Top 25 Games of 2021
Hello, fellow gamers.
2021 sure was a year. In fact, I’d say it was among the greatest years of the 2020s. I played a lot of games this year. In fact, there were 25 games I played for more than an hour. All of those games are absolutely eligible for my top 25 list, and I’m really sorry about that. If it makes you feel better, I liked most of them, but I will also complain about a few regardless of whether or not it makes you sad. Here is the list in alphabetical order:
Astalon: Tears of the Earth
Before Your Eyes
Blue Fire
Boomerang X
Bowser’s Fury
Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Deathloop
Deltarune: Chapter 2
Everhood
It Takes Two
Metroid Dread
Monster Hunter Rise
NEO: The World Ends with You
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…
Pac-Man 99
Persona 5 Strikers
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond
Psychonauts 2
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Resident Evil Village
Returnal
Scarlet Nexus
Shin Megami Tensei V
Tales of Arise
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
Oh boy, I can’t wait to see what this year’s list holds in store for us. Perhaps we will all celebrate the event as it should be celebrated. You know how it goes. Please, just understand that too much celebration can be detrimental to your health, and I do not want anyone to be hurt from the sheer excitement of seeing myself rank 25 separate video games from worst to best. Let us begin:
25. Everhood
Creating this type of list last year should have been a bit of a formative experience for me. I have a tendency to lapse in and out of writing projects I take on, almost inevitably resulting in a failure to complete said projects due either to an inability to accept my perceived personal flaws, or through overplanning the writing process and crushing my brain under an unnecessary weight of perceived burden and responsibility. In actuality, the importance of my writing is solely dictated by the enjoyment I receive from it. I am not doing this as a job and I know the amount of people who honestly read my work likely won’t go past single digits. I have had much contemplation over these negative thought processes, and have sought many professionals for consultation concerning my personal feelings of being a failure. The result of this is still undetermined. I wish I could say that my successful effort of sticking to a large writing project, even barring it taking nearly half a year to do so, had fixed my indecisiveness. However, I was intending to make a BIG return to my writing, including a list of ideas for media-related articles and a rebranding of my personal Medium page. My first attempt at an essay was an analysis of ‘The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD’ from the sole perspective of using buttons only, and why this way of playing ‘The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword’ would be a horrible mistake for new players and an exercise in tedium for returning players. I began this article close to a month after the release of ‘The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD’, popping out a total of eighteen paragraphs over the course of two hours. I was about a quarter of the way through my argument and felt quite satisfied with it at this point. However, I have not returned to this article since that day, and I have, at this point, completely forgotten a majority of the things I intended to discuss. Those words gather dust in my drafts folder on Medium, and they will likely never leave the security of that folder unless I delete them, forever sending my memories into an endless void, never to be retrieved. I am left wondering why, exactly, I have yet to delete the article. I have lost all of my interest in finishing it up, yet at the same time I hold sufficient anxiety over the possibility I may need to complete it some day. But what value can be gained from completing this? I am evidently opposed to doing it out of personal satisfaction, yet I’ve established I will receive no gratification from others seeing the finished product. When I think about my writing in this way, I become caught in a loop. What is the meaning of performing one’s hobby? What is the meaning of value? What is the meaning of productivity? What is the meaning of this tired script we refer to as everyday life?
‘Everhood’ wasn’t very good. At the time of writing these particular words, it is November 29, 2021 at 5:26 PM EST. At this moment I am nowhere close to finishing all of the games I want to play for the sake of completing this list, but ‘Everhood’ is pretty firmly lodged in the bottom spot, and I don’t foresee anything slipping below it. If something does, I will still not edit this write-up, because any efforts at editing I make, no matter how small, always end up in me completely redoing what I’ve written, and that doesn’t sound like a good time. From the moment I write these words, they will be forever imprinted onto this page no matter how many falsehoods they contain. Noting the many flaws ‘Everhood’ holds would take a significant amount of time to write, and I will absolutely take all of the time I need. I fully expect all of the eyeballs which take the time to read my complaints will take offense, as the reaction to this game has been almost unanimous praise, but that is a problem for me to disregard and for you to seek the necessary professional attention based on how you decide to engage with my words.
‘Everhood’ can’t really be brought up without noting the music and mechanics related to said music. The perception of ‘Everhood’ as a rhythm game by many reviewers led to me misinterpreting the type of game ‘Everhood’ actually is. While this isn’t a fault of ‘Everhood’ itself, it does bring an intriguing argument to why video game reviewers deserve to be purged from this plane. What was described to me through my various readings was a rhythm-action experience with ‘Undertale’-like combat. So I expected a game where you perform actions by hitting the appropriate commands at the appropriate timing in an ever-changing gameplay loop. Instead, what the game offers is a more unique yet significantly less engaging type of gameplay where the boss performs the rhythmic actions and you just dodge the notes they make. Later on you can absorb some of the notes and fight back with them. There is never a change to this, though you do have to change up our strategy depending on which boss you’re on. The gameplay in ‘Everhood’ ranges from boring to infuriating, unfortunately never reaching the point of actually being fun. Ideally a game centered around music would make up for any of its flaws by containing music one would identify as “bops” or “jams”. I, personally, cannot identify with such a mindset. Aside from the absolute banger ‘Tinnitus Dance’ and the climactic ‘Euthanasia Rollercoaster’’, ‘Everhood is severely lacking in the area of memorable or noteworthy tunes. Given the sheer size of it’s catalogue, this is truly unfortunate. It should be noted that the game drew comparisons to ‘Undertale ‘’ due to it’s aesthetic and writing, as opposed to it’s gameplay. It feels impossible to separate ‘Everhood’ from ‘Undertale’ in this regard simply due to how blatantly the former apes the latter. The creators of ‘Everhood’ saw ‘Undertale’ and thought, “Yeah, we can do this meme shit.”
Now, it’s important to distinguish immediately that I fucking love ‘Undertale’. It is one of the greatest video games ever made, and the attention it brought to the indie scene was a bit unfathomable. The reason I feel ‘Undertale’ struck a chord with so many is that it was quite innocent in it’s sensibilities. I don’t get the sense that ‘Undertale’ is actively trying to establish anything more nuanced than, “you should be nice”, yet the methods it takes to reach such a theme are creative, hilarious, emotional, and, for better or worse, full of memes. It’s intriguing to look into the creative process that went into ‘Undertale’. Toby Fox was basically just a random dude with a creative idea and the skills to put those ideas together. ‘Undertale’ was not meant to be the event it ended up becoming. It was meant as a fun experiment from a guy that liked ‘EarthBound’ a lot. The depth of ‘Undertale’s’ story and characters wasn’t really understood until massive swathes of people hopped on the ride and built their own interpretations and theories surrounding the events of the game. Yet, when you take the game at face value, it’s a small, silly, and somewhat overly sentimental piece of art. But the small flourishes stuck with people. People who viewed the game’s story as something to engage wholly with were rewarded with something truly magnificent. The game is masterful in every way a game can be. But this wasn’t something Toby Fox crafted himself. The depth of the Mariana Trench cannot be manufactured by humans, and neither can the depth of any single piece of art. Depth in a story is only made by how the audience of said story chooses to view it.
If you want an example of someone attempting to manufacture depth, re-read my first paragraph. Most of that is absolute bologna. The initial paragraph was written to fool you into believing I am extraordinary. If you personally read the opening paragraph and made the assumption I was extraordinary, you just got OWNED. I immediately deleted my analysis of ‘The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD’ when I noticed it gathering dust in my Medium drafts while looking into the stats of some of the actually interesting articles I’ve written. It is, in fact, true that I have sufficient anxiety regarding my work and how I interpret said work, and I most certainly continue to refuse the editing process to keep that anxiety buried, but that anxiety comes exclusively from a place of privilege. I can write large chunks of somewhat legible text for days on end without becoming exhausted. Boredom, instead, is my greatest enemy. Writing about ‘The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD’ was fucking boring. Why would I dedicate so much time writing about the most ineffective way of playing one of the most mediocre gaming experiences ever conceived? That was a terrible idea.
Now, which paragraph is the truth, exactly? Am I truly regretful for the ways in which I have gone about practicing my hobbies? Or am I just rolling with whatever happens, acknowledging poor decisions and appropriately moving on? Neither are actually important, as I am continuing to manufacture depth with these questions. Much like myself, ‘Everhood’ also wants to possess depth. It goes to the length of completely aping an aesthetic to give itself perceived depth. Yet the story is an absolute trash-fire if you stop to think about it for more than a few minutes. I, unfortunately, can’t spoil anything significant due to the legal action CD Project Red took against me from the year prior, but I feel I should note that the actions the player takes, the way the game decides to speak to you about your actions, and the end result of actions you’ve taken are all full of holes and contradictions that left me actively annoyed as the credits rolled. This game has cool psychedelic scenes though. Like, wow, some of the best I’ve ever seen. 2021 sure was a year where getting extremely high and watching longplays of ‘Everhood’ would’ve been cool for a variety of reasons. Welcome to the list you pieces of shit.
‘Everhood’ Score: 2/6
24. Monster Hunter Rise
Perhaps there is something to be said of myself that I would deign to allow this list to be populated by a game of which I have among the most minimal experiences possible. I initially did not have ‘Monster Hunter Rise’ included when drafting out the positioning of each game I played from the year 2021, as my total playtime almost certainly did not exceed five hours. Given the grand scope of ‘Monster Hunter Rise’ and my understanding of it as a game with hundreds of hours of content, it would have felt cheap to include it, especially given that I figured out fairly quickly that I did not like playing it. However, I also included ‘Pac-Man 99’, a theoretically endless experience of which I played only a couple of hours at the maximum. Perhaps it is time for me to admit that I do not have the amount of integrity I would like to pretend I do. I would love to pretend ‘Monster Hunter Rise’ is just a bad game for bad gamers, but the harsh reality is that I am merely a failure of a gamer who should not be allowed to come within twenty meters of a Nintendo Gamecube, the Earth’s finest gaming console.
This is not my first revelation of my ineptitude in playing video games and summarily discussing these experiences with faux-artistic sensibilities. When I included ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2' on my 2020 list, it served a similar purpose of admonishing the cruelty I could be showing to a potential audience. Perhaps even a warning to those unfortunate enough to stumble upon my words, in an effort to present a finely tuned writeup which more reflects the danger of becoming too absorbed in the long-winded dialogue of an author with profound delusions of critical substantiality. I can utilize video games such as ‘Monster Hunter Rise’ and ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2' to feed this message through early on, before I become absorbed into discussing gaming experiences for which I actually do have more than a minimal amount of thoughts on. I become something else when I go into my ‘Gamer Mode’, something far more pathetic than my current, healthy state of being. I urge you to consider these words before you make the decision to continue reading my words. I am henceforth forbidding you from leaving these writeups unfinished if you make the decision to read past this paragraph. If you do stop, I will be sad, and you do not want me to be even sadder than I already will be once the rot of ‘Gamer Mode’ reaches my brain, do you?
‘Monster Hunter Rise’ is a bad game for bad gamers. Yes, I am aware of how harsh and shallow such a comment is, but I am also aware of Capcom’s decision to frontload the game with text boxes as a means of tutorial, rather than making the process of learning the seemingly endless systems of the game through a more organic method. I do not play video games to read descriptions of video game mechanics. That is what nerds do. I imagine if you play visual novels you will enjoy the first two hours of ‘Monster Hunter Rise’ because you have to read swathes of text while the plot fails to progress at all. That’s right, visual novels are bad too. I read ‘Umineko no Naku Koro ni’ for ten hours before something happened, and it is supposedly the greatest video game ever made according to probably at least one person. If you play visual novels, you are a bad gamer, and if you played the first hour of ‘Monster Hunter Rise’ and thought it was a good way to open a game up, you are an even worse gamer. Is this what you want from me? Is this fun for you to read? If you made the decision to continue to this paragraph, I am sorry, but it is too late. You are forever cursed with the unfortunate decision to keep reading, just as I am forever cursed due to my decision to purchase ‘Monster Hunter Rise’. Yes, I am aware this entire write-up is a troll, and yes, I am aware it makes no sense to chronologically come after my ‘Everhood’ writeup. But ‘Everhood’ is actually a bad game so it was an important distinction. ‘Monster Hunter Rise’ is probably pretty fun if I try to play it in spurts of more than 20 minutes.
