by lnvis
These lists are turning more into "Here's every game I played this year that I didn't dislike, with a list of games I really liked". So here are my favorite ones for the year of 2021, starting off with -
Here's also a list of games that I did not get around to playing by the time I wanted to make this list, so to avoid rushing through them I'll get around to them when I have time. They potentially could have made this list going off the type of games I enjoy: Solar Ash, The Ascent, Psychonauts 2, and Severed Steel
Huge scale battles in multiplayer games have been around for decades now, except it's a different feel when you put them on a smaller scale map. It leads to chaos that just can't be found on a map the size of Kansas, and Chivalry 2 is nothing short of that. You'll join either the Agatha Knights or the Mason Order as you use any sort of medieval weapon you can find to defend your land.
Torn Banner Studios have nailed the combat here in both its sound design and depth. It has a surprising amount of depth that I wasn't expecting, as I mostly skipped the first Chivalry. You've got more than enough options for mind games in a skirmish, with feints and counters alongside swings in every cardinal direction. And if that's not enough, you can start crouch dodging or learning reads for when to time your kicks.
That's not even the best part though.
You know the unwritten rule for multiplayer games where if one players crouches and then stands up while looking at another player, the receiving player has to do the same? So take that and add in where both players can scream incoherent nonsense at each other with a dedicated "Battlecry" button. Chivalry leans into how silly it can be which works out perfectly for it. Whether it be with constant battle cries, picking up loose limbs from fallen knights to use as a weapon when you lose yours, or just being there for morale support with your harp, each match is entertaining in its own way.
Rift Apart brings more to the table than the series's predecessors ever have, at a time when it was necessary. Ratchet got a new Lombax accomplice in Rivet who's there to step in when he needs some time to do his own thing, both literally and to breathe new life into the story when it needs it. Collecting bolts, upgrading weapons, exploring new and robust worlds, it's all here. Just this time it's not only faster and looks better, but Insomniac Games has created a masterclass in animation that needs to be appreciated more.
It's hard for me to describe what's fun about Ratchet and Clank without sounding like a broken record. It's the quintessential collect-a-thon series that is still here in 2021 while most others have been abandoned or have trouble capturing the magic that Ratchet does. It's writing always lands with me, the weapons are a blast to use, and it's just chill fun.
I believe the reason I enjoyed Outriders so much is due to the class I chose accompanied by the time that I played, which was at launch. I began playing as Trickster before starting over as a Technomancer when I realized the Trickster's mechanics for healing were not suitable for the distance you usually engage at.
It didn't take long playing as a Techno to start breaking everything with its skill "Blighted Rounds". To avoid getting heavy into theory crafting here, you could create a build using this skill where you never have to reload. That's not an exaggeration either, as I did multiple 10-15 minute missions where I never reloaded once. It created a power fantasy of fucking shit up that any game would crave for. All of this would later get nerfed, though I had moved on by that point.
Outriders needed that fantasy to hold everything together as not much else could. People Can Fly touted both its story and endgame pre-release, and while I don't have anything too negative to say about its forgettable story (voice acting included), it was nothing more than to serve as a way to get you from level to level. The end game however was mostly a DPS race in a timed instance, leading to the normal grind you'd see in a Diablo/Destiny.
That'd be fine if Outriders weren't fighting with itself in regards to its imbalanced healing and cover mechanics, the latter of which I never used more than a handful of times in my 73 hours played. No class has a dedicated heal skill as two of the classes' healing is built around being close to the enemy as they die or melee'ing them before they die (the other two classes can heal at range). That's one of the main reasons I stopped playing Trickster because on higher world tiers I was dying so fast in melee range that I couldn't heal. I don't think Outriders makes this list if I don't give the other classes a try to spend the time in creating the build I wanted, but I'm glad I did. It's a solid loot based shooter that, above anything else, respects your time more than others.
With many games today being built around the idea of "Games as a service", it's hard to break that mold that your game isn't when it looks exactly like one. People Can Fly/Square Enix both came out early messaging that Outriders was not going down the same road as a Destiny, albeit not well enough as they weren't able to properly set that expectation come release leading many to expect something entirely different than what they got. For how much I still play Destiny 2 to this day, it's refreshing when a game lays out everything it has to offer at the start and won't get mad at you for leaving whenever you're finished.
