Keiran’s 2021 Year in Review

2020: Electric Boogaloo has been an odd one from the start. Of course, coming only minutes after the first one finished, the sequel was always going to feel like a rush of things, and it might have lacked some games we’d have wanted. Yes, I am joking about the situation of the games releases from 2021 feeling like a strange mix of games only three people can play because the PS5 still has stock issues a year after release. Meanwhile, the Xbox Series X/S feels about as wanted as a balled-up Post-It note. For me, it was an odd mix of console ports, remasters/remakes, and indies, with blips that were odd from the word go.

This year we saw Oddworld make a return with an altogether strange alteration to a sequel of one of the greatest games ever made. Biomutant, after years and years of hype surrounding it, saw a release that would almost have felt rushed, if it wasn’t for Cyberpunk 2077 last year. Then, in what was a surprise to the whole world, we got two 3D Doctor Who adventure games, with only one of them feeling like a slightly above mediocre knock-off of “Blink,” but mostly because we didn’t get the Doctor in Last Stop. I haven’t even spoken about the Roguelike, the RPGs, Bus Simulator 21, and the shooters I’ve covered this year.

Looking back at the year, on the whole, is strange too, as everyone said we were getting back to normal. What is normal? Any time you bring up any level of politics (or “politics”) someone wants to rip you to bits and use your flayed skin as sleeping bags for whoever they believe is the underappreciated. That’s where we’re at now. The only “normal” we got back was the mess we were in pre-pandemic: Everyone gutter sniping, delayed games have upset people for unknown reasons, and I want to rip someone’s ears off and make castanets out of them.

In the greater gaming industry as a whole, it wasn’t much better. Activision-Blizzard played tonsil tennis with the law in ways that were inappropriate for the workplace, to the point where state and federal cases were brought against them. CD Projekt Red has been dancing the merry dance with fire since Cyberpunk 2077‘s release, and GOG suffers losses.

All the while, children that were far too eager to let something happen in due course are pretending the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S are both worth the money, on equal footing, and can entice you to buy one over the other. Sony has been pumping out exclusives that are worth at least looking at and Microsoft plays the game of releasing everything on PC too. All the while, Sony continues to port older games with enough breathing space to maintain value in their titles for the time being. Shall we get to the games? I think we shall:

Honorable mention – Hades

We’ll start with the one that I am sure my editor might find tentative to mention. Not initially releasing this year, but being ported this year, Hades found its way to PlayStation and Xbox consoles in the late summer and it was a good thing too, hell gets cold in these winter months. It is only an honorable mention simply for that grey area that it falls within, but it is one Asphodel of a good honorable mention no less.

I’ve said it time and time again, I’ve grown apathetic to the Rogue-like/lite genre. I view it more as a crutch on which the entire games industry seems to be relying on now, following the release of Returnal even the triple-A market seems to finally be getting in on the game. So even I was surprised when I was very much enjoying the narrative focus that Hades features, pulling me through the sometimes overly repetitive gameplay loops, which play into the story themselves with Zaggy Stardust’s teenage indifference to his dad’s powers.

From the beautiful art direction, the tease of plot being unraveled by every failed attempt to escape, and generally that Dark Souls-esque chipping away at the wall makes Hades fantastic. Is it the best game ever? No, the gameplay is little more than simplistic button mashing, and the aforementioned detail that it is quite repetitive drags that down a little. Did it need more loops and typically more complications to the formula to be greater? No, the phrase does go, “too many cooks spoil the broth.”

If my lofty praise here thus far and in the review wasn’t enough, let me ostensibly state it: Play Hades. Supergiant is one of the few developers within the games industry I still trust implicitly with a story, with a proven track record to back that up. Is every game my thing? No, Transistor is something I bounced right off of like a ball of the rim of a hoop in the NBA, or more appropriately, Pyre. However, Bastion is one of the greatest games of all time with a soundtrack that rivals anything you put in front of it.

Dishonorable Mention – GTA: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition

Do we need to do it? I’ve seen more graceful murders in Quentin Tarantino films than this. I’ve seen Malcolm Tucker give more delicate verbal dissections than this abhorrent defecation onto exactly who Rockstar wants to keep on their good side. Of course, the dishonorable mention goes to the GTA: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, but only if your definition of “definitive” is found in a Thesaurus ripped up and reconstructed by an illiterate. I’ve not seen such a disrespectful act against the fans of one’s own IP since that time Fox told Sega to order Gearbox to fire projectile excretions at the fans of the Alien franchise.

