I don’t know how but despite all available evidence (i.e. vibes and my crumbling ability to perceive the passage of time), apparently it’s the end of another year. Yeah, I don’t believe it either, but just in case we’re both wrong, for safety I give you my favourite video games of 2021! Much like my list from last year, this one isn’t going to be ranked in any particular order, but unlike that post, I’m not going to settle on an absolute favourite because, to be completely honest, I don’t really have a number one this year. These are all incredible games that made my year categorically better but the ones I would consider top-tier are also games I enjoy for very different reasons. As such, I hope this doesn’t dissuade you from continuing on because I did actually enjoy these games, for reasons that will hopefully be evident once you’re done!

Before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to shout out the games that didn’t *quite* make the top seven, but we’re nonetheless very enjoyable, or were titles I simply haven’t played enough to hold a concrete opinion on right now. Regardlessz you should absolutely check out the following as well:

• Deathloop
• Metroid Dread
• Shin Megami Tensei V
• Pokémon: Brilliant Diamond
• Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
• F1 2021
• Resident Evil Village
• The Forgotten City
• NieR Replicant
• Little Nightmares 2
• Scarlet Nexus

With all that out of the way, here are my top seven games, in no particular order, of 2021. Enjoy!

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RETURNAL

First of all, I want to say that I cannot believe a game as niche as Returnal was given the triple AAA treatment. It’s a good sign that Sony appears willing to take risks on games like this that only appeal to freaks like myself, because I will continue to ingest this good content forever if need be.

Returnal is a time-loop game, a strangely specific sub-genre of games that seemed to thrive this year (if I had a nickel for every big-budget PS5 exclusive where being trapped in a time loop is the main mechanic, etc etc). Its companion in this field, Deathloop, is really fun and enjoyable in its own right, but where that game’s story feel short due to a seeming lack of confidence in its central conceit, Returnal differs by supplying confident storytelling in fucking spades. That’s a particularly surprising thing to state considering how, for lack of a better term, “game-y” Returnal is from the get-go. As soon as you take control of the protagonist, Selene, you’ll notice immediately just how inhuman she feels to play as. She runs at lightning pace, could jump the length of a bus, and hip-fires like you’d expect from the most talented irresponsible American gun owner. She also has a jetpack for double jumps and a dash ability that would turn any normal person to paste. This is all to say, while Selene controls like a dream, she doesn’t quite play in the same naturalistic way one might expect from your standard narrative-driven PlayStation exclusive protagonist. However, despite this huge difference, Returnal, presumably as a prank, goes and tells one of the most compelling stories of the year, and delivers it in the most uniquely brilliant way it could.

The story of Selene, how she ended up on this time-looping nightmare planet, and what happened in her life to be totally fine with exploring the darkest reaches of the universe, is something of a puzzle box the player is invited to navigate over the many hours they’ll spend getting their entire ass handed to them. Returnal, as you may have already heard, is not a very easy video game. Quite the contrary; it’s an absolute bitch to play sometimes, but in the best way possible. The melding of developer Housemarque’s bullethell beginnings with the contemporary trend of third person action works to create a decidedly stomach-clenching experience that refuses to take it easy. For a lot of people, that’s going to be a huge turn-off, and I can understand that completely. That being said, I personally really appreciated how challenging Returnal is, not just because it’s an incredibly fun game to master, but also how that difficulty is utilised as a storytelling device. Without spoiling too much, the hardships you face as a player feel as though you are stuck in Selene’s shoes, and that shared overcoming of hardship is a really effective method of having the player empathise with Selene’s personal battles.

Returnal is, at its core, a story about cycles. Of course, there’s the main setup of a time-loop that brings Selene back from the dead and refuses to let her leave, but there’s also an emotional cycle Selene is simultaneously trapped in. Very quickly, it becomes clear that weird time travel stuff isn’t the only thing going on around this planet. The world starts conjuring up images from Selene’s past, most notably a house that could not possibly be here, if not for Selene’s experiences within it. Entering the house causes Selene to visit events from her past, often from the perspective of what is presumably her child and, more importantly, distorted by whatever alien entity is recreating these moments. The further into the game you journey, the more challenges you are able to overcome, you are rewarded with new pieces of information gradually pointing toward a fully picture, one too terrifying for Selene to confront.