Halo is the reason I'm writing this list right now. I had been playing games for almost a decade leading up to Halo CE's release, and the combination of CE/Halo 2/Halo 3 propelled me into LAN and online gaming that I had never experienced before. Halo didn't raise the bar, it was the bar. I couldn't wait to get home from school every day to run Halo 2 customs with the same group of rotating 10-20 friends year after year. Today is a different story however.
I didn't engage in Infinite's multiplayer for more than a few hours before coming to the realization that it has passed me by. I look back so fondly on a time that I'll never be able to replicate; not in the sense of being unable to find a competitive game I enjoy, but any multiplayer Halo experience that isn't that will never be the same. I had a sense of all that going in, as I felt something similar playing Halo 5. Halo Infinite was going to shine in its campaign for me.
Chief crash lands on Zeta Halo to begin his adventure in preventing The Banished from taking control of the Ring, similar in concept to Halo CE's 2nd level "Halo". I say that because Infinite's entire campaign resembles an open world re-imagining of "Halo" over anything else. You've been given an entire extraterrestrial ring to explore as many set pieces as it has, yet it falls into the same trappings of its predecessor through simplicity and repetition. At least for all the trees and hills you come across, the incredibly satisfying grappling hook will let you traverse them with superhuman speed like you were playing Tribes: Ascend.
Don't get me wrong, Zeta Halo is visually stunning in its overworld as it tries to break apart from it's less than impressive E3 2019 unveil. It's still novel for a series which has mostly confined you to the bounds of closed off spaces before. In spite of that, what you'd consider the numbered campaign missions fare off much worse with each level more closely resembling the last. They're more diverse than the stale hallway crawls seen in The Library, but once you've ran into a blue and grey tower to press a button starting a cutscene, you've ran into them all. Which leads me into the reason I'm playing Halo still; it's story.
Infinite tries to distance itself from the idea that you have to read 30 novels to get a grasp on its story, which I'm all for. Contrary to how much I'm writing here, I was never a fan of reading books. You'll have plenty of time to wonder what's going on as you pick up audio logs that do more to flush out the story than any cutscene will.
On one hand that's exactly what these types of logs are for; they're in countless games as an optional side objective to give you more world context to prior events. I'm someone who combs every nook and cranny of a world, where I had collected nearly all of them come story end. There's one particular audio log from Escharum preceding a cutscene that, if obtained, gives substantially more weight to what is forthcoming. I'm going to leave it there so you can discover it yourself, as it's towards the end of the game.
For now much I have to say about Infinite, it gives off the impression that it shouldn't be on this in the first place. I haven't mentioned much about how Halo plays as a, you know, video game, because it falls in a similar vein as Ratchet and Clank. I could have just typed out "Halo still plays as well as it ever has", and just left it at that to nullify everything else I've said thus far. Even with 343 picking up the reins from Bungie years ago they've maintained the excellence in how well it feels to shoot shit. This was the first Halo I played with a mouse and keyboard since Halo 2 Vista and I'm popping off headshots like I'm John Wick.
The Halo series means more to me than any other, so any release that isn't the greatest game of the year leaves me wanting more. I've set near unreasonable expectations for what I want Halo to be in 2021 and onwards by virtue of nostalgia for a game mode I no longer have interest in. At the end of the day 343 has laid a solid, if unorganized, foundation for Infinite's 10 year plan that I hope will continue to expand upon what draws me into Halo today.
I wouldn't consider myself an anime fan, seeing that I never watch anime. On the other hand I really like JRPGs. I've beaten Tales of Vesperia 14 times on three different platforms since it's intial release in 2008, three of which were 100% runs. I live out my apparent love for anime through video games instead. There's something about superpowers and calling upon God himself to strike someone with lightning that I'm into. Scarlet Nexus has superpowers galore, as you and 9 other companions mess with time itself in a quest to solve a black hole in the sky.
The real time combat loop here is pure madness as you'll be teleporting, slowing down time, and using psychokinesis to throw shit around just as a handful of the abilities provided by your teammates. It's just plain fun with how often you can keep your enemies stunned or juggled since you can get wild with having all of your teammates abilities activated simultaneously. Starting a fight by just slamming all your face buttons activating every power at once is hilarious while your teammates try to get in their voice lines, and also makes you feel like a god as you're cruising through the story.