Do we start with the fog or the fact that they used AI up-scaling but never spell-checked it? How about the fact that Rockstar, a company that was adamant about protecting its IP legally with court orders, sold (in the thousands, easily) music that they did not own the rights to? I’ve produced videos on YouTube for the better part of a decade. I know, if you even try to use three notes of anyone’s music, they will legally try to rip your genitals off for fear that they are losing out on three shiny pennies.

From the word go, I think we can all agree that no one cared about Grand Theft Auto III: The blandest and most basic of the trilogy. Yes, in the context of the time, GTA III revolutionized gaming forevermore, but like with Dune II, we don’t talk so much about Arrakis as we do the galactic warfare of 1997’s Total Annihilation. My point is that it is what comes after that first spark of flame that continues the bonfire. Or, for more typical GTA audiences, it is the later shooty-bangs that make stiff drag-rolls ooze all the blood. As influential as you are GTA III, it is your offspring that got all the princesses of the land pregnant, not to mention your story is crap and gameplay is basic.

That, young one, that fantastic taste you have is the taste of grade-A cocaine in your eyeballs mixed with caffeine and a little bit of morphine. The 80s of Vice City really set the world alight. Maybe not to the degree the 90s did only two years later, however, it did more to show that not only can you be cartoonish, but you can also be serious. Of course, Saints Row 2 would perfect that tone a few years later, showing the influence of not only the first of the three but the entire trilogy.

Aside from tone and sometimes color, what else did Vice City have that Saints Row 2 followed up with? The soundtrack to rival the best of them; Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross, and Rick James is enough to qualify as one of the greatest. Throw in 2 Live Crew, every 80s hit from rock to pop, and pump that thing up with about 100 songs encapsulating that era so perfectly, you’ve cemented the greatest soundtrack ever created. I will have no arguments.

Then you have the game that opened the chest covered in dust unveiling some of the true wonders the sandbox genre could offer. San Andreas is the reason we saw such a boom in open worlds in the 10-15-years following its release. Sometimes the open world was used to great effect, employing the larger scale to enhance the story. Other cases made the world big for the sheer hell of it. Despite moments that are ridiculous: Being clad in leathers clutching a double-ended gentleman’s sausage that is as stiff as a board and beating old women to death as their blood pools around their bodies, you realize just how seriously people take things that make no sense.

Look at me, I am a well-adjusted human, aren’t I? At least that’s what my handlers tell me I am when they let me outside. Joking aside, these games are part of not only my childhood, but the lives of millions of people around the world, some probably not bothering to check gaming press (beyond the hype machines) regularly. I am not just blaming Grove Street Games for this complete and absolute failure of providing a quality product. What Rockstar did was to bank on that nostalgia they already knew was around. All the while, trying to bring the games into a middle ground of preserving classics and gaining new traction.

We didn’t need the melted Fortnite figured horrors for character models, but the only explanation for that decision was the desire to capture a newer audience. For ages, fans have been creating mods and texture packs to not only maintain the style of the originals but bring them into the modern day without losing that style. To rip out half the soundtracks should be a crime punishable by plastic surgery to look like the 88 women, the remastered version. I’ve not even touched on the cheats, or how badly the performance is on the Switch, the latter of which is so poor you can’t play the race missions.

To call this in any way shape, or form, the definitive edition is beyond unspeakable. I feel like Malcolm Tucker, ready to pin someone to the wall by the throat and verbally berate them until their soul leaves their body. How badly is Rockstar strapped for cash when they are paying Dr. Dre to appear in a new GTA Online expansion? How, for the life of you, do you not use the resources, time, and energy, to put some work into something you are actually trying to sell to the general public as the “Definitive Edition” of your product? Oh, that’s right, you took the original product off shelves so this was the only product you had available.

