Ch-ch-ch-changes…
2021 was a year where a lot of things changed for me. I spent the first months of the year freezing my rear off in a warehouse. Then, I spent the rest sweating it off in Florida. I ultimately internalized that you can’t predict what’s going to happen – you just gotta roll with it. Not only did this very website see some big changes, but I stepped out of my comfort zone for trying new games. Oftentimes I was rewarded, and sometimes I ran away screaming in terror. This list of ten is a blend of old faithful and eye-opening surprise. Start your engines!
10. Genesis Noir
Genesis Noir is a game with a vision. Accordingly, you are gonna see some stuff should you play it. With a color palette of mostly deep blues and white, the game has a watch peddler endeavor to save his love from a jealous murder. To do so, he must search the universe for clues from the big bang to the big crunch. In each segment, you see a snapshot of cosmic history and play with it in a unique way. The word of the day here is variety. Genesis Noir keeps shuffling you along to the next weird or interesting thing around the corner. While always retaining the point-and-click style, the methods of interaction are constantly changing. This lets your part in moving the universe forward become somewhat toyetic. The game switches frequently between camera angles and settings, yet the striking art style keeps things in the same world. Yep, it’s another one of those games where any screenshot could become your desktop wallpaper. Its music is also standout. Lonely saxophone notes, improvised duets, and world-shaking symphonies all enhance whatever moment is unfolding. I don’t think Genesis Noir sticks the landing – its message becomes muddled with new plot elements that minimize the initial setting. Plus, the general brisk pace of the game can make getting stuck on puzzles even more aggravating than usual. That said, I still have to appreciate the game for synthesizing some of my favorite tertiary interests into a mostly cohesive experience. If you want the highest possible number of concepts jammed into a three-hour session, Genesis Noir is your ticket.
9. The Forgotten City
2021 was the year I soured on time loops as a concept. After I bounced off Outer Wilds, which still had some rad ideas, in 2019, I feel like the floodgates opened for aggravating, tedious games that could never live up to Bill Murray crashing down the moon – that’s how it went, right? Anyway, I changed my mind after playing through The Forgotten City mere weeks ago. It casts you back to the time of the Roman Empire, where a small group is trapped under the law of The Golden Rule: Any sin committed will imprison the whole city in gilded statues. Most of the game is talking to the citizens and using your knowledge from previous loops to solve their plights, but the story’s compounding surprises are the real draw here. As you might guess, things are not what they seem on the surface. But where so many time loop stories fumble the inescapable infodump, The Forgotten City draws you further and further in as you dig through its layers. Quests are interweaving and nonsequential, which lets you explore at your own pace. However, what makes The Forgotten City the definitive time loop game is that you never need to repeat progress. First, you carry items between loops, so you won’t have to worry about scrounging inside the same hiding places. Second, once quests are complete, you have the simple solution of just delegating a guy to do it for you. The length of each loop is very long – I only reached its natural end once, and I played just six loops in total before reaching the true ending. In other words, The Forgotten City embraces time loops’ best qualities without any of their pitfalls. In the process, it also offers a crash course on ancient history and the coolest “final boss” I faced this year.
8. Lost Judgment
Because the Yakuza franchise historically changes so little between entries, iterations just add more and more to the gumbo of game flavors. That pattern was subverted last year when the series went RPG, so I was happy to return to familiar territory with Lost Judgment. We’re back to 3D brawling, unchanged sans a new fighting style that slams foes’ faces cathartically into pavement. Nearly everything from the first Judgment returns, but now there is skateboarding, dancing, and a Detective Dog. Terrific! The plot crosses two cities as a bullying investigation inevitably spirals into a network of conspiracy and cover-ups. I often got lost as to who was Evil and who was Evil, But We Still Like Them, but I didn’t really mind. The story’s best addition is a rival character for Yagami who challenges his beliefs on a fundamental level. Also, he vapes. The returning squad of buddies don’t get much in terms of new arcs, but damn if I don’t love seeing them line up and crack their knuckles before a dramatic throwdown. Again, the storytelling is not perfect – most female characters are still not given enough agency – but watching the narrative unravel is as gripping as ever. Of course, the side activities are for some the real draw of Yakuza. Lost Judgment has a sequence of high school investigations that should more than satisfy. Of the ten available clubs, I only reached the second, and that was in postgame! Each seems to have its own associated minigame and substory, yet it’s almost completely optional. If I had infinite time to play games, I would definitely hop back in and see where this all leads. I hope this is not the final entry in the Judgment series, but if it is, at least it will end on a strong note.
