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The best Game Pass games from 2022 include an impressive range of rhythm games, horror games, and no shortage of narrative adventures.
Another year is coming to a close, and it was one with no shortage of excellent Xbox Game Pass games. Whether you’re into RPGs, rhythm games, survival horror, or niche historical murder mysteries, Game Pass probably had something for you this year. With so much to choose from, it’s hard to sit down and decide what to actually play We managed to do it anyway, though, and listed some of our picks for the best Game Pass games of 2022.
With the year drawing to a close and a packed 2023 on the horizon, it’s time to look back at the best games of 2022
With The Game Awards at an end, the year is drawing to a close, and while there’s plenty to look forward to in 2023 – including Starfield and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – for now, it’s time to take a look back at the best games of 2022. Despite a seemingly endless stream of delays, 2022 was packed with games, from big-budget spectacles like God of War: Ragnarok and Elden Ring, to surprise indie hits such as the adorable hero’s adventure Tunic and the retro-horror hit Signalis.
Choosing between so many games is no easy task, but we’ve done it anyway and listed our top picks below.
We’ve got a list of general tips to get you through the game.
Have you ever dreamt of slaying demons with an increasing amount of weapons while the background music features somebody shredding away on a guitar? Well, Doom has been around for a while now, but maybe you’re looking for something a little fresher, more rhythm-y?
Metal: Hellsinger scratches that itch and then some — with a flurry of levels, unique weapons and a leaderboard to show off how skilled you are at the game. If you’re finding yourself getting a little frustrated, we’ve got a list of general tips to get you through the game and up your score down below.
Six weapons, six ways to cleave through an army of demons on your quest to regain your voice.
Six weapons, six ways to cleave through an army of demons on your quest to regain your voice. Metal: Hellsinger has spared no expense in making your murder options both fun and interesting. Each weapon has a use, but some weapons perform better than others, so if you’re looking for a breakdown of all the weapons in Metal: Hellsinger, look no further — we got you.
We spoke to Metal: Hellsinger’s David Goldfarb about how it feels to release a game and how he put together the most metal game of all time.
As a game developer, few things are more anxiety-inducing than the review embargo. It’s standard practice for a select number of games media outlets and influencers to get early access to the biggest new releases, and then they’re given an embargo – a set time and date where they can start talking about the game and their impressions. This is when games get scored, and sites like Metacritic fill up with impressions.
“I haven’t slept because the game comes out on the 15th, but the embargo lifts today, so everybody’s crazed,” The Outsiders director David Goldfarb tells GLHF on the morning of September 12. Metal: Hellsinger is just days away from launch, and the review impressions just might decide whether or not thousands of people play the game, making this a nerve-racking moment.
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“You just never know, and I haven’t shipped a game in like nine years, so I’ve forgotten what it feels like,” Goldfarb says, referring to his director role on PayDay 2. Before that, Goldfarb worked on EA’s flagship Battlefield series and the PlayStation-exclusive Killzone 2. Clearly, it never gets much easier. “I think it’s just nine years of build-up where you’re like; ‘oh, let’s just get it out of the way’.”
Metal: Hellsinger is a brand new rhythm shooter which sees you blasting down demonic monsters in time to the original soundtrack. Each stage is coupled with a unique song, and you can compete for high scores in online leaderboards. Best of all is that Hellsinger’s soundtrack features vocal tracks from renowned metal musicians, including System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, Trivium’s Matt Heafy, Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe, and more.
“The way it started was, I was playing Doom (2016), and I happened to have the music turned down, and I was listening to Meshuggah in the background. And I decided to start doing stuff to the beat,” Goldfarb says, explaining the moment he came up with Hellsinger’s concept. “I thought there could be a game there; there’s this flow overlap that happens when you’re listening to music and shooting on the beat. Then I came up with playing as a demon, and fighting your way out of hell. And then I forgot about it. A few years passed, and Funcom asked me if there was a game I wanted to make.”
The fact that well-known artists have collaborated on the soundtrack for Metal: Hellsinger has been fantastic for marketing, and the Metal: Hellsinger concert at Gamescom 2022 probably wouldn’t have been viable if it weren’t for famous names being present. As a big metal fan, Goldfarb knew exactly who he wanted to collaborate with.
“But that didn’t mean we could get them,” he says. “Two Feathers are the composers and sound designers. We talked and we didn’t know who we could convince yet, because we didn’t have anything to show, we just had a prototype.”
“Nicklas’ (Hjertberg, one half of Two Feathers) mother knew the girlfriend of Mikael Stanne, the singer for Dark Tranquility,” Goldfarb says as he outlines the series of coincidences that solidified the direction for Hellsinger.
“So Stanne was who we reached out to first, and then when he laid down the track, we did a bunch of iterations and heard it, we were like, ‘OK, yeah, that’s gonna work.’ Then it became a snowball effect where every time we signed one person, we suddenly had a widening circle of people willing to work with us.”
The Gamescom 2022 Metal: Hellsinger concert felt like one of the biggest moments of the event, and cemented Gamescom’s return to in-person events. Goldfarb says it was organized in less than four months.
“Thank God I wasn’t doing the organization. It was a lot of planning and coordinating because we weren’t even on location,” Goldfarb says. “The other thing is, all of these artists were touring. So we had a super narrow window of opportunity to make it happen. It was unbelievable that we were able to pull it off. Our team, I don’t know how they did it.”
Tensions are high on the run-up to a big launch, as is clear when Goldfarb tells me how much sleep he’s had: “Probably like, four hours in three days, or something.” But even with that kind of stress and anxiety mounting, he only had one regret to share in our whole chat. “If we just could have had like, more people in the pit. I had actually f***ed up my foot; I really wanted to be in there but, no.”
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
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Metal: Hellsinger has more than just music to it.
If the idea of a music-based shooter sounds weird to you, you’ve probably never played a Doom game before − that series has grown an icon status thanks to its legendary heavy metal OST. Metal: Hellsinger takes that combination of metal and guns, makes them smooch, and births a diabolical baby.
Developed by The Outsiders, Metal: Hellsinger is an old-school FPS backed by rip-roaring, headbanging music. As in a Devil May Cry-styled action game, you’re tasked with not only playing, but playing well. Oh, and playing to the beat. This requires you to switch your mentality compared to traditional shooters, as you don’t simply need to progress through a level in order to “win” – you also want to dominate the leaderboards and land the perfect score.
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With good timing, you can rank your way through to a 16x score multiplier, and doing so makes your weapons more powerful and brings in each of the original musical track’s vocals. If you get shot or shoot out of time, your combo loses its intensity and the song gets back to its basics, down until the sole bass track.
Most of time, it’s easy to follow the pace of those songs, especially as the soundtrack is filled with bangers − bands are not involved, but singers from System of a Down, Arch Enemy (our favorite with “Stygia”), Trivium, Dark Tranquillity and Lamb of God, among the others, definitely are – and they’re such foot tappers that you’ll get into the right cadence without even noticing. The soundtrack really shines during boss fights, where they’re played at the 16x multiplier by default – it’s a bit of a shame they’re not very challenging, outside of the last two, but at least the final boss grants an absolutely epic ending to the game.
It’s not long before you find yourself counting the seconds between each shot so you can get the timing right, and you’ll naturally increase your tempo – and your fire rate – as the tracks get more intense. The game does a good job with that, dynamically switching between situations where you should follow a slower beat and a faster one throughout the same level.
All is music in Hellsinger, and doing anything in time – sprinting, shooting, reloading, slicing a demon up with your sword – rewards you. It’s a bit like playing a real instrument, at times.
Metal: Hellsinger has more than just music to it, though. It’s a full-fledged shooter, working exactly as you’d expect, with a good variety of enemies and weapons – the latter complete with extremely powerful special abilities. You might even say some of them are overpowered, but we’re here to have fun, right? Shooting is precise and reactive as you move your character around levels, especially with mouse and keyboard. It’s particularly exhilarating to quickly turn around while shooting, landing a headshot on the spin, perfectly on-beat, which is easier to do than it sounds. Truth to be told, the aiming assist feels generous, as it doesn’t demand exact precision, but like I said, we’re here to have fun, right? The weapons feel good, and that’s what matters.
Levels are linear, built around the concept of increasing your music’s momentum as quickly as possibly, and there’s no room for exploration nor gathering collectibles. While it’s in the tradition of boomer shooters, it feels refreshing after spending so much time doing Super Mario jumps in Doom Eternal.
You’ll never meet overwhelming, Doom-like hordes, either, but you’ll still need to dash, jump, and constantly be on the move if you don’t want to get overwhelmed. At times, you’ll think you’ve dodged a shot, only to take one directly in the face, but that’s probably more an issue with my skill than the game.
Speaking of Doom’s inspirations, Glory Kill-style takedowns are available for you to instantly kill your enemies after a few shots. This rewards you with health items, but not ammo − switching guns here isn’t a result of dwindling resources, but a move of necessity, with each weapon in your arsenal tuned for a different kind of threat. Plus, you want to look stylish and rack up those combos.
The Outsiders put together a six-hour campaign, where the story – despite Troy Baker’s charisma as the narrator – is just in the background and never goes much further than a trivial premise and a rambling ending. On top of that, you can pour a few more hours into the game’s challenge mode. Whether you play it during your first run or later, it’s useful as it grants you with perks that make it easier to rack up combos. As for the challenges themselves, you’re tasked with getting rid of a series of enemies in small arenas, in limited amounts of time and with modifiers that rotate your weapons randomly or don’t allow you to restore your health.
But speaking of longevity misses the point with this game. The developer clearly wanted a Guitar Hero-styled experience in the shooter genre – a game where you play the same level multiple times just to improve your high score or simply listen to that song you love one more time. Get your friends to play and see who can come out on top. It’s perfect for Xbox Game Pass.
In the current gaming landscape, it’s tough to come up with a memorable experience in the shooter space, but Metal: Hellsinger is a fancy idea seen from the outside, and one that entertains and simply works once you get to play. While the game leaves behind some gameplay and storytelling elements that could’ve been interesting to explore, it’s one that FPS and rhythm game fans, possibly with a bit of nostalgia for the good ol’ days, should definitely give a chance.
Written by Paolo Sirio on behalf of GLHF.
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Metal: Hellsinger is the latest attempt to take that mix of music and blasting and actually combine the two in gameplay – the big difference to all the other attempts is it actually works, despite all the complexities in the way.
Doom has a lot to answer for. Be it the nightmares of children who encountered a Pinky sprite far too young in ‘93 or the now inextricable link between metal beats and FPS demon-slaying, we’ll be blaming the godfather of shooty-bangs for a lot. Metal: Hellsinger is the latest attempt to take that mix of music and blasting and actually combine the two in gameplay – the big difference to all the other attempts is it actually works, despite all the complexities in the way.
Hellsinger challenges you to make it through various arenas while shooting, dashing, reloading, and activating special abilities, but you do it to a beat. The music swells as you keep to it, and big, satisfying points pop out of enemies as you headshot, slice, slaughter, shotgun, and otherwise destroy your daemonic opponents. Get to a x16 multiplier and the vocals kick in, your job being to hold it there as long as possible.
In similar games I’ve tried in the past, this has been ludicrously difficult. The combination of trying to navigate a fast-paced game world, stay alive, and stay on beat quickly overwhelms. Hellsinger does a lot to help with that, and most of it comes down to subtleties. Simply, everything on screen is trying to keep you on-beat. Keeping your shots in time to just the crosshair would be a challenge, but every target pulses. Every gun reloads in-time. Missing one beat isn’t punishing, and sound-cues (alongside the music, natch) will put you back on the path. Even moving in-time rewards you, and the game never expects you to do two things on-beat – simply choose one each time.
