2021 felt a lot more quiet on the gaming front after the incredible 2020 lineup, perhaps as a result of the pandemic and a slowdown in development or releases. Despite this there were still some unexpected gems and quality to be found here.
I was taken completely unexpectedly by how good Kena is as a game. It is filled with gorgeous art and visuals, a wonderful story that askes some hard questions but provides comforting answers, addresses loss and mortality, and is packed with solid action and challenge as well as some puzzle solving. I loved my time with this wonderful adventure and can confidently describe it as a complete gem that deserves your time.
As a follow-up to the excellent RE7, this continued the new direction of the series, which was an interesting challenge considering we are 2 remakes deep into the original RE games at this stage. Despite that, RE8 is an excellent, if very action heavy, take on progressing the story of Ethan Winters and the lore established in 7. It feels like the RE4 of this arc, set in a rural 'European' village with a horde of new monsters including lycans, vampires and mutants of all shapes and sizes. It became too action heavy for me towards the end and is inconsistent in tone, but what a fun game with lavish settings and some very dark parts.
This felt like the first big PS5 exclusive game to me, and what a triumphant return for a series that could have lost itself long ago. It stands out with its sheer visual fidelity, seamless action and feels like a highly polished animated film at times. It has imaginative new mechanics, new player characters that make a meaningful difference to gameplay, and most importantly is a huge amount of fun. Fantastic game.
While gen 4 is my least favourite of the DS games, I was still looking forward to this remake massively. I was disappointed with what the result was here. The visual style is not good, considerably worse than the lovely art style of the DS games, and the content from Platinum is simply not here. The game is not terrible and still has the solid core mechanics of Pokemon, but this was an uninspired and rather ugly game and not one that can be recommended to anyone except die hard fans of the series.