7. Metroid Dread
The only hesitation I had about Metroid Dread was that it couldn’t be just another troidlike. One look at the indie market and it’s obvious that the genre’s quality has exploded in the years since Metroid Fusion. Releasing a safe or underwhelming entry would reflect poorly on Nintendo. Fortunately, Dread manages to carve out its own space while staying undeniably true to the franchise’s sensibilities. Its control is perfect. Samus finally feels appropriately heavy and maneuverable. As her powers grow, every button on the controller is put to use intelligently. The game is most demanding in boss fights, where reaction time and pattern recognition makes the battles more akin to Cuphead than any previous Metroid title. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed mastering these – it’s truly more about skill than time spent digging for supplies. That’s not to say that the level design is de-emphasized. In fact, it’s more intelligent than ever. You often feel like you’re sneaking out of bounds, yet you’re precisely where you’re supposed to be. Smart sectioning of the world prevents potential hours of confused backtracking, and generous checkpoints keep challenge high and frustration low. I know it’s not to every player’s liking, but it hit the absolute perfect balance for me, who finds these games to be an acquired taste. The only area Dread comes up short is in its title. The robots that chase you in certain zones are a fun challenge, but they don’t get all the way to being creepy. Their behavior is unreliable, which makes dealing with them kind of a crapshoot. That aside, Metroid Dread is my favorite in the series and an exciting step forward. It exemplifies that in gaming, no dream is ever truly dead.
6. Deltarune: Chapter 2
It’s exciting to be on the ground floor of an Undertale-related project because you don’t have overinflated hype coloring your expectations. For my money, Deltarune’s second chapter is hands-down the funniest thing I played all year. And it didn’t even ask for my money! There’s nothing better than villains having fun, and that’s true here for the team of Queen and Berdly. An insane computer who drinks battery acid from a martini glass, Queen is all about collecting “willing peons” and robotizing the world. Meanwhile, we all kind of understand that Falco Lombardi and Revali are related, but Berdly is like the younger cousin that even they find obnoxious. Always boasting of his smarts and superior gamer skills, he’s really nothing more than a pathetic dope. What makes these villains so entertaining is that they have collectively half a foot in reality. They have no self-awareness but no problem dropping in bizarre objects or doing “trucies” to get what they want. The party proper gets some good moments as well, like when an opportunity to temporarily split up doesn’t go as planned. On top of all that, there’s a Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes reference in 2021?! I was floored. Chapter 2 reintroduces consequences for killing or sparing your foes with a town that’s populated by your recruits. As expected, the pixels are pretty, the puzzles are clever, and the tunes are jammin’. All of this for the low price of zero dollars, tax included! But extrapolating development time is a little concerning. We’re potentially looking at a massive RPG made on a longer scale than Kentucky Route Zero. How Toby Fox plans to handle all that remains to be seen, and I confess I don’t really give a hoot about the overarching story. As long as the goofs are there, count me in.
5. Hitman 3
In 2021, we finally saw the legendary rebooted Hitman trilogy conclude. The best part is that all three games’ content can be housed under one launcher. That’s hundreds of hours of assassinations, infinite when considering community-made challenges. Does Hitman 3 by itself bring my favorite maps of the trilogy? Not exactly; there are some great ones like Dartmoor, but the locations leans a little too hard into story scripting for my liking. It’s weird that IO openly said that Absolution-style linearity was the wrong choice for Hitman, only to end their trilogy on a poor man’s Uncharted 2 train mission. But I find it difficult to conceptualize Hitman 3 as a separate game. It’s so wrapped up in my innumerable time with the trilogy, spent learning routines and conquering mastery challenges, that I view it as a great capstone to bring the whole package together. I got the platinum trophy in this one, but I didn’t come back for nearly any of the live content. With more maps planned for next year, that could change. It’s difficult to say much new about Hitman because it’s another game we take for granted. In a world where stealth is often relegated to massive open worlds that don’t benefit from it, we have a silly, flexible sandbox that rewards you for any dumb idea you can think of. It was a long time coming, but IO finally reached the success that they deserve out from under a publisher’s thumb. The fact that they are trusted to revive the Bond license says everything about their skill at translating the spy fantasy into an interactive medium.
