Top 10 Favorite Games of 2021

I know we’re already a month and a half into 2022, but now that I’ve started up my blog again, I couldn’t help but reflect back on what a great year 2021 was for gaming. Last year was the first full year with the next gen consoles, and quite a few great games were released to showcase the new tech—though I had to add a couple older games which I played for the very first time as well.

Without further adieu, let’s move into my honorable mention for top 10 favorite games of 2021!

Honorable Mention: Deathloop

Enter Colt Vahn, a man stuck in a time loop on the mysterious island of Blackreef. His mission: to kill eight 'visionaries' in order to break the loop. While this game topped a lot of people’s game of the year lists, it just managed to squeak into my top 10. Don’t get me wrong, though—this is an excellent game. Great gunplay and banter throughout. Lots of funny moments, brutal kills, and very creative use of powers. And fantastic Arkane level design. The ending fell a little flat for me, but the game was more about the journey and the mystery of the time loop than the final destination. Probably Arkane’s most widely accessible game, though I think I generally prefer their more linear narratives like the Dishonored series. A big part of the game is revisiting the same areas over and over again. Part of this is becoming familiar with the levels and knowing their ins and outs so they become almost second nature to ‘speed run,’ and part of this is finding the differences in the level depending on the time of day. That can become tedious, but the game helps alleviate the potential monotony by giving you specific objectives to focus on each run, leading you into every corner of each level. A very fun game worth checking out if you have a PS5. Otherwise, I expect this game to show up on Xbox Game Pass sometime next year once it's timed exclusivity window expires, so that’ll probably be the best time to check it out down the road.

10. Death's Door

You play a crow reaper, collecting lost souls and ferrying them to 'the other side.' Throughout your adventure, you will battle with the bloated souls of those who have escaped death for so long they have become corrupted monstrosities. Created by a small two person team, Death’s Door harkens back to classic Zelda games with their overhead perspective and frequent dungeon delving, but with a bit more of a deadly hack n’ slack combat style. The art is gorgeous, the level designs are wonderful, and the characters come with all of the quirky, sometimes creepy stylings of the best Zelda NPCs. Complete with intricate dungeons, hookshot puzzles, and an umbrella as one of a variety of silly and cool weapons, this game is really worth checking out if you’re in the mood for a solid fantasy adventure story with some challenging combat.

9. Sable

This game captured my imagination. Aesthetically, it reminds me so strongly of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (go watch this movie if you haven't yet). The game takes place on a strange alien desert world full of giant bugs and ancient spaceship wreckage where everyone wears a different mask associated with their profession/calling. You play Sable, a young girl who sets out on a coming-of-age quest—her gliding. The purpose of a gliding is for a young person to see the world, meet all sorts of people, sample all walks of life, and collect different masks associated with different vocations—futures which Sable can choose to embrace or set aside. The game openly steals the mechanics from Breath of the Wild in all but combat (there is zero combat), allowing for stress-free exploration and adventure. The writing is clever and wholesome, and at times the game does a great job dipping into philosophies of what kind of lives we can and should live. As you explore the world with your sci-fi speeder bike (customizable in very cool ways), you will find old shipwrecks scattered across the dunes, hinting at a former spacefaring life which brought your people to this alien world. And while you do uncover the origins of your people and their different cultural quirks, the game isn’t really about that. It’s about finding oneself. It’s about the joy of exploration and discovery. Despite some occasional framerate issues in most areas (and some really rough framerate issues in a couple specific biomes), I find myself regularly thinking back very fondly on this game.

8. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

While there are over a dozen previous Ratchet & Clank titles, this was my first in the series. I was a little worried about that jumping into this game, but Rift Apart turned out to be a great introduction to the setting and characters. I never felt lost amid the history of the franchise. This game is a masterclass of AAA polish. Every animation, biome, and combat encounter was beautifully rendered, and all the while the game ran like a dream. Despite a cartoony character art direction, the game has some absolutely gorgeous scifi landscapes, exuding such a strong Star Wars feel in its world design. The massive array of creative weapons and gadgetry kept me entertained throughout (shoutout to the topiary gun which turns enemies into plants for a short time), and the story was heartfelt—if a bit by the numbers. An evil mastermind accidentally tears open a rift in reality, revealing an alternate dimension in which he conquered the whole galaxy. Ratchet and Clank, alongside their dimensional counterparts, Rivet & Kit, must save not just one galaxy, but several. Also, despite the game being named after the titular characters, the new characters—Rivet & Kit—absolutely stole the show. A fun interdimensional romp to save the multiverse, this game never reached the heights of my favorite games, but it was consistently great throughout in every way. This game, along with the recent Spider-Man games, has solidified Insomniac as one of the powerhouse studios of Sony’s stable.

