GOTY 2021

I’ll keep the introduction short as I wanted to focus my writing focus on the games listed below. I will say this is one of the rare years where I did not have those few games that really stood out to me that I can easily proclaim as my favorite. I had a hard time parsing out which game I thought to be my favorite in this odd year in video games. While I settled on this list at the time I reached my decision, I’d say the margins between the top five games were very minimal and any of them would have taken the top spot depending on my mindset.

Without further ado, my top ten games of 2021 along with a few brief mentions.

2021 Games That Fell Into the Backlog

• The Good Life
• Griftlands
• Lost Judgment
• Melty Blood: Type Lumina
• Picross S6
• Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown
• Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

2021 Games That Fell Through During the Year, Focusing on Finishing in 2022 Hopefully

• NieR Replicant Version 1.22…
• Shin Megami Tensei V

2021 Game That I Did Not Count to GOTY, But Found the New Content Very Cool From a Packaged Re-Release

• Bowser’s Fury from Super Mario 3D World & Bowser’s Fury

2021 Games I Played

• Capcom Arcade Stadium with All Current Add-On Packs
• Mario Golf: Speed Rush
• Picross S Genesis and Master System Edition

2021 Dishonorable Mention

• Bravely Default II - Outside of Bowser’s Fury, this was my first 2021 game that I finished and boy this game was a major disappointment in my eyes. I can’t believe I stuck through it, but I did after clocking in close to 100 hours.

2021 Honorable Mention

• Clockwork Aquario - An arcade game that was canceled in the early 1990s got revived and finished with input from the original developers. It’s an arcade game so it’s not long and deep, but the game has a nice presentation and is simple and pleasant.

List items

• 

  Fantastic Night Dreams: Cotton Reboot!

  NUMBER 10

  You can immediately tell this being my number ten game of the year means I did not play a lot of games (particularly the notable ones) that were released in the year. But out of the games that I either did finish or played enough to formulate a strong opinion of, the Cotton Reboot makes it on my list. The game is essentially one of those side scrolling shoot ‘em ups that were prevalent in the gaming landscape in the 90s, but there’s plenty that Cotton offers in this reboot release to please fans of Cotton and possibly to fans of the genre.

  The most impressive feat of this release is the work done with the game’s release package. On top of offering an emulation of the X6800 version of the game, the reboot developers developed an arranged version of the original that includes cleaned up visuals and voice acting to the story segments and updated sprites of Cotton, Silk, and all the enemies along with variations to enemy waves, boss battles, and stage segments to freshen up the game to those who are already familiar with the original game. The reboot includes a time attack mode that’s essentially a high-score attack and a slideshow manual that explains the basic gameplay and the color-coded crystal system.

  I found Cotton itself to be a charming game despite its difficulty and brevity. Cotton’s stages are filled with a variety of color and combined with its enthusiastic soundtrack stands out in a shump genre where there’s a lack of vibrancy in their presentations. Its story, while silly, also won me over with Cotton’s steadfast focus on getting the Willows. The voice acting is decent and I’m glad they got English translation in this release so I understand how silly it ended up being.

  Despite the reboot work and additions done with the game’s package, it’s unfortunate that the price of this release is quite steep. The game is only seven stages long if anyone wants to power through just to see through all the stages and while the rearranged mode and time attack modes help, there isn’t much content to parse through in this package. But for me, it was enough in this tough year for me to enjoy what I got out of it in spite of its high asking price.

• 

  Guilty Gear -Strive-

  NUMBER 09

  Fighting games have taken the biggest hit in the past few years for me as I have not been able to put in the adequate amount of time for me to truly get a lot out of these games. Based on the time I managed to play out of this game, there are plenty to like what Arc System Works has done to push their long-running franchise to newer heights. There are decisions that they made that do not quite stick the landing with me, but ASW still managed to put out an impressive release that mostly checks off what a modern fighting game should have with its scope and retains its fun battles with interesting shifts in their battle mechanics.