In that sense, the difficulty of getting through the hardships of Returnal functions as a sort of gamified substitute for Selene’s struggle in confronting her past and moving on from it. What I appreciate about Returnal is how sure of itself it is; it delivers the story it wishes to tell, and allows the audience to make of it whatever they will. Selene is, after all, a vessel through which the player can experience the narrative. As such, the game seems willing to be open-ended enough about the specifics of its story that the player can have an easier time connecting to it, and therefore viewing the act of beating Returnal as an emotional victory of their own. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I found myself connecting strongly with the sentiment of feeling like every new day is just the same day on loop. I know personally what it feels like to feel as though the efforts you make in the short term fix very little in the grand scheme of that weird and complicated thing called your life.

Overcoming the challenges presented in Returnal can be daunting, and god knows some of it took me a while, but actually managing it, and enjoying those little victories was incredibly gratifying. Returnal is adamant in instilling an important lesson in whoever decides to play it; life is hard, and sometimes it can feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over again, but so long as you give every day your all and make the most of what you have, there is happiness, and perhaps even salvation, to be found.

Also, the soundtrack is absolutely banging and Sony needs to add Hyperion’s theme to Spotify before I civilian arrest them for atrocious vibes. That’s all, play Returnal if you can!

INSCRYPTION

One of the cooler trends of the past few years that became popular in the indie scene is the subgenre of self-aware video games. Not the Deadpool brand of self-awareness where its intent is to make you laugh; rather, the game goes out of its way to seemingly invade your computer, messing with files or even managing to dig up your real name and feed it back to you in-game. It’s a very effective way to unsettle the player, made particularly special by its uniqueness as a storytelling mechanic that can only really work in the medium of video games. Games like Doki Doki Literature Club or Undertale manage to tear away the wall separating player and game, to create a experience that might have you questioning your relationship with the media you consume.

Another game fitting within this niche is the 2015 game Pony Island, created by indie developer Daniel Mullins. The premise of that game was a fairly straightforward one: it begins as a simplistic game about a pony running through a utopic green field. However, soon the facade drops, leaving behind the hellish realisation that you are currently trapped in a video game developed by Satan themselves, designed to trap souls with pretty colours and overall nice vibes. Your objective is to escape, and the game throws a number of tricks at you to prevent that, and without spoiling anything more, it is extremely effective in that pursuit. It’s clear that Mullins’ intention with Pony Island was to simulate the sensation of accidentally cursing your computer and trying desperately to troubleshoot it until it’s fixed, so you can go back to using your computer like any other sane adult: watching Critical Role animatics while speedrunning a 5,000 word university essay at 4am.

What I love so, so, so much about Inscryption is it essentially takes the whole ‘being cursed’ concept and turns it up past the breaking point. It’s really difficult to talk about the ways in which this game continuously fucks with you at every opportunity without diving into spoilers. That being said, what you have in the early hours is a strategy card game fused with an escape room puzzle, stuck with a creepy old guy who has you trapped in what appears to be a manky old shack in the woods. The unbreaking first-person perspective, and the way your camera movements operate like your character is glancing frantically around as if seeing something move from the shadows, contributes to this overwhelming sense of imprisonment. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, you are not in control, and that makes your gradual besting of the odds feel all the more satisfying. Beyond that, however, is a story operating on multiple, equally bizarre levels that result in a game that never stops being engaging. I haven’t quite finished it yet because of Real-life Responsibilities™, but I have complete faith that whatever is coming next will be just as absurd and fascinating as before.

OMORI

Alright, so the thing about Omori is it’s not, strictly speaking, a 2021 game. Rather, it released on Christmas Day 2020 and as such you might think its placement on this list is cheating in some way. Bear in mind, however, the unreasonably little amount of time left in the year upon its launch. It’s a game that took me 23 hours to beat in total, and given the hectic nature of the last few days of the year, compounded with the fact that I’m a university student with nary a copper to my name, I don’t think it’s fair to expect I finish it by the year’s end. In summary, suck my dumptruck ass; it stays.

