Game of the Year 2021
Making this list was a bit of a strange one this year. Turns out I didn't really play a lot of new games this year after all. Bunch of games I only played a few hours of and didn't feel comfortable enough to put on the list, games like Age of Empires IV and Deathloop which I really enjoyed so far regardless. I also played a ton of FFXIV this year but only up to Shadowbringers and had a terrific time.
The only one here that's a bit sus is Tales of Arise. I didn't finish it but I did play around 20 hours and loved it, so short of it completely shitting the bed I'm pretty confident with the time I had.
I love Resident Evil Village, it takes what Capcom started in RE7 and really builds on it and improves it to create one of the best RE titles to date. Where RE7 has some issues in the latter half I found Village to be a much more consistently great experience.
The Horizon games are always of extremely high quality and incredible games to just chill out in for hours. But I think Playground have absolutely outdone themselves this time around. Mexico is great fun to drive around in and continues the Horizon trend of having an just wild amount of varied content that anyone can find the fun in, so long as they enjoy driving.
3. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
Without a doubt the biggest surprise of the year. After a near abysmal marketing push I played through this and found it has some of the most interesting characters of nearly any game in at least the last ten years. If anyone was unsure about this game after the initial marketing it is absolutely worth checking out.
I've never really been much into Halo. I enjoy them but Halo Infinite really blew me away, and that's just the multiplayer. I've only played a few hours of the campaign but the multiplayer is the closest thing I've played to an arena shooter in a long time and it is just fantastic.
Guilty Gear Strive fucking owns, dude.
I really enjoyed Metroid Dread although I did have some issues with it also. The game for a large part of it felt a little too linear for me and seriously fuck the EMMIs. But the game feels so incredible to play and has some amazing boss fights that it still easily gets to the number 6 spot.
7. Hitman 3
Hitman 3 continues on from the previous game with another bunch of excellent levels and now with the ability to play H1 and H2 levels within Hitman 3 it is one of the greatest packages in video games. On it's own Hitman 3 is still excellent and takes some evolves the formula in some really interesting ways in the Dartmoor and Berlin levels.
I've been a Tales fan since Symphonia on the GameCube and it's certainly an extremely inconsistent franchise but Arise feels like it had a lot more time to gestate and it's all the better for it. The game feels like it was given the level of polish the series deserved for so long.
9. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Ratchet and Clank sure looks good, huh. I did have a pretty good time with it but at this point on the list I'm definitely putting games that I thought were good but happened to play enough to justify. Rift Apart feels like a pretty good one of these games, I don't think it reaches the heights of the original trilogy or some of the Future games but it absolutely is a good time, although maybe not a good time for £70.
10. Outriders
Outriders was pretty good.
