While 2022 may not have enjoyed as many AAA releases as in past years, the ones that weren't delayed into 2023 were stellar and the indie development scene more than made up for the lack of big-budget titles. Some of our favorite releases this year came from small, ambitious teams that delivered fresh ideas. As is tradition, the Engadget team came together to extol the virtues of our favorite releases from the past 12 months. Bayonetta 3 is a delicious amplification of the series' most ridiculous themes. It indulges in absurdity without disrupting the rapid-fire combat or Bayonetta's unrivaled sense of fashion and wit. Bayonetta 3 is joyful, mechanically rich and full of action, plus it allows players to transform into a literal hell train in order to take down massive beasts bent on destroying the multiverse. The Bayonetta series just keeps getting weirder, but that doesn't mean it's losing its sense of satisfying gameplay along the way. In the franchise's third installment, Bayonetta is powerful, confident and funny; she's a drag queen in a universe loosely held together by witchcraft, and the chaos of this combination is truly magical. Sure, you've played Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Hades and The Binding of Isaac – but what if you could play all of them at once, in a single adorable demonic package? Cult of the Lamb is part social and farming simulator, part dungeon-crawling roguelike and all-around fantastic. After being sacrificed and resurrected, you're instructed by a grand, dark deity to start your own cult, managing worship services, agriculture, cooking, marriages, deaths and much more.

Console generations are generally thought to last about half a decade, which is what makes today's Switch anniversary so momentous. Nintendo's hybrid home-handheld console turns five today, and it shows no signs of slowing down: Though rumors persist, there's no announced plans for a new console on the horizon. The most we've gotten are two redesigns -- the Switch Lite and the OLED Switch -- and the expansion of Nintendo Switch Online to include more classic console games. But while it's certainly fun to revisit old favorites like Super Mario Bros., Kirby's Adventure and Earthbound, it's the games made for the Switch that have captured the hearts of the Engadget crew, along with a few other titles that made their debuts elsewhere but really shined on Nintendo's portable system. Regular Engadget readers know there's no way I would let a "favorite Switch games" post pass without even one Animal Crossing: New Horizons mention.

This pandemic has dragged on longer than expected but hey, another 12 months in lockdown means another year to play lots of video games. And what a year it's been, with new installments in storied franchises, remakes of forgotten classics and a game where you date your sword. As is tradition, the Engadget team gathered together to ruminate on their favorite titles released this year, extolling their virtues and sometimes drawbacks, but mostly explaining why we like them so much. We've also thrown in a few of our older faves that we played in 2021, because hey, a good game is always a good game. When people look back at Microsoft's 2021, they'll cite Halo: Infinite and the extra year the company gave 343 Industries to work on the game as one of its best recent decisions. But I think the company also deserves praise for taking a chance on Relic and Age of Empires IV. Coming off the dismal Dawn of War III, fans had every right to be skeptical of whether the studio could pull off a sequel to one of the most-loved real-time strategy games in history.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Welcome back to Talking Tech. This month marks a huge milestone for Microsoft and its Xbox video game console. Twenty-years ago, this month, Microsoft launched the original Xbox.

We regularly write about the games we love at Engadget, and even have "best games" lists for each console. But buying a game for someone else is a different matter entirely to choosing one for yourself. Unless you know exactly what they want, where do you even begin? Well, we'd begin by thinking about what your loved one's into, outside of gaming. Could they do with something to help them chill out every night?

Neon Giant flirts with open-world concepts by creating several "town" areas where players can rearm and reconstruct themselves or pick up side missions and flavor text about the world. Like with the skill and weapon improvements, the game is light on role-playing mechanics, but that helps it achieve its mood and pacing. It gives players time to soak in the atmosphere and take stock of the environments and absorb its booming soundtrack. While action sequences thump with bass, the quieter moments are backed by music like the Buddhist prayer chants in anime films like "Akira" and "Ghost in the Shell." If "The Ascent" has one big issue, it's that its aesthetics are almost too obviously referential.

As a young and fair-weather gamer, I loved playing Super Mario Brothers because it was my older brother's favorite game, and I wanted to be just like him. I can still hear the 8-bit theme song in my head, and I'm guessing you can too, if you played Mario as a kid. "Bah dat dat doo dat dat doo," goes the classic, repetitive, 1985 jam. The ubiquity of those notes in many of our childhoods was as constant as a hug from grandma, a pack of Gushers after school, or Saturday morning cartoons. Retro games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and The Legend of Zelda are comfort food for gamers.

Gaming never went out of style, but in 2020, it evolved from a fun hobby into an essential lifeline. Staying sane isn't easy when you're stuck in isolation for months on end. You can only watch so much Netflix before your brain starts dripping out of your ears. Games provide more active experiences that can help you forget that you've been staring at the same walls for weeks, letting you explore far-away virtual worlds or hang out with friends in multiplayer lobbies. In 2020, gaming became vital.

While some forms of entertainment like movies and sports were hit hard by the pandemic, gaming actually thrived in 2020. Since we were all stuck indoors, we spent a lot more time in front of screens, discovering new experiences, replaying older classics and a few of us even made a dent in our backlogs, aka the "pile of shame." To that end, the Engadget staff presents a slightly different list of our favorite games of 2020: not just the most impactful titles that came out this year, but also the older games that kept us company during this crazy time. I have already spilled so much digital ink on this game this year that, had you asked me to pick my best of 2020 a month ago, I would have picked something different like Miles Morales or Fall Guys. Animal Crossing is fun, I thought, but I've done everything I want to do in the game and I really should be focusing my critical eye on the fancier, flashier titles from more powerful systems. But then the winter update arrived, bringing with it new holidays and reactions and hairstyles, oh my!

Sharing recordings of your gameplay is all the rage these days, but believe it or not, watching someone play a video game is about as old as the pastime itself. When Q-bert and Ms. Pac-Man roamed the earth, it wasn't unusual to see a group of kids clustered around an arcade machine watching the neighborhood's best go all the way on a single quarter. In the 90s, the game in my neighborhood was Street Fighter II, and the aughts had young gamers clustered around living room televisions with the Grand Thefts Auto. Fast forward to today, where sharing or streaming video of your gameplay online is common, and almost any major game you can think of has a viewer base and star players. Unlike games of yesteryear, where Donkey Kong or Sonic the Hedgehog followed a pre-determined path and variation between game runs is relatively minor, video games today offer a variety of different endings, outcomes, and middle games that can be as entertaining to watch as to play.