7. Psychonauts 2

Much like Ratchet & Clank, this game was my introduction to the series. The only reason I decided to try it was because I was able to play it through Xbox Game Pass, and wow I’m glad I did. Psychonauts combines a sort of cartoony James Bond superspy feel with an organization of psychic superheroes who safeguard the world against psychic threats. It follows Rasputin, the young protagonist from the first game, who comes from a family of circus acrobats. While this game builds pretty heavily on the plot from the first game, a quick YouTube recap was all I really needed to get me up to speed. And honestly, the game presents itself well enough that you don’t feel too lost jumping in at 2. A sequel coming out 16 years after the first installment might give some people pause, but it’s such a fantastic game through and through. It artfully deals with past traumas and how those experiences can shape the ways in which people view the world. The game is classic 3d platforming goodness, with some bonkers level design that involves Rasputin traversing through other people’s minds, exploring the strange spaces of their past through a surreal lens. One level in particular felt like strolling through a 60s acid trip, complete with psychedelic visuals and groovy music, all while you follow a talking mote of light voiced by Jack Black. As a 3d platformer, it doesn’t feel as polished as Ratchet & Clank, but the story and depth of the writing helped push it ahead of Ratchet for me.

6. Ori and the Will of the Wisps

I played the original Ori and the Blind Forest back when it first released on PC in 2015. I enjoyed it quite a bit—the art was charming, and the story was tragic and beautiful. But something about the game was a bit of a slog to get through, despite being so well crafted. It was one of those experiences that was good throughout, but I struggled every step of the way to sit down and keep playing. So when the sequel came out late 2020, I didn’t jump on it right away. Once I got ahold of the new Xbox earlier this year, though, I had to check it out on Game Pass. And I'm so glad I did. What a magical sequel. It improved over the first installment in every conceivable way. The platforming was better, the combat was sharper and more fleshed out, and the characters and locations felt more varied and interesting. It continued the tone of the first game, mixing together a blend of magical and tragic moments, all wrapped up in some of the most gorgeous fairytale visuals I've ever seen. A top tier Metroidvania, no doubt about it. Technically demanding, satisfying to master. I would strongly recommend playing both games in order, but if you try out the first one and can't get into it, don't discount the sequel before trying it out.

5. Life is Strange: True Colors

I don’t want to take up too much time talking about the original Life is Strange. Suffice it to say that game threw me into a hardcore gamer funk for a couple weeks during which I mostly just listened to the soundtrack on repeat in a melancholy stupor. While I can say the first game affected me more strongly, I think True Colors is a superior game across the board. Alex Chen, the protagonist, is such a well-rounded character, and her supporting cast and the setting are all fantastic. Alex moves to a new town to reconnect with her long-lost brother, and quickly gets embroiled in a possible murder mystery/conspiracy. Her power, to sense the emotions of those around her, initially sounded like it’d be kind of a dud—especially coming off the previous game powers of time manipulation and telekinesis. But True Colors utilizes her abilities so well throughout. The setting of Haven Springs, a small idyllic town in the mountains of Colorado, was breathtaking. This game was just a joy to play throughout, and it really rewarded you for growing your relationships with the different townsfolk. Gameplay is fairly light—it’s mostly a choice-based narrative—but coming in at about 8 hours in total, it feels more like a fantastic season of a show that you get to participate in. Great to play with a friend or loved one who also loves narrative-driven stories.

4. Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation has been stuck in my backlog pretty much since its release in 2014. I don’t much care for scary games, but I'd heard nothing but great things about this game for years now, so I thought I’d finally give it a try. And wow—this game enthralled me. It nailed the setting and atmosphere of the original 1979 movie so strongly that I couldn’t help but be giddy whenever I sat down to play. It just felt like it belonged in the Alien universe, like it was plucked straight from the mind of Ridley Scott. Not that it had a ground-breaking or incredible story by any stretch, but it so thoroughly established this run-down Sevastopol Space Station, a wholly new setting in the franchise, and made it feel like it easily could have come straight from one of the franchise's best movies. The sound design and the analogue tech all felt perfectly scifi retro. Using the motion detector was both helpful and terrifying. Running around the space station avoiding the alien, dangerous humans, and even more dangerous malfunctioning androids was just so incredibly fun. I have to admit, I feel like the game was maybe an hour or two longer than it should have been, but the journey was absolutely worth it, and one of my favorite gaming experiences this year.

3. The Artful Escape

This game is short and it is beautiful. Clocking in at about 4 hours, you play as Francis Vendetti, a young musician living in the shadow of his legendary folk musician Uncle. He feels he’s expected to become the next great folk musician, but his heart is full of lasers, synths, and space opera. On the eve of his great musical debut, he is unexpectedly whisked away by an alien from another world to fill in a vacant spot for a galactic concert, and he then goes on an acid trip of a romp through psychedelic scifi planets and cities on a journey to discover who he is and what he wants to be. This game is on Xbox Game Pass and is absolutely a must play. You might try it and it might not be for you, but I strongly think everyone should check it out. The music and art alone are breathtaking, and the voice acting is really top notch. Carl Weathers in particular is great. The gameplay is fairly light—some rhythm sections in a Simon Says style, and some light left to right platforming—but the game is much more about the experience than any technical difficulty in traversing the levels or overcoming the challenges. The journey is primarily one of self-discovery for the protagonist, and it’s handled really well. If you’re ever in the mood for a bizarre Ziggy Stardust romp through the Cosmic Extraordinary, check out The Artful Escape. You won’t regret it.

2. Metroid: Dread

My journey with Metroid began back on my brother’s NES. I played the first 15 minutes of Metroid for years as a kid, never getting farther than the morph ball upgrade, never really progressing in any meaningful way. I'd just hop in, get lost immediately, and jam out to the sweet music and foreboding scifi setting. Fast forward to 2021, I hadn’t touched another Metroid game since the original, but I had fallen in love with the Metroidvania genre—Hollow Knight being the major standout. The structure of traversing a complex world, seeking out upgrades which grant access to previously inaccessible areas, and all the while battling challenging bosses...it's a magical formula. With the looming release of Metroid: Dread, I decided to lean into the oncoming hype train and finally play through as many Metroid games as I could. I burned through Super Metroid, Zero Mission, and Fusion in the two week lead-up to Dread’s release. Each game came with its own frustrations, its own moments when I needed a guide. But with each game, I needed a guide less and less. And as I became more familiar with the conventions of the series, I kind of fell in love with it all. It became a quick obsession, to the point where Mandy and I went on a trip the weekend of Dread’s release, and I brought a whole ass Wii-U with me so I could finish the last couple hours of Metroid: Fusion before diving into Dread itself.

Metroid: Dread is the perfect blend of old and new. It’s polished as all hell and controls like a dream, bringing with it some welcome quality of life updates. Getting a scan ability that will let me know if there are breakable walls anywhere nearby? Glorious. The sliding and parrying mechanics? Perfection. I didn’t get lost nearly as often as the previous games, and a big part of that is how the game locks you into certain paths at key points, keeping you from wandering too far off the objective path (which for me was helpful, since the next objective was often a total mystery). I know for some people the sheer vastness of being lost is the heart of the series (looking at you, Super Metroid), and I agree to a certain extent. I enjoyed Metroid: Fusion less than the others due to its linearity. And honestly, Dread is probably just as linear. But for me, it comes down to level design. Fusion’s linearity was due to the whole game taking place on a single space station as you moved from compartment to compartment. It made logical sense, and it was still a great game, but due to the layout, most of the levels in Fusion felt too organized and samey for my tastes. While at times Dread deals with a similar linearity, you’re still delving into the heart of a planet, discovering crumbling ruins, foreboding caves, mysterious laboratories, and active lava flows—the stuff I really loved from Zero Mission and Super Metroid. Plus, the game still lets you wander off the beaten path, allowing for those long stretches of aimless exploration that are so core to the Metroid experience.

