5 worst video games of 2022

It’s never fun to be negative, but some video games just weren’t that great this year. 2022 had some incredible winners, like God of War Ragnarok and Elden Ring. Conversely, there were titles like Gran Turismo 7, that, while fun to play, let their fanbase down with predatory, pay-to-win garbage.

Several of the titles on this list are genuinely fun. But poor decision-making and optimization are among the many reasons they fell short of the mark. Unfortunately, not every offering can be the best game of the year. Some just don’t live up to the expectations fans set of them.

The names are listed in no particular order as they were all frustrating. It’s time to talk about the worst video games of 2022, and why they let gamers down.

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What video games were the biggest disappointments of 2022?

1) Gotham Knights

It’s fair to say that we here at Sportskeeda were incredibly excited for Gotham Knights. As far as video games go, it is an action-RPG set in the gritty, dour world of Gotham City. Batman is dead, and it is up to the Bat Family to set things right. The visuals were beautiful, but that was about it. The combat that I expected to be sharp and exciting was a tedious, button-mashing chore.

The enemy attack patterns were weak, and the general gameplay loop was bland and uninspired. It felt like every other open-world ARPG I’ve ever played. The crafting system was tedious, and the game performed poorly.

Most of these are things that can be fixed, but Gotham Knights' launch, combined with the weak twist at the end, has made it one of the worst video games of the year.

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2) Babylon’s Fall

Babylon’s Fall was a disappointment for a few reasons. For video games, especially now, you want to have an art style that really captures the imagination. But for a title released in 2022, you want to avoid the graphics looking like they’re several years old. But that’s not the reason it upset people.

For a retail-priced offering ($60 USD), a game shouldn’t have to pack in a ton of real-money cosmetics or a Battle Pass — that will not endear it to people. If you want to spend money to max out that Battle Pass, it will cost over 100 dollars, on top of what you already paid to play the game. Sure, you don’t have to do that, but the point that it’s there is annoying enough.

Babylon’s Fall was just not very fun. It had some very cool ideas, but it implemented them in a way that felt slow, instead of fast-paced. It’s not an offering that feels fun until the endgame, instead of hooking people early and making the entire playthrough fun.

Babylon's Fall was one of the 2022 releases with a lot of potential, but it just didn’t work out.

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3) Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires

This one hurts me in particular. The Three Kingdoms games are a series I owe my career to at large. However, while I did enjoy Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires, it was just riddled with issues. It performed poorly, loaded slowly, and frankly, looked like a last-gen offering.

I’ve never seen so many long load times on a PlayStation 5 game. Visually, I was fine with it on a personal level, but it did let me down in a few places.

The maps were pretty bland and lifeless, and the textures would pop in suddenly. The cutscenes were boring and lacked the life and imagination that previous Dynasty Warriors games had.

While it is an offering I enjoy, I cannot help but put it here among the worst video games of the year. The gameplay was about what I expected it to be, but virtually everything else was weak.

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4) The Callisto Protocol

A late entry to the worst video games of 2022, The Callisto Protocol is another name that showed enormous promise. It was presented as the spiritual successor to one of the greatest horror games to exist, Dead Space. However, intense lag is always frustrating, especially in this genre.

Most negative reviews and feelings come from the game’s actual performance on PC. It was mocked as “The Stutter Protocol” with how badly it ran on most rigs. It’s not as bad on a console, but for PC video games, optimization is incredibly important.

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5) Diablo Immortal

“Do you guys not have phones?”

That quote from the Blizzcon 2018 Diablo Immortal presentation will probably live forever in infamy. It was a title that nobody asked for, but many were hopeful for. A free-to-play Diablo experience on mobile? One of the most frustrating video games I reviewed this year, and I wanted to like it. I tried to like it. I gave it so many second and third chances.

I dubbed it an “expensive free-to-play experience” in my Diablo Immortal review. The game is painfully, woefully pay-to-win. We've seen so many people spending tens of thousands of dollars, desperately trying to get the best gems in the game, only to be left empty-handed. The PvP system is frustrating, and while the actual gameplay and combat is fun, that’s all the good there is.

I enjoyed the visual presentation, but for every positive, there was a glaring, money-spending negative. It’s also the worst-reviewed Blizzard game of all time. One of the most predatory names for microtransactions, it had a great premise, but was hampered by corporate greed.

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Most of these video games can be fixed by developer updates and patches, but their launches were among the worst of the entire year. It’s not all negative, though, as we’ve also covered some of the best games of the year, such as the 10 best RPGs of 2022.