Monster Hunter Rise Score: 2/6
23. Tales of Arise
The ‘Tales’ franchise is a curious one. It’s one of the longest-running gaming franchises, dating back to 1995 in Japan and 1998 in North America. Since then, it has seen nearly twenty mainline releases, most of which have been made available to Western audiences despite the series’ tendency to get relatively low review scores and sales. But the series does have a huge cult following, and it’s both loved and hated in numerous gaming circles. Specifically, titles like ‘Tales of Symphonia’, ‘Tales of the Abyss’, and ‘Tales of Vesperia’ have notable bunches of fans, with myself belonging to all of those. I like the ‘Tales’ franchise, and have played every title released in the United States. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I am a fan of the ‘Tales’ franchise.
But the series has been in a pretty weird state for a while now. I think it initially started with ‘Tales of Graces f’, a game which was very bad. For the first legitimate occasion, barring the severely dated ‘Tales of Destiny’ and the bad port of ‘Tales of Phantasia’, I found a ‘Tales’ game to be terrible. There was an initial shock to it, but it subsided when I played ‘Tales of Xillia’, which was very good. Then I played ‘Tales of Xillia 2’, which was not very good. Then I played ‘Tales of Zestiria’, which was not very good. Then I played ‘Tales of Berseria’, which was very good. Then I played ‘Tales of Hearts R’ which was okay. As you can see, despite my honest intent to play every title in this godforsaken franchise, including ‘Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology’ of all things, has led to massive spikes and plateaus in relation to quality.
I think I can identify my own personal reasons for why I feel the series dropped so hard. See, ‘Tales of Symphonia’ was a revolutionary title for me. At the time, my experience with RPGs was pretty minimal. They were more focused on turn-based systems or dungeon-crawling. It was a rare sight to behold a video game which had such a heavy focus on active combat with the flourishes of a detailed story and cast of characters. Similarly, each character provided their own unique play-style with their own technical skills and combo potential. I got pretty deep into the core mechanics of ‘Tales of Symphonia’, and while it’s admittedly shallow, the hundreds of hours I dumped into the game as a teenager were far more unique to me than most other games I had played at that point. When I was 14, I had dreams of becoming a game designer (which were immediately snuffed out two years later, the moment I tried to learn coding language), and I was creating ideas for games I would one day create. One particular project was literally just a copy of ‘Tales of Symphonia’ in both plot and gameplay, and I worked really hard on writing these ideas out. I was an idiot.
I would like to someday do a deeper dive into why this franchise initially resonated so strongly with me, but I feel games have evolved past the level of what ‘Tales’ offered to me. I can’t think of many games in the mid-2000s which had active combat systems with a heavy focus on statistical character growth and a large-scale storyline all wrapped into one package. ‘Tales’ feels like a pioneer in that regard, though it likely wasn’t the first franchise to do it, or the best at the time. I will not Google this to find out. The important thing to note is that those types of games started to become more common in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Games which scratched itches once found in the older ‘Tales’ games with far more polish and intrigue. The ‘Tales’ series has never been one to innovate itself, which usually isn’t a problem, but the games quickly went from being unique and exciting experiences to relatively shallow ones, surpassed by what both AAA and indie markets were able to put out. Even the games I quite enjoyed, ‘Tales of Xillia’ and ‘Tales of Berseria’, were far more due to story and characters as opposed to their combat. Hell, I barely remember the mechanics of most of the games beyond ‘Tales of Vesperia’ because they simply aren’t intriguing.
The franchise became the butt of every joke leveled toward Japanese RPG storytelling and game design. The series was a prime example of one which refused to change itself for the better, slowly becoming more absorbed with an effort to innovate while lacking the creativity to do so. It all culminated into ‘Tales of Zestiria’, a game so maligned by the franchise’s fans that it is still talked about to this day as a massive failure. It’s hard to get across just how bad ‘Tales of Zestiria’ was. A lot of why it is so bad is due to it’s incredible start. The initial introduction of it’s characters and world introduce a wealth of intrigue. We are also introduced to the Fusionic Chain Linear Motion Battle System, which to this point was the best the series had seen. Complaints leveled toward the combat in ‘Tales of Zestiria’ have a tendency to focus on a poor camera and bad AI, but I never experienced these as issues myself, so perhaps I am just a better gamer than you. The systems in ‘Tales of Zestiria’ were kind of awkward and poorly explained, particularly how it handles equipment skills and fusion, but it is a much appreciated effort to try and add depth to it’s combat.
But around the midpoint of the game, something changes. The story loses its focus almost entirely. The world design becomes overwhelmingly large and barren. The method of progression becomes linked to chains of fetch quests. The pacing halts completely to force you into endless strings of battle, which, while still the best the series had seen at this point, was not able to sustain engagement for the game’s brutally long campaign. This astronomical drop in quality was frustrating, further so when it was discovered there was an alleged sex scandal which may have led to the game’s producer shifting the direction of the game to favor the Japanaese voice actress of the character, Rose. I will not talk any more at length concerning this, since numerous individuals have done deep dives of this rumor, but needless to say, ‘Tales of Zestiria’ will always be remembered as a pathetic screed of a video game.
‘Tales of Zestiria’ was followed up by ‘Tales of Berseria’, which had some of the most creative storytelling I’ve ever seen in a video game, especially in this genre. The way ‘Tales of Berseria’ managed to take the excellent worldbuilding ‘Tales of Zestiria’ failed to capitalize on, then completely deconstruct every tangible facet into something incredibly purposeful, was enthralling. This isn’t even mentioning the wonderful voicework (A fucking rarity in modern ‘Tales’), the quality of scene direction despite a limited budget, and the tight pacing of each and every event you play a part in. There are obvious issues with the story like it’s villain being the stupidest thing ever written, but those flaws are all wrapped around a brilliant character study when viewed in a bubble. I think ‘Tales of Berseria’ reinstalled a lot of good faith within the fanbase, yet there was still a need for the series to advance itself.
Enter ‘Tales of Arise’, which, as you can probably tell using context clues, I did not like. ‘Tales of Arise’ functions a bit like a soft reboot for the franchise, updating it’s combat to have a more modern feel. The result is one which has potential to be the best the series has seen, but fails to actually engage it beyond a fairly limited scope. It is certainly not strong enough to sustain a 40-hour campaign, and it becomes the game’s worst aspect in the final act, where enemies sponge up damage to instill faux challenge. I literally moved the difficulty down to story mode due to how much the combat was destroying the game’s pacing. This is not the sign of a good battle system.
And while we’re on the subject of pacing and the final act of ‘Tales of Arise’, the story takes a nosedive as well. I never found it to be initially engaging, but it was, at the very least, nice to watch unfold. The final act, which is about seven hours long, contains about 60% of the story, introducing brand new characters and concepts up until the final dungeon. It stops being nice and instead becomes a relentless slog of context which merely becomes stupider the more they decide to tack on. The story could have worked if these concepts were introduced earlier and had some time to breathe, but as it stands, the script is laughable in it’s presentation. The fact that this is the most boring set of main characters the series has seen thus far just amplifies that. At least ‘Tales of Graces’ had bad characters that were fun to make fun of. This is essentially just a group of sandwich bread.
So I know I didn’t actually talk much about ‘Tales of Arise’ relative to the franchise as a whole, but I think it’s important to note how much potential the franchise possesses. It’s evident that a lot of work goes into them on all fronts, and ‘Tales of Arise’ actually was remarkable to most people from what I can tell. This is the highest-selling and most critically acclaimed title the franchise has seen, at least in the United States. Yet I’m left wondering why that is. Surely this isn’t the peak ‘Tales’ experience for a majority of the people. And if so, how likely are they to expand on the legitimate flaws present? ‘Tales’ will always be a series mired by inept writing or game design or both. That’s just in its nature. Yet here I am, the fool who has played every North American release in the franchise and is engrossed in multiple translation projects for some of the games we didn’t see come over here. I will always be here to complain about ‘Tales’ games, and this series will continue to kick me in the ass while I gleefully pour my free time into them for the sole sake of whining on the Internet.
Tales of Arise Score: 2/6
22. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
When I was in middle school, my language arts teacher dedicated a chunky portion of time within the curriculum on creating titles for our future works. She termed this, “Jazzy Titles” and that phrase haunts me to this day. What does the word “jazzy” even mean? Is it in reference to the musical properties of jazz? Is it related to the rhythmic styles of swing? How can you classify something as “jazzy” if one isn’t performing music or motion?
As a very large and very old man at this point, I think I have finally discovered the true meaning of that adjective through experiencing ‘Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion’. Once I saw this title, the phrase “Jazzy Title” submerged from my subconscious and began to dominate my casual stream of thought. The moment I read ‘Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion’ in the Messenger chat my brother sent to me, offering me a free Steam code to play it with, I was enamored with it. Jazz comes in many forms, but it is at its most intriguing when you seek out avant-garde or free improvisation. It turns the already complex musical landscapes of jazz into something far more unorthodox and layered, Something far more bizarre, yet still holding onto the regality one would associate with smoother jazz. It can even, at times, be somewhat sinister. If you have ever listened to Mingus’ ‘The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady’, you will likely walk away thinking “Wow, that was total shit.’’ or “Wow, that was the greatest thing I’ve ever listened to.” Jazz has significant power to compel or destroy one’s psyche.
It was that curiosity which drove me to try out ‘Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion’. Beyond a video game, it is a relentlessly compelling string of words which necessitate further understanding to become fully immersed in whatever expression of character ‘Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion’ is intending to elicit. It is a game which I feel immediately drawn into playing solely on the basis of the quality of its description.
The actual video game is extremely boring. It plays like the most mindless of top-down adventure games with extremely linear dungeons and an absolutely tiny overworld. It’s core appeal appears to be it’s writing, which reeks of current meme humor. I imagine the game’s writing will be outdated within the next two years. I laughed exactly one time. There is some fun in constantly tearing up documents from both governmental and private industries seeking to capitalize upon you, but it only reminds me of the futility of anarchism in the current hellscape we call ‘The United States of America’. I can re-use my own jokes from last year because ‘Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion’ attempted to make me laugh by utilizing a years-old copypasta with no legitimate context. I realized after ninety minutes of play, I was already approaching the ending, and that continued play would be a complete waste of everyone’s time. I also just now Googled the term “Jazzy” and found it has an official definition of, “bright, colorful, and showy.” I have wasted my entire life pondering these words, when I could have just used a dictionary.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion Score: 2/6
21. Persona 5 Strikers
Despite my prior statements in my ‘Everhood’ write-up concerning my lack of willingness to edit my work due to the extreme lengths I would go to in order to overcorrect myself, this is my second attempt at a write-up for ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ My first write-up spent a large amount of time building up to a statement I felt needed to be made about ‘Persona 5 Strikers’, concerning the fact that is a sequel which did not need to be made, and that its existence is a frustratingly poor example of the storytelling of the ‘Persona’ games and of the addictively fun combat of the ‘Warriors’ games. I realized, after spending a page and a half getting to this point, I could just say it in a single sentence and not waste everyone’s time as I told them they were bad people for enjoying a bad video game. It’s okay. I have consistently been playing ‘Overwatch’ since 2016. I understand what it’s like to enjoy a bad video game.
It should be noted, however, that my statements of ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ being a bad video game aren’t entirely fair. For starters, every video game is bad because playing video games is an inherently poor character trait for one to have. Moving aside from that, I essentially went to the most absurd measures to ensure my time with ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ was a bad experience. I had just completed ‘Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity’, another grindy musou experience, when my brother asked if I would like to borrow his copy of ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ on the Nintendo Switch. I said, “Yes, brother. I will borrow this from you and play it,” verbatim. ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ runs like ASS on the Nintendo Switch. Not the good ass some of my fellow gamer boys would like it to be, but the bony ass of a skeleton or something. I don’t quite have a metaphor to utilize without inappropriately objectifying some aspect of a human being. Similarly, when I play video games on my Nintendo Switch, 95–100 percent of my gameplay is spent on handheld by choice. I don’t like playing video games on a television or monitor because I am odd, so I will use handheld options as much as possible. ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ on the Nintendo Switch runs like ASS while undocked.