4. Persona 5 Strikers
In contrast, Persona 5 Strikers gave me something familiar, but presented in a considerably new way. If you thought that the Dynasty Warriors thing would be a weird fit for Persona, know that the experience is shockingly close to Atlus’s breakout RPG hit. Art design, UI elements, animations, character representations… seeing Strikers so faithfully translate the visual panache of its inspiration lends an authenticity that is not always a given. The story is more than an excuse to get the Phantom Thieves back together, instead expanding on themes from Persona 5 with new characters I actually enjoyed. It doesn’t take a genius to see where the plot lines will end up, but I was having enough fun with the team that I didn’t care that much. While plenty of content is available, you won’t need to put off your career plans to finish this one. This works perfectly as a legitimate sequel to Persona 5 – it’s just an action game this time. Can it be hokey and a little mindless at times? Sure, but I feel like RPG fans are in for that sort of thing anyway. The social aspect is the big sacrifice here, but there is still a generous number of interactions with your friends, complete with optional quests that strengthen your bonds. So many mechanics do return from the 2017 game that the experience feels consistent and like a real continuation. My love for Persona 5 is tied to its look, sound, and spirit, not so much its genre. This was everything I could have asked for as someone who wanted to stay in that world but interact with it differently. If you aren’t quite ready to let go of the Phantom Thieves yet, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
3. Forza Horizon 4 & 5
I never considered myself to be a car person. But look around and you’ll realize that 999 out of 1000 cars we see in everyday life are boring as crap, designed to fade from your memory as soon as they exit your vision. Forza Horizon can turn regular commuting Joes or even – gasp - public transit riders into car appreciators by painstakingly replicating hundreds of real-life gas guzzlers. Then, it throws all those cars into a gigantic, breathtakingly pretty open world that contains literally something for everyone. Maybe you’re like me and split your time between campaign races and exploring the festival. You could try for high scores on PR stunts, beat other players’ challenge cards, or go royale in The Eliminator. No matter what you intend on doing, you’ll most likely be distracted by a million other things on your way there. These games throw you new cars and currency like rice at a wedding. And every character over your radio loves to tell you how you’re the greatest racer of all time, and our best friend, and we love that you drive like a psychopath, actually. For a racing casual like myself, it’s exactly the silly concession needed to keep me around. I spent many hours on Forza Horizon 4’s Steam version early this year, and I was ecstatic about the surprise announcement of the fifth game. Having gobbled that one up, too, it’s hard to say which I prefer. At their bones, they admittedly are basically the same thing. You really can’t go wrong, and I’m looking forward to whatever comes next for the festival.
So when I said start your engines earlier? That was foreshadowing!
2. Before Your Eyes
When I said eye-opening surprise earlier? That was also foreshadowing! Any game built around a unique control method can go one of two ways: disaster or masterwork. While it’s absurd to say, the only game to make me cry is controlled purely by blinking. By tapping into a webcam, or through the honor system, Before Your Eyes uses eye tracking to tell a story that could be told through no other medium. As you relive your character’s life, each blink advances to a new memory. You will literally fight your own body trying to keep your eyes open and stay in the moment just a little longer. Ultimately, though, you must give in and let it pass. The game immediately establishes imagery that follows you through the years. It’s always recontextualizing those symbols so that just a silhouette immediately triggers something in your brain. Fantastic vocal performances ground the story’s emotion into reality. In the story’s climax, as my emotional defenses felt mounting pressure, the moment building and building, ever on the precipice, it only took one blink, one microsecond for my senses to register what was happening, and the dam broke. The game appeared written for me, about my life and my family, but I’ve seen others react the same way. Before Your Eyes is at once universal and specific, telling a more personal and immersive story than most films could hope to achieve within the same runtime. It often seems like these artsy-fartsy games are everywhere. But if I must champion one thing this year, it is this. Buy it and play it as soon as you can, then make some calls to loved ones.