  I typically jive with Guilty Gear’s presentation and style highly influenced from classic heavy metal/hard rock with the names of characters, character special moves, etc. Strive loses some of that personality by presenting a softer presentation with less aggressive font and orchestral music accompanying the game’s menus and online lobbies. It ends up being a messy stylistic clash of maintaining the franchise’s metal legacy against a softer look to make it look a bit more pleasing. Most of the UI I find lost a lot of the classic influence with hearts replacing the win icons and the iconic jagged BURST icon regulated down to a small bar. In spite of these stylistic changes, there’s still a lot that still shines through in Strive’s presentation with ASW continuing to make the fighters and stages look artistically and technically impressive that can compete with AAA studio’s work. The character battle themes, though a few venture into different musical genre territory, are still great for the most part.

  ASW made a number of impactful changes in Strive in regards to some of their well known gameplay mechanics. While the change in trimming the gatling system was initially frustrating, I found the other mechanical changes with the Roman Cancel, adding a dash macro button, the different standing Dust moves, and wall breaking more than enough to most keep some personality aspects of how previous Guilty Gear games played out while the adjusted mechanical changes giving it a fresh strategic view for veterans of the franchise and genre to study and be mindful of. I do understand with the overhauled battle UI to help novices to the genre pick up cues during battle, such as small gears on the tension bar to indicate 50% meter is available to perform certain mechanics, slowdown and a huge COUNTER sign to signify a significant counterattack hit, a clock icon and colors of the different Roman Cancels, etc. A few of the new UI elements I liked (Roman Cancels), the other UI elements I feel distracting at times. Overall, I think the end result on the battle side for Strive worked out well for the most part.

  Strive isn’t a perfect package overall. Aside from the stylistic clashes and different battle feel, there’s a couple of other items that hurt Strive from hitting its full potential. The game’s online battles are great thanks to its excellently developed rollback along with instant rematch to essentially reduce the cooldown time from battle to battle non-existent, but it’s hampered with a subpar lobby system that has a few odd issues along with not displaying your opponent’s ping during pre-match. Strive boasts a deep training dive of its characters and mechanics with its mission mode and the training mode has a ton of options, though it is missing a few features that other fighting games include. There’s a ton of fun to find in Strive if you can get past a lot of its missteps.

• 

  Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-

  NUMBER 08

  Team Ladybug does one thing, and they do it well. Record of Lodoss War is another game in the crowded Metroidvania genre where no explanation is needed. All of the hallmarks of Team Ladybug’s style are in full force in this entry: the detailed and well animated pixel graphics, thematic soundtrack, and almost entirely emulating Symphony of the Night’s gameplay and mechanics to a tee. I felt this entry is Team Ladybug doubling down on what they do, so if you enjoyed their previous work you’ll feel right at home.

  I don’t know much of the source material the game takes its setting and characters from except knowing it was a short run anime OAV from the early 1990s and is deeply D&D influenced. You don’t need to know the source material to play the game but I felt the story felt like a backdrop needed to flesh out the game rather than something to keep attuned for during your adventure. It mostly centers around one character’s mystery of why she’s going through this labyrinth while coming across numerous characters that she previously encountered. Outside of the lackluster story, the game’s presentation is pretty solid with high quality pixel graphics and animation. I found the soundtrack a bit mundane as it’s catered toward the medieval fantasy setting.

  Most of ROLW’s gameplay is familiar to those who are well-versed in the Metroidvania genre, Symphony of the Night in particular. You have your array of weapons, a couple of magic attacks, and movement techniques such as the slide, backdash, double jump, and hover. The one neat addition Team Ladybug included a dual magic absorb/damage system with wind and flame similar to Ikaruga’s famous mechanic where you can absorb the same magic while dealing and taking damage in contact with the opposing one. The magic is sprinkled throughout the game’s labyrinth but is more prevalent in fighting against hordes of common enemies and heavily in play against some bosses. ROLW also includes enemy elemental strengths and weaknesses notated by a six-sided die with 1 being fully vulnerable to 6 being fully invulnerable. You can get almost every enemy not being mindful about them except for a few cases against common enemies and certain boss fights.

