Without a doubt, 2022 was a neat yr for gamers and it certainly saw a number of excellent titles released on PC, including Casualty, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Wolfenstein Two, Battlegrounds, and many more than. For our year's favorites run into our Best PC Games You Should be Playing list which is updated a few times a year with a combination of the games we are playing (and thus recommend) and newer entries which we deem worth of your time and attention.

While exterior of our usual scope, we must recognize that it arguably was an fifty-fifty better twelvemonth for consoles with hits similar The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon Naught Dawn dominating discussion for game of the year.

It's overnice to talk about all the great games that were released this year, but nosotros're also not going to permit slide the games that really disappointed the states, and in that location's a few that stick out like a sore thumb. The following games simply weren't expert plenty; far from information technology in fact. We've narrowed the list down to 5 worthy entries, which nosotros'll be going through in no particular order. And boot it off this time is a doozy: easily the most controversial game released in 2022.

Star Wars Battlefront II

When talking about Battlefront II I practice desire to mention that some aspects of this game are genuinely fun. Multiplayer is a smash, and the presentation captures the essence of Star Wars in such a vivid way. In that location's a lot more content to enjoy than its predecessor, too.

But the problems with Battlefront Ii are numerous. The much hyped single player campaign is very brusque and just complete garbage to exist honest. And the multiplayer progression system is one of the worst in modern multiplayer shooters: it's confusing and unnecessarily complicated, with items, abilities and upgrades for both locked backside odd barriers. As a regular player, the progression system just doesn't experience rewarding and doesn't do a good job of incentivizing goals or unlocks.

And let's not forget the pay to win system that EA nearly thrust on usa all, if it wasn't for an enormous outcry from the community. Loot crates you can buy with existent money that give tangible in-game advantages to players accept no place in competitive games.

It'due south a disgraceful coin grab, when the game already costs $60. And while EA did temporarily remove the ability to spend existent coin on boodle crates at launch, there is no doubt yous'll be able to pay to win at some point in the hereafter. This could have been a good game, maybe even great, simply instead EA chased piece of cake money and ruined the hard piece of work of the developers.

Mass Effect Andromeda

Mass Effect Andromeda disappointed nearly every Mass Effect fan. Looking back, I'one thousand not sure why I played 50 hours of this game, considering it isn't that skilful. The chief story in particular wasn't that interesting, and butchered what could have been a compelling premise. Information technology takes a long time to kick into gear equally well; the all-time parts and most interesting worlds are reached afterwards a 15 hr opening slog, which no incertitude led to many players giving up early into the game.

My principal issue with Andromeda is that in many ways it merely didn't seem like a true Mass Effect game. The characters were weak, wooden and hard to intendance about, non helped by poor animation. The choices you brand throughout the story seemed to accept very piffling impact, and there weren't enough of them. The game is as well padded out with tons of boring fetch quests rather than compelling side stories, and it's side quests that brand or break a strong RPG. A huge disappointment from EA and BioWare, and there's no doubt the game suffered from a horrible development cycle.

Middle-world: Shadow of War

Shadow of State of war is a tedious game. The story is dull, the gainsay is dull and repetitive (particularly if you played its predecessor, Shadow of Mordor), and the ending is downright disgraceful. Oh and there's loot boxes with microtransactions, too, but to cap off ane of 2022'south great disappointments.

Information technology's a real shame Shadow of War turned out in such a mediocre land, because Shadow of Mordor was a fantastic, innovative game that could have led to an interesting, equally-inventive sequel. Instead, Shadow of State of war is basically a stretched out Shadow of Mordor with a couple of pocket-sized gameplay additions. Siege battles are a lot of fun – by far the best aspect to the game – and it was nice to encounter a larger diversity of environments, but the nemesis organization feels stale and the story isn't interesting in the slightest.

And let's accept a moment to talk nearly the ending. For no other reason than to pad out the game and incentivize loot crate purchases, Shadow of War gives you 20 consecutive fortress defenses of increasing difficulty. 20! It's a 5+ hour repetitive grind; you're better off just watching the concluding cutscene it unlocks on YouTube. I'm not sure who thought this ending was a good thought, but it's a disgusting end to a very disappointing blockbuster game of 2022.

Demand for Speed Payback

Everyone'due south least favorite game publisher has entered this list for a third time with Need for Speed Payback, so congratulations EA for having three of 2022's most disappointing games. I'grand not quite sure why EA continues to make Need for Speed games, as it feels like the terminal decade of entries has been subpar. Payback could be the worst entry yet.

The story is laughably bad with terrible characters, though that isn't surprising for a racing game. The worst part of Payback is that it's not a very satisfying driving experience, especially compared to the improve racing games of 2022, and it compounds that with grind-filled gameplay and a bad upgrade arrangement.

Information technology's the final racing game you should play in 2022 if you lot're a fan of the genre, and to exist honest, EA should retire the series for a while if information technology tin can't brand good entries anymore.

PlayerUnknown'due south Battlegrounds

Wait, what? You'll be wondering why we've put Battlegrounds in our about disappointing games listing when the game is clearly i of the best games of the twelvemonth, too. Well, before you lot get-go slamming united states in the comments, PUBG is a cracking example of a game that gets a lot of things right, but lets downwardly players in other areas. In that sense, it's both a neat and disappointing title.

Ane of the key issues with PUBG is optimization. The game is non the prettiest and for some reason, even with the latest release, runs poorly on a range of hardware. AMD users are hit the hardest, whether they have Ryzen CPUs or Radeon GPUs, and while those with Nvidia/Intel systems fare a bit better, the framerates y'all get aren't great to say the least.

It was piece of cake to forgive PUBG for these bug in Early Admission, but despite a large development team and plenty of resources, the game is nonetheless poorly optimized even at the official launch.

PUBG also suffers from technical issues and bugs, many of which seem connected to the network code. Stuttering and safe banding is reasonably common, at to the lowest degree the concluding time I jumped in, though there's also bug like texture pop in and random graphical glitches. PUBG needs a fair scrap of work to improve how it performs, though the current technical issues are non exactly going to end people from playing. Information technology's a ton of fun despite the problems, that's for certain.

Dishonorable Mentions

The five we listed in this article aren't the only disappointing games of 2022, several other titles failed to alive upwards to expectations including Call of Duty: World War II, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Lawbreakers, Agents of Commotion and even Destiny 2.

There was no shortage of games that failed to live up to the hype in 2022; perhaps cipher quite equally bad as the No Man's Heaven disaster of 2022, though loot boxes and microtransactions certainly dominated discussions this twelvemonth. 2022 should be a bumper crop of games, especially on PC, so there's enough of potentially great stuff to look frontward to.