Game of the Year 2021

[DjchunKfunK]

So I thought for this year we could do something a little bit different. Instead of voting we list our top five games and a brief reason why we like each game. Voting has made less and less sense over the years due to the number of people who have played a variety of new games and the numbers who vote, this way we can highlight the various games we liked from the year.

I'll start.

1. Valheim


A lot of this is to do with playing this co-op with friends and the hilarious scraps we got into but even putting that aside the way the crafting system slowly unlocks as you discover new materials is really smart and despite the small amount of build items compared to similar games you can create some truly amazing structures. It also managed to find the right balance between survival being something you need to worry about without it getting in the way. Added to all that was an amazing look and a great soundtrack.

2. Eastward


A beautiful game that luxuriates in it's leisurely pace. Whilst most games ask you to save the world Eastward is content to let you just explore and follow the story on it's cast of characters. Another stunner of a game with some of the best pixel art and animation that I've ever seen. The way the developers were able to give Sam such character with just a few pixels was astounding.

3. Death's Door


A great mix of Zelda style exploration and challenging combat and another game that has an art style that I love. A game that the further away from completing it that I have got, the more I have grown to love it.

4. Inscryption


Not really a surprise that I end up enjoying a Daniel Mullins game but even when you expect the unexpected with him he still manages to surprise. The game starts out really strong and whilst chapter 2 is a bit lacking the third act is a return to form. The dumb FMV is the icing on the cake. It's not without it's flaws, the game relies a bit too much on randomness at times but the look and feel of the whole experience more than makes up for that.

5. Necromunda: Hired Gun


Possibly the biggest surprise of the year, Sterum On Studio have a history of making interesting but flawed games and Hired Gun is sort of another one of those. However the combat manages to gloss over a lot of it's issues. It's not a new feature and Halo Infinite also has one, but the addition of the grapple hook coupled with the various movement abilities your character has means levels are a blast to play. Guns pack a mighty punch and the levels encompass some of the best recreations of Warhammer architecture I have ever seen in a game. You can keep your Doom Eternals and your Halo Infinites, give me Hired Gun any day of the week.

[Sly Boots]

Nice, glad we're still doing something like this

[Sly Boots]

1. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous



This was something of a surprise for me, in that what I expected to be an interesting diversion actually played out to be simply one of the best (and biggest) CRPGs I've ever played. Huge, even overwhelming, number of choices in character creation, which is a good thing, but any initial paralysis of choice is mitigated by a freely available total respec. I was intrigued by a good half-dozen of the available classes, and thanks to that mechanic was able to try them all out before making a final choice. Strong story, fantastic gameplay and while Kingmaker was also very good, the addition of (once again hugely varied) mythic paths adds an entirely new dimenson. I loved it, the only blot being the slightly tacked-on crusade mode, but at least at a certain point you're able to steamroller through it without much thought.

2. Inscryption



Already on Dj's list, but another one that blew away my expectations. I was expecting a decent card battler, but in fact it's an excellent card battler wrapped up in a trippy narrative that is constantly evolving throughout. I'd have been perfectly happy with my purchase had the first (and best) chapter been the entirety of the game, but the way you keep descending down the rabbit hole after that point, with no idea where you're going, elevates it to one of the games of the year imho.

3. Loop Hero



Slightly odd one this, in that I played it obsessively (84 hours according to Steam) when it first came out, but eventually reached that point where I was done with it and haven't played it since. However, that initial playthrough was great fun, the right kind of roguelike where you're making constant, sustained progress between runs, and always developing new tactics to try to get that bit further in.

4. Solasta Crown of the Magister



Another RPG! This one divides the crowd a bit, I think, because while environments are nice-looking, the characters are, not to mince words, horrible. And the available voices in character creation are both thin (four for each gender, although one of those sounds the same for both male and female) and also pretty bad. Also, the story, while serviceable, is not terribly compelling either (in fact I can barely remember now what it was all about, in stark contrast to Pathfinder WotR). So why is it on my list? Because if you can look beyond those shortcomings, it's a lot of fun to actually play, and it's stands out as the most accurate implementation of D&D 5e mechanics on PC, so it feels very much like playing tabletop D&D. It's got Wrath's stamp of approval, so who am I to argue?!

5. Days Gone



Surprised this didn't make Dj's list ( ), but in all seriousness this is one of the better open-world games I've played in recent times. Great graphics, great acting, tootling through the world on your bike remains a lovely experience throughout, while the action is a mix of stealth, frenetic combat (when your stealth inevitably goes wrong) and pant-shitting terror. I'll simply never forget the first moment a horde descended on me while I was sneakily clearing an outpost, and fighting hordes late-game is unlike any other gaming experience.

[Animalmother]

I've played a good few games that came out in 2021 but I've either completely forgotten them or didn't think much of them. The ones that stuck out...