  ROLW is a finely tuned game in a well worn genre. For me, I did not get as much out of this entry as it ended up being more of the same from their previous entry Touhou Luna Nights, even using the same menu UI. The additions of the dual magic absorb/damage and the enemy elemental characteristics were neat, but not enough for me to feel like it was adding in an engaging wrinkle to their formula. It’s just a tightly packaged and well executed Metroidvania and I still enjoyed my time with it despite it being all too familiar.

• 

  Death's Door

  NUMBER 07

  Death’s Door made an immediate impact with its first impression. I bought in quickly with the varying and beautiful visuals, the sublime soundtrack, the brief but sharp, quirky dialogue, the mystery of the door, and solid combat. As I progressed through the game, two things arose that slightly soured my initial burst of enthusiasm: lack of a map and the combat became more methodical. I would have loved to venture more if there was a map that I could reference and if battling enemies did not become more of a slog, but I was still charmed by its great artistic vision.

  I was enamoured with Death’s Door presentation throughout my venture. The varying environments with their own neat color decor, the interesting characters even if they appear in brief spurts, and the soundtrack that’s subtle yet alluring and fitting with the different areas. I loved venturing into each area, venturing from the vault to the beginning cemetery area, then going over to the three major hubs with its sub-sections and themes whether it’s the courtyard/estate/underground of the Witch to the winterous structure hopping and slippery surface of the Beast’s mountainous area.

  The adventure part of Death’s Door is what I loved about it the most gameplay-wise. I enjoyed the little puzzles and challenges sprinkled throughout the three major areas. I also found it neat that each area was designed with its own designated checkpoint without having a checkpoint system by having a ladder, gate, or door unlocked at certain sections. It makes retreating and returning to a section much smoother after going through a tough section and eliminating the need to completely backtrack and redo the entire section. I do wish there was a map to let me know which places I’ve already explored and if there’s a secret I missed. Early on, I was eager to thoroughly explore each area to see what I could do to reach a certain secret that’s either in plain sight or slightly off the picture where it hints a secret could be. I stopped when I was starting to repeat running through the same areas, though the fisherman helped me find a few secrets toward the end of my gameplay. The combat through the areas I didn’t mind so much, it’s the bigger battles (tougher enemies, the vault treasure phased battles, bosses) that took a lot out of me. It’s your typical battle where you have to be patient, figure out the patterns, and time your opportunities to strike. It was hard to stay composed to try to focus after going after fights multiple times only to commit a mistake and quickly fall apart thereafter.

  Once I finally triumphed against the final bosses and got to its affecting end, I breathed a sigh of relief and cracked a smile. The game has its rough spots, yet I enjoyed my time playing as a crow rolling around and slashing away while absorbing the beautiful visuals and music.

• 

  Inscryption

  NUMBER 06

  I will give Inscryption this, it takes a lot of major swings on how it tells its story. I bought into the game with its first act where I was floored by being able to step out from the table to grab items and gain additional cards. I also loved how playing certain cards unlocked certain items within the cabin. The card game portion wasn’t too shabby itself. The following acts did not quite reach the heights of storytelling and surprises, but I admired the efforts to play through the game to its conclusion.

  On the story front, the first act was definitely the best portion of the game. The overwhelming amount of content stuffed within the confines of a cabin room captivated me to no end, whether it’s seeing a three digit code cycling through the definitions to open the safe to getting a particular eyeball to solve a certain room mystery. The second act is where the game lost its amazing momentum where I understood what it was doing on a storytelling front, the lack of surprise and suspense doured on my initial enthusiasm. The final act does pick up with a few neat surprises along with a somber ending that restored some of that initial joy; I still hark back to the first act as the main highlight and crux of what I loved about this game.

