Top 10-ish Games of 2021-ish

 

 

This is the first year in awhile where I truly loved every game on my Top 10 Best Games List. Whereas my annual Top 15 Movies List is always drowning in riches, with ten or movie great-great movies not making the cut, I often struggle with the Games List. Last year I only had six or seven games I truly loved. I'll end up putting games I only kinda liked on there. Last year, I only respected Final Fantasy VII Remake and there was a good reason I did not finish CrossCode. That's not the case this year. No filler, no fat, only great games.

Now is truly a 2021 list? As the games industry grows less and less regular with an annual cycle, I suppose that question will only get weirder as time goes by. We might have to add a few epicycles into our model of the universe to keep a 2021-centric view that makes mathematical sense. My Top 10 Games of 2021 include one game that will not be truly released for many years now, one game from 2009, two games from 2019, and one game from 2020.

This is also probably the most Eric Fuchs list of video games I've ever made. Metroidvanias make the list every year, as do VNs, as do JRPGs. A lot of games on this list are Eastern-style RPGs, one Western RPGs and a ton of action RPGs. Never mind how vague those genre terms are getting these days. I'll add some epicycles to that view of the universe too. Writing this list, I used the word "Zelda" ten times or so. Square Enix is on here three times.

I do worry with my gaming habits that perhaps I am limiting myself and my scope of experience. This past year I owned Cyberpunk 2077 and never opened it. I bought Deathloop at a full $70 price and played two hours of it before losing interest. Maybe neither of those games belong on a Top 10 List due to their own merits or lack there of. But I couldn't honestly tell you. I'm told Monster Hunter Rise, Forza Horizon 5, and Age of Empires 4 are incredible. However, they are games not for me. There's nothing mobile, no open world extravaganzas, and very little that needed next-gen hardware despite this being the first full year of the PlayStation 5 era. Does this increasingly narrow band of gaming make me a worse critic? Sure, probably. But when I write about movies, I'm probably going to care more about gross horror flicks than documentaries or comedies. I like what I like, I'm 31-years-old, my back hurts sometimes. At a certain point, you have nothing to prove to anybody by playing a roguelike when you hate roguelikes.

Still, one thing I will not say is that this is an uninteresting collection of games. Even in a more narrow genre scope, I still found what I believe to be the fantastic experiences. If "Zelda"and "RPG" are a dirty words in your book, then maybe this isn't the list for you. You do not have to like what I like. We can still be friends.

2021 was a disappointing year for a lot of reasons. It seemed like a fresh start and ended up being another round in endless sociopolitical trench warfare, just globally. I cannot say the state of the gaming industry is trending in the right direction, I definitely can't say the state of the world is trending in the right direction. But I cannot worry too hard about the existential horror of Microsoft buying out the entire industry or the reckless capitalist nightmare that is NFTs, because if those change the universe, that's years down the line. I might as well try to stop the continents from shifting because I like how the current map looks. Years, industries, the states of society, it's all far beyond me and my powers. 

For now, at least gaming is still a safe space. It's more creative, more creative, more fun space making better products than it made a decade ago. For now at least, things look pretty okay... maybe. Anyway, let's get to the list.

Or actually, no. The true Top 10 has to wait a moment. First off, an Honorable Mention:

0. DELTARUNE Chapter 2, Toby Fox

I already highlighted this game three years ago as part of my Best Games of 2018 List, when Chapter 1 released suddenly that Halloween. Deltarune will be a regular guest star on these Best Lists, as long as it stays an episodic experience. I am perfectly willing to wait three years between Chapters if they're all this good. And when the final seventh chapter comes out, I'll replay the whole damn thing. I'll even make sure to hit those optional superbosses that I keep missing. Someday Deltarune will be Game of the Year 20XX. That throne lies empty, waiting for its once and future king.

Chapter 2 of Deltarune is close to being its own stand-alone video game. Chapter 1 already was a surprisingly long demo that made for a bold sequel to the original Undertale (arguably the best game of the entire 2010s, so legendary it now plays before Popes). In Chapter 2, our adorable heroes of Kris, Ralsei, and Susie find themselves trapped in a new realm of darkness hiding underneath their extremely Earthbound-esque "real world". But coming with them this time is the even cuter Noell, who we discover is Susie's crush. And then there's a shitty /r/games user named Berdley, the living personification of No items, Fox only, Final Destination (just looks more like Falco). Along the way they find romance, they find internet spam, and Ralsei dresses up in a suit and is impossibly precious for it.

At this point, Deltarune is preaching to the choir. I'm in that choir, you can see me down in the bottom stage-left corner, bass section. I love these characters, I love this kind of humor, I love this mixture of JRPG combat and bullet hell gameplay. I even love when Deltarune ditches all those gameplay influences to instead become Mike Tyson's Punch-Out briefly. Chapter 2 is more of the same from Chapter 1, which is what it should be. This is effectively the second level of a much bigger and grander game we haven't seen. Maybe this chapter there's a bit too much weight put on the gamer humor. Well, luckily Chapter 3 will be about something else.

However, as lovable as this experience is so far, it is hard to guess where Deltarune will go next. Something is deeply and terribly wrong in this world. Chapter 2's ending is terrifying, because we leave knowing pure evil is out, free, and uncontrollable. It really feels like anything can happen. Until I know what that "anything" is, I really can't put any Chapter of Deltarune on the main list. You'll have to stay here, as the Honorable Mention.

10. Astro’s Playroom, Team Asobi 

"Wait a minute, that's definitely a 2020 game. Even by your loose definition of re-releases and ports, no way this is a 2021 release. I call BS."