Resident Evil Village
The gorgeous visuals, arse clenching use of sound and the frenetic action make this the standout game of the year for me. It's also one of the very few games that make use of RTX on the new consoles. It's not a long game and it does feel like they blew their wad on the first few chapters but it's a very solid game throughout.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Yes it's 2 years old but with the constant updates they've turned it into a completely different game from when it was released. This is dispite Ubisofts bumblefuckery attempts to ruin everything they produce.

Halo Infinite
The open world is a bit of non event and the multiplayer can go fuck itself. But the actual combat is great and the grappling hook is the greatest thing ever introduced in the series.

[ManBearSquid]

I've barely played any new releases. Hitman 3 and Deathloop are the only two that I can think of. So...

Hitman 3
Loved it, love the series. I didn't play it as much as 1 and 2, but that's mostly because I bought it on PS4 before getting my PC. I'll likely buy it again once it comes to steam.

Deathloop
Although I did enjoy this game, very much so at times, it doesn't top Arkane's earlier work for me. Solid game, some great fun, but also a one-and-done for me seeing as the whole premise of the game is repeatedly playing through it.

[Lenny Solidus]

1. Halo Infinite Multiplayer


A modern halo multiplayer had its work cut out glad to say it's my go to online fix mixing up some of the best arena shooter maps + gameplay currently on offer it's been a long ass while since I ran round with a gun feeling like an extension of myself hitting headshots from across the map sticking grenades smacking other aggressive players to the face as their bodies crumble in a corner. Adjusting your playstyle depending on what team mates you get *fuck all afk players* to always secure a hard earned one point difference win especially when you end up in a 3 v 4 scenario, hard clutching on the game is frequent and always rewarding and that yeah one more match ethos is as strong as it has ever been. I've missed several appointments unable to pull myself away in time.

No I don't own the battle pass after spending too many years being fleeced by Destiny 2 only to see my purchased content disappear into the ether, I am yet to give 343 any money even though I'm platinum IV in ranked I have unlocked plenty of goodies but don't have access to any of it without the pass. I think I will give up what they deserve this week for the price of entry alone I've had enough memorable gaming from it already to warrant that slight cash injection.

Please fix melee though 343 its broke as fuck in all Infinite multiplayer isn't only a return of Halo it's a pure celebration of everything that always made Halo so good and showed an entire industry not everything has to release a broken mess.

[Alan]

Been a bit of a dry year for me. Most of what Ive played that came out in 2021 I didnt think much of (Halo, Loop Hero, Back 4 Blood, Metroid, Outriders, The Medium). Everyone elses posts remind me there's a whole bunch of games I wanted to get round to!

Of what I have been liking I haven't finished any!

Hitman 3
Havent even started it yet but I know when I get round to it it'll be one of the best games of 2021 ¬_¬

Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth
Havent come close to finishing it yet but its a very good Metroidvania with a very silly name based on some probably silly anime thing. Its very Symphony inspired and is very good so far. Also on gamepass. Thats a very lot of very.

Guilty Gear Strive
Looks great, plays great, I'm awful at it but thats not its fault.

Resident Evil Village
Its fine. Looks great, sounds great, plays kind like shit which is probably intentional in that tank control kind of way. Its very very silly. The bit with the hand did have me cracking up. Overall I think it feels a bit stale but still good enough to keep going with.

Wildermyth
Not played enough to know if it gets stale in the long run but its an impressive procedural generated tactical RPG. Its heavy on the character interaction, development and ageing. It makes me think of Massive Chalice which was a very boring game with neat ideas which makes me worry about Wildermyth in the long run. Its neat so far.

Jupiter Hell
Its a top down Doom (very)roguelike that they had to change some some stuff that was a bit to close to Doom. Music's a great Doom 2016 ripoff. Its very hard and very addictive. The voice work is a bit grating though.

[Raid]

As usual there are very few games I've played at release this year, so almost all of my choices would be from earlier than that.

DCS F/A-18C Hornet and F-14B Tomcat
The two big sim modules I've flown this year are very different beasts to one another. The Hornet is relatively modern (it models an aircraft from 2005), flown by telling the computer where you want to be rather than really flying it yourself, employing precision weapons and hitting targets from several miles up. The Tomcat? Well if you pull on the stick hard enough you can rip the wings off and even if you don't, it's extremely easy to break half of the cockpit instruments just by manoeuvring too hard, but it's practically a rocket-ship by comparison. A big, dumb rocket-ship that swaps precision and, well, effectiveness, for a pair of aviators, a cassette full of synths (no really, there's a whole controls section for the tape player that your pilot has secreted somewhere, and a whole soundtrack written just for the module) and enough thrust to make those dastardly Soviets regret...stuff.