  I felt the same on the card game front where I was surprised with the strategy and amount of cards and upgrades available to play in the first act. After a couple of hours kind of feeling through and wailing away, I finally succeeded with the assistance of compiling a particular wood idol setup that made most battles a breeze. Coinciding with my enjoyment level, I found the card game in the second act the most frustrating due to mixing different types of thematic cards. The third act reigns it in slightly by modifying the first act’s structure and adding an additional lane.

  While Inscryption was not able to maintain the bombast of its amazing first act, it still threw a ton of curve balls through its sluggish second and enjoyable third acts for me to still be interested to see what it had up in store. For its sheer will to go above and beyond to employ its story through its methods was enough for me to easily place it as one of my favorite games to play for the year.

• 

  Chicory: A Colorful Tale

  NUMBER 05

  Mental health has gained a lot of traction and attention in the past few years and video games are now gaining strength to tell their tales in intriguing ways. Chicory tackles the mental blocks of self uncertainty between two of its core characters around a neat take of the adventure genre by having the player paint the environment as its core gameplay element. Art is the other major theme in the game and Chicory knocks it out of the park with great looking art all around and the use of colors that both serves to liven up the look of the environment and numerous neat gameplay uses along with a strong and appropriate soundtrack. While Chicory isn’t a long game, I felt the pacing of its storytelling and the related level designs felt slow and made it feel longer than it should.

  In no surprise, Chicory’s presentation is its biggest strength. Every area I turned to, I was in awe of how much I loved the art and music at every turn. There was so much to take into: whether it was the look of the buildings, the characters and their food names, the various nature settings of the game’s different areas, I always came away impressed. The soundtrack always shifts to correspond to the area you are visiting and they are catchy and appropriate. Once the additional skills to the brush adds in over the course of the game, the colors just burst out of the screen once they are added onto the environment. It’s great the game gives players multiple color options at all times if they want to color code different parts of the level and changes up the colors per area. It’s also a great choice to not have combat during the adventure parts that allows the player to focus purely on the screen at hand.

  I played Chicory on the PS4 and while I got through the game with no major issues, the game seems better correlated with the KB+M scheme compared to the controller setup. While the game does not count for precision, it does hurt whenever you are drawing a picture or painting the environment as controlling the brush with the right stick and the lack of control compared to a mouse shows. The boss encounters are unusually tough as the dual sticks of moving your character and the brush to the area to damage the boss got aggravating. Thank goodness the game allows the player to play through the boss battle even after taking numerous hits instead of restarting all over. The other part that I fault Chicory for is that there’s far too much puzzle stuffed throughout its areas. The puzzles themselves are great with the great use of the paintbrush and colors to navigate through them, they were getting tiring as I got deeper into the game.

  Nonetheless the game triumphs of walking the tightrope of being a mostly relaxing game bursting with excellent art with well designed puzzles tied up with two main characters with deep internal mental battles that most of us can easily sympathize with. Despite the story pace being a bit slow and playing through a controller being tedious at times, it’s a fun game to still explore with a surprising amount of side quests to extend your time if you dig what the game offers.

• 

  Forza Horizon 5

  NUMBER 04

  It’s crazy to me that a design change of its progression system results in a game that’s more enjoyable to play through its paces even if the content of the game is entirely the same throughout the franchise. You still have your different racing disciplines with their two racing events along with freedom of the open world and numerous open world challenges. The way that Forza unfolds its content and cutting back on its credit grind makes Forza easier to digest throughout your progress for both new and veterans of the franchise.

  I really enjoyed how they changed in unlocking events in FH5. Instead of reaching a particular level and throwing numerous events as you level up, you instead earn accolade points up to a certain amount and then choose which area to add more of. Players can choose to solely focus on one discipline and complete its unlocks before moving on, or can choose to unlock bits of each. You don’t even have to choose to unlock at the time you reach the milestone to unlock, keeping the map clean. Eventually the map does devolve into an iconic mess once you unlock more of each festival site without filters. But this change makes FH5 feel more relaxed and wants the player to just enjoy the ride, however they want to roll.

