The best video games of 2021

In terms of video games, 2021 for me might as well have been 2001, wherein I rekindled an old flame (Samus), destroyed my sleep schedule with Halo and miraculously found time to complete multiple 80+ hour RPGs.

2021 is maybe the first year that proved my burgeoning social life (Those first few post-vax months were something, weren’t they?) and video game habits don’t necessarily sit in diametric opposition. This is not building to a cute framing device for a GOTY list; I just wanted y’all to know that I’m OK. That seems important these days.
Anyway

10. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy

It’s easier if you don’t ask about the llama.

I love mechanically-rich games. It’s maybe the only through line found among many of my favorite games of all time. Character-action games like Bayonetta 2, aggressively difficult JRPGs à la the main Shin Megami Tensei titles, fighting games featuring word salads such as Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r], your Dooms Eternal, etc. etc.

So it’s a real testament that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy had an inescapable grip on me from its second chapter and never quite let go, despite not having any of that mechanical richness. It’s combat systems are simplistic (bordering on rote, even on higher difficulties), but it’s clear from the outset that it’s not really Eidos Montreal’s focus. Instead, that richness is derived from the incredibly strong writing of a main cast that rivals and often surpasses their silver-screen and comic-book-page counterparts. This is especially true of Mantis and Drax, two stellar performances that are among the year’s very best. This game is immune to Marvel fatigue, and it should serve as a quiet reminder that there is still room for this kind of 20-hour, narrative-driven, single-player experience within our current games-as-a-service paradigm.

9. Deathloop

In retrospect, it feels like critics turned pretty quickly and harshly on Deathloop after the honeymoon phase ended, largely due to its hand-holdy nature and… disappointing 11th-hour narrative turn. While I largely agree with the latter point, one could hardly forgive Arkane Studios (makers of such excellent and poor-selling gems as Dishonored and Prey) for wanting to make a game that people would finally, you know, buy. Previous Arkane games often tout a certain level of freedom for the player and the ownership of their choices, but those decisions could just as often feel restricting—opting to play Dishonored or Prey as a pacifist was an inherently punishing prospect because many of the games’ more interesting abilities were locked behind more aggressive playstyles.

Deathloop may not be the Hitman-esque, clockwork contraption that many wanted it to be, but it still boasts a degree of elegance, ingenuity and style that immersive sims are rarely afforded. And it lets you dispatch enemies in any old tragic/hilarious Rube-Goldbergian method you desire. At the end of the day, magically tethering a guy’s fate to four of his homies and then dropkicking said dude off a cliff (killing five dudes simultaneously) is pretty cool.

8. Shin Megami Tensei V

This is one of those 80-hour JRPGs I mentioned. It’s also the game that made my launch-day Switch wheeze and gasp so loudly that I thought it got COVID.

So yeah, let’s talk about it; this game runs very, very poorly. It runs so badly, in fact, that it inspired the start of my emulation journey after I saw this and temporarily lost my mind. Despite those technical shortcomings, SMT V is an exceptional JRPG and—to date—it’s the only mainline SMT I’ve ever finished. I own and love SMT III and SMT IV, but this latest entry offers a number of sensible quality-of-life improvements (light and dark spells only have a chance to insta-kill if a target is weak to that element) while preserving the hard-as-nails challenge that makes this series so satisfying to overcome.

The soundtrack also slaps harder than my grandmother.

7. Deltarune Chapter 2

I feel like I’ve broken some unspoken rule including one-seventh of an unfinished video game. It’s tough for most successors to subvert, delight and surprise an audience as jaded as Gamers™ in general, let alone the Undertale fandom. But Deltarune does, over and over and over again. This chapter introduces a memorable antagonist in Queen, maybe the most genuinely-funny character of 2021. Queen is a contemptuous, internet-savvy robot who sounds like the logical conclusion of GlaDOS, if GlaDOS were stuck in an AOL chat room for 20 years.

I don’t care if you usually prefer waiting until a game is complete. Play Deltarune now, and then play it again when it’s done.

Do it for Susie.

Do it for yourself.

6. Resident Evil Village

Resident Evil Village has finally given Ethan Winters a character, if not a face. The comically-invisible protagonist from the legitimately-pee-your-pants-terrifying Resident Evil 7 returns to make a mark in the pantheon of great Resident Evil protagonists, if only by virtue of being the single-most tortured, unfortunate bastard in franchise history.

Maybe it’s due to the awful stakes (his infant daughter is kidnapped, and then… well, it gets worse), but Ethan’s 12 labors of Hercules have the fortunate side effect of imbuing him with an actual personality—all of which pays off in one of the most bonkers conclusions ever.

I know it’s weird that I chose to focus on Ethan here with there’s Lady Dimitrescu, Heisenberg and that poor fish man to talk about. And to be sure, Ethan is hardly Village’s crowning achievement; that distinction would probably go to its structure, or maybe the RE Engine, or possibly the sheer variety of locales and set pieces. Could be all of the above. It may not be the best Resident Evil, but I am hard-pressed to think of a more fun one.

5. Halo Infinite

I know what I said before, but low expectations are actually what defined my 2021. Mostly for people, but I saved room for delayed video games.

For years, Halo Infinite occupied the shelf within my brain space labeled “It sure would be cool if this game turned out OK.”

I’ve since relocated it to the “This game is going to get me fired” shelf.

