Mass Effect Legendary Edition Presents: Zackington's Top 5 Games of 2021
2021 was a busy year for me, so I did not get to play nearly as many games as I wanted. But the ones I did play, I put in a ton of hours. The one that got the most hours though was Mass Effect Legendary Edition. I love Mass Effect. I have played through the trilogy so many times, on multiple platforms. I love that world and those characters. And in a year where I didn't see my friends and family as much as I wanted, it was nice to have my Normandy fam there to hang out with. That being said, its not on this list because its the same 3 games as they've always been, just with a clean look and updated ME1 controls. I know its my list and I can do what I want with it, I just didn't feel like I should put it on my list, when these 5 games deserve it more. But that's why this list is sponsored by Mass Effect Legendary Edition (not really). Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the game to play when you want to escape the real world and fight a buncha evil robots.
Now lets get this party started!
5. Forza Horizon 5 – The Horizon series is my favorite racing series not starring Mario and friends. It has always been the perfect mix of serious racing sim and silly open world exploration. Its like if you took the weapons and killing out of GTA and put in incredibly tight controls and car physics, you’d have this game. Driving around Mexico and just destroying nature, fences, other cars, and then slamming your car at 100+ mph into the side of a house. FH5 has the best open world the series has had to date with the most varied biomes to explore from jungle to desert to cities and even a volcano to climb. The racing is exhilarating, and bumping up the difficulty to give yourself a new challenge always feels nice and adds a new level to test yourself. Or you can just play it as easy as you want and just have fun with it. How Playground Games has designed this open world, and all the previous open worlds in the series, has me very excited to see what that studio is going to do with Fable.
4. Super Mario 3D World/Bowser’s Fury – What a fun treat this pack was. Super Mario 3D World is my favorite 3d Mario game to date, and maybe even my favorite Mario game ever. So if Nintendo had just dropped that on the Switch, I would’ve been fine with it. I would have absolutely bought it and had no regrets. Its an incredible game where every level just feels so focused. But Bowser’s Fury took me totally by surprise. What at first kind of seem like this tacked on side game, turns out to be one of the most ambitious things to come from the Mario series. A big open world Mario that lets you just go wherever you want and when you get there, boom a level starts. And with a big ole Bowser just looming in the center waiting for his time to come out and throw hands, this gives a wonderful look at where the Mario series could go from here. Again, Super Mario 3D World alone is worth the price, but the addition of Bowser’s Fury really makes this a must play for all Switch owners.
3. Persona 5 Strikers – When this game was originally announced along side Persona 5 Royal, the P5 fans all rolled their eyes at this silly spin off. I thought it could be cool, because I thought Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors were a lot of fun. But how would Persona work as a Warriors game? Well the answer was to not make it a Warriors game. It was to make it a Persona game but with Warriors combat. The game has long moments of dialogue, cut scenes where the gang is all hanging out on their road trip, small open areas to explore in the real world, and large sprawling dungeons to explore in the metaverse. The game is no where near as long as standard P5 or Royal due to not having a social link system and having to go to school/managing your day to day schedule. But since you are already friends with the Phantom Thieves, you shouldn’t have to level them all up again. The two new characters Sophia and Zenkichi fit perfectly with gang, and have some incredible moments of their own that make me hope they continue to appear in potential future P5 spin off games. And with Strikers coming to PS+ in January, I’m definitely going to play it again.
2. Yakuza: Like a Dragon – Not technically a 2021 release, but it came out at the end of 2020 and Xbox put it on Gamepass in June so I’m putting it here because this game rules and I want to talk about it. I have previously tried to get into Yakuza, but I was just not feeling the combat. And I know that there is so much more to the series than the combat, but these are all long games, and that’s a lot of combat to do. Well when you turn it into a turn based combat system while also starting a brand new story with brand new characters, this seems like the perfect opportunity to jump into this series. This game just oozes with fun and creative visuals. By making it turn based, they could really amp up the silliness of the specials and summons Ichiban calls in. Like a Dragon balances the over the top silliness, with a very personal story about fathers and sons and fighting for what you believe in. I cannot wait to see where they take Ichiban’s story in the next few games.
1. Metroid Dread – Not only did Nintendo announce this game 4 months before its release, and used it to cover up the fact that Metroid Prime 4 is no where near ready to show, its that they made this Metroid 5. A game that Metroid fans have been waiting for about 15 years. A game that everyone assumed was dead. But can a game like this really just skirt by on nostalgia and fans just happy a Metroid game actually released? Well we don’t have to worry about that, because this game kicks all kinds of ass. I’ve never really gotten into Metorid before. I have Samus Returns for my 3DS and I do like that game a lot, but I never really played the previous entries, and never touched the Prime games. Dread just feels so good. The fights are frenetic and fast paced. The EMMIs strike fear in me no matter how good I am or how many powerups I have. And I love that Nintendo chose to make a REAL Metroid game. I don’t mean that is a classic side scroller. But that they made a game that doesn’t hold your hand. It lets you get lost and confused. You can get powerups early and they know you can so they put in fun ways to kill bosses if you get those powerups early. I hope that with the way that Dread has been received and the amount of money it made, that Nintendo will start working with other studios to bring back some of these older franchises who only really are known now by them being in Smash. There are definitely some studios out there with ideas to make a new F-Zero or Advance Wars or Kid Icarus.
