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Superharman

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Game of the Year 2021

While 2021 didn’t hit me like 2020, it was just a continuation of what that year became which was…disappointing. While I’m a generally quiet person and am fine hanging out at home for the most part, I still enjoy going shopping in the city, meeting up with friends and going to the movies on a regular basis. 2021 had little to none of that and this was also compounded by the fact that I lost a lot of touch with others hobbies, particularly reading books. Thankfully, gaming hasn’t been a hobby that has had any major impact, in fact, it’s probably benefited from all the above with this year’s list representing a lot of hours played.

Previous Year Lists: 2008 (Braid), 2009 (Dragon Age: Origins), 2010 (Mass Effect 2), 2011 (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim), 2012 (Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward), 2013 (The Last of Us), 2014 (Dark Souls II), 2015 (Bloodborne), 2016 (Inside), 2017 (NieR Automata), 2018 (Yakuza 6: The Song of Life), 2019 (Outer Wilds), 2020 (Final Fantasy VII Remake)

Honourable Mentions:

It Takes Two – I just couldn’t sneak this one onto my list as while the gameplay was excellent and there were genuine moments of joy, the story and game itself became a little bit tedious after a while.

Golf Club Wasteland – If I ever get to working on a creative enterprise that this game helped me realise, I’ll likely regret not giving this great experience more praise. Alas, that could still be some time off.

Road 96 - Was literally on my list but removed it due to a first week of January game just blasting my list apart. There is a lot here to dig into if you’re willing to go with it though the Switch version is rough on a technical level.

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye – I’m not against putting DLC on my top 10 and Echoes of the Eye certainly did a great job at recapturing the magic of one of my favourite games of all time, but that’s just it, I’ve given this game all its praise. Also, fuck those stealth segments.

Set to play January: Inscryption (Just beat Act 1) & Tales of Arise

Old Games:

Prey – Ashamed. I actually got a copy of this the year it came out and never touched it. Admittedly, I hear that the Series X version with improved load times and frame rates removes a lot of frustration…but I’m still pretty sure I would have loved this as much then as I do now.

Resident Evil 0-7 & Code Veronica – I’ll talk more about this when I get to Village on my main list, but playing that game made me realise that I’d been missing out on a series that seems perfectly attuned to my tastes…so I decided to play them all. I will just note that I only played remasters/remakes in all instances, I’ll be playing revelations 1 & 2 when I have time in the new year also.

Dissapointment:

Bravely Default 2 – Just one that sticks out this year as something I felt like I’d sort of wasted time with, BD2 was just so…boring. It remains to my shame that I never finished the first one, but I hit a difficulty wall that would have required grinding and I wasn’t in that place when playing it. I thought the first game had some great story beats which is why I stuck it out with this one, I was just waiting for something, anything to happen and it just never did.

List items

  • Bob’s Bottles, that’s where it made this spot, I already loved this game to that point but there was just something about that level that hit me (and my girlfriend who was also choking up watching along) to the point where I couldn’t do anything but make this my game of the year.

    I played Psychonauts when it first came out and it quickly became a favourite but the game never really felt like it was more than wacky fun and a collection of genuinely amazing levels. I’m also a big fan of pretty much all of Tim Schafer’s games and have been since Day of the Tentacle. One thing that’s always been frustrating about the way people talk about his work is that the focus is on the funny, but he’s also great at drama, both Full Throttle and Grim Fandango are examples of how he just nails quieter, more dramatic moments. But the first Psychonauts, while it certainly had its fair share of themes, just ended up being that wacky fun and that’s the mindset I went into this one. At first I was actually a little disappointed, where were levels like The Milkman Conspiracy for example? But as I started to realise what Double Fine were doing with this game, the story they were telling and the world building they were doing, I started to care, a lot.

    There was just so much here for me and the levels all flowed so magically that I was kinda down when it all finished up, I wanted so much more and yet, it’s a miracle we even got this in the first place. This was so far beyond my wildest expectations way back when I supported this game on Fig. In terms of story, it’s honestly up there with one of the best I’ve experienced in a game for mine with just so many moments that I’ll be thinking about and hopefully, go back to. I’m hoping this launches Double Fine and Schafer into a new era of creative freedom where business and budgets can be managed by others and they can knuckle down and deliver large, small but most importantly, unique Game Pass experiences.

  • Shockingly early in my Resident Evil Village experience, I realised that I’d been an idiot for 25 years in keeping this series at a distance. It wasn’t entirely my fault, I never owned an original Playstation and then never had either a Dreamcast or GameCube either so I couldn’t really play any of the foundational games in the series. The first one I really had access to in any way was 5 and that never really grabbed me. I grew up on adventure games though and at its best, Resident Evil combines the best of adventure games with a strong horror edge to keep you on the edge of your seat, I know this now because after coming to this realisation playing Village, I played through all 7 numbered games (to note, remakes of 1, 2 and 3), 0, Code Veronica and hell, I even watched all 6 live action films (something I don’t recommend), the 3 CG films and the series recently released on Netflix.