I took one lunch break to hop on the network playtest when that was made available back in September and very nearly didn’t return to work. That inclination hasn’t really gone away since the game’s full release (for free, at least for the multiplayer component). Microsoft could just as easily have marketed Halo Infinite as some crude form of time travel, because I, a grown man with bills, lose eight hours every time I queue into a match.

Speaking of crude forms of time travel, Halo Infinite’s open-world campaign feels a little dated in many respects, but I find that the 30 Seconds of Fun formula maps nicely onto an open-world structure, even one lifted from 2007.

4. Inscryption

Go play Inscryption.

Don’t look anything up about this game.

I didn’t even want to write this much.

3. Tales of Arise

I wondered whether Tales of Arise was being conservative with anime tropes until, at the one-hour mark, my masked, amnesiac protagonist pulled a flaming sword out of the tsundere sidekick's chest.

And yet, this is also a game that has Something to Say about some rather dour themes—namely, slavery, racial prejudice and how certain societal and hierarchical structures allow for the perpetuation of those two things.

Yes, “racism is bad” is a rather simplistic message. But, as it turns out, it still needs to be said.

I expected this, to some degree. What I didn’t expect, though, was the warm, PS1-tinged nostalgia this game would evoke via continent-hopping adventures, evening chats over a campfire with party members and a smart, dynamic real-time combat system that rewards careful observation, timing and improvisation.

I’ve spent a large chunk of the past 20 years missing the golden age of Squaresoft. Tales of Arise isn’t that, but it’s not trying to be. In a genre so slavishly devoted to the late 90s, with its endless callbacks and spiritual successors, Tales of Arise endeavors instead to pave a different path for the future of JRPGs. Whether anyone other than Namco Tales Studio will follow it is anyone’s guess.

2. Metroid Dread

Samus Aran is the coolest human being/chozo/metroid alive.

I’m sorry for ever doubting MercurySteam.

There is a defensiveness that is deeply ingrained in each and every Metroid fan, honed to a razor’s edge by a thousand disappointments, delays and outright cancellations.

Consider, then, my stupidity upon seeing Samus gaze carelessly upon Kraid’s visage, shoving her beam cannon in his mouth and wordlessly excavating the back of his skull.

Imagine, then, my consternation as I parried my first E.M.M.I. (Eliminate Metroid Mommy Immediately Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier) and escaped, though only long enough to return and melt its face off.

Contemplate, then, my dismay once I completed a multi-room gauntlet of a Shinespark puzzle that looked like Summer Games Done Quick footage.

To put it plainly, Metroid Dread owns. And I was a fool.

Dread features Samus’s strongest characterization to date, sufficiently strong enough to negate all of its other weaknesses (the least-memorable soundtrack in the franchise’s 35-year history and an occasionally-uninspired environment).

The moment-to-moment gameplay of Metroid Dread—its buttery-smooth frame rate, parries, thoughtful combat encounters and incredible bosses—have set a new standard. It will be hard to return to previous Metroid games and simply point and shoot at enemies. Because “previous Metroid games” includes Super Metroid, I’m fairly certain that makes that last sentence just about the highest compliment I could ever pay any game.

1. The Forgotten City

So how does a remake of a six-year-old Skyrim mod land at #1 on my GOTY list?

The Forgotten City crystalized a notion that I’d long suspected about myself for a few years now. When I look back on the experiences that stuck with me the most over the past decade or so—Ghost Trick, Device 6, Return of the Obra Dinn, Disco Elysium, Outer Wilds—the emerging commonality is pretty obvious in hindsight: I love mysteries.

Most video game mysteries would have you solve a crime that’s already occurred, trusting the player to use their powers of deduction and observation to discern one clear truth among a sea of lies.

The Forgotten City turns the art of forensics on its head and instead asks you to investigate in a preventative capacity, to stop a crime before it can be committed. The further wrinkle is that the consequences of the crime are enormous—if any citizen within the titular forgotten city commits a sin, all two dozen or so residents will die.

“The many shall suffer for the sins of the one.”

You will inevitably learn this the hard way, but don’t worry; you can escape this fate by jumping into a mysterious portal that drops you off at the beginning of the day. Except, of course, now you have to ask yourself: what exactly constitutes a sin? The Forgotten City is extremely interested in this question and explores it from just about every angle imaginable.

Everything, including the game’s setting, proximity to actual historical events, the cleverness of the mystery itself, the nature of time travel, the exploration of philosophy… it may very well be the most thoughtful and considered game I’ve ever played. That this all comes together in a cohesive package is a miracle, as is the making of most video games, but the fact that The Forgotten City is largely the work of one ex-lawyer with zero game development experience is absurd.

It feels like Nick Pearce and his collaborators over at Modern Storyteller really thought of everything, including ways to lessen the repetition inherent in games constructed around a timeloop. There’s even a character within the city who you can ask to perform actions that you’ve already done in previous loops so that you can spend your time focusing on new discoveries. And, because they thought of that too, even this shortcut has narrative implications.

The Forgotten City is so well written that I almost didn’t want to write anything ever again after I finished it. Good art inspires; great art intimidates.

Honorable mentions

I also really enjoyed NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139, The Great Ace Attorney Collection, Psychonauts 2, Monster Hunter Rise, Death’s Door, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Loop Hero and Returnal.

My January catch-up month will largely be spent on Chicory, Scarlet Nexus, The House in Fata Morgana and a few other 2021 joints that I missed.