All this being said, can I truly blame ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ for being a bad game? ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ was a bad game in part due to me being a bad gamer. Would it have still been bad if I played it in October of 2021 on my PlayStation 5? Possibly, though the chances would be lower. What is a factual assessment to make, however, is that ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ would have been better as a turn-based role-playing game. Even barring the removal of distinct ‘Persona’ elements such as social links and social stats, ‘Persona 5 Strikers’’ effort to adapt the brilliant Press Turn combat system, present in most modern ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ works, into a musou action system, was a poor decision for sure. I understand it may be controversial to say this, but musou games can be very tedious. I played ‘Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity’ for forty hours, then immediately played ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ for another forty hours. I do not want to play another musou game ever again. However, at the time of this writing, I am currently playing ‘Shin Megami Tensei V’, and it is fantastic.
Story-wise, ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ is serviceable, but lame. It is no better than a high-effort fanfiction from a college freshman with above-average intelligence and at least moderate depressive symptoms. I don’t actually remember most of what occurred in ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ as it did not do anything actually compelling with the plot and themes initially laid forward in ‘Persona 5’. ‘Persona 5 Strikers’ is a sequel to ‘Persona 5’ which has worse gameplay, worse story, less-engaging mechanics, and was bad enough to be available on the Nintendo Switch. Utterly despicable.
Persona 5 Strikers Score: 2/6
20. Pac-Man 99
If I were a child in 1980, I feel confident that I would not have grown up to become a morbidly obese man-child who spends most of his time consumed in the virtual hellscape of many video games, most of which are ultimately unfulfilling experiences. To be fair, I also did not become such a thing having been born when I was, as my obesity is not of the morbid variety. But if the best video game available to my child brain was ‘Pac-Man’ and not ‘Super Mario Bros. 3’, I would have likely done something productive, like marketing. Instead, I am a gamer, and my life is actually fun. To suggest ‘Pac-Man’ is the business major equivalent of degree-seeking college undergraduates is a bit harsh, as ‘Pac-Man’ is morally neutral rather than an agent of chaos and famine, but I stand by this comparison because I was not academically skilled enough to finish my business degree before switching to the arts. Yes, I am aware this tangent has no conceivable structure, but I want to address my primary concern with my life in relation to my primary concern with ‘Pac-Man’ in that they are only disappointing in relation to others, and that disappointment is frugal at best.
‘Pac-Man’ is a game about a gluttonous ball-man who eats smaller, insentient balls while being chased by ghosts. Sometimes you can eat a larger insentient ball and you will then become a gluttonous and violent ball-man capable of devouring the very ghosts which haunt you. This simple set of mechanics is the driving force behind ‘Pac-Man’ and it is extremely fun to play for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes have passed, you will likely not enjoy playing ‘Pac-Man’ for at least a few hours, and then go back to finding it incredibly fun for 15 more minutes on your next play session. ‘Pac-Man’ is potentially the most “arcade game” arcade game ever designed.
Fast-forward to the year 2021 and the gameplay loop of ‘Pac-Man’ is no longer sustainable despite the strength of branding present. It has become crucial for ‘Pac-Man’ to twist itself into fresh experiences. The developers are fortunately intelligent enough to understand this need, while also finding ways to maintain that iconic gameplay structure present in the original ‘Pac-Man’. Enter ‘Pac-Man 99’, which is ‘Pac-Man’ except it is a battle royale. The end results are a bit strange, but ultimately engaging enough to feed the same 15-minute engagement loop the original ‘Pac-Man’ so perfectly captured over forty years prior. ‘Pac-Man 99’ is a messy, confusing battle royale that doesn’t entirely make sense, similar to ‘Tetris 99’, the game which almost certainly inspired this one. Generally speaking, you don’t have to understand the total depth of ‘Pac-Man’ to be good at ‘Pac-Man 99’, you just probably won’t win much. To this day, I have not won a single game of ‘Pac-Man 99’, yet I am never bothered by this. I have numerous wins in ‘Tetris 99’ which is the only retro video game I have any semblance of skill with, so I am not ashamed about being bad at ‘Pac-Man’. Fuck you.
Pac-Man 99 Score: 3/6
19. Scarlet Nexus
It has been a significant amount of time since I kicked my anime addiction. Looking at MyAnimeList.net, it appears I stopped rigorously watching anime at some point in the summer of 2018, quitting part-way through shows such as ‘Attack on Titan Season 3’, ‘Grand Blue’, and ‘Chio’s School Road’. My official last update was on January 26, 2020, with my viewing of episode 21 of ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’. I am not sure why I stopped watching ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’, as it was pretty good. I am certain, however, that anime has a pretty strong correlation with my depression. Something about the common tropes of writing combined with more mature themes, while also presenting as literal cartoons for babies, gives me an obscure form of escapism which no other hobby of mine has ever managed. When I was a high schooler, I yearned for life to be like it was in Japanese anime. When I was an adult, I yearned for the time in my life where my greatest issue was having a life unlike a Japanese anime. Anime became a coping mechanism for me, and one which was profoundly unhealthy, as I would dissociate from my reality the more consumed I became with the medium. There was a point where I literally began writing about anime, and when I begin to write about something, it has become a gross obsession.
I do not like anime for this reason. I will actively insult anime whenever possible almost solely to remind myself it no longer consumes me. Sometimes I think I play too many video games, and I think that is certainly true, but when I notice how I engage with my gaming hobby versus how I engaged with my anime addiction, I realize just how much better I am doing now. We’re talking some wild levels of cringe while on anime kicks. Completely delusional thinking and feeling towards others to an extent where I think I may have implanted false memories into my head. I would think myself to be schizophrenic if I weren’t able to correlate these mental issues to the one thing I was doing then that I am not doing now with a relatively stable and healthy brain.
I bring all this up to note that I have yet to fully kick this obsession with Japanese cartoons, evident by the fact that I saw ‘Scarlet Nexus’ and thought it would be fun. And it was! But the anime aesthetic has basically nothing to do with the amount of enjoyment I received from it. It actually hurts it quite a bit. ‘Scarlet Nexus’ is a game that prides itself far more on it’s writing than it actually should. The plot and setting are trite nonsense, with abnormal amounts of text and voiced dialogue put forth all for the purpose of saying nothing and doing as little as possible to differentiate itself from a Shonen manga which would be cancelled nineteen chapters into it’s run and never receive an anime adaptation. It’s possible to argue that the bar is just so low for Shonen-style anime games to tell compelling stories, but even if you choose to ignore the popular ‘Persona’ games, efforts from the likes of ‘Tales of Berseria’ and ‘NieR: Automata’ are choosing to push video game storytelling in directions it hasn’t yet gone while maintaining those tropier elements found in a standard Shonen anime. ‘Scarlet Nexus’ chooses to bore you with an absolutely absurd amount of plot for a world which changes so little and characters sorely lacking in even the slightest bit of dynamism.
Fortunately, ‘Scarlet Nexus’ also contains a solid combat experience capable of lasting through it’s campaign, waiting until the very end to start getting stale. You have various characters in your party, each with a specific power, and the fun part is finding out ways to utilize these powers in unison to create a combat system which, while fairly shallow overall, is a blast to toy around with. They could have made this restrictive by limiting your total powers available to who you have in your party, but they don’t. It gets especially neat in the last chunk of the game where you are given access to the powers of every playable character, allowing the experimentation to grow in ways the characters themselves never could. I will probably never be able to watch anime again, but if ‘Scarlet Nexus’ is any indication of the quality of writing present within the industry right now (I’m aware it’s not), then I appear to be making good decisions.
Scarlet Nexus Score: 3/6
18. NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139…
In 2019, I wrote an essay concerning the video game ‘NieR: Automata’ and addressed a preoccupation I had been afflicted with, alt-right Internet communities, and how I ended up viewing that game and those communities in different lights when comparing the emotional reactions I achieve through both. When I finished writing it, I had the first feeling of actual pride and accomplishment ever achieved through my writing. I felt like I wrote something that mattered to me, and to the world in general. I cannot re-read it because of various syntax issues, some small grammatical errors that nobody else will notice, and some unnecessary ramblings of a trip to Jamaica which I found, at the time, to be something of a reawakening for myself. I do wish I could ignore the common flaws of my writing, which will ultimately be forever present, and likely are already presented through these write-ups, but for a brief moment in history, I felt quite satisfied with something I made. I felt the same way when finishing the final sentence and presenting my perfect score to ‘Doom Eternal’ in last year’s list, and I hope to feel the same way when I write the last sentence for the currently unnamed video game which reaches the highest position of this year’s list. That game is not going to be ‘NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139…’.
I brought up the article I published on ‘NieR: Automata’ for a very specific reason, that being the nuance of the story being told within that game. I played ‘NieR’ back around it’s initial release in 2010 for the PlayStation 3. ‘NieR’ felt like an extraordinary experience primarily due to the strange world atmosphere, ethereal yet climactic score, and it’s absurdly dark storytelling. The gameplay was about as enjoyable as going into work on a Monday, finding out the office was closed, then getting stuck in traffic for the entirety of a standard 8-hour work day, but the prior strengths were always there to reel me back into it. I had never experienced anything like ‘NieR’ at that point, and I don’t think I ever truly have experienced anything like it since. Even ‘NieR: Automata’, on some levels, fails to match many qualities present in ‘NieR’. Unfortunately, ‘NieR’s’ greatest flaw is it’s experience. The narrative is ambitious and hypnotic in it’s theme and identity, yet that ambition results in a messy method of storytelling. You have to play and beat the game once, then replay the second half of the game three more times while meandering through a number of dull side missions and collecting sometimes meaningless gear for the sole purpose of gaining a true understanding of the narrative, and to reach any sort of finality to said narrative. It is an exercise in tedium to finish ‘NieR’, and by the time you reach it’s final message, the various storytelling methods designed to elicit feelings of despair, guilt, melancholy, grief, and any other shitty emotions, have become dry given that you will have seen and participated in the game’s events four times to reach a conclusion.
‘NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139…’ does nothing to remedy this issue, and I did not finish my third playthrough before shelving it this time. I am an old man at this point and my ADHD has somehow become even more severe in the years following high school and university and graduate school. I do not have the time or energy to put into events designed to make me depressed for the seventh and eighth times in my life. I already did that when I used Tinder. On top of this, the gameplay still feels about as enjoyable as going into work on a Monday, finding out the office was closed, then getting stuck in traffic for the entirety of a standard 8-hour work day. If the original ‘NieR’ had combat which felt like it was made in 2001, ‘NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139…’ has combat that feels like it was made in 2005. This is all despite the way ‘NieR: Automata’ progressed the franchise in both story structure and combat design four years ago.
It should also be noted that I felt the amount of dread present in ‘NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139…’ is a bit too overbearing for me to deal with at this point in my life. I have gone through the strokes of depression, as discussed briefly in my ‘Scarlet Nexus’ write-up, and do not really intend to go back. Currently, I have a full-time job where I listen to people discuss their traumas in some of the most emotionally vulnerable ways, so experiencing stories with such a high amount of discomfort as a means to have fun is basically the dumbest thing I could possibly do. I think one of the reasons ‘NieR: Automata’ struck a chord with me was due to that hint of hope and comfort the ending gave. Ending E of ‘NieR: Automata’ is the single most impactful piece of game design in the medium to me, and perhaps it’s unfair to wish it’s prequel had a similar way to engage the player. ‘NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139…’ will always be a brilliant game held back by some pretty wild flaws, and this really shouldn’t have been an issue, given there were eleven years to address them.
NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139… Score: 3/6
17. Chicory: A Colorful Tale
When I played ‘Wandersong’, it was essentially the best possible time to experience something with such a high concentration of optimism. I awarded it my prestigious ‘Game of the Year for 2018’ award, and while I certainly doubt this game holds up to the high standard I put it at three years ago, and while it certainly has its own supreme issues in game design, that initial experience was so transformative. I remember finishing the game and feeling as if I was in a haze, still feeling miserable about my life situation at that time, yet for the first time I felt able to reconcile that depression and anxiety. To process it and tell myself things were going to be okay. I still struggle with severe anxiety, but I’ve been able to manage it quite sufficiently, and I think playing ‘Wandersong’ at the right time in my life was a significant help for me.
