What was the first game you played in 2021?

I spent New Years Eve alone, of course, since in the year 2020 spending time with other people became a dangerous activity, so I decided to finish off some games from that cursed year. I completed Carrion (I liked it okay and at least it's short) and took a run at the last mission in vanilla Minecraft Dungeons (that game is aggressively bland and the last boss is apparently a massive difficulty spike, which is not appreciated) and that finished at 11:30 so I decided that since I had fun with Carrion I might as well grab another shortish and critically acclaimed pixel art game off Gamepass. I ended up going with The Messenger because it was on my list and I'd downloaded it already, even though I bought copies on both Switch and PS4 already for some reason (I'm a dummy; but at least the Xbox version isn't costing me extra.)

So far I've played about an hour and I really like it. The twist has been spoiled for me but as a simple but not very hard kind of Ninja Gaiden/Shovel Knight thing it's holding my attention. It looks nice, sounds really good, and even has some clever writing. I'm glad I'm starting off this year by playing something I actually want to play, as opposed to prior years where I've made some...questionable decisions as to what game to start the year off with.

So for me the answer is...The Messenger.

What was the first thing you played this year? And if it wasn't Dig Dug then you only have 364 days and change to start your annual playthrough of Dig Dug so you better get started digging if you want to save Doug!

Dragon Quest XI on the Switch; the last game in 2020 was Like A Dragon.

Fitting.

Grounded with my brother and roommate. I spent midnight getting attacked by a fucking stinkbug, which seemed like a reasonable send-off from 2020.

Played Sea of Thieves with my brother and some friends earlier and our ship was sunk by a giant red shark. Also seems like an on-brand final hurrah for 2020.

I'm trying to grind my teeth through Valhalla's mythological sections. They did so much to improve the accessibility in the menus, but combined it with lighting and particle effects so over the top that I can't see two feet in front of me in a cave. Or white on white markers that blend into the snow or backgrounds. It's insane that this game was praised so much for its accessibility because playing it makes me want to hire Butterbean to slug my eyes.

Last game of 2020: Yakuza Like a Dragon

First game of 2021: Dota 2

I fucked up about 50% of this.

Baldur's Gate! CRPGs are a massive blind spot for me (haven't played any- just Dragon Age: Origins on 360 when that came out), and i've resolved to understand and DM my first D&D game in 2021- so shortly after midnight i continued my progress. it's neat! fun to see where the bones of so many RPGs came from.

I was playing WoW when the clocks turned over so....WoW.

Not the first year this was the case. Probably not the last year, either.

I'm referring to the new year as "2020 2: Electric Boogaloo" until further notice.

Anyway, still in Cyberpunk 2077.

Last game in 2020: Mahjong via Clubhouse Games 51

I bought CG51 for Switch recently and Mahjong was the last game that I hadn't gotten a medal in. So I read the tutorials, watched some videos, and here was my progression:

Me after tutorials: This game is so complicated, who would ever want to play this?!

Me after winning against the CPU: FINALLY! Now I'll never have to play Mahjong again!!

Me 30 minutes later, but my mind was speaking in Jan's voice : ...Yo, I kinda want to play more Mahjong. It's kinda dope.

I imagine that Mahjong will be my first game of 2021, or Panzer Dragoon Saga, which I'm working my way through.

By the by, this Mahjong kick has nothing to do with Ben and Jan. It's just a coincidence.

WoW Shadowlands, and judging by the pretty dire release calendar for the first half of the year, that'll probably be the case for a while.

I'm still too hungover to game

Kingdom hearts 2.8. Specifically dream drop distance. Jan got to me, now i am playing through the whole series. Its kind of cool, in a batshit kind of way. Also its very anime.

So far I haven't directly played anything myself, but I finished off watching the last half of Penny Arcade's play through of Doki Doki Literature Club (a game I had given up on playing myself because feels), and god damn. That game is intense. Quite apart from the themes of the story (which I, as someone who is very much in the middle of a lot of the issues being portrayed, felt were very well executed), it is a prime example of what sets video games apart from literature and cinema as a story telling medium. Without spoiling anything actually related to the story the game toys with player perception (mixed with the unreliable narrator), and plays around with the physical realities of a PC game actually being a program installed on a hard drive...

Escape from tarkov. Not because I play it much but because I refused to let it be hearthstone battlegrounds because I hate that game and I can't stop playing it.

New years resolution is to get a pc that can run escape from tarkov properly.

I got a raspberry pi 4 for Christmas, so I've been back on my shit, playing earthbound. I love that game so much.

@gerbilsinspace: i need to play that again sometime!

PES 2021. War never changes.

I played some Murder By Numbers before I went to bed I guess. I was watching Castle of Cagliostro at midnight though.

I started replaying Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to tide me over until there are some more patches on Cyberpunk. It’s so much better than the rep is has as a franchise killer, and it’s making me really hope that the rumor that the IP isn’t dead but just on hold is true.

Started Astroneer after picking it up on sale. Great to start 2021 on some chill vibes

@tartyron: interesting. I just started human revolution after beating Cyberpunk. Oddly, it feels like such a breath of fresh air in comparison. Exploring different paths based on your character development feels so much more tangible in deus ex. Also the side quests are way more meaningful than cyberpunks.

