favourite digital Lego set Minecraft, now with all that Microsoft money behind it, just continues to get more and more cool stuff added to it.
It's also that rare game older players can enjoy with kids.
"Dad and kids world" occupies a special 40-odd (and growing) MB on the Series X at home, and many wet weekend afternoons have been spent on deep delves for diamonds or shepherding villagers around to create satellite towns surrounding the ol' Allan homestead (now featuring a map room, train station and witch's tower).
The whole family getting completely lost underground and then somehow making it back to the surface with our collective haul of iron ore and redstone intact has been cause for many a high five.
Attack of the giant death crabs
Return of the Obra Dinn
Like every gamer I know I've got a "to play" list that's longer than a giraffe that's fallen over, so it's nice to tick something off.
I picked up acclaimed seafaring mystery/logic puzzle Return of the Obra Dinn a mere four years late this year and hey, turns out it's as good as everyone said!
Investigating the fate of the titular abandoned ship through snapshots of its past tapped into a few of my personal interests _ old timey dialogue, grizzled sea dogs, exciting facial hair variations _ but I've also got a bit of thalassophobia (Google it), so when the mystery took a turn with an attack by giant, hideous Japanese spider crabs (Google those too _ or just go get creeped out by the one in Otago Museum's Animal Attic. ARGH.), it suddenly all became very horrifying.
I'm just glad time is frozen in the game's snapshots, because just imagining them skittering around the slippery deck was enough.
Wyatt Ryder
Making everything worse
Roadwarden
I love miserable games.
Roadwarden is part interactive fiction, part resource management and part choose-your-own-adventure game.
It is like being dropped into a gloomy fantasy novel where nobody wants the main character around.
Hint: that's you!
Throughout the game you'll explore a broken world, run from monsters, try to cure plagues and make the world a better place.
I did not.
The game gives you 40 days to improve the world by solving the intertwined narrative riddles. After that, your character leaves and gets to savour the fruits of their labour.
Or so I thought.
My warden couldn't expose the corrupt local politicians, got a friend addicted to drugs _ which killed her _ and let a significant portion of the community get eaten by zombies.
Whew. That's not quite as positive as I expected.
Seven hours of gameplay invested and that is what I "achieved".
I obsessed over it. What else could I have done? I was meant to be writing news stories at work, but all I could think about was this miserable, fantastic game.
After sitting with my failure for a few days, I sat down at my PC with a pad full of notes and a brain packed with the knowledge of my last play-through.
This time I would solve it, I told myself.
I was a fool.
My endgame situation was better, but I'm still far from a perfect ending.
But I'm not giving up. One day I will unravel this miserable little game.
Hayden Meikle
Stress-free melee
Nobody Saves The World
I am an egg.
Oh wait, now I need to be a horse. Then the monk. Then the mermaid, the ghost and the turtle. And don't forget the zombie!
Not many games give you that sort of choice.
But by the time you near the finish line of Nobody Saves The World, you will be switching seamlessly between 17 different forms to utilise each one's strengths and abilities, and when you have played to the end, you will be desperately sad it is over.
It's a simple but delightful little role-player that maybe didn't save my gaming year so much as provide some much-needed variety .
An hour or so into the game, I realised with a little smile that I was just having fun.
Not obsessing over which path to choose or which costume to outfit my character with. Not thinking ahead to assemble a super team or come up with an intricate possession-based gameplan for the Champions League final.
Not sweating over how badly I was going to get "pwned" by some Italian teenager with much quicker reflexes than this old gamer.
Just. Having. Fun. And isn't that the point?
What's over this way, then?
Forza Horizon 5
"There's a sense of freedom you don't get with other holidays." That is a great line from The Inbetweeners when Jay, the crassest of the four lads, is trying to convince his mates of the appeal of staying in a caravan.
If I might paraphrase him, there is a sense of freedom in Forza Horizon you don't get with other racing games. Or any other game, really.
The fifth edition of the free-range, souped-up, slightly maniacal racing simulation (in the loosest possible definition of that word) was released late in 2021, but it was only really this year that I soaked in it like a luxuriant bath.
Freedom in Forza Horizon 5 means time _ play for 10 minutes, or play for two hours.
It means direction _ follow the highway or tear off into the Mexican countryside.
It means expectation _ just drive and have fun, or apply yourself to winning races and unlocking everything.
It means choice _ drive that 1970s muscle car or slide behind the wheel of that expensive modern supercar.
You are free to do what you like, when you like, how you like. True gaming escapism.
Michael Robertson
Screaming at the bottom of the sea (with friends)
Barotrauma
At the bottom of the ocean, the only ones who can hear you scream are those in your immediate proximity, and they're probably screaming too.
Barotrauma is a nightmare of a game, putting you in a small submarine as you make deliveries and take missions to fight swarms of aliens under the sea, and asking you to trust that everyone around you isn't an idiot.
That isn't always the case.
Highlights include a new player starting a reactor meltdown, the captain shooting a clown multiple times and me constantly asking the ship to stop as I saw a plant and I really need it guys, I swear!
One fateful day, we were doing a regular delivery from one outpost to another.
Suddenly our ship was grabbed and we were hauled down into the depths by ... something.
Our captain was trying to yell orders over the carnage, as all guns aimed and fired at this abomination.
When the monster finally died, our ship had few to no walls left, everyone needed serious medical attention (did you know you can do CPR underwater?) and we all needed a break.
Naught to do but grab a welding torch and start repairs.
We were in this simple five-10 minute mission for over an hour.
The kicker? We lost our shipment and didn't get paid ...
Cresting the summit ... way too many times.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
Why, oh why, did I think that this game would be worth getting all achievements on?
Getting Over It touts itself as a philosophical dive into the nature of difficulty, disappointment, perseverance and starting over. Sounds interesting if it wasn't so infuriating.
You play as a man in a cauldron with a hammer.
You are tasked with getting to the top of a mountain, created out of junk.
There's a subtle art to climbing a mountain with a hammer.
Swinging wildly can cause you to hit something and go sailing off in a random direction, hitting some oh-so-conveniently placed piece of scenery and plummeting to the ground, all as the narrator gently nags you for falling once more.
Every obstacle feels deliberately placed in order to cause maximum distress and pain.
But I would not be deterred.
I wanted that last achievement of climbing the mountain 50 times.
Each time I climbed, my pot would grow more shiny, turning a lovely bright gold.
I learned different tactics, such as pogo-ing to launch yourself skyward and placing myself in just the right spots to skip certain sections.
It took a long time but finally I climbed the radio tower for the last time and launched myself into space.
As I sat the end screen, with that little number "50" looking back at me, I could only think: "What more is there left to do?" Only one option. Uninstall, and never, ever, touch that game again.