Some would argue there was worse this year. Open Country wasn’t abhorrent but it was at least clunky and poor in terms of a quality game. I think everyone collectively defecated on Harvest Moon: One World for Natsume doing what we’ll term a bit of a Rockstar. While I thought Biomutant disappointed after all the hype, none of it was a reminder that something you once respected has died. Red Dead Redemption 2 wasn’t the best reassurance after the avarice that is GTA Online, but it was something, at least. This pile of complete and utter crap is confirmation no one seems to care anymore.

By all means, there have been updates, there have been patches, there has been a collection of apologies, but it doesn’t ratify the damage done. This No Man’s Sky, Assassin’s Creed Unity, and Cyberpunk 2077 approach should not be the default for the company that made a billion dollars in three days upon one release of their latest game in the series. Before the lawsuits were filed against modders, I wanted to believe there would have been a good job made of this. I wanted to believe I’d get a decent portable version of San Andreas on the Switch. Before this fundamental failure to do the bare minimum, when you heard that Rockstar worked on something you thought of polish and quality. Now it is absolute insatiable covetousness.

Honorable mention – Bus Simulator 21

I will admit, Bus Simulator 21 wasn’t the best game of the year, not even close. It would never beat out something like Hades or anything else I’ve mentioned/I’m going to mention. Hell, this year we saw a collection of Mass Effect remasters that weren’t diced up with the same avarice we’ve come to expect of EA, and that Rockstar now possesses. I could very well talk about that as being greater than Bus Simulator 2021, but I am not going to. It is a bit buggy in places, you can see the cracks, and I had to get an old keyboard to plug in simply to play it properly on the Xbox.

Why am I mentioning it here? Simulators are one of my few joys in gaming, it is the type of thing that is meant to be described as a guilty pleasure. It’s a little like listening to the Spice Girls in that regard. As I’ve said a few times, either in news pieces or a review I did this year, I spent a bit of my childhood playing trucking sims for far too many hours despite never wanting that job. Though, I have killed many prostitutes, digitally speaking.

I also don’t want a job on the OAP shuttle to the shops and back. I’ve killed enough old women that I don’t want to add to the tally. This was just confirmation that, while on the technicality I could do the job, I still don’t want it. I just like popping in and out of it from time to time. Bus Simulator is just that, a moment in the shoes of a bus driver at wits’ end with everyone that keeps handing over twenty quid for a two-fifty fare. The number of times I would drag someone out of bus, place their teeth on the curbstone, and stamp on the back of their neck, I think is enough to disqualify me as a bus driver.

I’ve got the anger and passive aggressiveness, I will happily shout at someone in a wheelchair for just sitting there in the door, I’ve got all the qualifications. Ok, I don’t have a driver’s license, the attention span, or the ability to drive a bus. However, if you’ve met a bus driver, neither have they. Bus Simulator 21 is the type of thing I’d be playing right now if I wasn’t sitting here in my ivory tower, inhaling cups of coffee, and dreaming about what I’m going to make for dinner, all while writing about games. If I had to do a normal job (like bus driving) for a living I’d probably kill someone simply for fun.

I am literally saving lives by not driving a real bus or even giving it a try, you can thank me later. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a bus driving lesson to get before I make myself a gourmet meal for one of pasta. Though in all seriousness, if you like strange simulators Bus Simulator 21 is good, despite its rough edges.

Honorable mention – Evil Genius 2: World Domination

It’s Dungeon Keeper, innit? Something I and many others will always miss when there isn’t one every three minutes, is a good solid management game. This is a management game that is a sequel to one of the best of all time. With Rube Goldberg-style traps, camp dialogue, and tongue-in-cheek references to early Bond films, yeah I am sold. Evil Genius 2 is just that, 17-years following the first game from an ex-Lionhead developer, the studio that was spawned from Bullfrog’s greats leaving to get a fresh start, it has the benefit of time on its side.

Does Evil Genius 2 redefine what it is to be a management game/real-time strategy? No, and quite frankly a lesser studio would have just rebooted the whole thing and said this was the new Evil Genius, because that is what it is. Not a remake, not a remaster, but a sequel that just takes all that 2004 had at its disposal, tightens those mechanics up, gives everything a fresh lick of paint, and modernizes where it needs to. As much as I don’t like sequels that do this, I’m mostly thinking of the likes of Burnout 2 which was released less than a year after its predecessor.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination may be the Point of Impact to Evil Genius, but it has that benefit of the 17-year gap. Now boasting console ports and accessibility, it makes the game far more robust and opens itself up to a newer audience that may only be 17-years-old now (that’s a depressing thought). It may not be the greatest game of the year, but with humor, color, and having itself firmly planted in tongue-in-cheek attitude, this one was a definite highlight of the year by making its return.

