CG's Annual 2021 Best and Worst of the Year!

CriticalGaming

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Welp it looks to be about that time again my friends. The holiday end of the year wrap up in which we all get together to lavish praise and spit hate upon video games that particularlly made us take notice for the year. A completely pointless post that holds no meaning other than having a small circle discussion because nobody important will read anything we say, much less actually give a shit about it. Nick might see it, but he wont care either so....moving on!

THE BEST OF THE BEST:

So 2021 in general was a pretty lackluster year, with most hyped big profile games getting delayed until early 2022, that left not a whole hell of a lot for the 2021 release window. Hard to blame the industry as a whole of this considering the whole working-from-home thing seriously interupted work flow and the ability to molest fellow co-workers with little to no consequence. Aparrently developers just work better after a daily non-consentual titty grab. Maybe we should all pitch in and buy development studios those anime mouse pads with fluffy boobies on them as a safe subsititute.

1. Persona 5 Strikers - This game actually led the year pretty strong all things considered. A Dynasty Warriors type game that managed to fuse together turn based JRPG elements with the satisfying feeling of mowing down hoards of crappy enemies, all told with a delightful sequel to the fantastic Persona 5. You know it's hard to make a follow up game to a lengthy 100 hour game and not have the character wear thin or act in unexpected ways. But Persona 5 Strikers managed to keep the Persona 5 cast intact while making the adventure with them feel fun and new. And I didn't hate any of the characters by the end of it which is a feat considering the last JRPG sequel I played with Final Fantasy 13-2 which made me want to murder every character in that game.

2. Resident Evil Village - I mean Resident Evil 4 was good and this game is basically like Capcom just copied a friend's homework and changed it just enough to be called plagerism. RE8 is good in the same way that RE4 was good. It was campy, intense when it neded to be, and doesn't outstay it's welcome. But above all else i think RE8 yields itself to be one of the most replayable RE games all told, with the currency system borrowed from the RE3 remake that let you save up to buy weapons that absolutely break the game in the most fun ways possible. And it has a 9foot tall lady to stomp on your balls, if you're into that sort of thing.

3. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart - I've only played one Ratchet and Clank game prior to this and that was the PS4 "reboot" that was supposed to tie into a movie that apparently released in theaters. I didn't like that game very much. But this new Ratchet and Clank game I really had fun with it. Maybe because it visually looked absolute mind bogglingly good and I'm a sucker for shiny things. But the gameplay concepts of tearing through reality I found made combat and traversing levels to be really fun. Puzzles and challenges all felt balanced and exciting, plus the variety of weapons and upgrades available gives plenty of options that never feel like there is a "right" weapon for any situation.

4. Kena: Bridge of Spirits - I don't have a whole lot to say about this one other than it was an adorable and beautiful Zelda-like game with fluffy little minions that were a joy to watch at every turn. Combat was solid, if not overly complex, some of the puzzles made by brain hurt but that's what Google is for, and the whole game is simply goregous. Not bad for a first game.

5. Metroid Dread - I've never gotten into the Metroid series as a whole and now that I think about it, I can't remember playing any Castlevania games either. But this game proves that the Metroidvania formula is actually really good. I now see what everyone had been banging on about all these years and it's good that it comes in a year that was so slow because otherwise i would have ignored it again by it being on the Nintendo Switch. I virtually never touch my Switch ever for any reason outside of new Pokemon games, but because there was so little this year I gave this a shot and, yeah it's good. I can't compare it to other Metroid games obviously, but I fould Dread a better game than both Bloodstained Ritual of the Night AND Ori and the Blind Forrest which both try to ape the established formula.

GOTY: Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade - Yeah yeah fuck you I dont care. FF7R got a PS5 upgrade with an entire two chapter story DLC that added another 4 hours to the game. With better textures, better frame rate, this rerelease made replaying FF7 again even more fun that last year. And since nothing this year blew my balls off, I'm giving my GOTY to FF7 again, so bite me.

Honerable Mention: Final Fantasy 14 for basically being my replacement for WoW and being a far better game in literally every single possible way. Too bad Endwalker didn't release in time to make this list officially.

THE WORST OF THE WORST:

Oh boy time to talk about the shit heap of 2021 because this year hasn't been bad enough already.

1. Balan Wonderland - I don't even know what the fuck this was supposed to be. What I thought would be a mascot platformer like Crash or Spyro or even Mario, was instead a pile of dogshit with designs that make no fucking sense. Costumes grant you a single power, and some levels have secrets that require specific powers from other levels but if you take a hit you lose that costume and power so you have to go to another level to re-get that required power then double back to try again on the level you want it on andAAAAARRRHHGGGHSHSHSH!!! Fuck this game, it's stupid.