The director of ‘Wandersong’ would go on to work on his next project, ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’, which was released in 2021 and is now being featured on my list of video games from that very year. Normally, I would see a game like ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’ and say, “Wow, that looks kind of neat, but I do not want to put forth any money to play it, and I am truly sorry to the developers working on this project.” I say this, verbatim, nearly every time I see an indie game trailer, regardless of whether or not I am alone. I need to be able to verbalize my full intent in hopes that this will one day lead to sweeping changes where all video games are always legally available for free, and the creators of said video games are compensated appropriately, while large publishers slowly die off and rot away.
The difference between ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’ and other indie projects is that it’s director also made ‘Wandersong’. The difference between ‘Wandersong’ and other indie projects is that I found out ‘Wandersong’ had a dedicated dance button, and I thought this was the best thing ever. ‘Fortnite’ may have popularized this shit, but ‘Wandersong’ made dancing available when moving, standing still, mid-cutscene, and mid-dialogue. This was truly gaming’s greatest innovation. ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’ does not have a dedicated dance button, so, in retrospect, I’m not sure what I saw in it.
What ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’ does have is a sentimental story, a single unique mechanic which is stretched to pretty extreme capabilities, and charming dialogue, all of which were present in ‘Wandersong’. I would never make the suggestion that ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’ is attempting to ape ‘Wandersong’ with it’s design, as they are quite different from one another, but it is important to note how ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’ failed to capture me in the same way. ‘Chicory: A Colorful Tale’ is a wonderful game, both in it’s gameplay loop and narrative design, but I did not need it in the same way I needed ‘Wandersong’ a few years prior.
Chicory: A Colorful Tale Score: 4/6
16. Boomerang X
Movement-based shooting is a subgenre of first-person shooters I have been constantly telling myself I would eventually go down the rabbit hole of while proceeding to only slightly dip my toes into its abyss. Last year’s ‘Doom Eternal’ and 2016’s ‘Doom’ gave me a strong indication that I really enjoy shooting things while moving. In fact, the less you move while shooting things, the less fun actually shooting things is. As a certified American citizen living within the center of the rust belt, aka literally Indiana, I am required to love destroying things with guns, just as my state destroyed my livelihood. However, I have never fired a true, physical gun before, not because I have any issue with responsible use of a gun, but because guns are very loud and annoying in real life. Virtual guns are loud but sound quite cool. Perhaps my inability to destroy animals or bottles or human beings or whatever else the typical angry white man tends to use a gun for means I do not belong where I currently am. Perhaps I should move to a place like Connecticut to do my virtual gunslinging. Until that point, I will continue to partake in playing extremely violent video games where I destroy various beings, sometimes for no true purpose. As I do this, I will continue to pretend that living in Indiana is not a complete waste of my time.
‘Boomerang X’ is a first-person shooter, mechanically speaking, though not aesthetically. You use a bladed boomerang to destroy things in ‘Boomerang X’. The boomerang is probably the lamest ranged weapon of all time, yet adding blades to it makes it very cool. You throw your boomerang at black sludge enemies and that is the entire video game. But the way you throw and catch your bladed boomerang is what creates the depth of ‘Boomerang X’. If you want to stand still and simply throw your bladed boomerang to destroy a sludge monster, then catch it so that you can throw it again, you are absolutely allowed to do this. However, you will be fucking lame if you do. One of the core mechanics of ‘Boomerang X’ is the ability to launch yourself toward wherever you threw your bladed boomerang. Using this ability allows you to juggle your body in the air as if you were a majestic falcon or eagle or bat or airplane. The more things you murder with your bladed boomerang, the stronger you become, as new abilities for murdering are presented to you based on how efficient you are at killing.
‘Boomerang X’ is not the most polished game. It takes about two hours to beat, and less if you aren’t bad at it. In that two hours you are presented a handful of arenas where the goal is to murder some amount of specific sludge monsters. Most of these arenas are pretty simple ways for you to practice your flight, until the final two levels, which hate you. I spent about half of my playthrough in the final two sections, one of which is the final boss, which adds the unseen-to-this-point challenge, of taking damage from the walls of a relatively tiny arena. Because of how constricted the campaign of ‘Boomerang X’ feels, and how little is done outside of direct combat, it feels more like a tech demo for a much larger project. I am imagining an adventure with the scope of a ‘Doom’ reboot or a ‘Half-Life’ using the mechanical concepts put forth in ‘Boomerang X’ and this brain is picturing something glorious. As a demo, ‘Boomerang X is a phenomenal showcase. As a video game I paid money for, ‘Boomerang X’ is solid but messy.
Boomerang X Score: 4/6
15. Psychonauts 2
Back in 2005, I recall seeing commercials for the original ‘Psychonauts’ during the ad breaks on G4TV when I was watching literally ‘X-Play’ unironically. I wrote that sentence and then prepared to do some digging on what ‘X-Play’ said about ‘Psychonauts’ and discovered that they literally brought ‘X-Play back a month prior to my writing of this sentence. I will begin watching new videos from ‘X-Play’ as of now on December 28th, 2021, and will post my initial thoughts on it’s return in a paragraph following this one. But before that, I should note I was quite enamored with the concept of a psychic summer camp where most of the levels centered around the madness present within the minds of various persons. I was the only person who thought this was cool, however, because nobody bought it and the franchise went on a 12-year hiatus.
So I’m putting this in italics just so you know it is completely removed from the overall writeup. I was going to try and splice it in with my ‘Psychonauts 2’ write-up in a more organic fashion, but I couldn’t really find a method of doing so that didn’t blatantly ruin the structure and pacing of the write-up. Just to break character a bit, you are more than welcome to skip this part, since it is really just something I had moderate interest in and wanted to explain here, as I had already written that phrase and didn’t want to go back on that promise, even though nobody would have read it beyond myself. This is more of an actual look into how I analyze media, I suppose, so take that for what you will. If you just want to see me talk about ‘Psychonauts 2’ without breaking away from the awkward tormented writer character I create for these analyses, then just skip the italicized paragraphs.
To note I did go and watch some ‘X-Play’ content, however, it’s actually been airing for about a year now, it just seems G4TV’s “””official””” return was in November. The new ‘X-Play’ is neat as a concept but it does not appear to be as concise in it’s writing nor does it retain the skit structure present in earlier episodes. The only thing the new ‘X-Play’ really appears to have in distinct similarity is Adam Sessler who feels more genuine in this iteration, though he has essentially lost the identity of his character as seen in the original series. It’s not really surprising given the dated writing style of the original ‘X-Play’ run, especially in the current landscape of the Internet where video game criticism has evolved past the standard method seen in commercial criticism. Adam Sessler is still a pretty fun guy though, and he has some popular, though, in my opinion, mid-tier, Youtubers assisting him with their own styles of criticism. It should be noted that this is solely my thoughts on a few of the videos posted to the YouTube channel, and it’s possible whatever G4TV has running on it’s programming is more similar to the old ‘X-Play’. It’s worth looking into for nostalgia purposes, but if you have no idea what the words “G4TV”, “X-Play”, or “Adam Sessler” mean, then you will find far better gaming content on the YouTube platform, likely without the need to try.
Much like any video game sequel which sees itself coming to the forefront after a significant amount of time following its predecessor, ‘Psychonauts 2’ was put into a relatively difficult situation. The marketing of ‘Psychonauts 2’, from it’s initial inception as a crowdfunding project in 2015, was unable to be divorced from the looming shadow of ‘Psychonauts’. This wasn’t just a sequel set in the same universe, this was a story which could not exist without the efforts of ‘Psychonauts’, one which would directly follow the events which occurred in that game. ‘Psychonauts 2’ couldn’t simply be a good game, it had to live up to the exceptionally high expectations of a fanbase which had already placed the ‘Psychonauts’ brand on an exceptionally high pedestal. Much worse is that it needed to do all of this while being similar enough for comfort to a severely dated game from the year 2005. By all accounts, ‘Psychonauts 2’ should have sucked ass.
But at this point we know the story. ‘Psychonauts 2’ received near-universal acclaim from both critics and fans. It garnered a lot of positive discussion concerning it’s themes and creative design. It even got nominated for Game of the Year at ‘The Game Awards’ which is the worst awards show ever made, but apparently has enough clout to be noteworthy for some reason. I researched sales data for a solid two minutes and found no evidence of it underperforming despite concrete figures not being available in that lengthy research process. So I have no reason to believe ‘Psychonauts 2’ wasn’t also successful, given ‘Psychonauts’ has seen a bit of an uptick in sales following it’s introduction to digital distribution.
But you aren’t reading this to discover whether or not ‘Psychonauts 2’ was successful, or whether the majority of its player base found it to be a strong follow-up to the original. You are here to see what I, a singular man, has to say about ‘Psychonauts 2’, and whether or not you, as a human being or artificial intelligence, deserve to play it. It is with great regret that I state to you here and now that ‘Psychonauts 2’ is a solid game. I truly wish I could complain at great length as to how this game isn’t as good as ‘Psychonauts’, and believe me, I could analyze the ever-loving shit out of them and bring myself to such a result, but doing so would be doing the exact same thing I have been speaking out against doing throughout every single write-up.
Judging ‘Psychonauts 2’ based solely on how it relates to ‘Psychonauts’ would be a dangerous method of criticism, given how absurd it is to hold a brand new video game presented to my cynical adult brain in relation to a brand new video game I experienced as a disillusioned preteen. I absolutely refuse to dwell in my past experiences, positive or negative, as doing so would cause my mental health to shatter, and I would transform into something far more powerful than you could ever comprehend. ‘Psychonauts 2’ will relish in it’s past self through aesthetics and dialogue to a severe, sometimes exhausting extent. It also retains key parts of gaming from the mid-2000s era, such as long load screens, cringey dialogue, and NPCs that will not shut up if you don’t do the exact thing the game wants you to do at the exact moment.
But at the end of the day, ‘Psychonauts 2’ is it’s own flawed experience. It has solid movement and platforming, though many of it’s ideas receive little to no expansion past some of their most basic uses. Combat is a completely awkward mess that is never fun to experience at any point. I can’t tell whether or not the game is being written for literal children or if the jokes really are that bad. Yet all of these things remind me of ‘Psychonauts’, and I like ‘Psychonauts’. I am definitely contradicting my prior statement. Dwelling in the past is awesome, especially when dwelling on positive experiences. Wow, this is some rapid character development. It’s just like in ‘Psychonauts 2’ where you cure a man’s alcoholism by completing platforming challenges.
Psychonauts 2 Score: 4/6
14. Blue Fire
If I were a man who cared about the actual objective quality of a video game, I would work for IGN. Fortunately I do not work for IGN and can talk about ‘Blue Fire’ without mentioning the numerous visual glitches, wild design oversights, easy-to-manipulate bugs, and the general lack of creativity in any of the game’s ideas. ‘Blue Fire’ is a bad video game for all of these reasons, but is also a great video game for the exact same reasons (By the way, yes, I am aware IGN gave this game a good score, better than the one I’m giving it. That does not make it okay for you to tell me I am a bad person you actual jerk).
‘Blue Fire’ is basically just a ‘The Legend of Zelda’ title with platforming and without polish. A majority of ‘Blue Fire’ is spent roaming around it’s various areas and collecting things as you go through. It has some neat set pieces and the washed out aesthetic combined with it’s low-key score make it a pretty solid experience. What truly elevates ‘Blue Fire’ to another level is the extent of it’s platforming, and the ability for a player to completely crack the game apart when utilizing what may or may not be severe oversights in the structure of the game.
‘Blue Fire’ has some incredibly floaty platforming, with movement options that allow you to reach places which I am sure a player is not intended to be. Because of this, there are a variety of ways you can go about playing the game which may actually be more fun than the intended route. Most of the game’s many platforming challenges can be completely redone if you have a new upgrade or if you figure out how to work around it’s obstacles. There’s never a set time where you need to complete them, so you can just ignore them until your movement improves. I think that’s pretty cool.
