Well, year is almost over, so might as well. I mean, there's technically still half a day left, but tonight there's other fun activities on the menu. That said, it's been kind of a slow year, innit? At least it was for me. Spent most of it playing older games, great for backlog reduction. So not a whole lot of 2021 releases played, most of which were pretty solid, but unlike previous years, none of them really surprised me with their excellence or provided me something I wanted but didn't know I wanted until I received it. On the flipside, I've also not played any real stinkers, with one major exception,just ones that were fine but that I expected more from.
Ok, fine, jeez. Let's just start with this year's losers, in no particular order:
The Losers of 2021
Balan Wonderworld
The only truly bad game I played this year, bot howdy is it bad. I tried the demo for an hour, and Iif I could, I'd sue Squenix for damages for that hour, it's that bad. At a conceptual level, this is actually not that bad, but the execution of every single idea is so excruciatingly poor, if you told me this was the product of 1st year game design students, I wouldn't believe you because they can do better.
Control
You're put in charge of an expy of the SCP Foundation, tasked with containing all kinds of eldritch anomalies that may end the world. Very cool concept, but unfortunately, the game doesn't really do much interesting with it. It looks really good, and it has one really fun level, but otherwise is mostly a rather boring third person shooter, and that's before you discover that telekinetically chucking shit around is the win button.
Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door
No, really. I know this game has a vaunted reputation as one of, if not the best Mario rpg, but I'm not seeing it and while I initially liked it, I ended up sorely disappointed by the end. It's got charming visuals and kind of fun characters, but actually playing the game is often imo such a slog. For every fun section is another overlong one of going back and forth between two characters/places on opposite ends of the map, doing the same basic platforming and fighting the same groups of enemies, over and over.
Resident Evil Village
Another one I found disappointing, even if it's pretty much RE4 with tig bitty vampire dom, bigass mouth baby and, huh, that's really all I can recall about it. I remember is a fine enough game, but just lacking in memorable standout moments, whether running away from a boulder, suplexing medieval monks, or dressing up like a Chicago gangster and moving everything down with a Thompson machine gun.
Neo The World Ends With You
I liked the first game a lot back in the day, but I bounced off this so hard. Didn't really like the combat system, nor the characters or plot progression, nor the kind of cheap presentation. Soundtrack is neat, but songs repeat from the beginning so often, you keep hearing the same 30 seconds, and it gets super grating.
The Winners of 2021
Mother 3
This game also has a reputation. And it imo actually lives up to it. It is a beautiful adventure that is excellently paced and never feels like you're just doing stuff to pad out the runtime. It's battle system is simple, yet elegant, and the gameplay offers lots of little touches that just make it a fun to play. But above all, it knows how to pull those strings, heartwarming at one point, gutwrenching at another.
Metroid Dread
I love me some metroidvania, and Metroid in particular and this scratches all the right itches, offering plenty of opportunity for exploration of its maps and mechanics, all wrapped up in a package that looks very good for Switch and runs near flawlessly. Zero Mission is imo still the best of the series, but Dread represents a welcome return to form.
Persona 5
Killer soundtrack, slick visuals oozing with style, a fun combat system and an engaging cast of characters. While I felt the final section of the game kind of dropped the ball, I overall consider it a top tier jrpg with a wealth of content and enough pizazz to actually want to do as much of it as I can.
Monster Hunter Rise
It's Monster Hunter World, my goty for 2018, but with a bunch of quality of life improvements and rideable doggo and crappling hook that offer a lot of new mobility and combat options. That said, I still rate World a little higher since it introduced me to the series, and thus has novelty on its side. Rise, while overall a better game, never occupied as much mindspace due to diminishing returns.
HITMAN
Kind of sucks that the progression is tied to an online system, but other than that I had a ton of fun replaying missions over in all kinds of ways, just to see what kind of ludicrous shenanigans I could get away with while still completing the objectives. I do hope part 3 will make its way off the Epic store and onto Steam or anywhere else sometime.