Beginning as a successful Kickstarter campaign, Omori took seven years to develop and, having played it to completion, I can absolutely see why. It isn’t a game that cuts corners or half-asses; within this 20+ hour story is a series of events ranging from a space town helmed by a pirate named Space Boyfriend, to an underground casino belonging to a ruthless shark mafia boss with a fatherly connection to one of your party members, and many other scenarios and areas, each as strange and memorable as the last.
The way I’m describing it, Omori must sound like a delightful little adventure, but I can assure you (or perhaps should warn you) that it is far more than that. Without giving too much away because this is another game best experienced as blind as possible, I’ll say that this game is much more sinister than it appears. It isn’t a bait-and-switch like Doki-Doki; rather, it is more a case of nothing in the game being as it seems. It doesn’t deceive necessarily, but instead slowly reveals its hand. Behind all the cutesy imagery lies a much more sombre reality.

However, the multi-layered nature of this game is not the beginning and end of Omori’s complexity. In fact, it lets you in on the story’s double meaning rather quickly. What makes this game so special is instead the simple fact that Omori is an intensely well-designed game and a beautifully interwoven narrative. It allows its characters to experience despair and exposes their deepest flaws, and forces the player to wallow in some deeply haunting truths, but ultimately, it always returns to this overruling philosophy that with friends by your side, you can surpass any obstacle. The story essentially puts the tried-and-true “friendship is magic” ethos of many classic JRPGs and puts it through a psychological horror grinder, yet still manages to feel hopeful by the end, and that’s a real achievement, I think. Omori is funny and frightening and wholesome and heart-breaking, all in equal regard, and it handles its darker subject matter with a maturity rarely seen in any art medium, let alone video games. It releases on Switch in 2022 and I hope you consider picking it up because I believe it is truly one of a kind.

DEATH’S DOOR

Out of all the games featuring on this list, this is the one I was least sure about including. That is not to say Death’s Door is the worst game I’m recommending here – far from it! – but I can’t ignore that I first came away from the experience feeling a little underwhelmed. It was an interesting emotion to close on, considering what kinds of trials and tribulations I had overcome to get there (the game is really fun and good actually), but I spent a while trying to understand what made me feel that way. Ultimately, I believe it was a case of unfair expectations on my end. I think I expected, or perhaps even wanted, a certain type of story to be told here, and when it didn’t fulfil that blueprint in my mind, I had a difficult time engaging with what I was left with. However, after some time away from the game, plus being in the middle of my second playthrough as I write this, I can comfortably declare that Death’s Door deserves its place on my end-of-year list, because it is a deeply, almost scarily, good video game.

Developed primarily by just two people, Death’s Door is kind of an unbelievable achievement in a number of ways. Visually, it’s gorgeous and so aesthetically distinct from anything I’ve played before. It brings the lively cartoon aesthetic of many 2D games into the third dimension and it translates really nicely with very little jank, which is incredible because, again, this game was literally made by two people. The visuals bring a certain light-heartedness to what is otherwise a somewhat sombre narrative. It’s in the little details, like how when a character with a pot for a head bows to greet you a little soup falls out, or the immaculate comedic timing of re-enact the Zelda-esque drama of opening a chest, only for it to come alive and eat you. It lends such a cute personality to the world and, as a result, it feels more alive than it would otherwise.

That’s kind of what Death’s Door is all about: finding hope and joy in an otherwise hopeless state of affairs. The story isn’t overly complicated but it certainly feels familiar to our own world. In essence, the game presents the afterlife as a 9-to-5 occupation, where you take the role of a reaper, tasked with collecting souls from topside. Along the way, you meet a little collection of characters who each share their own perspectives on the current state of things. One older crow remarks that they used to have a lot more success collecting souls, but now people are dying less and they’re forced to consider the reality that their purpose in life is gradually slipping away with nothing to do. Another crow, your middle manager of sorts, is constantly stressed out of their mind about meeting quotas and not upsetting the higher-ups. The other desk worker sitting next to them has a slightly different temperament, in that they are endlessly horny for paperwork. Good for them.

