The Games of 2021
Insert a picture of Ben Affleck smoking here
Last year I said that I didn’t really want to do platitudes, because it was a hell year and no one needed that crap. This year, things are a bit different. I think if we’ve all learned any kind of lesson, it’s that treating 2020 was exclusively terrible instead of one particular tipping point within the Cool Zone is wishful thinking. It’d also be lying to say that I don’t have an inclination to dive into just how miserable things can feel, but that’s what Twitter is for - this is a video games blog, so before I tell why I liked some games this year, let’s look at 2021 through that lens:
If 2020 was the games industry reaping the rewards of actually being able to entertain people via lockdown, 2021 was the industry desperately re-enacting the scene of Leslie Nielson in The Naked Gun trying to distract us from the explosions in the background by saying “Nothing to see here!” The consoles that Sony and Microsoft insisted on releasing in the middle of a global pandemic are still harder to obtain than basic human decency from the government. PC gaming can’t even pitch hit in this case, as we’ve reached the point where Nvidia has to do something so revolutionary as spend more than a year on a product line with the return of 2060 range cards. Yes, chip shortages are definitely a factor here, but I’m going to continue to roast these companies that saw these shortages coming and still said “yes, new hardware is a good idea.”
Not that a surplus of PS5s would solve the various delays and messy development cycles the AAA side of the industry spent the year enduring. Highly anticipated games like the Horizon and Breath of the Wild sequels ended up missing the year, which are disappointments for plenty even as dragging things out for the sake of safety. Halo Infinite launched a year late and while it’s a great time, it definitely arrived in a compromised state. These aren’t complaints as much as they are evidence that much like the rest of the world, the games industry is trying far too hard to obfuscate the realities COVID-19 has shoved us into - a trend I expect to see continue into 2022.
Speaking of what reality has boiled to the surface, a review of the year in games would be incomplete without talking about the efforts of employees at companies like Activision, Ubisoft, and Riot to push back on the treatment they’ve suffered at the hands of management. There’s still a long way to go for orgs like A Better ABK, but the fact that Activision specifically just cannot manage to PR their way around the conversation about their behavior is at least an indicator that even the most “talk only about the GAMES” types can’t ignore the direct correlation between conditions at Activision and their lack of hypeable games.
Basically, this year sucked. The truth is I’m having to put in a bit more effort here, because thinking about video games this year left me fucking lethargic for the most part. That applies beyond games too, actually - I haven’t even seen Shang-Chi for crying out loud - but 2021 was also the year I actually started going to therapy. I’m learning (or at least trying to learn) that we don’t really live in a world of absolute good and trying to hold myself or anything else to that standard is a recipe for anxiety. What I often find myself doing is looking so aggressively at the various enraging things in the world that when I see them in the things I use for escapism, it makes me question why I even cared, or that I am somehow complicit. That may be true, but this would be the point where my therapist would step in to tell me that I need to afford myself a little grace, too. There’s no point in seeking a change for the better if there’s nothing worth salvaging. So for the final day of the year, I’m going to try to give video games (and by extension, myself) a little bit of grace and tell you about some games I liked this year without feeling guilty for liking them at all.
As usual, games that qualify for this list must actually be things that I played and not be a remaster or port. If you are interested in everything I played though, I kept a list of everything I played this year on my GGApp profile here. Also, going to avoid numbers this year but these will be generally in the order of likelihood of me bugging all my friends to play.
CrisTales
Most people seemed to be pretty middle of the road on this game because it is faithful to its inspiration. CrisTales is definitely faithful to a fault, but it’s also compelling in its own right. What pushed this over the edge for me is that I keep coming back to playing it in spite of the technical issues I keep experiencing. I’ve bounced back into the game after not being able to get the game to display all text on my PC and critical boss fights just failing to proceed on the PS5 version, and that’s because I think CrisTales isn’t just imitating classic JRPGs but understands why people liked those games fundamentally. More about this genre has lived on than we pretend - I also played Persona 5 Royal most of this year so don’t try to tell me otherwise - and CrisTales isn’t imitating, it’s a great work study of the genre. That this kind of indie work can go toes with the Square Enixs and Atluses of the world as is while still getting updated with fixes now is more than enough reason to give it the look.
