Hello once again it’s time for ArbitraryWater presents: “Video games I have played this year that came out this year.” Much like its predecessor, 2021 has been a bit of a mess for me personally but at the very least my continuing physical, mental, and social isolation meant I played far too many video games, including some vaguely relevant to our shared online conversation. This is what we’re here for, yes? The zeitgeist? This is the one time of year I’m legally allowed to talk about video games you’ve thought about in the last 10 years so let’s get to it.

11 (honorable mention). Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Superlatives: CRPG Participation Trophy, Best reminder that 5e has more combat options than hitting a dude or casting a spell, Baby’s First Homebrew Campaign

One of the undersung things about this current CRPG renaissance is the abundance of solid independent outings, most of which I’ve unfortunately missed. One day I’ll get around to, uh, at least more than the first five hours of Underrail or Tower of Time, just you wait. Thankfully, the one indie game I did get to was a pretty solid one, in Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Made by a small Paris-based team (some of whom previously worked on the Endless series) it is, in a lot of ways, an ideal toybox for D&D 5th edition mechanics, most of which have yet to be really translated into a digital form. Swen willing, Baldur’s Gate 3 will come out for real in the year of our lord 2022, but until then this is the closest you’re going to get.

Solasta reminds me a lot of Temple of Elemental Evil, actually, with its fully customizable party, emphasis on combat, and character building options. Given that they’re using 5e SRD (as opposed to the full D&D license), some of the omissions are unfortunate even if there are often homebrew additions to fill in the gaps. If one needed a reminder that you can, in fact, make interesting combat encounters with the ruleset, there’s plenty of evidence here. I’ll admit I personally found it on the easier side, but I’m also a monster and know a thing or two about grids of a square or hexagonal nature. Of course, the strict adherence to “rules as written” means a delightful abundance of shit I forgot was even in the PHB. Who doesn’t love trying to remember the difference between light and low-light? Or like, keeping track of rations? Just… don’t make a human in your party. Otherwise you’re going to have to deal with light management CONSTANTLY. Treat yourself better than that. They don’t even get the free feat.

Now, the problem with Solasta, and the reason why it didn’t actually scratch the top 10, is because there’s not a whole lot beyond it being a 5e character building and combat sandbox. The game’s story and writing is endearingly amateurish, helped by the bizarre and questionable decision of having your party of PCs automatically talk based on whatever background traits you gave them. The entire thing, from the secret lizard people invader storyline (no, really) to the dungeon design, to the weird half-baked faction and crafting mechanics all speaks to a level of enthusiasm I can get behind… but as an RPG? It’s probably a little closer to Neverwinter Nights 1, where the toolset is the draw and the included campaign… is not. Looking forward to seeing what comes out of the studio and the fanbase with enough time, but for now this is the honorablest mention I could give.

10. Necromunda: Hired Gun

Superlatives: Divine Cybermancy 40K, In the Dark Future of the 41st Millennium There Is Only Wall Running

Warhammer 40K is a license whose cache in video games has been notably cheapened over the last few years, after Games Workshop seemingly made it available to anyone with $5. There have been definite standouts, like 2018’s decidedly un-XCOM turn-based tactical tomb raider, Mechanicus (which I like a lot) and the solid-if-dry 4X (but not actually a 4X) Gladius. Necromunda: Hired Gun is another notable game, made by the same team of French weirdos responsible for E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy and Space Hulk: Deathwing. In other words, it’s the product of Eurojank royalty, and deserves proper deference.

Finally, finally FPSes are taking influence from Doom 2016 outside the strange dark corner that is the old-school shooter renaissance. Necromunda is here to take influence from that, Titanfall 2 and basically a half-dozen other random things. As a cyber gunman/woman deep under the hive cities of the Imperium, you engage in… I think there’s a plot? Maybe? There are grindable side missions? Why is the weapon customization both in-depth and impossible to parse? You get a grappling hook and a double jump and an air dash and cyber powers and an attack dog and an execution that restores health and just a lot of different weapons. As a result the combat alternates between fast paced murder and absolute clusterfuck, but either way it’s certainly enjoyable. Most of the time.

Honestly I think my favorite thing about Necromunda is just how good the art direction is. It’s one of the few games (alongside Space Marine) to really capture the absurd stupidity of 40K’s scale, and does so on a ground level. No Space Marines in the underhive, just a bunch of cockney-ass criminal types surrounding colossal mega-technology with a bunch of rusted imperial machinery and worn propaganda. That alone is probably worth the price of admission if you’re into the setting, and I think it’s been proven I’m into the setting. So it’s on the list.