What makes the story of Death’s Door so likeable, I think, is the way all of these strange and funny wee characters, despite having incredibly different motivations, all come to the same irrefutable conclusion regardless: the current way of things isn’t working, and something needs to change. That’s where you step in; as you collect more souls, you naturally become more powerful. You hear lots of different little stories from each of the main bosses that they have all been affected differently by the same busted system that has left everyone in your office aimless and miserable. These adversaries are all really fun and interesting in their own ways, and the worlds they rule over are equally absorbing. Nevertheless, by the end of the game, having seen all there is to see of this world and its many faults, you have the necessary context for why change needs to happen, and it needs to happen now, before it is all too late.

So it’s fairly obvious that this is an allegory for the late stage capitalist world we ourselves live in, but what I love about Death’s Door is the simplicity with which it communicates its ideology. It gives you this world full of these delightful people, many of whom are victims of this game’s rendition of capitalism, and it just makes you want to help these guys. Your player character, a tiny crow guy with a cool sword, isn’t given anything in the way of a backstory or motivations themselves, but I think that’s kind of a microcosm of what makes Death’s Door work so well. The world is dying, and you want to save the good people that would hurt. Sometimes, it really is that simple.

PSYCHONAUTS 2

I think it’s best to come clean here: despite having owned Psychonauts for literally years, I never played it beyond the opening mission. It isn’t a bad game by any means, and I’m sure that if I had stuck with it I would have enjoyed it a lot, but my problem is unfortunately a deeply subjective one. Like so many games before it, the reason I couldn’t play Psychonauts is because it’s an old game. I realise how utterly sad and reductive that sounds but please give me a chance to explain. I didn’t grow up playing games like Psychonauts, much as I wish I had. The way that game plays, the pacing of it, honestly the entire vibe of the experience is like trying to understand a foreign language to my diseased little brain. I had the same issue trying to play GTA: San Andreas a while back; coming off of GTA V, the entire feel of the game, lacking in the special ambience and refined controls of what I already knew so well, was so divergent from its follow-up that I found it immensely difficult to engage with. These games from a time gone by are almost definitely worthy of all the praise and acclaim they’ve been met with, but whenever I try to play them it just feels wrong in all the ways that count.

Considering this, I can happily report that Psychonauts 2 is an absolutely wonderful game that completely blew me away. What I love about it is the way that it feels like exactly the kind of incredible game I’ve heard so many people describe Psychonauts as. It embodies all the creativity, clever writing and fun that I’ve been told Double Fine are known for, made manifest in a game that actually feels intuitive for me to play. Raz, the protagonist of both Psychonauts titles, is perhaps one of the most likeable video game creations of all time, and he plays like a dream as well. Every conversation he has allows an opportunity for him to be his own delightful self, and the gameplay of mainly platforming is packed to bursting with personality. Even having never played the original game, I was able to pick up on how Raz incorporates the acrobatics he learned from his circus-working family into his moveset; jumping, swinging and even falling all possess a sprinkling of uniqueness to them that feels distinctly Raz.

Beyond that, the story at the heart of the game is perhaps the best I experienced this year. The overarching plot isn’t particularly complex, but it’s the steps the game takes to get there that make its narrative so effective. Essentially, the gameplay involves transporting into the minds of individuals and navigating the inner workings of their brains, in order to find a core problem and help to fix it. This separates the game into a series of detached little worlds unique to each person you help. For example, the mind of a gambling addict takes the form of a casino hospital, while an insecure crazy dentist’s world is suitably teeth-ridden. One extended trek into a brain sees you guiding a featureless orb out of its unfeeling void, and you get to watch as it learns the beauty of experiencing every individual sense for the first time again. This sequence, of course, all takes place in a psychedelic album cover world reminiscent of the Beatles and the Flower Power era. The game just can’t hell but keep throwing new and exciting scenarios at you, often utilising interesting new mechanics in each encounter so the experience is always fresh.