I don’t really have anything else to say about ‘Blue Fire’. I think we sometimes have a tendency to forget just how difficult it is for indie developers to create video games, especially given the polished experiences of games like ‘Hades’ or the ‘Ori’ franchise. In reality, most games do feel a bit amateurish if you go out of your way to play them, but when those games end up being fun, they are truly worth experiencing.
Blue Fire Score: 4/6
13. Deathloop
If any game released this year were to receive the award for what critics will ultimately deem as the most important title ever made, then summarily proceed to forget existed the following year, it would be ‘Deathloop’. That’s no slight on ‘The Last of Us Part II’, ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’, or Red Dead Redemption 2’ because I have not played those games for more than one hour combined, but I don’t ever think about any of these games and have not since the year of their release, and my word is law. The only difference between ‘Deathloop’ and the rest of the previously mentioned video games is that I played ‘Deathloop’. Of course, having played ‘Deathloop’ to completion, I can answer the question I’m sure all of you were wondering. I can, for a fact, say yes, ‘Deathloop’ is better than 2013’s ‘The Last of Us’.
So what exactly is it about ‘Deathloop’ that made it so critically acclaimed anyway? There seemed to be a bit of dissonance between critics and the average gamer. The former group lapped this shit up harder than they lapped up this year’s actual best game, [REDACTED]. The reception among the audience was far more mixed, though still steeped in general positivity. ‘Deathloop’ is ultimately a game with flashy combat, excellent worldbuilding, and snappy dialogue featuring two of the best vocal performances of the year in renditions from Jason Kelley and Ozioma Akagha. There’s even this awkward sexual tension between them which is extremely weird once you make it to the last 25% of the game. Critics fucking love awkward sexual tension, especially when it becomes weird.
All of that aside, ‘Deathloop’ is, above all else, a game which lives and dies by it’s time loop mechanic, asking the players to put a puzzle together to figure out the best way to murder eight different people in a single day. If you fail to complete this, everything resets except for the memories Colt and Julianna have of that day, as well as any equipment you science into your inventory. The elements present feel more like a roguelike than anything, a genre typically reserved for indie titles. ‘Deathloop’ has significantly less depth and diversity than the only good roguelike, ‘Hades’, but it still manages to craft a bit of it’s own identity. The biggest problem in ‘Deathloop’ is the poor enemy diversity and the incredibly boring requirement of stealth before you get a solid loadout.
Nexus is a really cool ability that can be crafted to easily become one of the most overpowered abilities in gaming. I made it to where Nexus latches on to anyone within a small area, as well as an upgrade which gave me health any time I murdered someone under Nexus’ control. This turned me into an invincible chad with an immaculate thirst for blood which could not be quenched. All the clever touches to the game’s design and level structure were rendered pointless to me, never engaging the more clever methods of murdering, as it was far more fun to begin slaughtering waves of enemies. It gets especially absurd in the final mission where you infiltrate a party. I killed well over a hundred people on numerous occasions during these segments. It was neat.
The final story segment is pretty interesting, but leaves a lot more questions out on the table than answers. This is fine because you don’t need art to explain everything to you. Sometimes it’s fun to speculate, and ‘Deathloop’ is exactly the type of game people will make theory videos on YouTube about. At the end of the day, this is the greatest gift of all.
Deathloop Score: 4/6
12. Deltarune: Chapter 2
This game is not finished and is therefore not going to receive an actual write-up. I am just including it on my list because it is better than ‘Everhood’ and also I guess all these other games too.
Deltarune: Chapter 2 Score: 4/6
11. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond
Ever since I was a small, dumb child, I have been enamored with the ‘Pokémon’ franchise. Not just the main line of video games, but also the Japanese animated television series based on the ‘Pokémon’ video game franchise. Around the time I was going to undergrad at the University of Southern Indiana and majoring in literally advertising and public relations, I began to obsessively consume ‘Pokémon’ products, such as numerous seasons of the animated series, the first thirty or so volumes of the ‘Pokémon Adventures’ manga, fully completing the at-the-time brand new ‘Pokémon Y’ within about two weeks, which I also went to my first and only midnight release to collect, and completing various quizzes on the website ‘Sporcle.com’ to eventually remember the names of every Pokémon created to that date, as well as their assigned number. This level of interaction with the franchise was, ultimately, quite minor in comparison to what all was available to me. But the amount of ‘Pokémon’ content I have consumed over the course of my whole life is troubling at best, and lethal at worst.
But there was a period in my life where I was a teenager, and therefore completely fake and also an ass-bag. I thought ‘Pokémon’ was for babies. This was the period of my life which saw mainline releases for ‘Pokémon Diamond’, ‘Pokémon Pearl’, ‘Pokémon Platinum’, ‘Pokémon HeartGold’, and ‘Pokémon SoulSilver’. I did not play any of these games on their initial release, only going back to them during that phase I went through as a moody college student, and playing both ‘‘Pokémon Platinum’ and ‘Pokémon SoulSilver’ to story completion exactly one time and never again. ‘Pokémon SoulSilver’ happened to be a remake of ‘Pokémon Silver’, which was a game I engaged with for hundreds of hours, but ‘Pokémon Platinum’ was a brand new experience which I had not engaged with at all, and continued to keep unengaged from after a comparatively short 20-hour playthrough.
I bring this up solely to note that I went into the recent remake of ‘‘Pokémon Diamond’ having engaged this section of the ‘Pokémon’ franchise less than any other limb of the grotesque amalgamation the mainline franchise has become. An equally important note to make is that it has been about eight years or more since I actually experienced the fourth generation of ‘Pokémon’ games. ‘Pokémon Brilliant Diamond’ had every opportunity to capture me with the magic of a moderately new ‘Pokémon’ experience in the easiest possible way, especially given how upset I was from having played ‘Pokémon Sword’.
Did it succeed? No, not really. But it’s still pretty fun! The biggest gripe I have with the game is the decision to create a super-deformed aesthetic for the overworld, then proceeding to use full character models in battle. The overworld character design is quite off putting, and the decision to still use full character models within battle scenes has me struggling to understand why this was the direction taken. My cynical side will blame it on and approach to cut costs, since the simplistic design makes it look no better than something you’d see on the Nintendo 3DS, but ‘Pokémon Sword’ used full-scale character models in the overworld, and that game also looked like it was made for the Nintendo 3DS.
Ever since the ‘Pokémon’ games moved away from sprite work, there’s been a strong need for designs of both human characters and the Pokémon themselves to stand out creatively. As much as I hate ‘Pokémon Sword’, I’d be more of a fool than I already am if I tried to argue it wasn’t aesthetically one of the best games in the franchise. The designs for ‘Pokémon Brilliant Diamond’ were initially done using sprites, so perhaps it felt more visually consistent to use the super-deformed style? Either way, it is a significant downgrade from the overall look of the Sinnoh games. I normally don’t pick at something like this with any sort of actual critical eye, but the ‘Pokémon’ franchise is pretty well-known for it’s visual appeal, and a lot of that appeal is removed when the older games are adapted to the new current style present in the series.
One thing which hasn’t changed, fortunately, is the addictive gameplay loop of capturing new Pokémon, training them to evolve, and proceeding through a fast-paced story that’s as long as you want it to be. I sunk about sixty hours into my time with ‘Pokémon Brilliant Diamond’ and by the time I finished, this seemed like my own personal cutoff for enjoyment. The game could easily be beaten within 15 hours, especially given the new experience share system which completely negates any needed grinding. It even maintains the late-game difficulty assuming you don’t go into the final battles over-leveled. Cynthia is still the hardest champion the series has seen, and even though she can still be beaten by abusing items or having an above surface-level understanding of the game’s mechanics, she can still surprise you with the unique team she has built up. The only time I ever really die in these games anymore is due to me farming levels for weak Pokémon to evolve them. Having my primary team of six wiped out was an oddly satisfying experience, even if it was really only due to my lack of planning and some horrible luck with critical hit rates.
Sonically, the original soundtrack for these games is arguably the most acclaimed in the franchise. This is despite the fact that the sound on a Nintendo DS is actively nauseating to listen to. It’s not even as charmingly terrible as Gameboy Advance music, where the garbled mesh of noise can actually feel endearing in some way. The DS cleaned things up a bit, but not to the point where anything from that system sounds ideal. The new compositions present here are massive improvements, despite what nerds who like the original will tell you. This is, hands down, the best soundtrack the series has ever had, and there’s not really even a close contender.
‘Pokémon Brilliant Diamond’ is obviously not perfect. They keep some of the more archaic design choices present in the 2007 releases, and do practically nothing to the experience to make it worth playing over ‘Pokémon Platinum’ or most other generations released after the originals. But this is my list, and it felt fun to actually engage this generation of games honestly, even if all they gave me to do it with was developed with fairly low effort into differentiating it from its origin. This writeup isn’t totally filled with bad jokes because I wanted to focus on giving it a fair critique, as I don’t think it’s really been receiving such from the fanbase. It’s easy to write this off as a cash grab, and yeah, you’re probably right with that, but we’re also talking about the largest media franchise in the world. Everything made is going to be a cash grab. ‘Pokémon Brilliant Diamond’ is a small piece of a megalithic structure, and resources will always be allocated accordingly. At the end of the day, despite the ease of which many upgrades could have been implemented into it, ‘Pokémon Brilliant Diamond’ is standardized ‘Pokémon’ fare. If you like the gameplay present in these games, it’s going to be a fun ride from here on out. As is, the series doesn’t need to innovate to achieve its goals, and you can make the choice of whether or not you’re willing to engage that type of franchise.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond Score: 4/6
10. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
For absolutely no reason, 2021 was host to a number of franchise comebacks. Previously, we saw ‘Psychonauts 2’ on this list, which was the first full-length experience the franchise had seen since 2005. Yet to be seen on this list are ‘NEO: The World Ends With You’, the first entry into the franchise since its inception in 2007, and ‘Metroid Dread’, the first original, non-spin-off ‘Metroid’ game since 2010, and the first official main-line game since 2004. At the time of this writing, I have not played ‘No More Heroes III’, but it is also the return of a franchise which hasn’t seen a mainline entry since 2010. Similar to all of these is the ‘Ratchet & Clank’ franchise, which, barring a failed reboot/movie tie-in, hadn’t seen the light of day since 2013. This isn’t quite as long of a gap as the aforementioned titles, but it is still quite significant in the current era of annual releases or sequels being announced immediately following a release. Whether or not these games are actually any good is beside the point. I was craving the consumption of franchises from my miserable adolescence and I was rewarded.
While they will ultimately receive the same scoring. I feel like there is a pretty noteworthy gap between ‘Pokemon Brilliant Diamond’ and ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’. You could say ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’ is the first truly great game to be introduced in the list, and that we have now encroached upon the must-play territory. However, you will need to have a Sony PlayStation 5 in order to play ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’, so I am sorry for imposing this task upon you. If you do not have a Sony PlayStation 5, please stop reading and do not come back until you have acquired one. Until then, you are not a strong enough gamer to be reading my words, and I am offended you would attempt to join my company.
If you were to ever meet me in real life, you would soon discover that I am a fucking nerd. This personal feature has been present throughout most of my life, though it reached it’s throughline between the ages of twelve and fifteen. This period of my life was marked with such intense gaming that I became the god gamer you witness today. I can attribute the whole of my gaming landscape to a mere five core titles which I will now list: ‘Dark Cloud’, ‘Jak II’, ‘Super Smash Bros. Melee’, ‘Tales of Symphonia’, and ‘Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal’. All of these video games, regardless of where I align their quality now, were transformative to how I viewed games, and I consider them to be some of the most important games for my own personal growth as both a gamer and, unfortunately, a mortal.
To say ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’ had some big shoes to fill would be putting it lightly, especially given the disgusting wretch some people refer to as 2016’s ‘Ratchet & Clank’, a video game I hate more and more any time I think about it for more than three full seconds. ‘Ratchet & Clank’ hasn’t really been the franchise it started out as for a long time, and efforts to create a game as fresh and memorable as that original trilogy on the PlayStation 2 have been lukewarm at best. Sure, the games end up being great fun to play, and it’s likely a lot of my nostalgia talking, but the transition from a platformer with third-person shooter elements to a third-person shooter with platforming elements has not been kind to the identity of the series. This issue reached its climax with the last mainline entry, ‘Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus’, a game so marred by a lack of ideas that they couldn’t even stretch it out beyond a brief 6-hour campaign at best. The gameplay loop of this franchise is fortunately satisfying, so it’s not as if the franchise has become unenjoyable, but there’s little to separate these games from one another at this point.