Shut up, ...whoever is talking. (*looks around and sees nobody*)

The fact of the matter is that Astro's Playroom is a pack-in game for the PlayStation 5. In theory, yeah, that console did release in the year 2020. But in that year, only about fourteen total people could get their hands on a PS5, so I say Astro's Playroom was effectively not released until 2021. Besides, people still can't find PS5s to this very day. To get it, you need to follow @Wario64, the heroic Twitter account that is the glue holding together our failing late capitalist infrastructure, to get the rare chance at a lottery win just to have a console. Maybe Astro's Playroom will be on next year's list too.

Astro's Playroom is propaganda. This whole game is a fascinating act of total brand reinvention. We see Sony ditching its usual air of masculine gamer superiority to instead pretend it is Nintendo and always has been. Through that lens, we can pretend that the Vita, or the $600 price tag on the PS3, or PlayStation Move, all those various disasters, were just one part of a continuum of joy. Like Whig Historians re-imaging English medieval tyrants as constitutional forefathers, Astro's Playroom pretends that every twist and turn in the PlayStation Dynasty was a necessary step for the grand conclusion, the PS5. We've made it, the End of History, the Console War is over, peace shall reign forevermore under Pax PlayStationica. (Pay no attention to the black hole of infinite money devouring the industry, history is over, we promise you.)

To put it another way, Astro's Playroom is bullshit. All of it. However, we can accept that and still enjoy the presentation. Astro's Playroom is a much shorter Super Mario 3D World starring tiny adorable robots that live inside your console. You journey with them through various linear levels decorated with Sony IPs and obscure trivia. To make sure you feel good about your illusive hyper-modern machine that you spent $400 or $500 on, Astro's Playroom devises levels all built to show-off the marketing bullet points of the console. So we have a GPU Jungle where your PS5's mighty heart comes to life and sings to you. A vast outer space level teaches us that the PS5's SSD is really cool in some technical way far beyond our mortal understanding. If you're going to sell a console, Astro's Playroom is a more fun way of doing it, versus Sony's typical tone, abrasive arrogant edge.

Astro's Playroom also managed to gather up all the silly gimmicks in the DuelSense and find a compelling use for them. The gyroscope and haptic feedback and adaptive triggers are things I've never used on that console, even after months of ownership and plenty of games. Astro's Playroom pulled them in and made a compelling case for them. Using the stiffened bumpers to do a rock climb as a kind of robot monkey was pure joy. I don't think I'd want to do that for thirty hours, but twenty minutes made me smile. Still, I can't imagine that Sony's true flagship titles, like next month's Horizon: Forbidden West, will want anything to do with such simplistic child-like pleasures.

I compared this game to 3D Marios before, and that's a hard space to try to compete in. Nobody can be Nintendo except Nintendo. However, for a few hours, even while acting as completely shameless marketing, Astro's Playroom could be as good as the best Mario game. Therefore it had to make this list.

9. Death’s Door, Acid Nerve

In March, my most-anticipated game of 2022 will release. That's Tunic, the long-awaited tiny Zelda fox game. In the meantime, 2021 supplied me with a different top-down action adventure game with often unforgiving difficulty starring an adorable animal. That's Death's Door. This time you're a little raven instead of a little fox, though I say both forms of life are valid. You're working as some of grim reaper, collecting souls for a bureaucratic afterlife. This is a pretty short game - there's only three major dungeons, which would be a disappointing if this were a true Zelda and not just spiritual offspring. However, short is not bad. None of the games on this list have been longer than ten hours so far.

I have played plenty of these top down retro-inspired games. I'll give Death's Door extra credit for not trying to look like a Super Nintendo game like so many of these do. It instead molds its own art style with soft almost clay-like graphics. I will never write one of these Annual Top 10 lists without saying the world "Zelda" at least once, and this year I'm almost a broken record about my Zelda love. Even admitting that Death's Door is not particularly experimental or innovative, this is an exceptional "one of those". I've eaten plenty of burgers in my life, and I'll eat plenty more. I can still appreciate the really great ones.

If you're going to make a game like this, you need to do it right. The competition is fierce. You need tight controls, exceptional boss fights, beautiful environments, and not to out-stay your welcome. As mentioned, Death's Door is not outstaying any welcome. The combat is simple enough stab and dodge action. Learn the enemy patterns and wreck their shit, you've done this before, I've done this before. You do have a ranged attack with limited ammo if you need to get distance. Making really great boss fights is a very difficult art form, not a lot of games can do it. Death's Door is one of the best this year, and that deserves commendation. There's not a bad boss fight in the bunch.

Since Death's Door is a small game with a small world and not a lot of NPCs, I managed to find most of the secrets and upgrades. It's definitely rewarding to beat an optional boss and get an upgrade to your fire spell so that it causes status burn damage over time. I appreciate a game so straight-forward that I never needed a guide to find the best sword. I appreciate that these days, when most games, even most games on this list, go for a kind of baroque vastness of experience, Death's Door can be just the best possible version of a little slice of gameplay.

8. Gnosia, Petit Depotto

There were many, many time loop games in 2021, and most failed to make an impact on me at all. I played less than three hours of Deathloop with all its HD graphics and innovative mechanics. I did not play 12 Minutes and never will. Instead, I spent about $20 on Gnosia, a tiny indie Japanese game on the Switch, and could not put it down for about a week. I was on vacation in sunny Florida this spring and put another ten hours into it between the beach and roller coasters. Gnosia is one of those perfectly addicting on-the-go games. Its parts are bite-sized and short, making it deceptive in its time investment. I promised myself "one more loop" and I knew that was a lie. Hundreds of loops were going to pass.

