It won’t be long before the 2022 edition of The Game Awards is upon us. Even though the year may have been a touch light on huge triple-A releases (with exceptions, of course), it’s still been a fantastic time for plenty of games made by smaller teams. The nominees in the Best Action category reflect this trend, as there’s a nice mix of small and large titles here, although which one wins is anyone’s guess. Let’s take a look at all of the nominees.
Related: All nominees for Game of the Year at the Game Awards
A Plague Tale: Requiem
The sequel to Asobo Studio’s rat-infested stealth-action game, A Plague Tale: Requiem took what worked in the first game and broadened it to a more epic, sweeping scale. Although it still has its fair share of personal storytelling and tense stealth, the larger world and expanded suite of combat options turned this indie darling into something closer to the triple-A action games that usually dominate this category.
God of War Ragnarok
Sure, it only released less than a week before its nomination, but God of War Ragnarok still might be the most obvious nomination for a category that features games “combining combat with traversal and puzzle-solving.” The much-hyped sequel to 2018’s reboot of this long-running franchise picks up right where its action-packed predecessor left off, and it’s probably a frontrunner to win this category when all is said and done.
Horizon Forbidden West
The third and final sequel on this list, Horizon Forbidden West followed up the first game in the series in the challenging circumstance of releasing a week before Game of the Year nominee Elden Ring. Much like the other sequels in contention, Horizon mostly expanded on what worked in its predecessor, namely fighting daunting robot dinosaurs tooth and nail by focusing on individual body parts to deliberately (and dramatically) take them down.
Stray
One of two games on this list that was made by a smaller team, Stray sees you explore a cyberpunk-tinged city as a cat. It stands out among the nominees as a more traversal-and-puzzle-focused game, that’s only occasionally punctuated with combat or chase sequences. Although most of these elements show up in similar ways in plenty of games, Stray shows how much more exciting they can be with a simple change in perspective.
Tunic
Tunic may be the biggest surprise to make this list, but that’s only because it doesn’t fit the mold of the usual Action Game nominee. With combat that takes 2D Zelda a few steps further, the action, strictly speaking, is more than serviceable. But the real treat is in the bottomless well of puzzles and mysteries that hide around every corner, just out of sight.
