Every year I always want to write GOTY lists, but every year I normally opt to skip. Part of that is on myself, for the negative belief that no one would care about the opinions of someone on the internet (but hey people still use Twitter). The other more salient point is, that I don't usually play games that were released within the calendar year. I have never been someone who needs to be part of the zeitgeist when it comes to new games. I have an embarrassing (for me) amount of games in my collection, and while we all have backlogs to some extent, mine could probably sustain me from now to the end of my life if I never purchased another game again, but still kept playing games as frequently as I do now. So, when I see everyone speaking about Guardians of the Galaxy, Halo Infinite, and Billy Hatcher, I know that I am more then comfortable waiting for games to go on sale or for it to appear in a B2G1 free promo before I pick it up. That might also be because I don't really engage with online multiplayer games anymore. None of my friends game online, and trying to organize a time to play something online weekly just isn't in the budget when your free time is a commodity and everyone I know has kids.

So what changed this year? Well, I got more into writing for myself regardless of readership. I am far removed from the rat race of followers, viewers, engagers, or whatever anyone wants to call social presence. If I put this out there and not a single person reads it, that's ok for me. Secondly, I have seen and read a lot of other Giant bomb users content, where they don't exclusively stick to the "released in 2021 format." I understand that for media, they have to constantly move forward and closing things at a year cutoff means that they can crown best and worst for that time period. They aren't digging in and saying the worst of 2021 is still the SNES basketball game "Bulls vs Blazers," because no one would really want to read about a bunch of games they have long forgotten about. Those of us, within arms reach of that world, can relax and play through 93 hours of a game a few years old, or get lost in a sim for the apple 2. We aren't on the time constraints they are.

Where does this put me? Well if anyone has read my stuff before, you will know that all I do are game writeups in an attempt to rate every game I play to find, "What's the Greatest Game of All Time?" To re-hash that list would be pointless, because I have already done that Here, and there would be no suspense to the list. So, I am going to examine my completed games in the past year, the list as a whole, and come up with some categories so that I can rank games outside of their simple "Greatest" moniker. If you haven't read my stuff before, and are starting here, Welcome! if you like what you read, I try to do around two very mediocre writeups every week placing games on a very opinionated list about what games are better then others. If you want to read deep dives into each game that I have listed below, there are links on that spreadsheet that I just linked to (like two sentences up). Don't worry, all the links take you back to Giant Bomb.

Lets Begin shall we:

We are going to start with a banger: Top 5 games I Wish I liked More then I Did

5. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Forever, I heard about how this Zelda game was the cream of the crop, but I never had a Gamecube to play it on, so while I didn't constantly kick myself for not playing it, it stayed in my mind that it was one of the first games I purchased when I acquired a second hand Gamecube. After playing it, while I enjoyed it, I wasn't really that awe-inspired by what it did. The music didn't blow me out of the water (see what I did there) and the dungeons and bosses were very bleh to me. I liked exploring the islands, and that was a huge draw for me to continue playing, I was let down on what I normally come to a Zelda game to do. It still ranked rather high on my list, but I can confidently say, that this is not the best Zelda game.

4. Moving Out - This game kinda bummed me out, because I don't get to play through a lot of true multiplayer games (and the single-player of this is awful). I wanted to like the slapstick style of a "Overooked meetings moving" game, but I got so bored when the game used up all its ideas in the first 5 levels.

3. Shantae - This is a very stupid reason, but I got really into Limited Run this past year, and they put out a new physical edition of Shantae games like every half hour. They always sell out at record speeds, so I was under the assumption that it was because these games were hidden gems with amazing gameplay. I should have realized its because their are some horny dudes out there. I mean the game is fine, but not sell out in a day fine.

2. Blast Corps & Kickle Cubicle - I think this falls into the "My memories of these games are so good, why did I ruin them?" category. Both are Nostalgic to me, because I didn't have a lot of games growing up, and these were two that got a lot of play in my house. Upon replaying them, they don't deserve the pedastal I had them on, and I'm partially upset about that fact. Blast Corps has a lot of bad level design and races that require bumping into every wall to find shortcuts if you actually want golds, and Kickle Cubicle is way to easy, and how did I never notice it was the same song for every single level?

1 . Dragon Quest 11 -It can only be this game. I spent 93 hours with it, and I wanted to like it so much more then I did. I wanted this to rekindle my love of old JRPGs, I wanted this game to make me want to start the Dragon Quest Series in earnest (I series I have avoided for now). I wanted it to be the game of year, that it was talked about when it came out as being. It was none of those things for me. It was horribly paced, it had a plot that would have been poor twenty years ago, and its party members were no the interesting or charismatic bunch I was led to believe they were going to be. Upon reading the comments on my review, I can understand that I came into this game with the wrong expectation, as the series isn't meant to have this great plot, or be paced like a regular game, but I still can still say that I was let down by the product, and it probably setback from Dragon Quest foray for another few years.

