Games from before 2021 that carried me through 2021:

GTA V Online

For all the flak this game gets, much of it justifiable, the big updates in 2021 (Los Santos Tuners and The Contract) added a lot of new activities and toys to buy. The Contract even included some much-anticipated follow-up on the story and characters from the single player campaign. Best of all, these updates can be enjoyed in a private session without interruption from the normal chaos of GTAO. It's really unfortunate that the good stuff is gated behind a money grind, but the content itself was a nice refresh to an aging game.

Crimsonland

10tons' legendary title got the Series X/S enhancement treatment which seems superfluous for this game, but it was the perfect excuse to dive back in all these years later. Twinstick bliss.

Descenders

Underrated to this day, Descenders pretty adeptly pulls combines elements from extreme sports games and... rogue-lites?! Shred some gnar, pick your path, try to beat the boss jumps, and vibe to the liquid drum n bass.

Demon's Tilt

Left Gamepass at the end of 2020 so I purchased it immediately. Everything about it is polished to perfection. The soundtrack especially rips.

Crossout

Yes, a Russian F2P game. A *vehicular combat* game with PvE and PvP and mind-boggling levels of customization. Destruction physics give every round the potential for hilarity. Fills the Twisted Metal shaped hole in my heart. A real blast with friends.

Hades

Not much needs to be said here. They put it on Gamepass, which was a master stroke.

2021 Top 5

5. Hellish Quart

One-on-one sword combat a la Bushido Blade, which is to say uncompromisingly realistic. Every single match has this feeling of life-and-death tension. The animation is fantastic and frequently uncanny. In every regard, this is remarkable stuff from a one-man studio.

4. Halo Infinite

These days I can take or leave PvP shooters, but this one got all the homies playing and for good reason! And when the competition gets too sweaty, the campaign is a lot of fun. Being able to freely grapple around like some half-ton armored Spider-Man is a nice perk compared to the MP. If the co-op campaign was available, this might have made it even higher.

3. MLB The Show 21

Yeah, an annual sports franchise. Before this, my experience with baseball games was minimal. Hell, my interest in baseball as a sport was minimal. I'm definitely a fan of sports sims and a good career or franchise mode, though. So, in a recurring theme, this came to Gamepass and I gave it a shot. I have no context for the series before this - if the graphics and gameplay are up to snuff compared to prior years, all of that, but that's not really why this is ranked. The Show 21 kindled an interest in the real life game. I am far from the first person that a sports game has had this effect on, but if you would have told me at any point prior to 2021 that I would be watching *baseball*, I wouldn't believe it. So, kudos to The Show 21.

2. Forza Horizon 5

So the wheels are only a little rounder, the reflections only a little sharper, yada yada. It all adds up to a title that's even harder to set down that its predecessors. I spend at least an hour a night just chilling with Hospital Records and completing a few weekly objectives. Whereas FH4 reached a peak and I eventually stepped away from it, and there are elements from it I'm missing in 5 (namely some of the character customization), the subtle improvements all around have made this one into a long tail game for me.

1. Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

Maybe it was presumptive, but the popular description of DE as the next Planescape: Torment just shut me right down initially. cRPGs have never been my thing, not in the Baldur's Gate era and not in this current age of Pllars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, etc. But all these cRPG giants have a large focus on combat, which Disco Elysium completely eschews. The game essentially becomes a point and click adventure, or even a visual novel, with frequent elaborate skill checks - nothing nearly as basic as 'high charisma unlocks a 4th dialog choice'. All of your perks and skill points dictate how you interact with the world, and even yourself (via your inner monologue) - literally the kind of person you are. It feels like the ultimate realization of applying a D&D style character sheet to a real person, and not an action hero. This is a fully realized fictional world, often times surreal and absurd (sometimes both at the same time) but everything feels realistic within it. I haven't started a brain-damaged alcoholic psychotic run yet but I'm confident it would work as well as my only-slightly-unhinged detective run; just like a more traditional cRPG might be equally as fun as a berserker or a rogue. Instead of save scumming to optimize combat, I'm doing it to explore every dialogue routeHuge credit to the writing and voice acting for bringing all of this home. I have to carefully choose when to play this game, because I wind up playing for hours at a time.