2. Outriders - This is what happens when you copy someone's homework but accidently write all the answers upside-down and thus getting everything remarkably wrong. Outriders is a looter shooter that is trying to follow in the footsteps of Boarderlands and Destiny....also Anthem.....mostly Anthem. It's got broken loot, bad shooting, and stupid uninteresting gun ideas in the first place.

3. Returnal - What a game concept and something we haven't gotten in anyway that I can specifically remember. Returnal is a rogue-like, a genre of game that typically hails from the indie regions of our industry, brought forth and given the AAA treatment. Sadly the typical AAA-treatment is to take a good concept and completely misunderstand how it works and thus fuck it up as much as possible. Returnal is a Rogue-like/bullethell that does both those genres wrong. There is very little persistancy between runs and no build up system, which means entire runs are completely pointless if you don't beat the entire game in one-go as there is no currency or anything to buy that gradually gives your character more and more of an edge each time allowing you to get a little further with every repeating run. The entire game is so heavily RNG based that you are either overpowered and breeze through the game, or your buttfucked and I am saving my buttfucking for Marriage thank you very much.

4. Deathloop - Why the fuck do people think Arkane games are so good? Every game I've played is horribly balanced, filled with arbiturary systems, and pretty poor exploration. Yet these are supposed to be emirsive sims? Deathloop is an interesting concept, like most Arkane games, and is frankly held back by the gameplay. The AI is inconsistant either being capable of sniping you from across the map before you even have a chance, or being so stupid you'd wonder if they are just standing there sucking on a battery. The map layout is very limited and the overall world of Deathloop feels like it had a very indie budget. There are only like 4 areas and they aren't very big because the ultimate goal is to be able to zip through every map in a swift "loop" killing all the leaders and freeing yoruself from the cycle. Except it all really just sucks, it's buggy, it's got sloppy gameplay, and surprise surprise it's from Bethesda. I shouldn't really be surprised anymore.
 

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5. Metroid Dread - I've never gotten into the Metroid series as a whole and now that I think about it, I can't remember playing any Castlevania games either. But this game proves that the Metroidvania formula is actually really good. I now see what everyone had been banging on about all these years and it's good that it comes in a year that was so slow because otherwise i would have ignored it again by it being on the Nintendo Switch.
I'm kinda shocked you didn't see why people like Metroidvanias considering you're quite openly into Soulsborne games, which are very much 3D Metroidvanias. Hell, it's been convincingly argued that Souls games are 3D Castlevania games done right(We're not going to talk about Lords of Shadow).
 
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Hawki

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Yeah yeah fuck you I dont care.
Well that's not very nice. :{

Anyway, don't have the time or inclination to do a long list, but if I'm making a list of the best and worst games I've played this year (not those that came out this year - usually I'm far behind on this), I guess I can nominate the following:

FIVE BEST

5: Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods (part 1)
4: Metroid Dread
3: Spyro: Year of the Dragon
2: Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
1: Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

FIVE WORST

5: Star Trek: Online
4: Battleborn
3: Gears POP
2: Sonic Forces: Speed Battle
1: Team Fortress 2

GOTY

Metroid: Samus Returns

AND THE REST

Gears 5: Hivebusters
Crash Bandicoot
Spyro the Dragon
Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage
Phantasy Star
Sonic Lost World
Overwatch
World of Warcraft
Sonic Unleashed
Castlevania
Command and Conquer: Rivals
Resident Evil 6
 

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I don't have a worst list as I don't bother with shit anymore (rarely ever did when given the choice), so it is nothing, but greats or what I consider my GOTY.

  1. No More Heroes III - GOTY
  2. Crysis Trilogy Remastered - With Crysis 3 being the the best.
  3. Super Monkey Ball Mania
  4. Cruis'n Blast
  5. Panzer Dragoon Remake
 
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Bob_McMillan

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Man, I'd forgotten that majority of those games even came out this year. I can't believe the year is almost over, I played absolutely no video games -_- Maybe if I can get Fallen Order or Ghost of Tsushima on sale I'll be able to get some gaming in during the holidays.
4. Deathloop - Why the fuck do people think Arkane games are so good?
In Dishonored, the art style felt deliberate. With Deathloop, it just looks cheap.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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Man, I'd forgotten that majority of those games even came out this year. I can't believe the year is almost over, I played absolutely no video games -_- Maybe if I can get Fallen Order or Ghost of Tsushima on sale I'll be able to get some gaming in during the holidays.

In Dishonored, the art style felt deliberate. With Deathloop, it just looks cheap.
One could say even the Dishonored games felt deliberately cheap though too.
 