Top 5 games that I will want to play again soon - I am excluding sports games, and like the games in my top 10 ranking list. Of course those are easily re-playable and great games.. but we are going for deeper cuts.

5. Griftlands - This game is supposed to be played over and over, so this isn't a surprise.. but when I did play through the game I pretty much did everything, beating each scenario twice so I could see both sides to the story. Even still, I want to go back because the card game was immensely fun, and the world was interesting.

4 . Shovel Knight - Did you know Shovel Knight was two players? I certainly didn't. Now granted its only for one campaign, but hot damn I want to try that co-op.

3. Blazing Beaks & Streets of Rogue - Yeah, I'm cheating again, but these are both rougelites that I exclusively want to play again, because of their multiplayer aspect. Blazing Beaks I never really tried two player, I think it would be interesting to see how its risk-reward system plays if only one person carried all the negatives and the other player didn't pick any up. As for Streets of Rogue, that is just a generally good multiplayer game that I encourage everyone to try if they got a loyal co-op buddy.

2. The Legend of Zelda (OG) - I was a little harsh the first time I played it, and maybe I'm a little softer now, but it will be one I will be firing up to see how I feel about it now that some time has passed.

1. Empire of Sin - I don't think any of us thought this would dethrone X-com for a great tactical game, but I want to give it another shot, knowing what I know now. For instance I think the default difficulty setting is far too easy to play through the game on. I was never raided by the police, and rarely felt threatened by any other mob faction. Perhaps on a harder difficulty I might actually have to engage with the many systems that game had in place, or perhaps changing the difficulty just makes the enemy hit at a greater % and the game becomes absolute trash.. Only one way to find out.

Top 5 games that maybe, possibly, just by a hair, are not ranked correctly on the list - Now I will go to the mat and defend any of my current rankings now, I also don't have any plans on changing them, because that really destroys the integrity of the list, but the below 5 are ones where in an alternate universe I can see them being ranked higher or lower.

5. River City Ransom - This game is probably a shade too low. At the time I think I put River City Girls above it, and I think in hindsight I might actually give RCR the edge now. It might be nostalgia talking, but I'm all about that stat build life, and that really isn't offered in Girls.

4. Octodad: Dadliest Catch - I think this game should probably be above "Tiny Lands" and "Blast Corps." The first time I played this game I was chuckling and having so much fun, that I was constantly showing it off to my wife. When I played it again for this format, obviously I knew the jokes and how it played so I didn't get nearly the same enjoyment out of this. If I was to rank the game based on my true first experience, then I think this game is better then where it landed.

3. Dragon Quest 11 - Listen when I finished this game I was bummed out, but it probably doesn't deserve to be under WCW Vs NWO World Tour. I still put in 93 hours, but I was mad that I felt the game didn't respect my time and didn't end the way I wanted it to. That's my expectations coming into play, so it probably doesn't deserve that.

2. Ganbare! Super Strikers - I love blitzball, I really do.. Its one of the reasons I go back to play FFX, but this game was a bad mashup of Blitzball and X-Com. It should be ranked even lower, and that is saying something considering it is 76 out of 96. Like move this down 4-5 places and no one bats an eye.. Who am I kidding, no one bats an eye at all with this game, because I'm one of like 10 people who have played it.

1. Super Mario Bros. 3 - I will fully admit I let the "legacy" get the better of me on this game. I personally don't care for SMB3, I like nearly every mainline Mario game more than 3, it has never been my jam. Is it a very well made game? Yes.. Is it hugely influential and paved way for the World? Yes.. Does it play great? Yes.. Does it have Iconic music, levels, art, enemies, etc.? Yes If this is my personal list, should it be in the top 10, No. I will take no questions on the matter.

I think that's good for a reflective 2021 GOTY-esque look at things. I could come up with a million other categories (ok like 2 more), but I'll tuck those away for another time. If you enjoyed this list or my "What's the Greatest Video Game" feature, know that I really appreciate it. I always love engaging in conversations with the community, because as someone who is relatively offline for the rest of the social its nice to talk to like-minded people. I'm always up for discussing conflicting views as well, so If I rate your favorite game low, then hell let me have it (civilly of course).

What does 2022 hold for the feature? Well I haven't stopped buying games, and have added at least 20 games in the past 2 months because of sales and the like, so I will have plenty of things to discuss coming up. I also added some new systems to the mix, so maybe I'm not always spinning Switch games. Its a small library but I have a Sega Saturn, Sega Cd, and have bolstered my collections for Sega Dreamcast and Playstation 1 games. I really wanted to hit 100 reviews by the year end, but unforeseen circumstances stopped that from happening, and while I could do writeups to get us closer to 100, either way I'm not hitting 100 in the remaining days. My goal for 2022 is hopefully to hit 150 or more games on the list, but that does mean I have to complete roughly 40 + games in the new year, I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Hope everyone had a healthy 2021, and see you in the next year.