9. Chivalry II

Superlatives: Dedicated yelling button, the knight game whose community isn’t swarming with nazis

Dedicated Yelling Button. Throw your dang sword at them. Sometimes the servers don’t work. Hey. Hi. It takes a lot for me to get into competitive multiplayer stuff anymore, but Chiv II is a good time. It’s the perfect middle point between sweaty pro-gamer execution-focused video game and a complete big-team clusterfuck, somehow doing that latter bit far better than this year’s Battlefield installment. Don’t have a whole lot else to say other than “it’s very satisfying to cut dudes” and “you should play this with me, maybe” If you’re the kind of person who reads every entry on this blog please drop a “bloggers” in the chat.

8. Arthurian Legends

Superlatives: They Made A Video Game Specifically For Me, This Year’s Troubleshooter Equivalent, Probably not on your list

In the arena of Game of the Year lists, my tastes can seem depressingly mainstream at times, despite my reputation as an obscurist weirdo. I’m never going to be one of those Giant Bomb guest lists that have 18 different games and non-games from itch.io that you played during a game jam with your game dev friends (also you had no time to play real video games because you were too busy making games during game jams with your game dev friends or getting into weird twitter fights.) So, the best I can muster is drawing upon the power of obscurity to talk to you about this first person shooter-brawler with only 200ish steam reviews, filled with digitized actors who are clearly the developer and his friends running around in chainmail. Arthurian Legends is very stupid, but it’s the exact level of stupid that I want. As someone who has spent this year delving into FPSes, both dubious and otherwise, it’s also a genuinely fun time.

“Finally, someone decided to make Witchaven but good” is a sentence no one but I and maybe Civvie-11 would say. Through three episodes you spend a lot of time fighting historically accurate monsters like Saxons, Gargoyles, Giant Spiders, Skellingtons, and Wizards, finding hidden secrets, doing a lot of violent decapitations, etc. The focus on melee works primarily because it’s simple, straightforward, and gives you a lot of tools (like running around throwing caltrops and kiting fools) but there’s also stupid nonsense like grenades, poison throwing knives, bear traps, and the occasional magic wizard staff. It’s a good time! You should play it

7. Cruelty Squad

Superlatives: DIVINE LIGHT SEVERED. You are a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters.

Cruelty Squad is fucked. Just an immensely unpleasant hell nightmare of a video game, intentionally made to be as upsetting as possible. Aggressively weird, vaguely immersive sim-ish, filled with an exceptional burning hatred of our current late-capitalist hellscape and the way it commodifies human existence. Did I mention this game is weird and fucked and somehow in spite of that also a totally good first person tactical shooter filled with a bunch of hidden stuff? Anyway please harvest the organs of your foes or get way into fishing, as to in any way game the stock market. It’ll make sense eventually. Or not.

6. Monster Hunter Rise

Superlatives: The one switch game I played this year aside from Ring Fit, the self-control award for not ruining my life

Monster Hunter Rise has the special distinction of being a Monster Hunter game that didn’t absolutely demolish my free time, personal well-being, or grades. By this metric, it might be the best Monster Hunter game. By another metric, the best thing about Rise might just be the way it takes Monster Hunter, a series notable for being leisurely, and makes it go fast. All of the quality of life streamlining from World is still intact, but with the added mobility and a far more generous grind it might just surpass it. The gunlance is good again, finally. The regular lance is still good. It looks and runs astoundingly well for something on the Nintendo Switch. Will I get the master rank expansion and sink another 60+ hours? Probably. Will I go all the way down the bad choices path and re-purchase it on PC? Maybe? Hopefully not? Get your release shit together capcom.

5. Halo Infinite

Superlatives: John Halo Fucks Shit Up Award For Being A Good Halo, Titanfall 2 Award for Good Grapple, Game I cannot play with my brother-in-law because I get matched against absolute savages and he cares slightly too much.

The most relevant Halo has been in years is also the most relevant I’ve been about Halo. Campaign-wise, 90% of that is the grapple hook. As someone who cannot stand the Ubification of big open worlds, the open worldish segments of Halo Infinite aren’t especially thrilling on their own, but being able to swing around like a 7-foot-tall space brick Spider-Man whilst committing acts of relentless violence against the Not-Covenant II is some of the most fun I’ve had with a shooter in quite some time. I think the actual linear levels are kind of a bummer. A large portion of that is just how many of them take place in the same neon-lit forerunner corridors that this series has relied upon for far, far too long (and sometimes red-lit banished corridors.) Similarly, the relegation of the “outside” bits to open world shenanigans means that there’s less room for “the tank level” and so I was forced to have my own fun with the tank in the open world, which.. Let me tell you. That open world is not built for tanks.