Night in the Woods
A game about the sad ruts that people find themselves in and the effects this can have on their mental health, this was a bit of a strange one. I had to rush through it as it was leaving Gamepass in the week that I finally got around to starting, and it was only after I'd put it down that I realised how much character building stuff I'd managed to miss when I read the wiki, and I was gutted. It's not that it's hidden away or obfuscated, but it occasionally forces you to choose between two friends with whom to hang out, and I ended up sticking with the bad influence character most of the time. It's well written, utterly charming and has a wonderful soundtrack. I was going through a rough patch myself at the time, then I picked this up and felt things, and then I discovered that one of the game's developers committed suicide after its release. It's going to stick in my head for a long time, but not for the reasons a game usually does that.

Enter the Gungeon
This wasn't even new to me this year, but after a long hiatus I came back and actually finished a run for the first time, which given how sodding difficult it is, was a major triumph for me. Given that it's where my forum avatar comes from you'll not be surprised to learn that it's one of my favourite games of all time, but it's rare that a game with no real story or atmosphere, one that survives purely on its formulaic but brilliant gameplay, really grabs me like this did.

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
This absolutely wouldn't be on my list were it not for Ian and Todd, with whom I've spent many an hour planning strategies, giving one another covering fire, and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the axiom "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." The game itself is good, but not half as good as when you've got a few likeminded folks to play it with.

Final Fantasy 5: Pixel Remaster
This is going to be the game I hold up as an example of a near perfect remaster. They've done such a good job with updating things that it doesn't feel like they've done anything at all - it's only when you look back at screenshots from the SNES version that you realise just how much they've done, because in my head this is what the game always looked like. It's vastly better than the hideous mobile ports they made a few years back, as it keeps every scrap of character that the original release had.

[Sly Boots]

Night in the Woods
A game about the sad ruts that people find themselves in and the effects this can have on their mental health, this was a bit of a strange one. I had to rush through it as it was leaving Gamepass in the week that I finally got around to starting, and it was only after I'd put it down that I realised how much character building stuff I'd managed to miss when I read the wiki, and I was gutted. It's not that it's hidden away or obfuscated, but it occasionally forces you to choose between two friends with whom to hang out, and I ended up sticking with the bad influence character most of the time. It's well written, utterly charming and has a wonderful soundtrack. I was going through a rough patch myself at the time, then I picked this up and felt things, and then I discovered that one of the game's developers committed suicide after its release. It's going to stick in my head for a long time, but not for the reasons a game usually does that.

Not really the thread for this discussion, but that dev got accused of some really horrible things, and I think some people boycotted the game as a result. I've seen nothing recently to indicate whether those accusations were ever proven, though.

[Raid]

Yeah, I'm largely aware of the circumstances, and frankly it's all a bit messed up. To some his suicide before getting to tell his side is an admission of guilt, but then you have to factor in the effects being immediately dropped by a team you've worked with for years could have on someone. It tarnishes the memory of a game I quite enjoyed, but at the same time it's morbidly appropriate to some of the themes the game covers. Holowka had spent much of his adult life battling personality disorders and depression, the game deals with these themes quite directly, and then after releasing this to critical acclaim, he kills himself. And I myself suffer from depression, and was going through a bad patch of that at the time.

It's just a bit of a mental clusterfuck that I struggled to get my head around much less put into words, hence why I referred to it, in something of an understatement, as "a bit of a strange one".

[Snowy]

OK here I go then, not everything on my list was released in 2021 but my criteria is that it was played a lot by me:

1. Forza Horizon 5 - Other driving games do elements better but for a simple pick-up-and-play none come together and deliver quite like the Forza series. A forgiving handling model but one that has sufficient flexibility that different cars handle in different ways that feel right. The constant drip-feed of dopamine from winning new cars, races etc, the changing seasons bringing a new set of challenges in every few days, and the stunning visuals keep pulling me back in.

2. Ghost Recon Breakpoint - This one I just keep going back to, and the co-op sessions with Todd, Eny and Raid have been gaming high points. In co-op this game is so much more than the sum of its parts. My finest moment of gaming in 2021 came from this game, with my sneaking into an enemy base while getting overwatch from Todd and Chris - having the whip of silenced sniper rounds whistling past to take down enemy infantry was just sublime.

3. Days Gone - One of the best "7/10 games" I have played in a long while. Good story, well acted, and the hordes... <shudder>

4. Red Dead Redemption 2 online - Getting my online cowboy on remains a whole load of fun. Very little griefy play in this one, and the overall feel and ambience makes me go back again and again.

5. FIFA '21 - I have a perverse relationship with football games. On the one hand, I don't follow foot-to-the-ball at all and find the whole tribal thing a bit crass, but I do enjoy football video games. Played this a lot this year, enjoyed it too.