If you haven’t played Psychonauts 2 yet (which would be fair since it’s a sequel to a 15-year-old game that financially detonated on impact), I hope these last couple paragraphs have convinced you to at least consider giving it a go. You only get games like this a couple times a year maximum, and if supporting it means more chances for Double Fine to keep creating wonderful experiences like this, then I’d call the purchase essential. I really mean this because our of all the games on this list, Psychonauts 2 is easily the one with the biggest heart. It sets out to tell a story about fractured people putting themselves back together with a little help from friends who care about them, and I think we could with more games like that in the world.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

It feels rather odd to put Guardians of the Galaxy on this list packed with experimental and deeply affecting works of fiction, because ultimately it is neither of those things. It doesn’t rock the boat in any meaningful way, nor does its story make me think deeply about my worldview or system of beliefs. It isn’t a revolution of game design or a narrative benchmark for the medium, but it does succeed in one crucial area, and one I often tend to overlook in conversations about end-of-year favourites: Guardians of the Galaxy is so much fun.

I don’t think it should be underestimated just how important fun can be in the equation of a game’s quality. It seems obvious and perhaps even second-nature, but this industry and all its many, many, many, MANY faults make it hard to accept pure fun as a metric for greatness. The triple AAA game scene is one marred with an absolute cavalcade of problems. The most significant is, of course, the ongoing issue of sexual abuse and harassment scandals and the issue of general workplace sexism and, as such, reduced opportunities for women in the industry (i.e. Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Quantic Dream, and so much more). Looking further back, we see the litany of calls to action regarding crunch culture the abuse inherent to those practices. 2020 and 2021 saw a surge of support for the victims of these systemic injustices and that is hopefully paving the way for a much better future for game developers.

That being said, very little tends to be said about the issue at the core of the games industry that will forever prevent it from being the fountain of creativity and innovation it should be: it’s capitalism. Big budget games are an investment, and so they are always created on the basis of a profit motive. Sometimes companies, such as Sony with their PlayStation exclusives, are relatively hands-off with what the developer end up creating, but what ultimately lies in the back of every developer’s mind, whether they like it or not, is the profit motive. No matter what wonderful things they create or imagine, the unfortunate truth is that, in the end, this game, their baby, is being made from the ground up to make money, and as such it must be marketable to a broader audience, and thus creativity is stifled as a result. Ultimately, capitalism operates in such a way where the people that the top – the ones perpetuating an often abusive and inhumane work culture – are incentivised to keep their positions at all cost, while the ordinary developer simply wanting to make the game suffers the brunt of these abuses, often with little return on their physical or emotional labour investment. It’s a bullshit system that necessarily upholds the worst aspects of the industry for the sake of profit, and that makes enjoying games created under this organisation markedly more difficult.

Considering this, Eidos Montreal stands out as being a noticeably unproblematic studio. It has had its fair share of controversies – the most notable being its decision to co-opt language from the Black Lives Matter movement for marketing of their game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – but nothing approaching the immediately harmful treatment of workers and issues of an abusive work culture. In fact, the opposite appears to be true, if reports that the studio is considering experimenting with a four-day work week are to be believed. In my research, I could not find any significant evidence that Eidos Montreal suffered the same systemic injustices that have long plagued the games industry, and without even knowing any of this ahead of time, this seeming encouragement to treat game development as a passion rather than a grindhouse is evident in Guardians of the Galaxy.

And so we come back to the opener: Guardians of the Galaxy is so much fun. But why is it so fun? That’s a question that requires a very subjective answer, and so here’s mine. Beyond the surface level pleasures – like how the teamwork focus in gameplay keeps combat dynamic and endless refreshing, or the way the main cast is so brilliantly written and play off each other wonderfully, or even the ability to bask the drop dead stunning visuals and aesthetics of this gorgeous universe – what stuck to me while I was playing it was this overwhelming sense that the developers were having fun creating it all, every step of the way. The narrative structure is pretty freeform and, in a lot of ways, quite messy and unfocused, but it works because it reminded me of the chaotic energy inherent to a really fun Dungeons and Dragons session, where your characters keep stumbling into increasing ridiculous scenarios entirely of their own making. The dialogue can come off as cringey and awkward sometimes, but not in that horribly corporate way where it was obviously a middle-aged dude trying to appeal to “the youth”; rather, it’s delivered with a refreshing confidence and ends up playing like a group of writers fucking around and seeing what sticks. There’s an scene where your character Peter bumps into an old companion whose face is held together by straps on account of inexplicably not having lips, and the only way you can get through that encounter unscathed is by reciting the song Storm Rider from memory, a song I had never once heard in my life, and the whole time I could not believe they had put this in a high-budget Marvel Comics licensed video game but I was so happy they did.