Story-wise, it’s kind of a mess. The idea of “normal man and manic pixie AI deal with The Master Chief” is a solid enough premise, but the whole narrative throughline and resolution to the stuff from Halo 4 and 5 makes me glad I very much do not care about the deep lore. I care about headshots with pistols, exactly how squirrely the warthog is, and the screams of my foes as I grapple to them and then punch them. The campaign in general feels like a very strong foundation for much *better* Halo-ing, and I’m interested to see what comes of it. Also I’m probably gonna play Halo 5 for the first time in 2022, so look forward to that trainwreck.

More importantly, the multiplayer is actually great. For once, having the geriatric reflexes of someone pushing 30 is actually a benefit, and my latent Halo 3 experience circa 2007-2010 is finally paying off. It’s faster whilst not ever really betraying what makes Halo novel and good. as the last mainstream arena shooter. It’s still about controlling power weapons and vehicles, with a decent split between sweaty pro gamer stuff and big team chaos. Now if they’d make the next battle pass better and fix matchmaking for BTB that’d be alright. Just don’t read the subreddit.

4. Inscryption

Superlatives: Gino “ThatPinguino” Grieco Personal Card Hell Trophy, Vibezzz Award, Game Everyone Else Has On Their List

Like all of Daniel Mullins’ other games, Inscryption is more than it initially appears, and like all of his games it’s more about a weird voyage through a bunch of different game styles and goofs than a reflection of one particular genre. Well, that’s not entirely fair, it’s a game about card games, just as it’s a game about the batshit insane ARG tie-in and a game about weird haunted video games. I’m not one for spoiler culture and generally don’t give a shit about ruining everything for myself, but a lot of the magic of Inscryption is just the constant sense of surprise. If you like card games and weird shit and escape room puzzles… maybe give it a go? Yeah. It’s a good time. I enjoyed it a lot.

3. Resident Evil Village

Superlatives: Somehow Works In Spite of Everything, “Your Right Hand Comes Off?”

REVILL dares to ask “What if Resident Evil was stupid again?” Don’t get me wrong, Resident Evil has always been dumb, given the last numbered game in the series involved an evil hillbilly dad whom you had a chainsaw duel with. But Village is somehow even dumber; picking up from 7, deliberately invoking 4, and then charging brazenly and recklessly into full cornball B-movie nonsense territory. Ethan Winters is truly the ideal Resident Evil protagonist. He’s an idiot faceless goober who constantly has the worst shit happen to him and shrugs it all off with a quip and a disproportionate lack of concern. His reactions are key in a game which jumps from giant vampire mommy castle to an escape room where you chase an evil puppet to a flooded section where you fight a fish man to a factory where you fight cyborg zombies. Somehow it manages to do all of this without any of that feeling discordant, which is WILD.

For once, the increased emphasis on action over survival horror is something that I’m okay with. Some parts feel like a practice run for the absolutely inevitable, worst-kept-secret remake of RE4, but no sequence lasts long enough to overstay its welcome. It’s a brisk experience whether or not you’re going for a speedrun, which works to its favor, even if I do wish there was a bit more of that old-style puzzling and navigation. Really, the one point of outright contention I have with RE8 is just that the Mercenaries mode sucks. Otherwise it’s definitely a continuation of the hot streak Capcom has going with the series.

2. Hitman 3

Superlatives: The Best Package in Video Games, Vicarious Vinny Caravella Viewership Award

Yo, Berlin is very good level. Okay cool thanks bye. No seriously, you know what hitman is. This game works both as a self-contained conclusion to IO's new trilogy and also as a complete package. Cannot say enough nice things about it.

1. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous

Superlatives: Russian Excess Award, The Most CRPG, Shouldn’t have played as much as I did in the time period I did.

CRPGs ARE BACK BAYBEEE. Okay, they never left. But hey, I get one every year, and this year’s outing is probably the most impressed I’ve been with “one of these” since Pillars 2 in 2018. I think Owlcat’s initial outing, Pathfinder Kingmaker, was a bit of an uneven one. It launched incredibly hot out of the oven and was more-or-less unplayable for the first few months of release. Once it was stabilized, it was an alright time, although still a little closer to a curiosity than a full-on banger. More importantly, I think Kingmaker was probably the wrong choice to adapt into a CRPG. It’s a module that benefits greatly from the improvisational nature of tabletop RPGs, and turning it into a computer game strips down the act of exploration and kingdom building into a series of dull choices and maintenance. Who doesn’t love having to deal with *checks notes* exhaustion rules?

Wrath of the Righteous is a universal step up over its predecessor in almost every way. It’s better-written, looks significantly better, adds a bunch of meaningful classes from tabletop, and comes with turn-based already implemented. Pathfinder was always a ruleset based around exponential escalation, so a module where the main characters receive demigod-level powers in their fight against hordes of demons makes perfect sense. It helps that the game makes some genuinely interesting variations depending on which mythic path you pick. Not all of them are going to be especially world-shattering differences, but there’s enough variety that a playthrough as a Trickster (the one I picked) will have a pretty clear difference from one as a Lich. It’s a sense of scale and power that starts high and becomes absurd by the end. To put it simply, it goes for it in terms of scope and it pays off very well.