Visual novels are not typically little morsels to snack on, they're big meals. Gnosia combines the sprite-based VN presentation with a simple Mafia-style game. (Or maybe I should compare it to Among Us, the hot meme game of the moment.) Your POV character wakes up in spaceship surrounded by strangers and your task is to find which of you is actually the evil alien out to devour the others, the title Gnosia. Every night one of you gets eaten, and so every day you vote one person into cryosleep. This all sounds simple but you'll learn there's a lot of manipulation and politics at play that are required to steer events in your favor. Every loop can be a different scenario. Maybe you're the Gnosia this time. Maybe you're a human and trying to help the bad guy. 

There's also, however, a big meta level at play. Winning or losing the text-based Among Us game actually does not matter too much. If you get eaten, or you win, the loop repeats anyway. To escape, you're going to need to uncover the greater plot and get more familiar with your shipmates. This is not a game about beating them, it's a game about learning about them, and ultimately bonding with them. Gnosia wants you to friends with the thing that eats or betrays you.

What really sells Gnosia is its cast. This is one of the very few Japanese games I've played with such a commitment to queer themes and diversities in bodies. Your main partner in uncovering the mystery is Setsu, who is nonbinary, and your silent protagonist can be nonbinary too. One guy wants to become a cat. A friendly gray alien insists that he is human and you need to accept him for what he is. 

But what I really love is how character personalities affect the game of Among Us.  Even if you're playing out the same scenario hundreds of times, it's fun to watch the distinct personalities bounce off each other. The sweet little Kukrushka looks innocent but is a master manipulator. Some people are followers that just want to quiet things down, some live off tension. SQ is this flirty redhead who seems to only even want to cause problems. Though she's nowhere near as much of a bitch as Sha-Ming, this a dude who doesn't want to be a problem - he is a problem.

Best character in Gnosia though, maybe best character of the year, has to go to Raqio. They are this nonbinary crew member dressed like a SciFi Egyptian who knows they're smarter and cooler than everybody else, and backs up those claims. Raqio is definitely the fashion statement of 2021 gaming and we need to respect their glory.

More people should play this.

7. NEO: The World Ends With You, Square Enix & h.a.n.d. 

Other than Gnosia, NEO: The World Ends With You has to be the most tragically under-played game of 2021. You know Square Enix's marketing of this title has been a complete failure when most people thought this was a Switch exclusive. I keep telling people its available on the PS5, I used all that mighty next-gen horsepower going to fire up a budget RPG, and don't believe me. NEO TWEWY is not a showcase of graphical muscle, but it never looks bad. The cel shading effects and the jagged angles of Tetsuya Nomura's style helps fill in those gaps. The many stylist effects in combat help fill in color and personality better than any ray-tracing could have. In spite of that, Square Enix fumbled this, and the sales of NEO TWEWY have been frankly dire. That's disappointing. 

Still, luckily we get a TWEWY 2, after years of asking. And it was a really good one. Maybe the world of Noise and Shibuya will not continue past this, but it went out on a high note.

I've never been to Shibuya, I might never go there. But as a JRPG gamer, I've spent a lot of time in that neighborhood. In comparison, I've lived within ten miles as the bird flies from Times Square most of my life, and I've spent, maybe a few hours there, tops. (Times Square sucks, awful place, don't go.) But I spent dozens of dozens of hours digitally in Shibuya. Between TWEWY, Kingdom Hearts, Shin Megami Tensei, and the visual novel, 428 Shibuya Scramble, I can picture that place more distinctly than the office I worked at most of 2015. I see the Statue of Hachiko more clearly than my last boss's face. So even as somebody who was not a terribly big fan of the original The World Ends With You on the Nintendo DS (I didn't even finish that game), coming back here to the Scramble intersection, that's pure nostalgia to me now.

NEO TWEWY is arguably a better Persona game than the Persona series at this point. If you must play anurban fantasy adventure battling the demonic personifications of human negative emotions, NEO TWEWY has a more more likable cast than the Persona 5 kids. It helps a lot that NEO TWEWY is using party members in an interesting way. They're not just drones that follow the leader's orders. In fact, you really don't have a party at all. They are not distinct individuals but a greater whole that are all under your control at all times. Each one gets mapped to a button on your controller. Together they merge into singular force of violence that passed from one character to another in a chain of HP-erasing death. Everybody shares one HP bar for a reason.

Importantly though, that party combat works great. Nobody seems to be out here singing the praises for NEO TWEWY gameplay, so I guess I have to do it. I've never played an action RPG quite like this one. Even if the game rarely is difficult, and when it is difficult, it's more obnoxious than thrilling, the concept is really cool. The Pin system is back from the first game, which you assign to each party member. That means your hero, Rindo, can have a fire spell that you summon by holding down the Triangle button. Then when that's exhausted, you switch to his buddy Fret, who has an ice spear attack which you mash the Square button for. By the end of the game, as the plot grows more and more absurd, so does the gameplay. You end with six party members which you can customize into glorious combos, apply those bonds of friends into an overwhelming rhythmic blitzkrieg to annihilate your enemies.

6. Eastward, Pixpil

Eastward is the game I have most recently finished for this list. I have been cramming as many games as possible since early December, and I only wrapped this one up on Sunday. Since Eastward is the freshest in my mind, that makes it a bit difficult to decide a place for it. I played some of these eight months ago, and its unfair to have them compete with something I finished during my current laundry cycle. But also, Eastward itself is a pretty complicated experience and I lot of mixed emotions about it.