Guilty Gear Strive
A fighting game tends to find its way on to my end of year lists, because I like kicking back with them from time to time. Even so, I know that I’m not that good at them. I’d never picked up a Guilty Gear before but gave Strive a look after enjoying Arc Sys’s DragonBall FighterZ and seeing artist datcravat’s interpretations of some of the game’s characters (she’s very talented, check her out) and promptly learned that I am much worse at these than I thought. After kicking my ass though, Guilty Gear Strive told me that I could, in fact, get better. Unlike most fighting games that fairly assume that you know what you’re getting into, Strive directed me to its training modes that were designed to teach players not just how to play this game, but the fundamentals of the genre itself. Other aspects of the game encourage growth as well, from the analysis of my gameplay after each fight with notes of encouragement to the fluff text in right before a fight begins that tells you that your character is an extension of yourself. It’s bluster, but it works - I’ve quickly played a lot of Strive and it’ll likely enjoy a near permanent occupation on my precious PS5 hard drive space. That’s all before I started reading the lore that Strive conveniently provided me and folks, this shit makes Kingdom Hearts read like Steinbeck. I love it.
Death’s Door
Death’s Door occupies the somewhat perfunctory “not every game has to do something unique, sometimes being really good at a known thing is plenty” award this year. On paper, this is just an isometric Zelda-esque experience, but by god is it an addictive one. Door is a bit speedier and interspersed pretty tough enemies at a brisk but healthy pace to keep things moving. This isn’t quite hitting the craziness of a Platinum game, but it does scratch that same itch. The atmosphere is top notch, too. There’s a near-perfect and gorgeous blend of macabre and whimsy that sells the adorable and fun characters while allowing room to appreciate their meditations on mortality. We are seeing more and more indie games trying to balance these kinds of scales, to be about “things” while maintaining an adorable or whimsical nature. Spoilers, Death’s Door won’t be the only one here, but it definitely does some of the best balancing by not seeking a perfect balance. If it’s time to kick your ass, it’s going to kick your ass. If it’s time to make you laugh, it’s going to do that now. Maybe things don’t have to be a balancing act, but rather commitment to the bit.
Monster Hunter Rise
I’m hesitant to say something along the lines of “Capcom is just killing it” because I know better than that. However, the Monster Hunter team within Capcom sure does look like they’re killing it. After the success of World, I know there was some confusion and hesitancy at a Switch focused entry, but damn if they don’t know what they’re doing. Rise is designed so specifically for the Switch experience you’d have thought it’s a first party Nintendo title - but the online modes work extremely well too, so that can’t be it. Sure, the game is overall smaller in scale, but that scale is jam-packed, especially with vertical exploration. Having played a lot of both Rise and World, I think I have to say the verticality and speed options provided by Rise probably have more overall longevity, at least for someone like me - but that’s why I always end up enticed by things on the Switch in general. Honestly though, it’s the Palamutes. They’re adorable and useful for gameplay at the same time! The perfect innovation.
Genesis Noir
Also known as the game that I have to disclose my Kickstarter pledge for, Genesis Noir is a fun and abstract point-and-click that ends up being a great example of what a couple of creative minds can do with the medium still. What I think stands out most is that Genesis Noir pulls a majority of its inspiration from mediums and material far removed from video games. That’s surprisingly frowned upon among the talking heads in games, but Noir proves that looking beyond where we’ve been before is hardly a bad idea. Over on The Young Folks, I compared the game to a Fisher Price toy, and I stand by that observation. Most of the fun of the game comes from tweaking the various pieces of the environment to see what sounds or effects it will make - which is also conducive to the nature of pointing and clicking itself. At no point did I feel compelled to click around every aspect of the screen because that’s what you’re supposed to do here, but instead because I was curious and exploring just as the troubled No Man was in the story line. A special note for this game’s jazz infused soundtrack driving both the narrative and existing as an ever present force that itself serves as pay off for your exploration.
New Pokémon Snap
Is New Pokémon Snap’s existence almost certainly in part because it’s the franchise’s 25th anniversary and the brand is having a bit of an identity crisis with its aging original fanbase? Yes. Do I care? Did you see that picture of a Pelipper with a Pyukumuku in its mouth? Y’all I don’t even think the existing Pokémon games are bad, so of course I was going to eat this game right up. The innovations Bandai Namco applies for New Snap honestly don’t do too much beyond enhancing the existing concept, but dammit if that initial concept doesn’t work so well. There’s something that just feels so satisfying about in-game photography, as evidenced by the explosion of screenshot buttons and in-game camera modes, and Snap captures that so well. There’s also the case to be made that The Pokémon Company International actually made the right call by waiting so long to release, not only for the visual quality of the game (this is definitely one of the best Switch games this year, visually) but because there are so many goddamn Pokémon now that each excursion into Snap’s levels held another creature and surprise behavior. Still though, this took forever to actually happen, didn’t it?