    So yeah, this game made me a pretty solid Resident Evil fan and it would likely top my list…if I didn’t play Resident Evil 7 which overshadowed almost the entirety of this game, hell, that’s now probably one of my favourite games of all time. But this is about Village and Village is still a great game and I can’t overlook the fact that about 2 months of my life became absorbed in Resident Evil all because of it.

    Village just fantastically accomplishes everything it sets out to do, from the classic survival horror of Castle Dimitrescu, to the more psychological horror of the doll house then the body horror shoot em up section in Heisenberg’s zone. These characters are so rich and fun that you almost wish some of their sections could go on for longer. Resident Evil Village made me a fan and I now eagerly anticipate the next entry in the series.

  • I’ve been playing Halo since the start but I’d never really call myself a Halo fan. While I loved playing through that first game it wasn’t till Halo Reach that I sunk myself into another campaign in the series (though I did play them all except for ODST). From a multiplayer perspective there were a lot of nights playing 3 with friends and housemates and again, with Reach, I had some great moments playing online but beyond that the following games in the series left me a little cold. When they surprised launched the multiplayer for the 20th anniversary, I wasn’t going to jump in as beyond a dalliance with Overwatch a couple of years ago, I’m not really a multiplayer shooter type but I was swayed by the hype…to the point that I ended up logging over 20 hours with this game before the campaign even hit, it was just so much fun.

    The campaign hit at a slightly awkward time for me as it was my birthday and I had a lot of family visiting, it wasn’t until the week after that I really got to sit down and let it all wash over me so I could find just a stellar gaming experience. I’ve heard people complain about the story, I just shrug that off, it’s a Halo story, it’s fine and probably better told than the last couple at that. The moment to moment of this game though is just so good. There is a section in the middle of this game where you’re stuck in a small part of the open world and you have to take down three guns so your ship can take off. It sounds like the most basic game design possible and it is but actually playing through that made me feel like the greatest action hero ever with just the bevy of combat options you have in this game to the point that explaining all the things I did would make me sound like a crazy person. This is what it comes down to for me, be it multiplayer or campaign, the game just never stopped being an absolute blast to play and before I even started writing this entry, I logged in to make sure I got a game in for the current event. My team lost, didn’t care, it was still a great time.

  • I did a thing recently where I looked back on a lot of my lists from previous years and there were some games that I ranked really high where I scratch my head a little. I’m sure I loved the game at the time and it carried through with me to the end of the year, but it feels like almost after I hit publish on the list, I just forget about some of these games. Bugsnax from last year is a good example of this, a game I ranked third on my list, there was so much I genuinely loved about that game but was it a third placed game? I say all this because I’m potentially at risk of doing this again with Chorus, but just know this future self, you love this game, go play it for a bit and you’ll remember.

    It’s almost as if Fishlabs went into my brain and created the ultimate game I didn’t know I wanted. Chorus tugs at me from a lot of different directions, I grew up a fan of PC space sims but have fallen off the genre, while this is a lot looser than a sim, the control of the ship and the battle scenarios are so absolutely fantastic that I’m constantly playing it with a smile on my face. This is a game where I will cheer when I pull off a perfect move while weaving through an asteroid field keeping a ship in my sights or doing a shooting run across a capital ship and pulling up at the last second before colliding, it’s just all so damn thrilling. I also like the story and the main character, yes, it’s constrained by its budget, but it all struck the right balance for me with this damaged character who almost feels like she’s come right from the Riddick universe…a universe I happen to love.

    Yes, I played this game in the first week of January so it’s extremely fresh, but I gotta be honest with how I’m feeling right now and right now, Chorus is my fourth favourite game this year, it wasn’t even that big a question for me.

  • I love ambiguity, it’s one of the reasons Dark Souls is my favourite game where it isn’t just the super tight gameplay and challenging difficulty, but the world you’re cast into and the hazy explanations for everything. It didn’t take long for that feeling to hit me with Death’s Door, with its intricate and beautiful world design that never really goes out of its way to over explain everything. Fighting the giant castle early I was wondering how much crazier this could all get, then I got to the pot lady’s mansion and was just obsessed with sinking myself as far into this world as the game would allow

    It’s actually been a while since I’d played this and I was starting to wonder if this actually was something that should rank so highly on my list, then the NoClip documentary came out and as soon as that music hit, it all came flooding back to me. This is just a wonderful experience from top to bottom with precise controls, a good doling out of upgrades and some wonderful levels that reward exploration. Its world design does a great job at capturing what I love about Dark Souls in showing a world that is basically in its final days and how the characters are dealing with that. Just writing about it again really makes me want to go back and put in the time to do that umbrella run.