To start out positively, Eastward is the single best-looking game I played this entire year. Sorry, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, your throne has been usurped and you didn't make the Top 10 at all. It's common to call modern games that still use pixel art "retro" but that's a bit dismissive to me. Is 2D animation "retro" in the 2020s? Sure, it's out of fashion compared to 3D, but it's still a thriving artform. Sprite-based games have really never gone away, and thanks to the indie scene, we've seen more gorgeous pixel animation in the last decade than arguably before. There have been stunningly beautiful games like Owlboy or Iconoclasts that use dense details and intricate designs to build an impressive visual aesthetic. Eastward is a step even further beyond, the artwork in this game is incredible. Pixpil is a Chinese developer, Eastward is their first game. And this is a stunning first attempt.

Continuing on that positive energy, Eastward is a very charming game. It is not hiding any of its influences. Pixpil is staffed with people who are as much in love with with games like Dragon Quest, Zelda, Secret of Mana, and Earthbound as I am. The faithfulness to action RPG gameplay can a strength and a weakness. Compared to the speed of Death's Door, the combat in Eastward feels bland and undercooked. (That's a pun, by the way, you fight enemies with a frying pan.) There isn't even a dodge roll. 

Also, this game has a very deliberate flow to its pacing, which can be off-putting. It has a world full of cartoony characters and silly slapstick. There's hundreds of NPCs, all with distinct names, and not one character design is repeated. However, that also means this is a game in no hurry. Before you can get to any of the dungeon crawling, you need to get through a lot of scenes and a lot of story. This game is eight chapters long, plus a prologue, and only the finale is particularly combat-heavy. One chapter has barely any combat at all. So if screwing around to save a circus sounds boring to you, Eastward might not be your game.

Where Eastward becomes unpalatable for me is how this light tone is always a set-up for a gut punch. Deltarune is doing something similar, but not with this level of cruelty. Eastward is the story of an older man, John, and his adopted daughter, Sam, traveling the world on a train after an apocalypse of some kind. Their adventures always start out sweet, everybody they meet is friendly and have big hearts. Then it goes bad, it goes shockingly bad. At a certain point I realized this was the top-down action RPG answer to The Last of Us.

5. Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139.., Square Enix 

In 2010, the original Nier Replicant released and the world was not ready for it. It was simultaneously too head of its time and paradoxically too far behind the times as well. I did not play this game back then, and I've regretted that ever since. Finally, in 2021, I can mix this is deep hole in my backlog.

Back in 2010, I'm sure Nier Replicant was shocking for how it subverted the game formulas. Now in the post-Undertale era, a game that's critical of the player is almost old-news. I was well and truly sick of that move by The Last of Us 2, my least favorite game of 2020. However, Nier is not just a ludonarrative shell game. Playing this in 2021, I was more shocked by how orthodox it all was.

You begin the journey as a small boy in a small green village doing busy work, like hunting sheep, fishing, and fetching items. It's practically Zelda: Twilight Princess in terms of simple agrarian fantasies. Later the game starts to collect totally different genres to inhabit. There's a level set in a haunted mansion that is extremely Resident Evil 1. There's a top-down action RPG level. There's a text adventure level. At one point, in a side activity, Nier becomes a rail shooter. Still, the classic tropes of patient slow-opening and tedious work is disarming. When the game does tear down this hero's journey you're on, the effect is surprising. 

Though even with no post-modern irony at lay, Nier is a just solid adventure. Could you ask for better party members than Kaine and Emil? They are simply the best people. They're also your first hint that the conservative version of quiet town life might have limits. Yoko Taro writes them as metaphors for all forms of difference, you could easily sub in a queer metaphor. They have unacceptable bodies and your hero never dares question what mechanism is at place for this exclusion.

This modernization of Nier Replicant is a pretty successful work. Obviously since Platinum is not around, the combat is nowhere near as stylish or fulfilling as you can have while controlling 2B or 9S. Replicant's combat is acceptable and never much more, but I'm told this is far improved from the PS3/360 version, at least. The peculiar decision to translate the game to Americans by rewriting the hero as a gruff man versus is a young boy has been removed. I cannot really imagine this story working as successfully with the hardened Daddy Nier. Even if you prefer Daddies with Hardbodies, Nier Replicant Numbers feels like the definitive experience. We get a bonus boss fight this time!

As you probably know, Nier Replicant needs to be completed something like four times. You beat the game once regularly, then must complete the second half an additional three times, each time growing more and more absurdly over-leveled. This is an entirely unnecessary chore. I'm not convinced that any of this was necessary to make a greater subversive point about the nature of heroism. However, the tedium is worth it, because after four routes, you unlock Route E, the one that's truly special. That's one where you can toss out all logic and all dark themes. 

You get a wonderful Happy Ending, and try not to worry too hard how it makes sense. If Lana Wachowski can paint the sky with rainbows with two characters madly in love in The Matrix Resurrections, then our three heroes of Nier Replicant deserve impossible, ridiculous happiness too.

4. Metroid Dread, MercurySteam & Nintendo

Few franchises were more in need of a W than Metroid. It’s been a rough ten years for fans of Samus Aran and her space bounty hunter adventures. That misery is only made worse when you contrast it with the wild success of Metroid’s influence. There were very few Metroid games to play in the 2010s, but a lot of Metroidvanias. It must have been hard to watch the world lose it's mind over Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, and countless others when all Nintendo wanted to give Metroid fans was the Samus-less Metroid Prime: Federation Force. (A game nobody asked for, and indeed, nobody played.) Fans did get two different remakes of Metroid 2, both unofficial an unofficial. But that hardly feels like a real victory when the true dream, Metroid Prime 4, is now but a faint whisper in the vastness of space.