Honorable mention – Moonglow Bay

July 4th, 2021, I went fishing for the first time in years and the first time on a boat in the sea because I was kind of invited (A slot opened up). To say what I had was a bad experience would be the understatement of a lifetime. I spent 2 hours near enough flinging myself into the sea while calling for Huey. I don’t think I could ever represent just how poorly that day went according to several people’s expectations, of course, not my own though because I felt the night before I would not like it. Who am I, Derek Acorah? No, I could actually communicate with someone dead, they are called goths.

Anyway, Moonglow Bay was in my top 3 right up to the end, just comfortably waiting to be called my third best game of 2021. So what happened? We’ll get to that in a minute, but the reason it was up there was simply how lovely everything is. Sure, your partner is dead from cancer or something and you have to fight massive sea creatures in gameplay that is sometimes a little too clunky for its own good. However, that repetitive nature of just plodding away, building your fishing empire one sand flee at a time is a warm feeling.

You may have noticed this through copious amounts of Doctor Who reviews and other things, I like good warm adventures. Moonglow Bay was the hero we needed this year, but after all that has happened over the last two, we may not have deserved it. Once again, it is not the most complicated or the most obtuse game released this year, quite frankly Back 4 Blood (Left 4 Dead 3) made itself flabby and unnecessarily convoluted, yet still ends up the bottom of my list because of it. Honestly, the Game Awards can die in a bin for making It Takes Two game-of-the-year, it was bland and unlikeable.

That’s the problem I had with this year, either you were Deathloop and Back 4 Blood, adding unneeded faff onto what was already there, or you were It Takes Two and Returnal, too bland to be described as tasting like chicken. There were brilliant games, games that deserve to be hyped to the moon and back: Ratchet and Clank: Rifts Apart, Forza Horizon 5, and Psychonauts 2, to name a few. Though beyond exclusivity and generational gaps, Psychonauts 2 is the only one left, and I think it might be cheating if you give something the award for just being more of the thing you have nostalgia for (hi Evil Genius 2!).

So to return back to Moonglow Bay, there was very little originality in the year breaking through and giving that warm and gentle hug. Once again, like Bus Simulator there were issues. There were always going to be when BunnyHug are such a small team expected to fight with the big lads over at Insomniac Games, who were revealed to be wizards this year. Moonglow Bay is to fishing what Stardew Valley is to farming, maybe not as in-depth with who it is you marry, but still the relaxing “where did the last 3-hours ago” type of experience

Top 3 – Last Stop

I don’t think anyone else is putting Last Stop anywhere near their top three games of the year, and quite frankly I don’t blame them. I would have been more hesitant to do so as well, however, it is exactly what I like: Weird and Doctor Who. Or more accurately, weird Doctor Who. Of this year’s two Doctor Who games, the other being The Edge of Reality, this is the one that stood out and made itself enjoyable as a whole. I felt connected to the characters. Something else it was doing, unlike Jodie’s adventures of late, was providing an adventure that was enjoyable.

The Edge of Reality felt more like a theme park ride, and while Last Stop doesn’t set you on blocks and tell you to run, it did give the illusion of something. Last Stop told a video game story, not the best one but one that satisfies well enough. The Edge of Reality was set-piece after set-piece of an experience. One of course is better than the other in my opinion and that would be Last Stop because it is built from the ground up to be a video game. The Edge of Reality was a VR experience, and while it is fun to be chased by some Angels, it wasn’t the best game.

Why am I putting Last Stop in third ahead of Moonglow Bay? It was a better story that pulled me along by simply being familiar. As I made clear when talking about Watch Dogs: Legion, very few games capture that feeling of being quintessentially English, British, or something a little broader for the UK that encapsulates that multiculturalism of London. Last Stop had a bit of humor, at least a tiny bit of multiculturism, and simply made for a fun adventure.