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CriticalGaming

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One could say even the Dishonored games felt deliberately cheap though too.
I think the difference is that Deathloop feels like a game that any AAA studio could fart out in 6 months. And something that you would see from an indie developer tbh.

It is short, buggy, and repetitive to an unfun degree that feels like someones passion project.

But the thing is, we heard about Deathloop FOREVER. game awards, several sony state of plays, even right up until release they were marketing the shit out of this game. Probably hoping to get hype sales before in feel off i to obscurity.

If this was any other year Deathloop would be ignored by the game awards and is only there because there arent a lot of options this year.
 

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Welp, here's my list. Keep in mind these are not in any particular order, as they each stood on on their on way. Also some of these games aren't even from 2021, but they left me with lots to say.

The Good:

Fallout NV, and the dlcs

As I've already said in the "Games you've beaten in 2021" thread, I played and completed NV and the dlcs for the first time 11 years after the release. Granted, I had to install few mods to bring some much-needed QoL changes, but regardless I enjoyed this game a lot.I love the work that went behind for the lore, characters, and locations. For a post-apocalyptic world, it felt much more alive than FO3 did. DLCs were certainly enjoyable as well, and I can now see the fall in the quality of Bethesda games. FO4 and Skyrim were my favorite Bethesda games. Not anymore

Talis of Iron
Having a great Metroidvania game is one thing, but to have Geralt of Rivia himself Doug Cockle be the narrator for the game made it a very fun game to play. Granted, there are several flaws with the game, but the amazing art style and gritty combat made my 10 hour playthrough all worthwhile. The music and the sound designs are amazing, and just like with any Metroidvania games the locations that you visit are amazingly crafted.

Cyberpunk 2077
Yes, I am fully aware of the disastrous launch and CDPR's shady practices behind the scenes. But they all seem pale compared to what's happening in the industry as of writing this. While the game certainly failed to live up to the hype, I still enjoyed my playthroughs of the game. Night City is an amazingly-designed world, with social acceptance of corruption, taboo, and moral bankruptcy running the city. The story was very well-written (save for the life choices and cliche act 1). I loved the way it asked the philosophical question of individuality, free will, and choices that we make. While some people are hating Johnny S.for being an asshole, I found him to be rather a facinating character, as he only acts hostile because he went through so much shit against his will

Imposter Factory
If you ever played To The Moon and Finding Paradise, this game is sort of in-between sequel, setting up for the next game in the series. While it doesn't hit as hard as the last two games did, I think the story was rather well-written and very relatable. Now, I beaten the whole game in 3 hours, but it was 3 hours of watching a great story unfold. And just like CP2077, I felt this game too asked me the thought-provoking questions about what kind of choices I can make, how to establish human connection, and how to cope with the limited time I have on earth.

Portals: Reloaded
When the creators don't make the next game in the series, so you do it yourself. This fan-made portal game uses the old source engine to challenge you to solve series of puzzle rooms, now with a time travel mechanic. Because it is using an old game engine, don't expect any ground-breaking physics or graphics. What the game excels in instead are the top-quality gameplay and puzzles, these ones being more difficult to solve than anything you saw on the first two games

The okay ones:

Diablo 2: Resurrected

All the drama at Activision-Blizzard aside, they got the base game right, now with shiny graphics. All seven classes are still fun to play, and killing wave after wave of monster for those sweet drops are still fun experience. However, the problems from the original stillexist, and then some with server issues. I regularly check r/diablo subreddit, and I see connection issue complains all the time.

Resident Evil: Village
Sorry, @CriticalGaming I am gonna have to disagree with you slightly on this one. I agree the game is fun. But I found Ethan to be incredibly underwhelming protagonist. And while other characters and villains you meet are interesting, I hate it whenever they use it as an excuse to give the protagonist flat or no personality. I think my biggest issue with the game was how I wasn't really....scared? RE7 was plenty scary and replayable. But this game they toned down the scare factor.The big monster fights are so common in gaming these days, I found some boss battles to be just...boring.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
It should've been called "Definitive Edition". While the game does take steps in the right directions for some great QoL changes, the collection as a whole does not go all out to be considered a remaster. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay, the story, and the characters are still great, but I felt it was more or less the same games, with improvements on the first game. Thinking back, I wonder why I paied the full $60 for the bundle.

The Bad:

Battlefield 2042/Cod: Vanguard

Usually I take sides in which of the two games from the respective franchise is better. However, I am not declaring a winner this year; They both equally suck in different ways. One game was launched broken as fuck, devs ignoring feedbacks from beta, and released as $60 multiplayer-only bullshit. The other game came with boring story, shit multiplayer, and probably the worst zombie mode I've ever played. It's kinda sad how pontetially-good games are released broken and the ones that do work on launch are fundamentally bad games.