At a certain point, I thought that Metroid simply was doomed. Of all the core Nintendo franchises, Metroid always felt like the worst fit for the company’s style and tone. It is directly inspired by Ridley Scott’s Alien. So it is a series about body horror, dank claustrophobia, and oppressive maze-like alien worlds. I cannot see Illumination making a family-friendly cartoon about Samus Aran's adventures, but I could imagine Raw and Titane director Julia Ducournau having something up her sleeve. Really Nintendo should do a kind of IP trade with Sony and give them Metroid, and in return, maybe get Astro and his Playroom.

Well, Metroid Dread showed that I was wrong, and Nintendo actually can still work with this IP. Recruiting MercurySteam, they went out and made the single best Metroid game I've ever played. Dread is arguably the smartest direction they could have gone with the franchise. I know Prime 4 is the great hype of the future, but a return to the classic two-dimensional form of the series is a smart move for now. Super Metroid is one of the most legendary games of all time, beloved to no end. And at a certain point, why not return to those roots? Why not try to surpass those roots? The last major blockbuster Metroid was Other M, and the less said about that debacle, the better. So don't try to be a traditional blockbuster. Maybe learn a trick or two from the hot indie Metroidvanias that your franchise inspired? Just make a damn good one.

And a damn good one is basically what Metroid Dread is. I know Super Metroid is the Padishah-Empress of this genre, but I found it a bit slow and the controls too finicky compared to our streamlined modern masterpieces. Dread takes that formula and with just a few small additions like a parry and a quick dash, makes Metroid feel better than ever. There's new cat and mouse sequences with these invincible killer robots that help break up the action too. The EMMI sections do end up out-staying their welcome. Luckily, by the end of the game you have so many movement abilities they're practically trivial anyway.

Dread is a fantastic action game, with sublime boss designs. I found a groove with this game, so where bosses seemed like intense steep hills to climb that could take hours or days to overcome, they were only deceptively hard. They actually have gentler slopes thanks to patterns you can learn. If you make a mistake, the game will punish you, however, "don't get hit" is not so impossible a demand as it might seem. There's some brilliant design going on, especially with the Final Boss. That's an all-timer triumph of fun gaming.

Plus, even if there isn't a ton of story here, Samus is back. After Other M did everything it could to reduce her character, this Samus is at peak badass. After the first boss, you see a cutscene where she slowly walks, charges up her arm cannon, and blasts that fool away. It's cold, it's confident, there's not a word said. But that's the character of Samus Aran fully defined. She's an icon, once again.

3. Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Greg Lobanov 

I'm a writer, you might have noticed, but not a terribly successful one. I accept this. I don't write frequently enough, I don't write concisely enough, I can never find a good metaphor when I need one, and I'm the shittiest single editor. I also take a perverse pride in doing things half-assed, like every piece is some kind of idiotic challenge run, so this very review is running up on a deadline and I can only do one revision pass-through. You might notice the imperfections, I'm sorry. Like any creative endeavor, writing is brutal. Maybe I'd be more successful if I were confidant. I find no action more painful and shameful than promotion. I want to create the thing, then never face anybody's reaction it, positive or negative. Find me a dark place to hide when this List is finished.

Chicory is a game that wants to talk about the most awful parts of being creative. It is set in a cute world full of friendly animal people all named after foods. My character was named after my favorite food, burgers, so they're named "Borgar", because I thought that would be silly. Borgar is a janitor for the most talented and beloved artist in the world, a bunny named Chicory. Something horrible happens and Chicory's magic brush goes out of control, erasing all the color in the world. That leaves you, a humble dog with no particular skill, with the task of coloring the world back in and setting right what is wrong.

I played Chicory on the Switch in handheld mode, which is definitely the best way to experience the game. This is effectively a coloring book art game that just happens to also be a top-down narrative adventure. So while using a cursor or a joystick to color would be more precise, I like using the touchscreen. It makes me feel like a little kid, happily spreading around my finger paints on a white page that I could pollute with any anarchic or horrifying design I desire. I have pretty steady hands and can sketch fairly well in the real world, so playing Chicory is this wild challenge of suddenly being clumsy and fumbling. It is almost impossible to color within the lines. Your paint will bleed over beyond where you want. The Switch will glitch out at one point and dump a huge straight line across the screen for no reason.

The effect is to give up control. To literally, in the gameplay, accept imperfection. I won't be a master artist as Borgar, just as Borger will never be as technically proficient as her crush Chicory is. I'll paint a pretty bunny and she'll be very cute, but it won't ever hang in a museum. In one scene you're tasked to make a portrait of Chicory while she paints you. Of course, my version was a blotchy mess, while her painting of Borgar was a precise impressionist masterpiece. But still, I did my best. I'm happy I tried.

It also helps that Chicory is a legitimately fun game that uses the paint mechanic to build low-stakes but effective Zelda dungeons. There isn't a lot of combat, but they use the paint moves in interesting ways. If I really wanted a full Zelda game with a magic brush and hardcore challenge, I'd replay Okami. Instead, Chicory is a happy, supportive kind of game. It isn't cloying with the sweetness, it has real emotional stakes at heart and a compelling central relationship. There's a duet scene where your heroes sing with little chiptunes voices which was the single best scene of any game this year.