  Everything else the FH5 provides mostly stays the same from previous games where each discipline has two race types (circuit and sprint) while the open world has speed traps, speed zones, drift zones, danger jumps, and trailblazers to take on. Each challenge still provides their thrills and challenges though the content is starting to be a bit long in the tooth. The map design is familiar too with areas dedicated to a particular environment and road routes and terrains, though they’re more enjoyable to traverse here compared to previous entries in my opinion. If Playground Games do have FH6 in the cards, my next hope is some more variety or change to the events to partake.

  Forza Horizon 5 is still very satisfying despite its familiarity. The adjusted progression system does help unfold events and digest events better and the map and setting are great to drive around to keep interest to fans of the franchise to dive into another Forza Horizon game. It helps that the game does not dictate you on how you should progress through its game. You play as the festival boss and the game allows you to play however you want to play. It doesn’t matter that you finished last in a race, as long as you are having fun, that’s all FH wants you to have.

• 

  Unsighted

  NUMBER 03

  Unsighted is one of those games that just delivers an excellent gameplay experience despite not having any qualities that really stood out to me. It’s one of those games where you go in, get your fill, and finish. There were a few areas in the presentation department that I felt were bland, but not glaring to be a detriment to my experience. I was mostly just enthralled in just going in and playing my way through the game, fighting through numerous waves of enemies and navigating through its well-designed areas. Unsighted is that game where if gameplay was your most important aspect of your enjoyment of playing video games, it easily earns an A+.

  It took me an hour to get used to one of Unsighted’s important mechanics, the parry. The execution of it was easy, it was the timing of the parry that once I finally understood, made me truly enjoy the game’s combat. It makes the combat a bit more interesting as you’re battling multiple enemies and timing the parries to get those critical hits that deal massive damage. The boss battles were neat with additional challenges in terms of phases and patterns. I also enjoyed the level design and puzzles that coincided with the weapons and abilities you earn along the way. The culmination and excellent action and adventure made me feel this was Link to the Past amped up.

  I felt most of the game’s presentation was okay. I was most impressed with the pixel graphics during gameplay with nice variety throughout the game’s areas and the characters and enemies are well animated in action. I wasn’t much of a fan of the character portrait designs (their pixel versions I didn’t mind) and thought the soundtrack and story it told was okay. None of what Unsighted presented was downright terrible or hindered my enjoyment, but nothing really stood out to me to remark anything substantial about it.

  Unsighted came, saw, and delivered… on being a kick ass action adventure game. The game moves at a great pace, has tight controls, and an excellent gradual progression of puzzle adventure and enemy variety and encounters as you progress further into the game. It can be finished as fast as you want it to be, as there’s an achievement for beating the game within an hour. All thrills with few fills.

• 

  Loop Hero

  NUMBER 02

  How can a game where a lot of important gameplay elements that are out of your control still enjoyable to observe how the hero does with the few concepts you do enjoy? The game seems even more unfathomable of being as engrossing as it is as a lot of it is contingent to luck. Loop Hero somehow hits so much on how well a particular run can go with the chaos ensued with the gameplay areas the player can control. A good run oddly felt like a meditative experience, being in the zone as you place the environmental tiles, equip new equipment, gambling to go another loop, and just hoping for the best run possible.

  I found myself impressed on how well Loop Hero’s elements play with each other. On the playfield, the player affects the playfield in three ways: by placing field tiles, equipment, and perks. The tiles that are placed on the field yields numerous different effects. Some of them produce enemies that could produce more tiles, others provide hero benefits such as adding max HP, replenishing HP, etc. What surprised me most about the tiles is that you can place two next to each other to produce an unexpected tile with different effects. Along with the tiles in play, the player can also control the equipment the hero wears and this becomes an on-going juggling act as each loop increases the enemy level and equipment needs to be constantly updated to match the enemy’s strengths. The run ends with either an escape at the campfire, escape at any point of the loop, or a battle death. The amount of items you carry over to the village depends on how you escape. The village portion rounds out the gameplay loop cycle where building and upgrading them gives the hero particular perks on the field.