This game solidified Samus Aran as an absolute badass for me. She always was, mind you. Even in my abridged playthrough of the series, I’d already blown up two planets and a space station. But like with many older games, your imagination does a lot of the heavy lifting. On screen, you’re often just flipping around a small 30x30ft room blasting a big pixely pterodactyl dude. But Dread brings the cinematic qualities that I love so much from modern games. You smoothly transition from gameplay into Samus dodging an attack and running along a boss’s arm, shooting power beams into their face the whole time, then leaping off and transitioning back to 2d gameplay. You get contextual moves like Samus prying a creature’s jaws open and blasting rockets down it’s throat. You get some absolutely savage takedowns that previously would have been left up to your imagination. Samus moves with the practiced precision of a warrior at the peak of her game, and that was the most enchanting quality of Dread. This game sold me on just how awesome Samus is. That’s not really new—she’s always been a total badass—but this game showed me over and over again why Samus Aran is the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy. I can’t wait to for the next Metroid game now, and I’ve never felt that way before.

1. Returnal

If someone were to ask me what I would want out of a 3d 3rd person Metroid game, I’d ultimately settle on something resembling Returnal. Returnal was created by Housemarque Studio, best known for their arcade-like game experiences like Resogun. But while their previous games were critical successes, they were all commercial duds. And so they decided to try their hand at a 3rd person action roguelite, but they didn’t want to leave their arcade roots behind.

Returnal is a game about an ASTRA Scout named Selene who is investigating a mysterious distress signal on a forbidden alien planet, Atropos. Her ship is shot down, but she survives and climbs out of the wreckage. Among the strange alien ruins, she finds the body of another ASTRA Scout, but she discovers it isn't another Scout—its her. Upon her eventual death, she finds herself reliving the moments of the crash and stepping from the wreckage. And that is the game, the central mystery. She wakes up from the crash, attempts to reach this distress signal, and when she dies, she wakes up again in the crash.

This live, die, repeat cycle isn’t just a gameplay quirk. Every death chips away another piece of her sanity. Narratively, the game deals very directly with what effect this endless cycle of death and rebirth has on Selene’s mind. She uncovers more bodies of previous (or future?) Selenes, each with an audio log that offers a glimpse into the unstable mind of a person slowly driven mad by the strange, hostile planet. The world itself is gorgeous, with six varied biomes that all deliver on the unique, eerie quality that makes Atropos so memorable for me. The ending is a little more ambiguous than I might have preferred, but it definitely works, and the journey itself offers some deeply satisfying twists and turns as it toys with the time loop conceit.

While I loved the narrative journey of this game, the real star of the show was the gameplay. The Dualsense made every gun feel extremely unique. Every shotgun blast was different than every pistol or carbine trigger-pull. You could feel the raindrops in your hands as you traveled through the damp forest. You could feel the Arrakis-like sands blowing against your suit. This game, much like Astrobot’s Playroom, is a masterful showcase of what the PS5 and Dualsense controller have to offer. The game is definitely a challenge at times, but it’s deeply rewarding for mastering the systems. Each run has you collecting better weapons and artifacts, dashing and dodging through a psychedelic bullet hell spawned from a bizarre menagerie of Lovecraftian horrors. Even after Platinuming this game, I still find myself dropping back in for a run every now and again. The gunplay is just plain fun. It’s the type of game that the more you play, the faster and more thoroughly you can destroy any enemies you come across. That is, until you get a bit too careless. Then your run comes to an abrupt and violent end. But that’s ok. It’s all part of the journey. There’s always next run.

And there you have it!

Honorable Mention: Deathloop

10. Death's Door

09. Sable

08. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

07. Psychonauts 2

06. Ori and the Will of the Wisps

05. Life is Strange: True Colors

04. Alien: Isolation

03. The Artful Escape

02. Metroid: Dread

01. Returnal

If you decide to check out any of these games, please let me know. While I know they might not be for everyone, they're all fantastic in their own ways, and I had such a wonderful time playing through each of these games last year. I'm already digging into some phenomenal games in 2022, and I look forward to doing more of these write-ups.

Later!