Above all else, I feel happier with myself and my achievements after playing this game. Am I the greatest gamer writer person ever? No. Am I still over-sensitive to other's opinions? Definitely. But after Chicory, I think I should write more, I want to make more things. Even if those things suck, they're mine, I should be proud of them.

2. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Eidos-Montreal

I cannot believe how good this game is. I couldn't believe how good this game was while playing it. Guardians of the Galaxy is a typical big budget narrative HD kind of experience, so basically I played it waiting for it to fail. Avengers from 2020 started out largely competent before collapsing under the weight of its terrible Games-as-a-Service concept. I was sure with Guardians that at some point this serviceable combat would turn outright bad. These characters would get on my nerves. The story would simply fall apart. Guardians of the Galaxy does not have a particularly stunning opening level either. Your first combat experience is blasting away these cubes of jelly in a pretty bland third-person shooter. There's a lot of banter between the characters and few of the jokes land at first. One really gets the sense you should start lowering your expectations fast.

But then something magical happens: the game never fumbles. It never looses steam. It only keeps getting better.

Guardians of the Galaxy only allows you to play as Star-Lord, despite the title promising all five heroes. On his own, Peter Quill is unimpressive. He's got two pea shooter laser guns and not a lot else. This all sounds disappointing. Why can't I be Gamora? Or Drax? But as the game goes on, you realize, you're not playing the hero of this story - you're playing the support character in a full party of heroes. Star-Lord is actually the Mage of the group. Eventually you learn elemental attacks that makes combat less bland. But more importantly, you unlock lots of options to order your friends around and build up combos. There's a strategic level to demolishing enemy mobs, which you get to plan out as Peter, because you're you're the back lines guy. The others can be up front and Tank, you're playing support. Eventually there is enough going on that Guardians of the Galaxy builds up a frenetic energy of chaos that's a lot of fun.

It isn't just the combat that builds on you, it's the entire feel of this game. Square Enix did not seem sure how to market it, but I get it. This is pure pulp nonsense. It's the 1981 movie, Heavy Metal's vision of space. The planets have stark colors, patterns, and preposterous geometries like a prog rock album cover. This space tyrant, Lady Hellbender, has a fortress floating on a round island, in the middle of an impossibly huge valley, whose primary architectural feature is a single glowing white window that is itself maybe a mile tall. If that were a paperback illustration, I would read the crappy Robert A. Heinlein novel inside.

James Gunn did a lot in his Guardians of the Galaxy movies to introduce these characters and this entire tone of Silver Age space opera SciFi to world. I love both those films. However, I may not be able to enjoy a Guardians of the Galaxy 3, because the James Gunn version of these five heroes are simply inferior to the versions Eidos-Montreal have created. I just love the game characters more, a lot more. Game Star-Lord is a corny loser whose routine of opening up is less warm and brotherly than the affections of the "cool councilor" at a religious summer camp. However, if he's corny, he's sincerely corny. He's miles ahead of whatever Chris Pratt is doing with the role. This Drax has a more appreciable sadness and grief. This version of Mantis is the wackiest and most hilarious character in an already very funny game, she steals the show every second she's around. The banter that was annoying at first starts to grow more tolerable, even lovable. Because you realize, this is a found-family communicating to each other.

Guardians of the Galaxy is a doing a lot of smart things. There's a few flashback sequences on Earth that are just straight-up Life is Strange slice of life gameplay, if now steeped in Eighties nostalgia. At first I thought this was going to pure fanservice, like the soundtrack which has too many too obvious Eighties radio hits. But this is a memory, distorted by Peter's grief into an idealized past. The game is not rejecting that nostalgia, however, it understands the limits and even the dangers of the emotion. This game actually has a poignant statement to make about grief and letting go and accepting loss. You know how the MCU tried to cover those themes in that WandaVision show and completely fumbled them? Guardians of the Galaxy: the Game, got it right.

And there's a talking Soviet space dog with psychic powers. This game rules.

1. Disco Elyisum: Final Cut, ZA/UM

Game of the Year goes to a console port. You did it, 2021.

I picked Kentucky Route Zero as my Game of 2020. In particular, I picked it because Act V felt like the exact perfect mood to encapsulate the end of that year. That game ends on more of an epilogue than a grand finale. It's the day after a storm, where you pick up your pieces, and begin the process of mourning and healing. But the sky is bright. There's hope for the future, the darkness has passed. And a year ago, in January 2021, that was the energy I felt. Trump was out of office, I was vaccinated, I could leave the house again. Maybe the world wasn't fixed, the war was not won, but there was, at least, peace.

Disco Elysium is not a game about hope. It's a game about "pornographic poverty", wallowing in your pathetic romantic wounds, and also the slow destruction of the planet. ZA/UM are developers who shouted out Marx and Engels at The Game Awards, but they created an alternate universe where Communism is even deader than it is here. You exist in this nation, Martinaise, who once was the vanguard of the global revolution, then was smashed and annihilated by the capitalist powers of the world. I don't ZA/UM are crying over the fall of the Soviet Union, their fantasy vision is more like what if the stamping out of the Paris Commune in 1871 by the Third French Republic had been even more violent and complete, a genocide of an entire political idea. Now, Martinaise is a plaything of the global powers, an exploited, dead zone of corruption and abuse. Even the local union is not a tool of worker liberation, but another cynical operator in a world already crowded with cynics.