On that note, ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’ is probably the closest the series has come to reaching the level of charm present in the original trilogy. I was initially quite impressed by the writing given how low the bar was set by the attempted reboot, which constantly threw memes in your face while failing to establish any of it’s characters as unique. I think ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’ is far more competently written than we’ve seen in a while. The concept of an alternate universe in which you are playing as a rebel as opposed to a defined hero was a neat way to shake up the atmosphere a bit. It may not be as engaging as the naturalistic storytelling present in the original ‘Ratchet & Clank’, but there isn’t really anything better ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’ could have done with their two-decade-old continuous storyline. And it’s actually funny again! It’s not the most exciting humor we’ve seen, but the series has been desperate to build a narrative focus to the point of being completely dry almost all of the time. Dr. Nefarious is a ridiculous villain and the decision to continue utilizing him as a threatening force beyond his initial appearance was a mistake. ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’ deals with this in the most perfect of ways by juxtaposing him with an alternative version of himself which holds the same level of narcissism while being far more competent and dangerous. Their dialogue together makes for some of the best in the game and I really wish they had a bit more presence together to explore their characters to a greater degree.
I can’t really say the same for Rivet or Kit, who are some of the most dull characters imaginable. They go through character arcs similar to their counterparts, though what made the original relationship between Ratchet and Clank so special was how well they bounced off of each other. Rivet spends most of the game with Clank and Kit with Ratchet. These are already well-defined characters, so seeing the new ones simply going through the motions is uninspiring at the best of times and corny as hell at the worst. When the two eventually do come together, it feels far more out of plot necessity than anything else. There’s what feels to be a last-ditch effort to connect the two in an event which occurred prior to the game’s story, but it only serves to create an extra layer of unexplored drama before the game concludes.
Maybe I shouldn’t be focusing so much on the writing, but that’s just the nature of the franchise. The gameplay is always going to be competent, and this game is no exception. It’s probably the best gameplay in the franchise so far, though I still miss the platforming a lot. Ratchet is fun to move around, so it would be far more interesting to experiment with movement as opposed to combat, but the guns essentially are what the series is, and always will be, known for, even if they all operate in extremely similar ways. There’s rarely any strategy to use beyond swapping your weapon once you’ve run out of ammunition, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a ton of fun cycling through and upgrading every weapon to their highest level.
If you’ve never played a ‘Ratchet & Clank’ game, it wouldn’t be too bad to start here. It’s issues are the least-defined since 2004, and even then, this is the best gameplay in the series. But starting with this should be done under the knowledge that this franchise had far more potential to evolve and adamantly chose not to do. This isn’t necessarily a problematic issue so much as it is a disappointing realization. Not every game needs to seek to revolutionize the industry, and that will be clear the further into my list you get. But I think it’s reasonable to expect a series to have at least some desire to separate itself from past flaws. I said in my ‘Pokemon Brilliant Diamond’ write-up that the franchise will likely be stagnant for the foreseeable future, as that’s just the way The Pokemon Company has decided to go about what has now become a relatively small piece of an otherwise massive puzzle. Insomniac doesn’t have that same excuse available to them, so it’s a lot harder for me to rationalize a lack of depth. Regardless of how you feel about ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’, I hope you can appreciate that I spent a majority of my write-up, on a game I defined as a must-play no less, bitching about how much I hate it. Such is the life of a gamer.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Score: 4/6
9. NEO: The World Ends with You
Perhaps the first example of the the Internet convincing me to buy a game was ‘Tales of Symphonia’. Second was probably ‘The World Ends with You’. The former is probably my favorite JRPG of all time, while the latter is quite a ways up there. I bring this up to note that the Internet has introduced me to some of my favorite video games, and for that I am thankful. However, now that I am an adult, I no longer have a need for others to discover the greatest games on this Earth. Similarly, my adulthood has allowed me the power to look at media from a far more cynical and depressing perspective. Have you actually tried to play ‘Tales of Symphonia’ in the last ten years? Don’t do it, it’s not actually very good, and it takes, like, sixty hours. I have not played ‘The World Ends with You’ since 2007, and I’m certain this has been a positive decision.
Despite this, I was nonetheless excited to see the series receive a sequel fourteen years after the fact in the form of ‘NEO: The World Ends with You’. ‘NEO: The World Ends with You’. The first thing I thought was, “That name is kind of bad.” My second thought was, “I guess ‘The World Ends with You’ is a pretty bad name in and of itself.” My third and final initial thought was, “Oh neat.” ‘NEO: The World Ends with You’ should not be the type of game which will be announced and blow everyone away. Few games come out which feel so concisely complete as ‘The World Ends with You’. It is up there with ‘Bloodborne’ as games which I would rather not receive a sequel due to how well they are able to succinctly explore their thematic, narrative, and design potential. ‘The World Ends with You’ was a Nintendo DS game which sought to push as many unique features of the hardware as possible, and the result was a pretty solid game which didn’t really need to be expanded on. Regardless, ‘NEO: The World Ends with You’ was a fun sight, just as a ‘Bloodborne 2’ announcement would be, as I am nothing more than a pathetic consumer.
Just as I noted, however, ‘The World Ends with You’ was a game designed specifically for the Nintendo DS. I never played 2018’s ‘The World Ends with You: Final Remix’, as I knew the transition from the game’s unique two-screen and hardware-feature-heavy gameplay would be a poor one. Nobody liked ‘The World Ends with You: Final Remix’, so naturally Square-Enix decided this would be the best time to make a sequel. But how does a sequel to an already complete experience even operate? ‘NEO: The World Ends with You’ should not have existed, and it by all means should not have been as fun as it was. It doesn’t play anything like it’s predecessor, though it retains the structure and pacing of the combat splendidly. You maintain control over your entire party as they only need to be controlled by a single button. This starts easy, then becomes a hectic balancing act as more party members and complex pins are introduced to you. It may be the most ADHD game of 2021.
The narrative is another crucial piece to the game, since it felt like there were more cutscenes than gameplay. It’s fine. Later on it begins to rely on callbacks a bit too much to it’s own detriment, but that’s an analysis for someone who has played the original more recently than 2007 to make.
In 2020, I had been planning to take a trip to Tokyo with my recently-retired mother. My older sister lives there and was, at the time, a freelance worker with no children who would have been able to give us lodging and assist our English-speaking mouths with any sightseeing. Going to Japan has always been on my personal bucket list, and I would have just been finishing up graduate school. It was the perfect opportunity to take a month-long respite to another country. We had everything planned and set. Of course, you all know the story. COVID-19 killed a bunch of people and the United States did as little as possible, resulting in Japan banning flights from the United States. Donald Trump ruined my summer vacation worse than Sora ruined Roxas’. I am now employed full-time and my sister now has a son. The chance for another vacation like the one Donald Trump ruined will not return to me at any feasible point in my life. However, ‘NEO: The World Ends with You’, more than anything else, is a game about being in Japan. For brief periods of time, I was able to glimpse what it would be like to be in Japan and spending all of my money on food and souvenirs. I did not get the actual experience, but ‘NEO: The World Ends with You’ wanted me to capture the slimmest satisfaction for my life. I think we should do ourselves a favor and convince Tetsuya Nomura to run for president of the United States.
NEO: The World Ends with You Score: 4/6
8. Returnal
There are some people in this world who will tell you that 2021 was a bad year for gaming. These people are MORONS. As of the time of this writing, on January 11, 2022, ‘Returnal’ ranks eighth on my list of games from the year 2021. This write-up will be concluded by giving ‘Returnal’ a 5/6. I try to avoid over-rating games, so a 5/6 is a pretty impressive score to receive. Yet there are still, at this point, seven other games which were better than the absolute bop that is ‘Returnal’. 2021 was truly an outstanding year for the gaming medium.
‘Returnal’ is a roguelike with a large budget and impressive marketing. Roguelikes are usually bad because the nature of a roguelike is to make a video game have as little fun as possible. Fortunately, people who actually design games to be fun thought it would be smart to make a roguelike which wasn’t bad, and thus we got ‘Hades’ in 2020. The folks at Housemarque likely got their hands on ‘Hades’ and made the verbal comment, “Wow, this genre can actually be good.” They then proceeded to make ‘Returnal’, which is another good roguelike. There are now two good roguelikes and nothing more.
So what is it that makes ‘Returnal’ such a wonderful experience? Well, lots of things actually. The first key aspect to the game is it’s fast-paced combat and gameplay loop. From the very beginning, ‘Returnal’ is introducing you to mechanics which you likely won’t be able to master on a single playthrough. Every combat encounter has a multitude of systems which can effectively change how one goes about playing through it. The way you move, the buffs and debuffs you’ve obtained, how enemies interact with each other, how your guns work, what buffs and debuffs are applied to your guns specifically, the actual design of the map both vertically and horizontally, how many traps are present, how much health you can sacrifice, the various mechanics at play when it comes to dashing and reloading and melee…… Yeah, it’s a bit overwhelming. Every second of ‘Returnal’ asks you to assess a large number of factors before making your next decision. It is evidently a game which prides itself on having the player learn it’s systems before moving on, and the end result of this learning process is that you might be okay at playing the game.
That also drives into ‘Returnal’s’ biggest flaw, which is the extraordinary difficulty. It is, by no means, the hardest video game I’ve played. It’s probably the hardest game released this year, but 2021 didn’t even have a From Software game to which we could compare every other video game release to. I don’t necessarily have a problem with difficult video games, and ‘Returnal’ provides a pretty lenient fast-travel following the completion of any of it’s zones, so it was never an issue beyond the standard growing pains of any challenging title. Where it becomes a problem is how this affects the story.
I don’t mean to sound like a pretentious asshole when I suggest this, but I think the narrative of ‘Returnal’ is actually masterful in it’s implementation. It is psychological horror where the monsters have thematic purpose, which is the literal best type of horror. ‘Returnal’ immediately begins the process of weaving an intense and thought-provoking story from the very first scene, and it culminates in something truly special. You rarely see games, especially ones with major publishers, take a risk with a more thematically-driven story. ‘Returnal’ has no intention of playing it safe with the writing and it is all the better for it. I think I would admire the risk alone if the story was dumb, so it’s increasingly admirable given how good it actually turned out. You won’t find a story with definitive answers, but you will find a story designed to be analyzed by S-to-B-tier YouTubers over the next decade.
But it’s also fucking hard. And when games are hard, you run the risk of people giving up, which I almost definitely did. Obviously, we are where we’re at now due to me sticking with it, but I only did so after about five hours of playing like shit and making no progress. This isn’t fun. The game’s fun potential is so high, but the barrier to even entry-level fun is almost too frustrating, and I see a lot of people who gave up on the game before it actually starts getting good. Yes, this game would have benefitted from difficulty options. No, you are not cool for thinking differently. Yes, you are lame. The story of ‘Returnal’ is one deserving of notoriety, and it’s a shame so much of the discussion has surrounded it’s poor difficulty scaling as opposed to it’s legitimate quality both mechanically and narratively. Also it is a PlayStation 5 exclusive even though it probably would have been fine on the PlayStation 4.
Returnal Score: 5/6
7. Bowser’s Fury
Bowser has been a part of the ‘Super Mario’ franchise since it’s inception in 1985. He is a large, silly turtle man who wants to kidnap Princess Peach. His rationale for kidnapping Princess Peach is typically undefined beyond a general sensation of being evil and potentially having some form of ruling over the Mushroom Kingdom. This is never effective for the course of a full game, as Mario will always kill Bowser, usually by dumping him in actual lava. Yet Bowser somehow always revives. You literally fight his skeletal corpse in ‘New Super Mario Bros.’ Bowser is truly the ultimate Eldritch horror. There needs to be a deep analysis on the lore of Bowser and his interaction with the world of the ‘Super Mario’ franchise.