There were moments that clanged down the street like Claire in that first episode of Doctor Who: Flux, some of the big sister telling-off moments particularly. Also, the gameplay for the most part was that of Quantic Dream’s biggest dreams, however, Last Stop was at least compelling. It had art that was simple but didn’t do a Funko-Pop and remove all detail, characters that are likable, and generally achieved what it set out to do. Last Stop stood out this year simply for doing something well.

Top 3 – Loop Hero

There is doing something well and then there is entirely capturing my mind and staying there for several months on end. Loop Hero still sits among my daily thoughts despite not being particularly flashy or exciting to some others, it is a somewhat retro-style Rogue-like/lite idle game about building a world. On the surface, it is nothing more than that and while I did get a little bored by the story rambling on a bit, it was doing something similar to Hades by building up your home that you return to.

I think it is the simplicity and accessibility of Loop Hero that melts it into every waking moment. On every loop, you gain loot which you can do two things with, gamble it on one more run or take it home and build up the camp you’ve created. In each loop, you fight rats, goblins, and other mythical creatures. That is, alongside your want to shout about stabbing that rat in the face now because you aren’t doing the combat. Generally, between the retro-style and the mythical setting, normally I’d be tapping out and saying “I am done;” Reading stylized text in itself is a big enough hassle with retro-style games typically.

However, Loop Hero does what some others have done these past few years, it has a dyslexic font. Stripping away the stylization allowing for ease of reading the text, the story no longer feels like a chore, and the overall experience is enhanced. It makes skimming the details about a ring’s 2% chance of increasing health or whatever into a quick 1-second job. In a game entirely about quick decisions to keep the loop going, that is heavily important to gameplay as much as it is me as a dyslexic.

Loop Hero is strange, and I like strange. It is hard to pin down Loop Hero because while you are idle for 99% of it, you are actually doing something. While it is about going around dungeons randomly generated collecting loot, it isn’t much of a Rogue-like/lite either. It is gambling masked as a fantasy void being filled in by you, as you remember it, with elements of those ideas of gameplay without fully committing. Not something I’d say every game should be for the next three years, but certainly it is an idea I think could be worked on and refined.

Top 3 – Unpacking

The only game that unintentionally gave the biggest gut-punch because it told a story, allowed me to piece together who it was, and provided everything I’d ever want from a game is Unpacking. Once again, this is not a game that needs to be reproduced on a mass-scale like open worlds following San Andreas or Rogue-likes after The Binding of Isaac. Nevertheless, Unpacking is a game that I could see being expanded upon, telling a more complex story and one that lasts more than a few hours.

It is the simplicity that metaphorically drags me under. The ability to see relationships and break-ups not through dialogue that lands like the last series of Game of Thrones, but by simply seeing what is taken through the character’s life. You are given enough room as a participant in the story to interpret moments. When they turn out as you expect, there is happiness. When that unintentional gut-punch I mentioned came, it was through that ability to interpret moments of the story and an external factor. Nevertheless, Unpacking did something no other game pulled out of me this year, an emotional response.

Maybe it was the lack of “everyone played X” this year, or maybe it was the number of delays. 2021 was just a bit of a crap year for games, and I say this as it was the year of the sequel: Ratchet and Clank, Halo (another one), Resident Evil Village, Hitman 3, Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 5, Monster Hunter Rise, Far Cry 6, Metroid Dread, Life is Strange, Age of Empires IV, Battlefield, Chivalry 2, Shin Megami Tensei V, Pokémon Snap, and Evil Genius 2. If you wanted more of what we’ve already had, this was a good year for you, but outside it was Deathloop, It Takes Two, and a collection of indies.

If 2022 goes ahead as it is scheduled to thus far, I’ve got a feeling it could be one of the greats like 2001. We’ve got Elden Ring, Dying Light 2, Starfield, God of War: Ragnarok, Suicide Squad, Two Point Campus, Salt and Sacrifice, Bear and Breakfast, the Saints Row reboot, Stray, and sure, Hogwarts Legacy. No matter who you are, next year has something interesting for you on the horizon and that is a brilliant year if all those live up to the hype machine. If not, we’ll have another indie-heavy, COVID-19 impacted year full of bitterness, again.