That’s what makes Guardians of the Galaxy such an absolute treat from start to finish. It is often clumsy and disorganised, and the story plays a bit like they were making it up as they went, but behind all the awkwardness lies a real passion and love from the studio for what they were making, and that can be such a rare thing for triple AAA games to capture. It’s far from perfect, but any changes you could argue to make the game more sufficiently “worth your money” would feel horribly reductive to me because what matters is one simple, unavoidable feature that transcends price or prestige, and that is this: Guardians of the Galaxy is so much fun, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

BEFORE YOUR EYES

I’ll be the first to admit that while 2021 was not lacking in really good and not bad video games, there were incredibly few titles that offered up an experience that I had never played before. I think Inscryption falls into this camp for extremely spoilery reasons, but the other game that felt truly fresh this year was Before Your Eyes.

There may be a lot of people who would feel apprehensive digging out £8 (or $10 if you’re a criminal) for what is functionally a 90-minute guided tour of a story with admittedly little in the way of “replay value”. However, the unique gimmick of Before Your Eyes is also its most compelling feature: time in the game passes every time you blink. Essentially, the game uses your webcam to track your eyes while you play, and that becomes your controller for the entire game. The story is structured as a series of vignettes chronicling the life and times of your character, but every time you blink, the game instantly ends whatever scene you’re in and starts the next one. There are also opportunities to make choices that shape the story you want to tell about the person you are inhabiting, which lends a necessary element of agency to the experience.

Like I said, this whole thing is basically a gimmick and the game leans on it the entire time, but you have to trust me when I say it completely works from start to finish. What helps is that every moment you witness through this person’s eyes is made incredibly engaging due to well-written dialogue with phenomenal performances to deliver it. The music is similarly built to perfection. Beyond that, it finds absolutely fascinating methods of subverting the mechanic that made for an experience I have never had before with another piece of art.

I fear that my description of Before Your Eyes may make it sound uneventful or overly simplistic, but I can’t stress enough that this is a game whose brilliance can only be made evident by experiencing it yourself. Interestingly, I feel no desire to ever return to this game. Beyond that, unlike a lot of other narrative-focused games I love, I am also not compelled to witness the experiences that others have with this game, be it friends of mine or simply YouTube playthrough. Unlike games such as Undertale or even Omori, where it’s fun to witness other people’s reactions to the same stories you’ve played through before, Before Your Eyes feels unique in that it, to me, was a deeply personal experience, and I believe the same will be true for anyone who plays it. The version of events that I saw – the scenes I strained my eyes to experience in their entirety, and the ones I sadly skipped over due to an accidental blink – feels like the only story that I ought to ever bear witness to. What makes every individual experience of this game unique isn’t that its scenes are randomised or procedurally generated; rather, it’s about what you chose to see, what you decided to skip, and everything in between. It’s incredible that a game where you simply sit on your chair and watch a story unfold before you can create a game experience this deeply involving and personal.

I hope I’ve made my case well enough because simply calling Before Your Eyes “special” and moving on feels like a disservice to what this game manages to achieve in such a short space of time. I truly don’t think there will ever be another game like it, and I think that’s okay, because what we have now is phenomenal.

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And that’s it! That’s the rundown on my increasingly deteriorating taste in art! I’ve unlocked the doors so you are now permitted to leave, but I hope you do not forget this mercy I have gifted you. You can make it up to me by checking out some of my other posts; I haven’t uploaded a lot this year for a number of reasons, but I would really like to get back into posting so, god willing, that will be something to enjoy in 2022. Anyway, thank you for sticking around this long. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you next year ❤