Honourable mentions include Going Medieval (medieval Rimworld basically), Deathloop (enjoyed my time with it but will probably never finish it), Back 4 Blood (good enough but not as good as L4D) and New World (scratched my MMO itch for a while but didn't keep my attention).

[Mantis]

Cheers for starting the thread up as always DJ.

I've actually played a fair chunk from 2021, though a lot of them are HD remasters or remakes. I would say my top five are:

The Ascent

Pretty simple and quite a janky experience online at times but ultimately was one of the most immersive and wonderfully detailed Sci fi worlds I've ever played in with fantastic meaty and gory shooting to provide the thrills. Blowing up entire screens of enemies with chain reaction bombs never gets old.

Loop Hero

As someone already mentioned, one of the most satisfying implementations of rougelike game loops I've seen. Such a neatly designed little package of a game with wonderful music and perfectly matched pixel art. Not finished it yet but it was probably my favourite release of the year.

Valheim

I normally can't stand survival crafting games because they are all pretty much almost identical. There was something about the retro ps1 style graphics, the lovely lighting and the general aesthetic of the world that really clicked with this though. Having a little village of 6 or 7 of us building together, going off on little solo adventures to map the world and teaming up to take down bosses really made it special though. One of the few procedural open world survival games where I really got a little sense of wonder from exploring the unknown on that enormous map.

Age of Empires 4

A nice update over AoE2, does some things better and other things worse. Ultimately it was just nice to be able to play a semi competitive RTS game again though. I've been craving one for years and everything usually falls short. AoE4 came close to recapturing the magic of the genre.

Returnal

I haven't really played much of this at all yet, but I can already tell from the tight gameplay mechanics that I'm going to sink a lot of hours into it.

[Solitaire]

Similarly to many of you, I didn't play too many new releases in 2021, so I'll throw in what I can. Will be a mix of newer games and 'new to me' from probably late 2020.

Sable



This is a fascinating game in many respects. It has an art style heavily influenced by Moebius and is a mostly non-violent, exploration type of game. It's in 3rd person, slowly paced, and allows players to basically take off in any direction, for whatever reasons - find stuff, complete quests, just look at cool architecture and landscapes, etc. The soundtrack is appropriately shoegaze-y enough to fit right in. Great game, on sale on GOG right now from what I just noticed. I have it on Steam and am quite happy I supported this interesting project.

White Laboratory



A curious tower defense-style game that can be quite satisfying when levels are accomplished, or screamingly infuriating when everything goes to hell. After the first couple of easy-peasy levels, it definitely becomes more of the latter. Cool physics and a really neat art style are the highlights.

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint



A game mentioned above by my Ghostly comrades, this was my absolute highlight of 2021 gaming. We've had tons of great times and I hope for plenty more, when I can get myself *finally* settled down somewhere! It'll happen soon! I hope! We actually had five of us in Discord not too long ago. Having a full four-man team, with Mark, Chris, Ian, and myself, equals an unstoppable squad! Until we crash-land the helo, that is. Or blow up the mission objective. Or alert the entire island of our presence. Or get repeatedly mowed down by a Behemoth. You get the idea. Anyway, the "Motherland" update is practically an entirely new game. I can ignore the NFT nonsense, because it was a non-starter and seems to be the joke of the gaming world, whether STALKER 2 or Ghost Recon or etc. The devs and artists in the trenches, I believe, have a love for this game and gave it the major tweaks and additional content needed to create a first-class experience.

Cyberpunk 2077



I'm a huge fanboi, I know. It's a culmination of decades of hope for a cyberpunk style game. It's far from perfect. The modding community has done wonders over the course of 2021, turning this into a truly great game in my opinion. Sure, there's still tons of problems, and lots of stuff that was promised but never delivered (e.g., destructible walls! [in exactly one place]) - and maybe in the future a new iteration will bring everything else that was hoped for. Still, I can't help but love skulking around in a (modded) rainy midnight, looking for trouble, and finding lots of it.

[Animalmother]

Can we add our most disappointing game of the year?
Battlefield 2042
Just a clusterfuck of terrible ideas, broken gameplay and tone deaf mismanagement. They took simple, time proven game mechanics and pissed it all away to try and make another generic shooter. The much maligned BF5 now has a higher player count than 2042. I fear it's time for my old beloved game to retire.

[Sly Boots]

I buy so few new games - being much more willing to take a punt on games when they're dirt cheap years down the line - that I tend to be pretty sure I'm going to like something before I hit the buy button.

I suppose there's Moonglow Bay, a little indie title that hit Gamepass and gleaned positive reviews. I downloaded it, utterly failed to make it past the first fishing part (which is also the first part of the game). After several minutes of fruitless attempts I prompted uninstalled, thinking "fuck this shit"