How is the year 2021's gaming so far?

Dear Giant Bomb forum users

We have 3 more weeks until the end of 2021, so I would like to see you guys share your thoughts on this year's gaming so far.

The things that I like:

• Assetto Corsa Competizione got new physics and content via updates.
• iRacing gets new cars and tracks for its roster.
• Automobilista 2 got new physics and content via updates.
• Fanatec reveals their new variant of CSL DD (Wheelbase), which is called GT Pro DD but the thing that I don't like about that is bundled with a steering wheel that has rubber wrap rather than Alcantara for the rim which made it feel more like the ones being used in road cars rather than the proper circuit spec and rally cars.
• Thrustmaster announced T248 (Racing wheel) with two variations, PlayStation and Xbox respectively.
• Halo Infinite's reviews are doing well.
• Forza Horizon 5 is the most played open-world driving game of this year.
• F1 2021 is a good simcade racing game of 2021 despite the classic mode being removed plus not beginner-friendly.
• Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 is an improvement over its predecessors.
• Guilty Gear -Strive- is an excellent fighting game.
• Neptunia ReVerse is a remaster of the original game to celebrate the franchise's 10th anniversary.
• Scarlet Nexus is a good looking action RPG.
• Just Dance 2022 is a very good looking rhythm game for anyone who loves to dance.
• Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is a good re-released 3D platformer game for the Nintendo Switch.
• Metroid Dread is a very good 2D sci-fi side-scrolling action-adventure.
• Monster Hunter Rise is a must-play action RPG for the fans of this franchise.

The things that I dislike:

• Battlefield 2042's launch is broken.
• Call Of Duty: Vanguard got a lot of bad reception from the customers.
• WRC 10 got a mixed reception from the customers during its early days.
• Gran Turismo 7 and Forza Motorsport Reboot are both not coming until 2022.
• Many other games get delayed to either 2022.
• PS5 and Xbox Series X doesn't seem to have many games at this moment but more and more will come by 2022 (No matter if they're 1st or 3rd parties).
• BlazBlue Alternative: Dark War is never localised for the west, while its server is going to be ended by January 31st, 2022.
• Fast & Furious: Spy Racers Rise of SH1FT3R appears to be not a very good arcade-style driving game.
• Destruction AllStars is a very weird & disappointing demolition derby game.
• Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition on all platforms is so buggy during its early days.

I thought it was a really good year. I got myself a Series S and while I mostly played 360 games I had missed or wanted to play again I was impressed with the overall output.

I've been pretty down on the last/current gen of games the last five or six years only really loving one or two games a year. (And by love I mean really love = God of War, Metro Exodus, Death Stranding) and while I dont think I really love any games this year anywhere close to those ones or favorites from the 360 era I would say this has been probably the best year I can think of over all for games I enjoyed playing and I think I'll look back on 2021 favorably.

Highlights for me have been:

Guardians of the Galaxy - So nice to return to a well produced story driven and linear game. I just dont have time for Open World nonsense. Give me a linear game like this or super laser focused like Mass Effect 2 so if I play for an hour I walk away from that hour with some sort of tangible experience besides skinning 30 leopards. Also Guardians has kick ass music, even the pretend band made for the game 'Star Lord' has made it into my playlist of good rock/metal tunes from the 70's and 80's.

Artful Escape - Another fantastic game, short, sweet to the point and filled with fantastic imagery. Thats what I come to games for that I think it can deliver better then any other medium - the imagery and being able to linger and interact with it more then say a film or a painting.