The Most Honorable Mention: Omori
Omori hung over me like a cloud for most of the year, posing some very heavy questions for this list:
One, can I justify putting it on my year-end list when it missed 2021 by one week?
Two, if we accept that, can I justify making it my game of the year?
These questions will have to be circumvented with the coward’s way out. Yes, I’ve already dedicated another blog post to the game, but not repaying respect to such an affecting piece would feel wrong. As I said then, Omori is the real Mother 4. One of my pet series, Mother always slammed strangeness and darkness together into a quirky cocktail that goes down rough. Omori is the result of pushing that to its conclusion – a horror RPG. The wackiness is still here, and the game made me laugh far more than it made me recoil. I loved the dynamic between the party, which sold a real friend group with all its foibles. The setting of a dream world leads to ridiculous, hilarious characters. At the same time, the darkness is always threatening to take over, and not knowing when makes it all the scarier. But there’s a maturity in Omori’s horror that wasn’t present in, say, Toby Fox’s embarrassing early rom hacks. Its purpose is not to be cruel or shocking, but to confront honest trauma, as much as you can in RPG Maker. When I was freezing in that warehouse, as lonely 14-hour workdays stretched interminably, my mind drifted back to those kids, determined to do whatever I could to help them through it. There are many hours of content I will never see simply because they lead to the bad ending, and I refuse to let that happen. Omori is a true spiritual sequel, adapting and reinterpreting the soul of a game that I will never forget. List or no list, it’s just something you ought to dig into.
1. Psychonauts 2
This year, I finally watched the Double Fine Adventure documentary, which follows the development of Broken Age and the many speed bumps along the way. In it, you can see Tim Schafer as a director who loves nothing more than stuffing far-out ideas into his work. You can also see his soul die a little every time Double Fine has to make a compromise to keep the project, and the company itself, alive. It’s a firsthand account of how game development is often ugly and heartbreaking. Crowdfunding Psychonauts 2 after that seemed, at the time, like we were in for a rerun. And that could have been the case if not for Big Phil Spencer scooping up Double Fine. However you feel about acquisitions, it’s fair to say that Psychonauts 2 is the absolute best version of itself it could be. In 15 years, gaming has advanced exponentially, and the team’s ideas have bloomed. There is nothing but passion pouring out of the game. Whether you’re progressing through its mind-blowing brains or exploring its expansive overworld, Psychonauts 2 always seems to be winking at you about the next trick it has up its sleeve. My favorite world comes near the end of the game, where a library come to life transforms into a paper city on a sea of ink. I’ve come to love how connected each character is to the main story – we see how one difficult event years ago changed all of them in different ways. There is a clear emphasis on Raz using his powers to help people, and it’s appropriately called out when he doesn’t. Even with the amount of new blood, it’s true to the groundbreaking vision of the original Psychonauts. Some story revelations may cause a double take, but the writing ultimately pulls it together for a touching conclusion. The only thing I’m not fully on board with is the entire franchise taking place over a few days. That’s one wild week for Raz. Psychonauts 2 is the ideal of every game I want to see made in the future: creatively uncompromised, accessible to all, and made without harming employees. It’s been a long time in the making, but how often do we get a project that fully delivers on years of anticipation? Duder, you’re looking at it.
While a lot changed in 2021, one thing that didn’t is my love of writing stuff on here. This is my fifth year-end list on the site, and each time it becomes more enjoyable and rewarding. I’ve also written about a number of these titles in further detail already, so scroll down through the blog if you missed those posts. And while you’re at it, slam that follow button, I guess? Does that matter? I’ve got some big plans for the new year, so stay tuned for that. Until then, happy holidays and enjoy game of the year!
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