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
If there was an argument to be made for the PS5 at all, it’d be Rift Apart, and it’d be a compelling one. Rift Apart is visually stunning and polished to a point where I’m starting to recall those tweets about how conditions were for some folks who worked on this game had a rough time and wondering how Insomniac pulled this off without “crunch” and if that’s good enough. They did knock it out of the park though, Ratchet & Clank gameplay is still plenty entertaining and the PS5’s hardware actually can keep up with all the particles and explosions going on all over. The series’ storytelling still has a lot of life in it too, leveraging that this is basically the legacy PlayStation franchise at this point to give us four protagonists at very different points of their lives and sure two of them are two foot tall robots, but it works. I actually found myself very much connecting with Ratchet’s conflict over whether or not he should just be okay with his life as is - and how hard it felt to communicate that, even to his closest friend. Shame more people can’t actually play this thing, though, cause it’s great.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
Look, I know no one really wants to just hand it to the Marvel game, especially after the Avengers debacle, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I’m sure I’m not the first person you’ve heard “I didn’t think this was gonna be good back at E3” comments from, but it’s really the truth. GotG comes out of nowhere to deliver basically a stellar AAA game with a slick, seamless, damn near perfectly paced story, which is hard enough on the best days and even harder when having to go up against comparisons to what even the harshest critics think are the “good” Marvel films. Somehow, Eidos did it - and I’d personally like to say that I’m glad James Gunn is spending his time off playing this game cause I hope he’s taking notes. This game’s use of Drax alone, not just in his own arc, but just in being around the player, is so good and occasionally tense that it probably deserves its own full on deconstruction, and he contributes to my favorite single sequence of the year. I genuinely hope we get a full breakdown of how this game got made, because it’s wild that I would assume the same people between Square Enix’s corporate and Marvel Games were watching GotG and Avengers development at the same time, but clearly GotG had to have been much less micromanaged or something, yes?
Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Confession time: I’ve had Chicory on my Steam wishlist basically all year, just begging to be played, but I didn’t pick it up until they snuck a Switch port under my door at the last possible minute for my end of year coverage. Thank goodness they did too, because I almost missed out on another absolute kicking of my heart’s ass courtesy of the fine folks at Finji. My fellow converts from the church of Night In The Woods will find a lot in Chicory’s story, but what stood out to me is how well the game’s themes and mechanical conceit of painting the world in at your leisure joins so tightly hand in hand. By making you be creative, even if you normally wouldn’t be, Chicory manifests its story of self-doubt and processing those feelings — while notably not simply being about just overcoming such things — and using that created connection to expand both its story and your skillset in tandem. Chicory is adorable, polished, heavy, and honest all at once. Much like Death’s Door, this is much less about a balancing act and more about knowing which strengths to apply and when. Chicory is also easily going to be one of my favorite Switch games going forward specifically, thanks to leveraging the Switch’s touchscreen in portable mode. It’s easy to forget that’s a thing, but it was incredibly helpful while playing; leading me to spend a majority of my time handheld with it even when I didn’t need to.
Inscryption
Going to go ahead and put my snobbish critic hat on real quick to say that I knew Daniel Mullins Games was the real deal before Inscryption came out - because it’s only up from here. The placement here at the end is entirely selfish, though. Inscryption does something for me personally that very few other games are even halfway capable of doing. You see, there’s this part of my brain that lights up very specifically when playing TCGs, to the point where the brief couple of years between my years of Yu-Gi-Oh playing and my current MTG obsession were some of my lowest points emotionally. There are plenty of games that use card game mechanics, but most of them use deckbuilding as a means to an end - another way to scale power ups in a roguelike or *shudders* anything in Chain of Memories. What I want to play is a card game, for the sake of that game. Inscryption gets this fundamentally. No matter how weird the game gets, that card game is the pillar on which everything else is built. And it is fun. While I was playing it, going to bed was just an excuse to lay there and think about playing more Inscryption. Talking with any of my game playing friends or peers right now is just an excuse to talk about Inscryption. Strip all of the storytelling and fascinating atmosphere and leave the gameplay and I’d still have Inscryption at the top of this list. Inscryption. It’s good, folks! They’re patching in an infinite play mode, so if you never hear from me again, well, you know what happened.
That’s a wrap for 2021. See in 2022 when all the games have crypto shit in them!