Halo Infinite - First thing I did when I got my Series S last month was play through all the Halos. For a long time I've really been lacking the passion for a game like I had for Halo when I was in highschool with my friends. 10-15 years later I'm married with kids, limited time and when I try other online shooters and even games like Destiny I just bounce right off. And I suck at the multiplayer no matter how hard I try! I figured maybe I was just too old now and dont enjoy games the same way. In playing the original Halo games I realized that they're just incredibly well made games that are in a lot of ways better then what came after. Played through Halo 4 and 5 on game pass, enjoyed the weird story for what it was but otherwise forgettable. Again didnt enjoy the multiplayer. But man when Halo Infinite Multiplayer came out it felt like I was a kid again and had endless fun being back in that playground. I'm not enjoying the single player as much as I'd have hoped other then the opening levels, again not a fan of open world design at all these days, but it feels like they've really hit their stride with this 3rd game from 343. And, while largely ego driven, it also feels nice to completely own in multiplayer again - which I think is a testament to how well they nailed the flow from the old games if I could pick it up and shred even on my opening match in a way I hadn't done since i was 17.

Cyberpunk 2077 - I guess it doesnt really count since it came out last year and I had to wait until I had a next get console to play it since they pushed out a broken mess. A year later though this game is pretty dope. I dont like some of the narrative directions they went in (ie. where the pace of the story goes in Act 2) and you can see a lot of broken dreams in the game thats delivered. But even then its probably the most authentic open world I've ever played, and I hate open worlds, and it does deliver that Witcher quality writing even if the polish isnt there. Put about 45 hours into it with 3-4 crashes and two instances of having to reload from a save after my weapons stopped working. And I got the game on sale.

Due to being more conscience about how much money I was essentially wasting on games due to not playing them, my 2021 is basically defined by Cyberpunk and Nioh 2.

@junkerman: That's great to hear that you're enjoying the Xbox Series S.

@facelessvixen: Ok I see but you can play them later.

@gtxforza said:

Yeah, but that thing is that using that rationalization only works to a certain extent. If we're talking about a handful of games that you got on sale and your attention is divided between two systems, sure. I consider the unplayed games to be a slight overspending.

But in my case: Out of the 400-something games I have on my Steam account, 200 of them are unplayed. Sure, some of them I got from free thanks to people like CultOfMush highlighting certain promotions and giveaways. But compared to the days of Nintendo 64, GameBoy Advance, PlayStation 2 and 3 where I played every game that I got for a significant amount of time, the younger me would be impressed with the huge selection, but disappointed with my low completion rate. And as for the more recent consoles, I don't use my Switch as often as I'd like to, and I've used the DualShock 4 300% more than the console that it belongs to; so that to me was a few hundred dollars wasted on a PS4 Pro and games where I should have just bought the controller, especially since Sony is finally opening up to porting their games to PC where my $4,000 PC can bring the best out of those games. ...Also, I spent $4,000 on a PC. Sure, it is my workstation for my multimedia projects, and it has enabled me to enjoy actually playing Cyberpunk 2077 instead of complaining about it on message boards, but that's still usually an average person's gaming budget for an entire generation.

So, for the sake of being more responsible and mature with my purchasing decisions, I have to call bullshit on the "I'll just play it later" rationalization when I know damn well that I most likely won't.

@facelessvixen: Yeah it's the same thing with bundles and sales. When i started my PC catalog, i would look at these sales and be like 'hm.. it's undeniably a great value and i've heard fairly good things about a few games too!' and that was enough for me to jump in. But at some point you realize that you come across 100's of 'great value' deals. So you look back on your catalog and realize that if you can't or don't want to spend time with a game, the actual value of that game is 0. Every penny you spend on a game that you will never boot up is basically a waste. A game like Enter The Gungeon is perfectly fine, but it would never be one of the top 10 games that i want to boot up at any given time. So i straight up shouldn't buy it. There will be better games in the future. That attitude shift helped me to save substantial amounts of money over time.

I understood, for gaming PC and consoles, I would personally love to treat them as collectible items.

This year has been weird for me, games-wise. The stuff I enjoyed the most haven’t been the games I was looking forward to, except for Hitman 3. I didn’t love Deathloop or Metroid or Forza or Far Cry or Lost Judgment, all games I was looking forward to. But I had a surprisingly great time with Axiom Verge and Ratchet and Clank and Psychonauts 2. I’m starting to suspect that maybe I’m tired of games. The last few weeks have been difficult for finding motivation to play them, and looking at the 2022 releases, there isn’t anything I feel particularly jazzed about. Maybe it’s depression.