GTA: Definitive Edtion
Need I say more? Next

New World
Look, I get Amazon is new at publishing games, but why MMO? Why not start with something small? What we have now is a shit one with hackers running free and broken economy

NFL 21- Wait, I mean 22
Need I say more? #2

Werewolf: The Apocalypse Earthblood
Aside from probably most head-scratching title, you'd think a werewolf game with stealth mechanic sounds like a no-brainer. But this game is filled with mediocre gameplay, confusing lore and story, crap animations, lackluster progression, and terrible AI
 

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Resident Evil: Village
Sorry, @CriticalGaming I am gonna have to disagree with you slightly on this one. I agree the game is fun. But I found Ethan to be incredibly underwhelming protagonist. And while other characters and villains you meet are interesting, I hate it whenever they use it as an excuse to give the protagonist flat or no personality. I think my biggest issue with the game was how I wasn't really....scared? RE7 was plenty scary and replayable. But this game they toned down the scare factor.The big monster fights are so common in gaming these days, I found some boss battles to be just...boring.
RE8's biggest problem is that it's literally RE4 in first person with Universal's monsters. Even though RE4 has been ported countless times, add that Capcom is officially remaking RE4 in the RE Engine, and it becomes beyond redundant. This does not help my case, because I am not that in to RE4. Give me Evil Within 2 any day over RE4-RE8.
 
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gorfias

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Been a really odd year for me. Don't have the $ right now for Gen 9 consoles even if I could find one available!
But last Father's day, the kids got me an Oculus 2 and that really is where my game time has been mostly absorbed. I am unsure of their release dates but they're all new to me.
Arizona Sunshine and DLC​
Vader Immortal 1-3​
Drop Dead: Dual Strike​
Rush​
Death Lap​
Epic Roller Coaster​
Arizona Sunshine has been by far my favorite and its makers release "After the Fall" 12/9. I have pre-ordered it.

I did as the kids for Ghosts of Tsushima for PS4 Pro and Forza Horizon 5 for Xbox 1X for the holidays.

Worst/most disappointing games for me this year? Mostly the junk Amazon gives away for free for their own client each month. I don't tend to even download them. BUT! I don't know how long it has been going on. I just discovered it in September/October: if you look very carefully, they offer games for other clients as long as you sync them with Amazon. Those can be very special, including Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit remastered this month for Origin.
 

CriticalGaming

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I'm kinda shocked you didn't see why people like Metroidvanias considering you're quite openly into Soulsborne games, which are very much 3D Metroidvanias. Hell, it's been convincingly argued that Souls games are 3D Castlevania games done right(We're not going to talk about Lords of Shadow).
I think what i ultimately don't like about Metroid Dread is that I don't like having to get a new ability to progress to new areas, then subsequintly having to remember where all the blocks were that would open because of that new ability. Not to mention that the 2D map layout makes landmarks and area recognition so much worse on a 2D map imo. Salt and Sanctuary had that problem where I found it impossible to remember which specific rest area had the vendor i needed because there is no really way to figure out where you are in relation to other areas.

Dark Souls doesn't gate you like that. Landmarks and area retention are far easier in a 3D space, because you can see future areas in the distance all the time and because of the difficulty you spend a lot of time in each area so it's immediately familar when you have to circle back later on. And there are no areas you cannot access because you do not have a specific skill. While there are doors you need a key for, there is no technique that gradually complicates the gameplay the further in you get into the game. And typically keys will be for very specific spots and not for 8 different doors scattered around the map at random with no rhyhm or reason.

So yeah that would be why one thing clicks for me far better than the other.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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I think what i ultimately don't like about Metroid Dread is that I don't like having to get a new ability to progress to new areas, then subsequintly having to remember where all the blocks were that would open because of that new ability. Not to mention that the 2D map layout makes landmarks and area recognition so much worse on a 2D map imo. Salt and Sanctuary had that problem where I found it impossible to remember which specific rest area had the vendor i needed because there is no really way to figure out where you are in relation to other areas.

Dark Souls doesn't gate you like that. Landmarks and area retention are far easier in a 3D space, because you can see future areas in the distance all the time and because of the difficulty you spend a lot of time in each area so it's immediately familar when you have to circle back later on. And there are no areas you cannot access because you do not have a specific skill. While there are doors you need a key for, there is no technique that gradually complicates the gameplay the further in you get into the game. And typically keys will be for very specific spots and not for 8 different doors scattered around the map at random with no rhyhm or reason.

So yeah that would be why one thing clicks for me far better than the other.
All that’s got nothing on Metal Gear, where you’re expected to memorize dozens of…screens, where the only difference is color scheme and placement of obstacles. