The Best Xbox Games of 2022

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – January 2, 2023

Which Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One games impressed professional reviewers the most during the past year? We rank the best-reviewed titles released between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022 by Metascore. Games must have at least 7 reviews from professional critics to be eligible for inclusion. If a game appears on both Xbox platforms, only the version receiving the higher quantity of critic reviews (typically the Xbox Series X/S version) is eligible for inclusion. (All scores listed here are from December 31, 2022.)

11 of 14 photo by Crows Crows Crows

93 The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

(#3) It's not often that we get to include a game whose reviews are incorporated into the game itself, but that's the case with this new version of an existentialist adventure set in an office where all workers other than your character, the titular Stanley, have suddenly vanished. Over a decade ago, a mysterious indie game called The Stanley Parable —itself a stand-alone version of a Half-Life 2 mod created by a 22-year-old gamer-turned-developer in 2011—quickly became a hit with gamers and critics alike. This year brought a revised version of the game that not only updates the visuals to modern standards—and brings Stanley to consoles for the first time—but also expands the game with new content, new endings, and a bucket.

“Without wanting to sound preachy, just know that you’ve never played anything like The Stanley Parable, and this Ultra Deluxe edition just expands on that in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. There are a lot of titles that gain short term notoriety thanks to the memes or streamers reacting, but this will outlast anything else that has come before and deserves to be considered one of the very best game experiences of all time.” —Xbox Tavern

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