That game is so good. I've been meaning to repurpose my RPi4 into a Retro Arch box kind of thing. Is that what you're using? What's the performance like for you?

last game of 2020: greedfall (gamepass)

first game of 2021: american truck simulator

I've been playing Factorio obsessively for a few days. Is it a new year?

Last game of 2020: GG Aleste 3 (in Aleste Collection).

First game of 2021: Immortals: Fenyx Rising

I'm a sucker for weird releases... So a new game made for the Sega Game Gear in 2020, only available through the Japanese Switch eShop (or physical import) was too much temptation. I don't have any nostalgia for these Sega Aleste games, but I do have nostalgia for the MSX Aleste games -- especially the music (because I'm not actually any good at playing these games). Then again, just having a game where most of the menus are in japanese is in itself a nostalgia trip back to the MSX days.

Immortals should be perfect for me... I love ubisoft open world map vomit games. But I just don't understand this one yet. There doesn't seem to be any indicator to let me know when I've completed an area or at least found all the icons in a particular region or something (e.g. like in Valhalla), so I figured perhaps that'll come later... I'll stick to the main story quests for now to let the game reveal itself to me -- but most of those quests seem way too hard for my starting level character. So I guess I just need to randomly explore to level up? it all feels a bit ... directionless.

Destiny 2. Went in to collect the community reward (it was meh) then logged out.

I've been playing Super Mega Baseball 1 which I saw was available on PS Now after hearing Dan and Mike gush about SMB3 in their GOTY.

I played a few rounds of mahjong soul after breakfast.

Otherwise unsure what the first real thing I tackle this year. Thinking about giving Fallen Order another shot because Austins new podcast has me thinkin' about Star Wars.

Technically Persona 5 Royal, as I was playing it when the hour ticked over. But the first game of the day I'm playing is Mega Man X2 in the Mega Man X collection.

I did not remember how open and exploratory the levels were in this! It's kind of blowing my mind. And also pissing me off with how completely obfuscated some of the power-ups are.

Donut County!

Last game from 2020: Doom Eternal

First game of 2021: Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!

Been meaning to get back to this for months (think I've got 3 badges) since Red version was my entire childhood.

Rogue has been the only game I've played so far this year ...

Last game of 2020: MLB The Show 2020

First game of 2021: MLB The Show 2020

I am a weak and fragile being.

Thumper

I continued to make my way through Murder By Numbers.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla on PS5.

Bought it along with Spider-Man Mile Morales and Demon's Souls when I got my PS5. After finishing Miles Morales. Played it enough to get out of the prologue section and do some of the missions in England. Went back to it during time off in the Christmas week mainly due to a notification on my PS5 about the Yule festival timed event to see what that was about and have been playing it ever since. Usually play for a few hours each night. Got about 44 hours of game time on the clock for it. Conquered 3 areas and started Oxenfordeshire's missions. On Skill level 131.

Ghost of Tsushima

Friggin Skyrim ... that or Session.

Does ringing in the new year with my villagers (shout out to my boy Spork, the most OP of villagers) in Animal Crossing NH count as being the first game I played this year?

I've always heard that Mankind Divided wasn't "bad", but it felt more like an expansion pack for Human Revolution that came out many years later when a lot of games and/or gaming mechanics evolved and moved on.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons for me, I started a new island.

Animal Crossing NH and WoW Shadowlands were up while transitioning to 2021.

I picked up the Vergil DLC in Devil May Cry 5. I wish I could have just used him in bloody palace mode right out of the gate, but it turned out that you have to beat the tutorial level to unlock him. I just wish the game told me that so I wasn't scratching my head for a few minutes.

I like the way he plays, but I have some trouble inputting the Devil Trigger super moves like Judgement Cut. I didn't have much trouble in 4 SE and it's the same input, but I find it inconsistent in this one.

Technically Animal Crossing as my son and I stayed up for the NYE Countdown in the game together

Then I've been playing Jedi: Fallen Order (which is really good - I picked it up in the current sale and they've eliminated whatever really bad bugginess I had heard it had at launch) and I'm getting into Stellaris

Last game I played in 2020 was Hades, and it's also the first game I played in 2021

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. Pretty fun, but too many escort missions for me.

The Witcher. I bought it for a whopping $1.49 to see if it would run on my crappy laptop and surprisingly it does. I'm liking it so far.

I played through Streets of Rage 4 after midnight to see how the positive memory of it from last spring stacks up to others for my personal list of best gaming experiences of 2020, if I decide to write down and publish a comprehensive list with words aplenty.

Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer, good way to start off 2021 with an easy 1000 achievement score.

Genshin Impact. Play it everyday, bastards gave me the ol' bamboozle and now I can't get out. Send help.

Call of the Sea.

The world is beautiful and the puzzles are pretty good. Storywise it suffers from that thing where the mystery is way more intriguing than the pay off and it also relies way too heavily on exposition rather than letting you figure out the story yourself.

I'd definitely recommend it though, if you like a good puzzle.