This is a very difficult object, this Disco Elysium. It is a long, complicated game with a ton going on. Whatever I'll say here is entirely insufficient to sum up all the moments within, from the mutant man who is talking to God through a black hole on top of a Church, to the billionaire whose wealth refracts the very laws of physics, to your Detective learning to teleport. Few games have as much game in them as Disco Elysium does. I'm going to give one particular interpretation of this object, obvious reflecting my current anxieties about the world in early 2022. But remember, there's so much here, Disco Elysium is so big in terms of ideas its throwing around, many ideas it might not even successfully work with, that my lone mumbles should hardly register as even approaching a true definition of the monster before us.

Disco Elysium is not some statement about keeping up the fire of revolution or truth winning out. To be sincere is to have hope, and there is not much of hope here. ZA/UM are instead bitter and sarcastic. Your protagonist is a police detective born after the revolution, having missed entirely his chance at a meaningful contribution to the course of the world's events. He's so addled by booze and disco and self-pity that his brain is an empty blank slate that you can color in like Chicory's magic paintbrush. You can choose any politics you want for him: fascist, communist, liberal, whatever. You could even make him a ranting racist (which was probably an unwise decision on the developer's part). It makes no difference. Every ideology is ultimately mocked as ridiculous and preposterous. The liberals are frauds, the fascists are just a bundle of incoherent grievance, and the communists are living in a fantasy world. The podcast Mages and Murderdads did an extensive and impressive ten episode review of this game and its themes, and rather brutally compared to South Park. Both fictions seems to have the same awful idea that maybe everybody is an idiot. At least on the scale of global politics and the fate of the world in Disco Elysium, it doesn't matter. You can be a fool or a genius, there's nothing you can do.

I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but I don't feel a lot of hope right now. Disco Elysium is set decades after a horrible, bloody war, but you play the game in what is basically a time of peace. We're in peace right now in the real world, but do you feel like your life is trending in the right direction? We've officially accepted that Covid is beyond anybody's control, the Biden Administration has turned utterly pathetic in its attempts to drive national politics, and our best answer to climate change seems to be smug Adam McKay movies. I feel like my Detective character, I was born too late, I can't save my world either. Can't say I'm flying in the sky painting rainbows right now.

I've done a poor job so far actually explaining what Disco Elysium actually is. It's an isomorphic RPG in the tradition of things like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment. So for once, at the very bottom of this list, I've picked a game that is outside my comfort zone. The Western PC RPG tradition is not one I'm familiar with personally. On the other hand, Disco is a text-heavy narrative game with almost no combat at all, and that's close enough to a visual novel for my tastes that sure, I'll play it. And ultimately, even if Disco Elysium is not about saving the world, it is a game about saving something. If only yourself.

I did love that this game allowed you, in a way, to craft your own narrative. The murder you're solving in this miserable neighborhood only has one solution, and ultimately the plot can only go one way. But I had this vision for my character as this Vash the Stampede or Captain Jack Sparrow figure - a man who can combine genius and idiocy so closely that nobody can tell the difference, not even him. Somebody who you'd dismiss as a complete fool just before he proved he had hard metal inside. 

The game even played out according to my vision. The PlayStation version of Disco Elysium released in horrendous quality, almost unplayable those first few days.Your character awakes in a horrendous hangover, and the game ran like it had a hangover. Progress is decided by various dice rolls of the many characters living inside your brain, and I got through the first day of the narrative failing almost all of them. The first task is to just pull a hanged corpse down behind your hotel. I could not do that. I also was defeated in combat by a massive guard and a ten year old foul-mouthed junkie. My partner, Kim, saw me as a complete idiot. Then slowly, a few patches came in, and the game started to work. At one point, Disco helpfully crashed for me and allowed me to redo a dice roll that had blocked my progress. The Idiot Luck I wanted my character to embody had seeped out into the real world. That's magic.

Oh, the detective's name is Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau. Do not listen to anybody who tells you otherwise.

Costeau can't save the world. He can't save his country. He can't save this neighborhood from its economic peril. He can have ludicrous dreams of starting the Communist Revolution, but a true Communist will see him for what he truly is: a poser with a grotesque smile. But the detective can be a good friend to Kim, he can save lives, he can tear up the dance floor, he can solve the case, and he can give a couple of dorky college kids a glimmer of hope that the impossible is possible. The immense forces of the world are just beyond him, as they're beyond all of us. You'll drive yourself into a miserable stupor worrying about it, end up with an eye twitching every five minutes as the stress of it builds and builds in ever increasing scream of pain. And whether you let the pressure build to the point your head explodes, it won't matter. Just fucking let go. 

All you can do is be alive, try to make whatever small difference you can, and try to be a better Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau than you were at the beginning of the week.

Play some damned disco and have fun.

...

Anyway, with all that business out of the way, let's end our post here with some RANDOM STUFF!!

Games I Wish I Had Played Last Year:

Since I am a singular human being, I am not going to play everything that comes out in one year. If I did have infinite time and money, these are the games I would have played: Loop Hero, Inscryption, Solar Ash, Open Roads, Psychonauts 2, Life is Strange: True Colors, TOEM, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, The Forgotten City, Bowser's Fury, Get in the Car, Loser!, Unpacking, Lake, and Resident Evil VIIIage.

I also wish I finished Shin Megami Tensei V. I had to put it down to play other things. I will continue to fool myself into believing I'll come back to that game... but also if SMTV was good enough, I wouldn't have gotten bored. 

Finally no game broke my heart more than Sable for being an Xbox exclusive. 2021 had a lot of disappointments, but uch, Sable being unreachable to me was the most painful of them all. Please, somebody fix that. Port that to PS5. I know it won't run on Switch, but do something.