Hellsinger also makes the correct decision of not being a challenging game outside of its rhythm properties. Damage isn’t too high, enemies aren’t too fast – it’s a high-score game, not a massively difficult FPS with metal on top. It simply wouldn’t work with Doom Eternal’s hyper-lethal enemies, ludicrous pace, or massive number of weapon and movement options. No doubt difficulty options – even a one-hit-death mode – are one of many potential additions that could be made outside of the demo I played, but for a starter experience this is perfect.
There’s just enough auto-aim that you don’t need to be pixel perfect. Health is regenerated through good combat, but there’s plenty just lying around too. Shooting off-beat still does damage and has an effect, if not as explosive of one. When the pace of the music changes, everything happens faster, rather than expecting you to work out how your gun timings interact now.
It helps, massively, that said music rules. Obviously, if you run screaming from heavy drums and guitars, or can’t stand melodic screaming as vocals, this simply isn’t the game for you. But this isn’t just thrown-together game music metal, it’s good metal. There’s famous names on the original soundtrack, and it sounds as legitimate and brilliant as anything Spotify Discover is likely to pop out.
Beyond the music, the aesthetics also work. Two things concerned me coming into Hellsinger: the general rhythm FPS difficulties explained above, and the ‘80s hair metal stylings that I’m both personally not a fan of and feel are very overdone. Whatever your personal feelings on it are, I was vastly more impressed than I expected. Enemies feel unique and interesting, guns are cool, the main character is a clear badass without speaking. I’d rather hear more from her than the odd cowboy skull-gun companion, who is probably the low-point, but it’s so much better than I expected. If the stylings of the trailers put you off, give it a shot anyway.
It’s probably also worth noting, and not just for my ego boost, that I am (at time of writing) the world record high score holder on the press demo level. As well as making me extremely cool and sexually attractive, positioning the game as a high-score chaser is going to increase its longevity a thousand-fold. You get a nice big “New World Record!” message if you manage to grab one, and a spot at the top of a global leaderboard. You can also show just your friends’ leaderboards to compete with them.
I have no doubt my record (6.8 million and change on Stygia) will be smashed within hours of the wider world getting access, but it does mean I can’t tell you if the game works with no sense of rhythm. I thought I’d be pretty terrible at it but I wasn’t, and I can say that I think the tutorial and various in-game prompts do an incredible job of teaching you, but this is something that each person will have to try for themselves. Hence why they’re putting out a free, three-level demo fairly soon, I suppose.
Those high-scores are one point of contention. After getting my world record (did I mention that?), I then tried a couple of times to beat it. I spent more time at a x16 multiplier, I took less damage, but my score ended up lower due to, I think, higher weighting on completing a level quickly. I don’t really want to beat it quickly, I want to do it skillfully, and I think the balancing of all that before launch and people start setting real records is going to be very important. There’s also so much optimization that can be done with every kill that getting a true 100% max run is going to be near-impossible.
Another area Hellsinger triumphs is boss design. If you’ve played Returnal’s bullet-hell bosses, you’ll be immediately at home with Hellsinger’s variant. Attacks hang in the air to give you a chance to analyze the pattern, and once again the whole combination of on-screen prompts means you can concentrate on it without dropping the beat, with some practice. The Stygia boss is simple and not particularly difficult to kill, so there’s clear room for increased complexity there.
On that note, this first level is brilliant but this definitely isn’t a game loop that can sustain a 20 hour campaign. You’d get tired, for one, and the areas for expansion that other FPS games can exploit don’t work when you have to keep it all simple enough to not overload players. This includes level design, enemies, guns, movement tools – the lot. What’s here so far is impressive enough that I think they’ll pull it off, but one misstep and it could go up in smoke.
With just one, ten minute level I’ve already dropped an hour or so on Hellsinger, and I’m desperate for more. Skill runs and high-score competitions will be a feast for the eyes and ears, and it should immediately get a post in the skill-game community, if they like the music. More, please.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.
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