Shacknews Most Overlooked Game of 2022 - Horizon Forbidden West

Stay with us, because we know: Horizon Forbidden West is an amazing game. It’s a gorgeous and vast journey through a world ruined by technology and reclaimed by nature. Unfortunately, it also had one of the worst release dates a game of this magnitude could ask for. Allow us to break it down as we share why we selected Horizon Forbidden West as the Shacknews Most Overlooked Game of 2022.

Simply put, Horizon Forbidden West, for all of the good things it did, was forced to come out just a week before the behemoth of an anticipated title that was Elden Ring. Between Forbidden West’s launch on February 18, 2023, and Elden Ring’s launch on February 25, that was just a measly week before we moved from one amazing open world adventure to another one. It’s a true shame too because that is hardly enough time to really enjoy everything Horizon Forbidden West had to offer. Don’t get us wrong. We loved Forbidden West and we loved Elden Ring, but you have to admit it’s a little unfair if you were a fan of both.

More than that, once Elden Ring came out, it can be argued that Horizon Forbidden West kind of dropped out of the collective conscious for a while. Elden Ring simply had all of our attention and it was everything many players wanted it to be, whether they were stalwart Soulsborne fans or not. Elden Ring is that good.

We’re not going to sit here and say nobody played Horizon Forbidden West. Plenty of people (many on our staff as well) love the game. It’s just a true shame that these juggernaut open world games had to go head-to-head with one another. As good as it is, that’s a fight Horizon Forbidden West should have never been booked for in the first place. We hope you found your way back to Forbidden West after Elden Ring, because there is so much wonderful gameplay in there and it deserves to be enjoyed without rushing it to get to the next big game a week down the way.

Check out our Year of the Games: 2022 article to see all of the other Shacknews Awards that have been announced so far.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.