But Bowser has always been a goofy villain. He gets mad, but it’s never intimidating. However, this time is different. Bowser isn’t coping with something in a healthy manner. Bowser is furious. In his inability to cope, likely with the trauma of being brutally murdered by Mario on numerous occasions, Bowser has become something terrifying. A blackened ooze coats his body, causing him to swell into a gargantuan titan, the excess sludge dripping and sticking to a once beautiful landscape, Bowser’s emotional state is far more aggressive and primal, as he has regressed to the reptilian brain, seeking only survival and dominance as he scorches the earth with meteoric flames. It is up to Mario to atone for his past misdeeds, and save the man he once gleefully terrorized. Bowser Jr. is even here, and the trauma he is suffering from his father’s anger has now officially put Bowser in the ‘Sad Dad Club’. ‘Bowser’s Fury’ is high art, just as ‘The Last of Us’, ‘The Walking Dead’, and ‘God of War’. Two of those games are actually good, and ‘The Last of Us’ is not one of them. Fortunately, ‘Bowser’s Fury’ is good.
Nintendo have been slowly making efforts to put every marketable Wii U title onto the Switch. ‘Super Mario 3D World’ is in the top half of the series in terms of quality, but to increase it’s marketing appeal, Nintendo tacked on the short 3-hour campaign which utilized the mechanical simplicity of ‘Super Mario 3D World’ with the large spaces of ‘Super Mario Odyssey’. The result is an open-world where each area functions under the unique platforming challenges and gimmicks which the ‘Super Mario’ franchise is known for. As a singular unit, it is non-stop fun with very few flaws.
Though flaws do present themselves. Primarily, ‘Bowser’s Fury’ feels like a taste to something bigger. It doesn’t feel incomplete per se, just evidently a project which could be better when expanded into a full game. When Bowser becomes furious during exploration or platforming, this can both add fun challenges and be incredibly annoying, depending on where you’re at in the game. It’s never detrimental to the high standards the game set, but there were exactly two occasions I remember where I had to stop progress in a level and do absolutely nothing, just to wait for Bowser to stop being a massive asshole. You can also turn into a giant cat and actually fight Bowser, but these sections blow. Sorry, ‘Bowser’s Fury’, maybe you should think about some of these crucial negatives before we are introduced to ‘Bowser’s Fury 2: Bowser Harder’.
Bowser’s Fury Score: 5/6
6. It Takes Two
It must be noted, first and foremost, that I played ‘It Takes Two’ with a fellow online friend. He and I have been playing ‘Overwatch’ together for a few years, so the two of us were familiar with our own particular personalities and methods of engaging video games. I feel as though playing this game with someone whom I’d had such a long and positive experience in gaming with was beneficial to my enjoyment of the game. I was initially going to try playing this with my partner, who does not play video games ever. Had the two of us followed through on this plan, I think I would have become single yet again.
‘It Takes Two’ is one of the most consistently engaging platformers ever made, partially due to it’s requirement of having two people working together for the entirety of it’s campaign, but also with how much variety it manages to jam into each section. The mechanics presented rarely stick past their particular level, and each one is stretched to a pretty strong extent. Some of them could likely be expanded on further to allow for more of a mastery, but this would probably become very annoying very quickly.
Lots of critics and fans alike had many problems with the game’s narrative. I can understand this somewhat, as the game says absolutely nothing about what a healthy relationship should look like, or how a legitimate divorce may actually function. At the same time, it’s also hilarious. The scene where you murder an elephant is some of the finest black humor, as you are violently dismembering a sentient being in order to make your daughter cry. It’s fun how it makes you perform absolutely absurd acts to achieve something which is basically worthless. Though I admit, the narrative would be significantly more enjoyable if it had even a somewhat realistic interpretation of how relationships actually function.
More than anything else, I think the social experience of playing video games with friends are far more impactful than the games themselves. I am not a Twitch streamer, so it is none of your business who I play with or how I play something you absolute jackass.
It Takes Two Score: 5/6
5. Astalon: Tears of the Earth
It seems we get a brand new metroidvania-type game each year. This is typically fortunate, as talented developers can take hold of an inherently satisfying gameplay loop. ‘Astalon: Tears of the Earth’ is one of the best members of this ever-growing genre, though it unfortunately came out in a year where Nintendo decided to start making new ‘Metroid’ games again. Fortunately, ‘Astalon: Tears of the Earth’ errs further toward the ‘Castlevania’ side of things, which we will never have to worry about seeing again, beyond pachinko machines, NFTs, and, oddly, one of the best animated television franchises ever made. I have no doubt ‘Astalon: Tears of the Earth’ would be well-enjoyed by a majority of people who would play it, but it is unfortunately being shafted by games like ‘Metroid Dread’, which is really good, and ‘Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights’, a game so boring that I have booted it five times and played for a total of forty-five minutes tops.
‘Astalon: Tears of the Earth’ is quite good. I don’t really have much to say about it beyond this. If a game so adequately does it’s job that I can not even spend a page attempting to write vaguely-related dialogue about my experience with it, you know it has probably figured itself out. I played ‘Astalon: Tears of the Earth’ intensively over the course of two days, and by the end, I did not want it to end. I then played the extra modes, which weren’t very good, and I realized I had only thought I didn’t want it to end. Needless to say, the extras weren’t worth playing because the main campaign of ‘Astalon: Tears of the Earth’ is so perfectly paced if you choose to shoot for the true ending.
The only legitimate flaw I feel has any weight is how ‘Astalon: Tears of the Earth’ would have been better if it removed it’s roguelike elements. It feels like it was presented as a gameplay mechanic to match the story, but the game evolved in a way which made this feel pedantic. You’re constantly unlocking shortcuts both small and large, so it’s not as if being sent back to the start is particularly challenging. It just adds boring treks to disrupt the pacing of the otherwise fantastic level structure. You can also destroy the game’s difficulty scaling if you intend to fully upgrade your character’s stats. The difficulty is probably at it’s best around the halfway point but when I was doing some clean-up on my final playthrough, I gained a massive advantage from dumping my points into stat upgrades. Playing naturally, you won’t even come close to achieving fully maxed stats, but it still feels a little silly to make the maximum level so high when there’s nothing to fight for beyond a higher difficulty with new game plus.
But those flaws barely function as complaints and are miles away from something deserving legitimate criticism. Do not sleep on ‘Astalon: Tears of the Earth’. This is one of the best indie games on the market this year, and it’ll likely be remembered, at least by me, as one of the best pieces of an otherwise oversaturated genre.
Astalon: Tears of the Earth Score: 5/6
4. Shin Megami Tensei V
It’s intriguing to think about what humanity may do if a demonic apocalypse were to occur. How, exactly, would each individual react? How would those with military and governing power react to such an unprecedented event? And, most importantly, what would teenagers do? In the ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ franchise and all of it’s spin-offs which I am aware of, teenagers are the only thing which stands in the way of a mass human extinction. I not only interact with teenagers on a daily basis as part of my job, but I have the lived experience of being a teenager. I can say, with confidence, that teenagers would likely be as useful as our government leaders in the event of a demon invasion.
‘Shin Megami Tensei V’ released in an awkward position. The ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ franchise has never been entirely successful in the West. However, the hit game ‘Persona 5’ absolutely thrashed the other games under the ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ umbrella in both acclaim and sales. The amount of love we saw the game receive, beyond the subset of massive nerds who already lapped up Atlus’ premier franchise, was unprecedented. No matter how silly it may sound, ‘Persona 5’ set a standard for any game wearing the ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ or ‘Persona’ moniker.
It would make sense to bring up the strange critical landscape surrounding ‘Shin Megami Tensei V’. IGN reviewer, Leana Hafer, famously stated, “[I]t sometimes feels like Persona without the heart.” Now, dumb people were very upset and began to harass her. But large-brained people, such as myself, noted that this was kind of obvious. The ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ franchise is one which has always prided itself on its atmosphere, combat, and thematic cohesion above all else. ‘Shin Megami Tensei V’ is more of the same in that regard. If you want a game where you can engage the characters and story with nuance, you should probably pay the main branch of the franchise no mind. However, this is still a problem which necessitates exploration. Japanese RPGs are well-known for having far more involved stories compared to other genres, though that aspect has shifted with Western action-adventure games leaning more into their stories than ever before. The ‘Persona’ games have been one of the few to retain such quality, and I think it’s reasonable to be hopeful and summarily disappointed by just how lame ‘Shin Megami Tensei V’s’ writing is. All of the characters are one-dimensional, with the most intriguing members of the cast being relegated to sidequests or brief story segments, and the plot is lazy at best. It’s fair to say the game is like ‘Persona’ without the heart, because the heart of the game is so far removed from what it values.
Obviously, despite the failure of ‘Shin Megami Tensei V’ to do anything intriguing with it’s overall story, I still loved it. This is the most engaged I’ve been in a battle system in quite a while. The way you can interact with it to deny turns to enemies is addicting fun. It’s probably my favorite battle system in a turn-based game. The fusion mechanic is back and better than ever. The sheer amount of demons available to you led me to constantly swap which demons I would use. Rarely did I find one I felt I needed to keep using beyond three or four hours maximum. The strategies are ever-changing due to this and I loved every second I was a part of the combat.
But quite possibly the most impressive aspect of ‘Shin Megami Tensei V’ is it’s world design. This may be a controversial take, as I haven’t seen much discussion on this part at all, but it’s the ribbon which wraps the package up and is also somehow the best part of the package. Moving through the various areas is less like an open-world, as is described by numerous critics, but more like large dungeons. They are ultimately quite linear and progression through them is exciting. There are also little secret red boys you can find by scavenging, as well as cool items and money. This all culminates in the fourth major area, which ditches the linearity in exchange for a level which is magnificently broad and open. The way the final world wraps into itself is phenomenal. It is peak level design and I was sad when I had finally explored every inch of it.
‘Shin Megami Tensei V’ is obviously not going to leave the same mark ‘Persona 5’ did. It’s not the type of game to bring people out of their comfort zone. It’s a game from an obscure genre which attempts to refine every note it takes, succeeding in spades. Fortunately, this appears to be the fastest-selling game in the main ‘Shin Megami Tensei’ line, which is ideally a good sign for the future of the franchise in the West. Perhaps the series will continue having storytelling issues, but if that results in a continued effort to refine the other systems, that isn’t such a bad concern to have.
Shin Megami Tensei V Score: 5/6
3. Metroid Dread
‘Metroid Dread’ is essentially an experience I’ve been waiting for since I was a literal teenager. The last ‘Metroid’ game I played and loved was either ‘Metroid: Zero Mission’ or ‘Metroid Prime 2: Echoes’. Every official game released since then has ranged from disappointing to bad. I went into ‘Metroid Dread’ with major concerns over how Mercury Steam would handle a brand new ‘Metroid’ experience, especially given how poorly ‘Metroid: Samus Returns’ attempted to reignite the series’ flame. But dammit, did they nail it with this one.
It should be noted before anything else that ‘Metroid’ is one of my favorite video game franchises. I have been a ‘Metroid’ fan since I first became obsessed with ‘Metroid Prime’ and ‘Metroid Prime 2: Echoes’ circa 2006. Ever since that time, I swore myself to the unholy union of fandom, possibly for the first time ever. I’m not sure which came first between my ‘Metroid’ obsession and my ‘Naruto’ obsession. I am only embarrassed by one of these obsessions, and it should be obvious which one that is (it is Naruto).
However, ‘Metroid’ has a long and storied history of making me sad. It all started with ‘Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’. Many will claim ‘Metroid: Other M’ was where the series saw its complete loss of self, though the warning signs were present in the previous game. You could even trace flaws back to ‘Metroid Fusion’, but I will not do that because I like ‘Metroid Fusion’. Around the mid-2000s, space stuff got super popular. ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’ was an astronomical success which changed the landscape of gaming, in particular games where you shoot aliens. In 2007, we saw ‘Halo 3’ and ‘Mass Effect’, two alien-shooting video games which were receiving unreal levels of attention and hype. Nintendo had to find some way to revitalize their premier alien-shooting franchise after the lackluster sales of both ‘Metroid Prime 2: Echoes’ and ‘Metroid: Zero Mission’. The Nintendo Wii was a perfect chance to do this, as it sold out the wazoo and was extremely popular among casual gaming fans, a market codified as lovers of the XBOX 360, the holder of those alluring alien-shooting titles. ‘Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’ could have been another somber trek through an unforgiving environment filled with discovery, but they decided to not do this and instead craft a linear, story-focused adventure spanning multiple planets with a keener focus on action as opposed to the puzzle-solving and platforming the previous two games excelled in. I don’t actually know if ‘Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’ was a response to the bigger science fiction adventures coming out around the same time it did, but the end result was something distinctly lacking in edge or creativity, even if it was a solid game in it’s own right.