  Loop Hero does have one major failing due to the nature of the game, and that successful runs and in particular, defeating the bosses is reliant on luck of the RNG. There are numerous runs where you never get the right tiles and equipment to make a deep run, other times you just run into hordes of enemies in succession and you die and lose out on a ton of material. Getting to boss at each chapter requires a lot of tiles in play and a lot of luck to even get to. To add onto the luck misery, each boss battle has an additional level of difficulty added on top that makes it seem unfair. To get a lot out of Loop Hero requires a lot of early input to build upon the perks from the village in order to mitigate some of the challenges of making a deep run. Finally overcoming a boss makes the run feel overwhelmingly satisfying, like you finally got over the insurmountable odds to win a significant hand.

  Loop Hero requires a lot from the player to dig their heels deep, learn all the nuances in play with all the tiles, buildings, equipment, and perks in play, and then roll out and hope everything falls into place. The heavy RNG aspect stinks as you do not control the hero to target a particular enemy in battle, the amount of enemies that spawn from the tiles you play, and whether or not the equipment traits and perks can carry you through. But if you somehow stick with it and understand what meshes with each other, it always all makes sense and you can start getting a feel on certain tiles, perks, and equipment to aim for the next run will result in new breakthroughs. I oddly put in a lot of time with Loop Hero and despite not officially beating it, I really enjoyed going to its loops that helped me through a good couple of weeks of this tough year.

• 

  Metroid Dread

  NUMBER 01

  Metroid Dread isn’t a masterpiece. There are many items I can easily nitpick about around some of the design choices made to this iteration of this venerable franchise. But no matter how aggravating some of those choices, I was allured to what Dread brought to the table. Every room I venture into I wondered what challenges and secrets were available for me to discover and fight through. The additions of the parry, 360 motion aim, and the E.M.M.I encounters add a bit more meat to the franchise even if their execution was lacking. Despite the numerous missteps, Metroid Dread still reigns on how games of the genre should strive to deliver.

  Dread did a fantastic job on giving the player to go forth with their adventure by teasing numerous secrets that are apparent yet unattainable at the time and challenging them to go through an area with their current arsenal at hand. As you start gaining more power-ups, the game quickly tests the player to use those skills off the bat which I appreciate. It all culminates to where you eventually gain all the critical power-ups and the entire game is available to explore is the final icing where it pushes the player to the limit on getting to all the secrets they passed through previously. Along with the great progression with the power ups is the evolution of the combat that coincides with it. I absolutely enjoyed what the new powers up offered against forthcoming enemies and making it easier against previously encountered enemies. I also loved the boss fights on how challenging they were and really forcing you to use all the tools you have in order to defeat them.

  It’s unfortunate that Dread makes some design decisions that caps it reaching its ceiling on how great it could have been. The biggest peeve I have is the guided path Dread pushes the player through. Throughout the game, they lock you out from exploring parts of the previous areas in order to push the player through the new areas and utilize the new power up at hand. The E.M.M.I. encounters, while providing their unique adrenaline rush, felt more like a battle of attrition to get past them to get to the power-up to defeat them. The controller button makeup was a bit of a mess and felt certain power-ups could’ve been better executed than the fixed configuration they decided on. I also felt the explanations for each power-up should be better fleshed out, in particular the shinespark as the most challenging secrets make use of this tool.

  Ultimately I still ended up really enjoying my time with Dread. This is only the second Metroid game I have played (first being Super Metroid), but I feel Dread did a great job capturing the gameplay and mood from Super in terms of the allure of exploration and the progression of gaining new items and their uses through the entire dungeon. While Dread had many missteps, it still overcame its faults to deliver a great game. I also see Dread as a nice stepping stone on how to evolve the franchise forward from here.