Game I Wish I Loved More:

This goes to Haven, a game I had a lot of hype for. This should be something very sweet and even touching. Last year I predicted that I might resent this experience and resent it I did indeed. Haven is about two young adults alone on an alien planet, out looking to fix their spaceship, and also being unbearably lame. There are a lot of stories about characters falling in love, very few stories about people being in a relationship. Because it turns out, people in puppy love are the fucking worst. You're happy, fulfilled, and having great sex every day? Get away from me, you disgust me with your positivity.

Maybe Haven could have won me over more if the combat had worked. It is attempting a turn-based RPG system where you control both of the little love birds at once. They can support each other and join in with attacks. I found this actually made the battles more obnoxious than the love story, since it turns every encounter in a timed puzzle, with very fussy controls and timing. There's a huge world, but all of it looks the damn same.

I wish I could be down for Haven was doing. I wish I could be happy for these kids and enjoy the little chores they have to perform to live their daily routine. Instead I was left feeling more lonely and unfulfilled than ever. The Game Bakers should have made Furi 2.

Worst Game I Played in 2021:

Nier Reincarnation. It's a mobile gatcha game, and I had a funny feeling I would hate these. And oh boy, do I ever. Even Yoko Taro, a seemingly fascinating storyline full of mysteries, and some promising short stories, cannot save what is an endless grind up a tower. Nothing happens in the plot. Then when you finish all that grind, you get to do the whole thing over again. Every chapter is same fucking pattern: no deviation, no twists, just an big bland tube of flavorless content you're trying to shove down your throat. 

When the hallmark of the Nier franchise is how every level is a dramatic change in tone and even genre, Reincarnation being this strident to a formula is a massive disappointment. Worse, it's boring! There's JRPG combat with no strategy or even decisions to make. Nier Reincarnation is so mindless that it makes Final Fantasy Mystic Quest seem like a high-level strategy game.

The only part of this game that was even remotely gripping in terms of actual gameplay was playing the slots every day to win 2B. And if your game is just an overly-complicated meta level to justify the real game: pulling a slot machine daily, you've made a shitty fucking game.

Best Boss Fights of 2021 (Spoiler Warning!):

5. Deltarune Chapter 2 - Giga Queen. You get to play Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, but you play as a giant robot punching an even giant-er robot. This was awesome.

4. Neo: The World Ends With You - Leo Cantus Armo (Sho). NEO: TWEWY is a game a lot like Kingdom Hearts where the typical enemies are slow and dumb. They often just let you beat them up. Sho here, however, is the first boss that actually will control the tempo of battle. It's surprising how intense he is. I also beat him first try, which was mostly luck. Also, Minamimoto is the only villain in this franchise I respect.

3. Chicory - Dark Borgar. This is a battle against a Dark version of You. As Mirror Bosses go, this is a creative one. It lives on one side of the screen, while your hero is on the other side. It will match your movements, so you need to avoid obstacles while leading Dark Borgar into hits. Also, your paint strokes are mirrored, so it's a confusing battle, but in a fun way.

2. Death's Door - Betty. All the bosses in this game could have made this list, easily. Betty is definitely the best one, and not just because she has the best music in the game. No, she's great because she has a roll attack that she loves to spam again and again. If you don't move quickly perpendicular to the left or right, you will be hit. Betty loves to use this attack over and over, so she's always in control of the battle.

1. Metroid Dread - Raven Beak. As mentioned, the final boss of Metroid Dread is the single best fight in that game. But this is also one of the greatest boss fights in Nintendo history. This boss is intense, he punches like a truck, he's very fast too. But as scary as his moves are, they're actually all avoidable. You just need every one of Samus' tricks to get through this. He's the culmination of the entire game, everything you want out of a final encounter. Take that, Bird Dad.

Preemptive and Probably Highly Inaccurate Top 10 Games of 2022:

I've been writing a predicted Top 10 List for a couple years now. Breath of the Wild 2 has been my "Most Anticipated" Games list now for three years, and I've had enough. So now, NEW RULE. I will only allow a game to make the 2022 Guess List if that game has a solid release date and I believe it actually come out this year. Final Fantasy XVI is not a 2022 game, that sucks, but that's reality. I don't want to hurt myself pining for Hollow Knight: Silksong again. So here's what we can be sure about.

10. Omori, OMOCAT (Switch Port) - I've been waiting to play this since 2020 now. We have a date for its Switch release, thank god it isn't exclusive to PC anymore.

9. Neon White, Angel Matrix - A card game and an FPS. I don't like either of those things! Why does this look so cool??

8. Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Game Freak - The Pokemon formula has needed a major shake-up for a decade now. I want to believe this is the answer.

7. Elden Ring, FromSoftware - I give myself 50/50 odds that I play this at all. Souls games are too stress for me.

6. Sable, Shedworks (ported) - Even if it isn't ported, I'll play it in 2022. I'll find some way to justify putting it on next year's list.

5. Kirby and the Forgotten Land, HAL Laboratory - Kirby ate the human race.

4. Forspoken, Luminous Productions - I'll just pretend you're FFXVI so I'm not sad. This is a bad title for a video game, btw.

3. Stray, BlueTwelve Studio - You were also on last year's list, weren't you? Try not to make me look stupid and come out this year.

2. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Rocksteady Studios - I don't think anybody else has hype for this. So when this game turns out to be awesome, let it be known that I called it. 

1. Tunic, Andrew Shouldice - My hype for Fox Zelda is endless.