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.)

13 of 14 photo by Bandai Namco

96 Elden Ring

Metacritic's #1 Xbox Game of 2022.

(#1) Was the 2022 Game of the Year released all the way back in February? Certainly, no title released in the months since has garnered the same level of acclaim as Elden Ring, a brand new IP and the result of a collaboration between Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin and game designer Hidetaka Miyazaki (of the famed Souls series). Their action/RPG is set in a vast and richly detailed open world and features a fantasy storyline revolving around an all-powerful ring, which, in the game's present, has long been shattered into shards—though the shards are still powerful enough to corrupt anyone who possesses one. You play as an exile (one of the "Tarnished") who seeks to return to the Lands Between to track down the shards and restore the ring to become the Elden Lord. If that sounds easy, you haven't played a From Software game before. If that sounds like one of the best videogames of the past decade, well, it just might be.

“Elden Ring is a crowning achievement for FromSoftware and undoubtedly the very best gameplay experience they've yet delivered - and that's really saying something given this developer's incredible back catalogue. The Lands Between deftly combine breathless open world exploration, stunning artistry, immaculate world-building and wondrous adventure with classic Dark Souls combat and dungeon-crawling, resulting in not just the best Souls game to date, but a candidate for one of the very best video games ever made.” —Pure Xbox

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