There’s a lot to this game, and anyone who finds it intimidating is probably normal. The spirit of Russian game design excess shines through here, but the biggest difference is that Pathfinder has a budget. There are 25 core classes, most of which have at least 4 separate archetypes (to not even get into mythic levels, prestige classes, multiclass combinations, and doing all of this for your entire party.) They sure did manage to reach all of their stretch goals, though at what cost? Well, as of this writing I’m to understand that mounted combat is still broken, certain class abilities don’t work as advertised, and the army battles are still fucking terrible. Oh right, did I mention that there’s an entirely separate army-scale tactical battle system heavily inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic? Yes it’s ridiculous, but consider that Owlcat has a lot of veterans from Nival, who made the last good Heroes of Might and Magic game before Ubisoft drove that series into the fucking ground. Is it fun? Is it balanced? Is it remotely interesting? No, but by gosh darn it they implemented it and that deserves respect. Maybe install the mod that just auto-wins all those battles.

It’s an unwieldy video game, but as a triumph of raw Computer Role-Playing Game it’s the best game I played in 2021. It also came out right as I was starting grad school and absolutely threw me off on the wrong foot from the beginning, so that’s cool. Like Kingmaker, I bet it’ll be a *better* game in 6-12 months but it’s already a pretty fantastic one.

Most Disappointing: Deathloop

Deathloop is truly a faustian pact of a video game. I’ve been one of the people agitating for Arkane to get their mainstream due for ages, and the fact that this is the game to get it… upsets me. I acknowledge I’m part of the problem, I’m why Prey and Dishonored 2 sold poorly, but there’s no way for me to say it other than “They sanded off the edges and I don’t like it as much.” In every single promotional interview for the game, the developers constantly reference things about prior Arkane ImmSims which players found confusing, intimidating, or overwhelming. So… they just took it all out. All of it.

To use a fun game designer term, Deathloop lacks “friction.” On paper, all the tools are still there and the ability to approach situations with a wide variety of options still holds true. In practice, you become overpowered *very quickly* and can bulldoze through pretty much every avenue with the blunt hammer provided by a small handful of weapons and abilities. What, are you *not* going to use their blink equivalent? Because you only get two slots for powers, and one of them is always going to be Blink. Stealth is perfunctory when you have so many tools to trivialize it, and I found going loud to be the correct option most of the time anyway. Perhaps a ham-fisted morality system isn’t the way to incentivize the player, but without something like that it’s very easy to put everything through the square hole. The one wild card is the invasion mechanic, which is neat, but hamstrung by a PVP meta that developed even by the time I was done with it (nor do I imagine it’s especially active these days.)

I guess the point of contrast here is Prey Mooncrash, which clearly influenced a lot of Deathloop’s structural ideals, but Mooncrash worked because it was a small-scale experimental DLC. Extrapolating that out to a full game while also trying to make it “approachable” doesn’t work nearly as well. It’s got a pseudo run-based sort of thing going on, but since environments are fixed and the progression of the story is fixed it’s not nearly as open as it initially claims to be. Instead of intuiting anything, it’s all spelled out for you with exactly ONE “correct” route. It’s… it’s a bummer man. There’s absolutely some cool style going on, some fun writing and quality performances, but that stuff alone isn’t quite as deep or meaningful to sustain a full video game. When the implications of the game’s setting and ending are more interesting than anything that actually happened on hedonism island… maybe that’s a bad sign.

Bleh. Now I’m depressed. It’s fine. It’s well-made. It’s not bad. It’s not even remotely close to the worst game I played in the year of our lord 2021. But it’s one that sticks out because of how sour it made me.

Games of 2021 I will play more in 2022 please stop yelling at me: Metroid Dread, Tales of Arise, King’s Bounty II, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Ys IX, probably some others I forgot.

Hey like all years, 2021 features games I purchased for money and then did not quite get around to giving a fair shake. These are some of them! One of my new year resolutions for 2022 is to not buy a new video game for the first six months. I already have Elden Ring and Total Warhammer 3 pre-ordered, and other than that… I probably have enough on my plate to last me a while. Will 2022 be the year I finally start poking at the Trails franchise? What about the Tales franchise? Need I remind you, I still own like six Tales games other than Arise which I haven’t played. Tales of Graces Fs in the chat? How will dubious RPGs be impacted? Please look forward to it. I’m hopeful things will be better from here on out. And if not? Well, Total War Warhammer III comes out in like six weeks. Have a good one. Stay safe out there.

...and yes, I will probably also write *my other list*