Of course, the story just worsens at this point. ‘Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’ sold well, though nothing compared to the Wii’s bigger successes. The series would see another entry in 2010, ‘Metroid: Other M’, which was a critical and commercial failure, as well as being a certified bad video game. ‘Metroid’ went on an extreme hiatus, coming back in 2016 with ‘Metroid Prime: Federation Force’, a game which immediately became a meme when announced. It seemed clear, at this point, ‘Metroid’ was no longer itself. The next year we saw ‘Metroid: Samus Returns’, a lackluster remake of an already flawed ‘Metroid’ game released on a dying handheld, which further failed to grasp the core appeal of its predecessors or it’s indie contemporaries. ‘Metroid Prime 4’ was announced, but it has been marked by extreme delays and a complete re-do with a different studio helming the product. It’s likely still deep in the pipeline, and it still felt like even if it were to release soon, it wouldn’t be able to live up to its namesake given this nearly two decade period of disappointing releases.
Then ‘Metroid Dread’ came out of nowhere and kicked ass. I went into ‘Metroid Dread’ with potentially the lowest expectations a ‘Metroid’ fan could possibly have. I had played Mercury Steam’s previous outing extensively, and I did not believe they were capable of creating a good ‘Metroid’ game. The game’s trailers were focused on the INTENSE ACTION and GRIPPING PLOT with numerous CALLBACKS to earlier games. I saw all the warning signs. I could tell this game was going to be mediocre at best. So naturally, I pre-ordered it and played it on launch day so that I could complain about it on the Internet.
I am quite happy I was wrong about ‘Metroid Dread’. Not only is it a fantastic game in its own right, but it feels like the natural progression the series should have gone in following ‘Metroid: Zero Mission’. ‘Metroid Dread’ offers some of the best areas and encounters seen in the franchise, and it’s much more focused on atmosphere, exploration, and puzzle-solving than the trailers let on. The combat experience was so stiff and unnatural in ‘Metroid: Samus Returns’, but they managed to refine it to an impressive sheen here. The strength of the combat reaches its peak in nearly every boss encounter. Each one is incredibly unique and requires some significant thought in their approach. I don’t know if I’d say the game is as brutally hard as it’s being marketed, given how naturally trial and error most of the fights are, but each of them asks you to use a significant amount of effort to topple. It culminates in one of the most exciting and rewarding final bosses in any video game, and easily topping any other battle in the ‘Metroid’ universe, which is known for having some incredible boss fights.
Exploration does take a slight hit because the world isn’t designed quite as carefully as it could have been. ‘Super Metroid’ is essentially peak map design and I’d struggle to say anything has managed to capture this quality, barring potentially ‘Hollow Knight’, though that game’s massive map leads to its own smaller issues. ‘Metroid Dread’ isn’t as tight as the best maps in this subgenre, but it’s pretty damn close. There are some instances of railroading the player which can get a bit egregious, and going for 100% completion is a bit of a pain given how late you get some crucial upgrades. But these problems are only worth noting because ‘Metroid Dread’ is in the same series as ‘Super Metroid’. The map is a joy to explore all around and it showcases some of the most engaging environmental design in the 2D series.
The main claim to fame for ‘Metroid Dread’ was the inclusion of the brand new enemy type, the EMMI. As this was the forefront of Nintendo’s marketing efforts, it is, naturally, the worst part of the game by a pretty wide margin. I get the appeal of them and I understand what the developers were intending to accomplish, but this feels very much like Mr. X in the ‘Resident Evil 2’ remake. It’s initially really cool and adds a layer of horror and anxiety to the experience, but that only lasts for about 15 minutes until it just becomes annoying. I liked the first few EMMIs I encountered, but it got dry well before it became challenging. The last couple you encounter become infuriating, as they completely derail the pacing of the game and force you to focus on moving through their chambers as efficiently as possible. It gives you a fairly gratifying conclusion when you can respond by decimating the machines with an overpowered beam, but you spend far too much time running and hiding to make that part worthwhile. Remove the EMMI sections entirely or make them scripted like SA-X in ‘Metroid Fusion’ and we likely have the hard conversation of whether or not ‘Super Metroid’ actually has been dethroned as the best 2D ‘Metroid’. As is, the segments are an unfortunate blight on an otherwise masterful creation.
‘Metroid Dread’ almost won this year’s top honors for me. If it weren’t for two of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had, it would have been. If nothing else, I’m no longer fearful for where the series will be going. Despite my reservations from their first effort, Mercury Steam appears to have developed a solid grasp on how these games function. I hope we can see this partnership continue I to the future, as I know there are likely many other ideas the team didn’t even get to see to fruition which would expand the series even further. As Retro works on ‘Metroid Prime 4’, I hope the team walks back on the intentions of ‘Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’ and looks at the series and the growth it actually needs to receive with the same mindset as Mercury Steam. The only certainty, however, is that I finally feel safely excited for the franchise for the first time in over a decade.
Metroid Dread Score: 5/6
2. Before Your Eyes
So, I don’t know where to put ‘Before Your Eyes’ on this list. I had initially slotted it into the number one position, but it doesn’t really feel fair to do that given how different ‘Before Your Eyes’ feels in relation to literally every other game present on this list. I felt like I connected to ‘Before Your Eyes’ in a way few pieces of art have been able to achieve. I do want to write about this game, but I don’t really want those words to be expressed on something as materialistic and self-absorbed as a ranked list where I spend most of the time trolling people who have done nothing wrong. It doesn’t feel right to rank this game anywhere on the list, to be honest. ‘Before Your Eyes’ is it’s own beast, and it’s quality can’t really be quantified with numbers. But for the first time in my life, I am at a loss of how to critique and summarily score a video game. So I guess it gets a 6/6 for that reason.
Before Your Eyes Score: 6/6
1. Resident Evil Village
I was pretty interested in playing this game upon announcement. The horror advertised in ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’ isn’t really my style, nor is the standard zombie horror the franchise is known for. It is obvious, then, that my favorite games in the franchise, ‘Resident Evil 4’ and ‘Resident Evil 2 (2019)’, are more akin to third-person shooters with horror elements. I’ve even lightened up on ‘Resident Evil 3 (2020)’ even more than I already was last year. Capcom knows how to design great action-horror for their classic franchise, even if the more it deviates into one specific direction, the less quality the experience is as a whole.
I had never played ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’ until quite recently. I put it off because I was aware of how I would likely not enjoy it. I only played it due to the fact that ‘Resident Evil Village’ was a direct sequel, something I didn’t know about until ‘Resident Evil Village’ asked me if I wanted a recap. I’m sure it’s classification as a direct sequel was noted heavily in marketing, but I have ADHD, so you are not allowed to be upset with me for my failures to parse even the most basic information. So I, of course, played ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’. I did not like ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’. It was gross, slow, clunky, and the horror was, as previously stated, not my cup of tea. The hillbilly-horror present is actually quite possibly my least favorite type of standardized horror theme. The classist undertones of codifying poverty as a type of horror is disgusting to me. Obviously shit like ‘Resident Evil 5’ and what it did to codify an unknown ethnic culture as horror is worse, but it’s still a gross method of inducing terror.
Naturally, I was skeptical of ‘Resident Evil Village’ following this. I still had the knowledge of it being a more action-oriented experience than its predecessor, but my four hours with ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’ were probably my least favorite in the series. I don’t want to suggest you are in some way wrong for liking ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’, as I’m directly stating this instead. It is, however, evident that I am looking for totally different experiences than those who praised ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’. But then I played ‘Resident Evil Village’. ‘Resident Evil Village’ is amazing.
Prior to it’s release, ‘Resident Evil Village’ heavily marketed the Lady Dimitrescu character. Horny people jumped on the boat immediately. These people are apparently the same people who reviewed the game at a professional level. So many critics praised the game’s first significant area while admonishing everything after it. These critics are morons. Not only is Castle Dimitrescu not the best segment of the game, but Lady Dimitrescu herself isn’t even one of the more engaging characters the game presents. One of the coolest things ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’ did was introducing all of the antagonists in the beginning with a well-framed table scene, almost certainly inspired by 1974’s ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. But the problem with this scene is that all of the characters were extremely loud and annoying. The villains introduced in ‘Resident Evil Village’, using an incredibly similar method of said introduction, are far more unique and diverse. Even the lowly Moreau is able to make his mark both in this opening scene and in his eventual segment.
Ethan himself had the problem of being terribly boring in ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’. I watched a longplay after quitting my own run and he never really became anything more than a mechanism to move through the game. He is immediately characterized far better from the very beginning of ‘Resident Evil Village’. He has fun interactions with the world and the characters you meet, and even has horrible one-liners upon killing stronger enemies. The game also introduces The Duke, who somehow managed to become the best merchant in the ‘Resident Evil’ franchise. The Duke is probably my favorite character introduced in 2021, and it’s a damn shame he gets overshadowed because the Internet is too fucking horny.
Gameplay-wise, ‘Resident Evil Village’ is probably the best the series has seen. Certainly, it was conflicting with the standard the series had set to this point, which was a wildly diverse range of gameplay mechanics. ‘Resident Evil Village’ mashes the faster-paced action of the recent remakes with the more methodical approach and first-person perspective of ‘Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’. The result, while not appearing original to the naked eye, creates a gameplay experience unlike anything the series has seen. Weapon upgrading is back and better than ever. Every weapon has the ability to become stronger through a generous upgrading system. You can also hunt animals and collect their meat for cooking to receive permanent buffs to health, defense, speed, etc. There are so many systems at play here and each one of them bleeds into the other in a truly captivating manner.
Of course, none of these qualities would matter much in a game with bad level design. Fortunately, this is some of the best we’ve ever seen, and easily the best in the ‘Resident Evil’ series. It’s not a unique observation to see how each limb of the game represents it’s own sort of appeal. Castle Dimitrescu is focused on navigation and puzzle-solving. Beneviento House is focused on horror. The reservoir is more of a cinematic level. And it all wraps up with Heisenberg’s areas and the bits after being action-oriented. What isn’t a unique observation is how each area feels to have been masterfully crafted to achieve those specific goals. I talk a lot in here about the Internet’s stupid horniness as problematic to legitimate discussion of ‘Resident Evil Village’ and how it transforms the medium with it’s approach to design, and I do so because it’s fucking embarrassing to see grown adults praise one really well-done section and then not care about the other 70% of the game which is also extremely well-done. You are an embarrassment. Yes, I will die on this hill and no, it will not be worth it.
Besides the Reservoir, which is fine in a vacuum but actually a pretty dull level in relation to what else the game offers, ‘Resident Evil Village’ is dropping dimes constantly with it’s intriguing set pieces, map structure, combat evolution, and storytelling. ‘Resident Evil Village’ is one of those magical experiences that happens upon the world and so affirmatively grips the core values of what playing a video game should feel like. Much like last year’s ‘Doom Eternal’ and ‘Hades’, ‘Resident Evil Village’ is a fucking masterclass of every component it aims to create. I don’t regularly try to argue that some games are THE BEST EVER because, like, have you seen how much I talked about ‘Tales of Symphonia’ in these write-ups? How much do I actually know? But ‘Resident Evil Village’ is, quite honestly, the best horror game. It is the best action-horror game. It is the best ‘Resident Evil’ game. Keep in mind, ‘Resident Evil 4’ has occupied my top 10 video games of all time for about fifteen years now, so I don’t say this lightly. We will probably never see another video game which aims to do as much, yet perfectly executes each part it presents as ‘Resident Evil Village’. ‘Resident Evil Village’ is a blatant masterpiece, and the medium has a lot of catching up to do if we hope to see games of this caliber regularly.
Resident Evil Village Score: 6/6
Wow, that was far more timely than last year. I can’t wait to see all the 2022 video games which will eventually be placed onto a list such as this. PEace out, my fellow gamers.
