{"id":130729,"date":"2022-12-21T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/#article-142051"},"modified":"2022-12-21T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T18:00:00","slug":"feature-game-of-the-year-2022-nintendo-life-staff-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2022\/12\/21\/feature-game-of-the-year-2022-nintendo-life-staff-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: Game Of The Year 2022 – Nintendo Life Staff Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Another year has come and gone (almost) and once more we’re looking back over all the games we’ve played, along with those we wish we had played. It’s been a great year for Switch releases, with a crop of excellent first-party Nintendo games joined by some great third-party offerings (Square Enix, in particular, has been on fire the last few months), plus choice ports of older titles and more incredible indies than we know what to do with.<\/p>\n

While our Top 50 reader-ranked list of the Best Switch Games of 2022 serves as the main course in our GOTY rankings (and will be published soon!), we also publish an annual NL staff GOTY list. Typically, we compile all nominations in a spreadsheet, and then everyone on staff adds points in reverse order for their top 10 games of the year, which is then tabulated to create our 10 staff picks. This is fine but a) it tends to produce a crop very similar to our reader-ranked counterpart, and b) smaller games \u2014 ones that rank very highly on our personal lists \u2014 usually get pushed off the bottom by familiar big-name fare, despite the passion they inspire in individual team members.<\/p>\n

So, we’re shaking it up a little from last year<\/a>. Rather than a ranked list, everyone on staff submitted their top five GOTYs and we’re presenting the accumulated nominations to you below, in no particular order<\/strong>. We feel this gives smaller games that we’ve adored this year a better chance to shine amongst the usual suspects making up GOTY lists across the web (and we’ve saved the game that got the most<\/em> staff votes for the very end, if you’re curious to know what’s toppermost of the poppermost at Nintendo Life Towers).<\/p>\n

Okay, let’s get stuck in…<\/p>\n

NL staff key: Alana Hagues (AH), Felix Sanchez (FS)<\/em>, Gavin Lane (GL), Jim Norman (JN), Kate Gray (KG), Liam Doolan (LD), Ollie Reynolds (OR), PJ O’Reilly (PJ)<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Neon<\/div>\n

\"Neon<\/a><\/p>\n

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Publisher: <\/span>Annapurna Interactive<\/strong> \/ Developer: <\/span>Angel Matrix<\/strong><\/p>\n

Release Date: <\/span>16th Jun 2022 (USA<\/abbr>)<\/strong> \/ 16th Jun 2022 (UK\/EU<\/abbr>)<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n