As part of the story you'll unlock a base of operations later that serves as your hub for companion quests with each party member having their own corner to customize as they see fit. They'll do so by you giving them collectibles found out in the world, and by the end they'll all look like their own slice of home. I'm particularly fond of Arashi's corner with a full size arcade cabinet next to tons of pillows under a desk of a computers. It all gives off such a cozy vibe. You can spend a lot of time in your base between main missions flushing out character stories through their respective bond quests, which are the standout here outside of combat. The quests themselves are not anything to write home about due to their backtrack nature, but that's not what I'm here for. I want family. There's too much content in these stories to expand upon here without spoilers, so just know they all flesh out endearing in the end.
I'm way less fond of the characters in Kasane's group compared to Yuito's, leading me to not play Kasane's campaign. I'm clearly missing out on a good deal of the story beats, but I thoroughly enjoyed everything on Yuito's playthrough enough that I left on a high note.
Let me put a wide body kit on a car and I'm happier than a pig in mud. My best friend and I would spend all Saturday customizing cars at my house in Need for Speed Underground, and even though I unfortunately can't put suicide doors on a Hummer in Forza, a lot of the customization is still there. One thing that the Forza series never gets wrong is what it's built around; the cars. I say this with every Horizon and I'll say it again, this is the best car list in a Horizon so far. It probably helps when you have 593 cars (at the time of this writing) too. Racing in some form or fashion is one of the oldest forms of competition, and I'm not the only one who likes to win.
I usually avoid online multiplayer in the Forza games mostly due to everyone using your car as brakes, leaving my competitiveness to find it's place offline. The problem with that is the algorithm behind Drivatars is still far from where it needs to be. The AI drivers stick to the racing line in single file as if they are on rails, with your only true opponent being the car in first that always separates themselves from the rest of the pack after the first few corners. This is especially true on the hardest difficulty "Unbeatable", so I was hoping we'd see a drastic improvement instead of them setting world records in normal races. For the most part these problems are only present while doing doing races confined to the streets, so when you take it offroad that's where those rails fall off forcing you to be on your toes.
Seasons are still here from Forza Horizon 4 but this time more directly reflect the weather types you'll run into during. Wet, Storm, Dry, and Hot describe the climate of each week's rotation, even though they don't bring with them the detailed map changes from 4 as two of them are just toned down versions of the others. In place of that are dust storms in the dry season and tropical storms in the storm season. I only encountered both of those once in my playtime since I had moved on before a full rotation, but you can play events at your leisure with these storms at any point. The seasons in 4 were the most welcomed change for a series that would have grown too stagnant without it (even if three of them were essentially palette swaps), so these storm based seasons do a good job to expand on that even further with how chaotic they are to drive though. The Winter season is the only significant absence from 4 and that's not a big deal. It's less work to put elsewhere and driving in it sucked even with snow tires.
In each of these weekly seasons you'll also accrue festival points by completing challenges of varying types, like finishing first in an offline tournament or using a specific type of car in a drift zone. Once you get enough points you'll automatically gain access to the first festival car for that week as a reward, and you can continue doing challenges to hit the second tier for an additional car. Make sure you get what you want too, cause these cars can be marked as "Exclusive" meaning you cannot obtain it outside of that week.
Thankfully you can get both cars in 5-6 hours of playing, or if you miss that week hopefully you'll find it to buy with your [in-game] currency at the Auction House from another player who got it themselves and wants to get rid of it. I had this problem with Forza Horizon 4 as it has this same system, where I missed obtaining of my favorite cars (the Ford Mustang RTR) and then could never find it for sale in an auction. Time limited events with exclusive rewards aren't anything new yet that doesn't change the fact that systems like this suck and only exist as a means to give the player a fear of missing out.
I did see the RTR in the AutoShow to purchase early on in Horizon 5, and boy was I happy to buy it and start working on it. I don't get crazy deep into the tuning aspects of Forza but I know enough. I'm not striving for world record times here (atleast not in Horizon) but it sucks finding that perfect car only to get in and realize it handles like mud. At the same time it's so satisfying when you put in the time to fix it. When I hit that apex as tight as I can and the front tyre lifts off for a second, it's glorious. I continue to hop into Forza every now and again to just drive around, listening to how mean my exhaust sounds when I fly off the line. I can't tell you where you take Forza from here, but I hope it gets crazy. The chances of me ever driving a Ferrari F40 during a tropical storm are low, but damnit I'll continue to live out my dream one way or another.
As someone who still gets excited for X-Games every year since I began watching it in 2000, Riders Republic is the extreme sports game I've been clamoring years for even with its absence of skateboarding, moto, and BMX (atleast until Season 3). While Red Bull Rampage is more of a direct comparison than the X-Games (and is included as a sponsored event in the game), it's able to scratch that same itch of what makes them so fun; seeing how far you can push the limits of gravity.