  • As we enter my top 5, I’ll be talking a lot about moments as having a genuine moment with a game, for me at least, solidifies it as being in my game of the year discussion. They don’t always stick, I look back on games from previous years lists and am stuck recalling what it was that stood out for certain games. With The Forgotten City, I don’t think I’ll be forgetting (…sorry) this experience in a hurry for basically one sequence, when you get the golden bow. My partner and I sat there glued to the screen as this continued to go on realising the horror of what was taking place…If you know, you know, I don’t want to spoil it.

    The rest of the game is also great and I haven’t really stopped thinking about this one. While I have issues with some elements of the ending, there was still a real sense of accomplishment at solving the mystery that was here. The loop of this game is just so clever and solves a lot of the mechanical issues I had with 12 Minutes. Ultimately though, it just comes down to being a strong, contained experience, I never felt overwhelmed with what this game was offering and I couldn’t help wishing that there were more games with open world freedom that were as focused in their scope. This one is exactly my type of thing.

  • I played this game coming off of Metroid Dread which was quite the dichotomy, something my girlfriend was more than happy to point out. After a demo was released for this I gave it a quick go and found the routine of it to be just a pleasant experience. It also introduced me to characters who I figured I’d like to get to know a bit better so I got this on release despite the Australian Governments best efforts to ban it due to the fact you can at one point inhale some weed!

    Pleasant is the way I’d describe this one, there is real drama here, but nothing earth shattering, just people living their lives and dealing with general problems. I found myself genuinely falling for some of the characters and to my delight, the game actually went there with me to the point that the ending I got just felt so unbelievably perfect. This is at above games like Forza and Metroid on my list simply because of how fondly I look back on the game. Sure, its indie strains start to show when you have a conversation with a house at one point or you start to hear the radio songs in your sleep because they’re so repetitive, but those issues are just pushed aside for the love I have for the game.

  • If we included all the hours I spent in Forza Horizon 4 this year, this may very well be my game of the year, it may end up getting there but for now it’s going to sit at 7 for a couple of reasons. Last year after I got my Series X, I gave my old One X to my brother mainly so we could play some multiplayer game pass games. His son quickly discovered Forza Horizon 4 and all of a sudden I found myself playing a whole lot of that game with my 7 year old nephew who I’d barely had an opportunity to see given COVID and how far he lived away. It was so great…even when he’d message me at annoying times to play. I introduced him to Halo through the Warthog showcase and for his Christmas/Birthday double this year (his birthday is 26th December) I got him a Mega Blox Warthog and the Limited Edition Forza Horizon 5 Xbox Controller.

    When 5 came out, I jumped right in and was just obsessed with it, I burned through so much of the content but I noticed something, my nephew wasn’t really playing it all that much. My brother ended up telling me it was because I’d played it so much and got to such a high level that he didn’t really want to play it with me. That made me a little sad and honestly, is probably why it is so low on this list, it lost a little something…with that being said, it did move it up a place because when I went to visit for his birthday, I not only saw the joy on his face when I gave him his controller, I also got a chance to sit down with him and play it and discover some of the things that were actually holding him back and help him get through them. Turns out there were some stumbling blocks with the event set ups. I don’t know if he’s going to be messaging me at strange times again this year, but if he does, assuming that I’m available, I’m going to be more than happy to play more FH5 with him.

  • Going into the last Boss of Metroid Dread, I was a little scared, I’d heard the stories, people saying they spent 6 or so hours trying to beat him etc. I always dread (…sorry) hard final bosses due to the fact that at that point, I’m generally ready to be done with the game and as the attempts stack, frustration builds, I start to yell at the television, my dog gets scared, I go and hug her…it’s a whole thing. With the final boss of Dread though, I had a few tries, thought about it, nodded my head knowing I got it, then just got the job done. Then I sat there wondering how people who spent 6 hours on this boss got to that point in the first place because there were way harder parts than that guy.

    I loved this game and putting it at 9 is a bit of a shock because of how much I sunk myself into this one but bringing this all together in my mind, I couldn’t pinpoint anything here that had me reminiscing on the experience. Instead I’m in a spot where I’ll just go with, yeah, that game was great, I hope we get more like it. It’s a great game and more importantly a great Metroid game and it’s on this list mostly on those strengths.

  • I didn’t think this was going to make the list and I haven’t finished it quite yet but after taking a break to play through Halo Infinite, I went back to it and it felt like crawling into a warm blanket. I’m a Yakuza fan but I got the first Judgment at an awkward time in my life so I fell off of it. In the lead up to this game though, I decided to pick up the Series X version and start again. I enjoyed it but it still felt like too much of a Yakuza side story, a lot of the detective elements that were advertised are pushed aside late in the game and it just becomes another beat em up with a plot that heavily involves the Yakuza.

    Lost Judgment shrugs off a lot of that baggage and while it still involves organised crime, it’s a little more off to the side. It still has some glaring issues which is why it sits at 10 on this list, as a compulsive side quester who will do all outstanding quests before continuing on with the main story, I found myself more often than not spending hours away from the plot and it just feels like that stuff could be better spaced. At the end of the day though, I go back to that warm blanket feeling I got when picking this game back up so it deserves its spot based on that alone.
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