Built on the framework on Ubisoft Annecy's 2016 game Steep, I finally got the game I was hoping Steep would be by adding in more sports, particularly bikes. Even though I enjoyed Steep at the time, I didn't put too much time into it as I don't keep up with Winter extreme sports as much as I'd like. You're given plenty of options here, some of which I won't dive into. Particularly paragliding, wingsuit, and rocket wingsuit, all of which are identical to how they were in Steep.
The map of Riders Republic is split into 3 biomes with a specialized discipline in each one. You'll snowboard or ski through slopestyle courses in the tundra, freeride down a colossal mountain in the desert, or breeze through whatever trail you can find in the forest. After loading into the world, you're placed in an instance with other players similar to how Forza Horizon does it, but also with an abundance of AI riders that will spawn/despawn around you as you're riding. It's an effective counter against the lifeless world of Steep without trying to accomplish the impossible task of putting every player in the same map. There is one mode however that will do just that.
Mega Races are the standout multiplayer mode here as a multi round race between you and 63 other players. Essentially the video game counterpart of Megavalanche, you're almost guaranteed top 20 if you don't crash in the first corner like everyone else will. Each round includes multiple disciplines, so you could jump off a cliff on your bike to switch to your wingsuit mid air and then glide down close to the ground and switch to your snowboard to finish it out. There's one major flaw here with Mass Races in that level advantages are active, meaning the higher gear you have the higher chance of success you'll have since you're just going faster than everyone else. I really wish gear was normalized in Mass Races, yet this still hasn't been done as of January 2022.
I'd easily consider myself competitive when it comes to racing but I have no frame of reference since leaderboards are missing from Riders Republic. It's odd to include so many real competitions like Red Bull Hardline, yet lose sight of their primary objective to see who can complete them the fastest. I want to check how close (or far) I am away from the world record time, not just see that I beat "BOT John" by 45 seconds.
Missing leaderboards aren't that big of a deal, at least not more than foregoing session markers; a way to set a spawn point of sorts and teleport back there anytime you'd like. It's always easier said than done, but skate. included exactly what I'm looking for 14 years ago. To offset this Ubisoft has included a rewind feature you can activate at any point to go a good bit back. It's not ideal as hitting a dedicated session marker button is a lot quicker than rewinding 30 seconds, but it's better than nothing. In a game seemingly built around finding your perfect spot, it certainly gives you a hard time in hitting that spot time and time again. Thankfully none of this detracts too much from that fact that just shredding down a hill hitting 360 Double Back Tailwhips are a sick time bro.
You are not the main character in Road 96. In your place instead are 8 people, all vastly different from the other with their own problems that you somehow always become intertwined with. You'll hitchhike, drive a stolen car, walk, and catch a ride any way you can as you go from place to place seeing the progression for each character while listening to the best soundtrack on this list.
A couple of the characters are clearly there for comedic relief, but none of them are free from pulling at your heartstrings. They've all got a clear goal and a few of them will do whatever it takes to accomplish it, even if it means throwing everything away. Some want answers, some want forgiveness, and others just need a friend.
Road 96 doesn't want you to like all of its main cast (except Alex, what a cool cat), but it does an incredible job throughout the story as you begin to learn more and more about their past in changing your perception of everyone. Sometimes when you dedicate an entire part of your life to one thing you realize by time you get to the end it was all for naught. Other times you never get to the end. I had begun to sympathize with certain characters by the end that I never wanted to see in the parts leading up that point, and any game that manages to do that with my renegade driven heart is a winner in my book.
All I want to talk about is how adorable Kena: Bridge of Spirits is. So I will.
As you progress through the game you'll collect those cute little fur balls above called Rot, who will always follow behind you. I mean, just look at them! Even better is the setting you can toggle to show all collected Rot following alongside you rather than just a few. And I mean all. I couldn't help but just smile every time I turned the camera around to 100 little Rot stumbling over to try and catch up with me.
When you aren't running around you can take a seat at any time to huddle all your Rot around you to interact with them too. The first Rot you collect will jump off your shoulder and plop in your lap to either kiss you, sneeze, or dance on your head. About 10% of my playtime is right here, since there is an actual game mixed in with these all this cuteness.
Story wise it feels front loaded for me, presenting the best characters early on lead …[truncated]
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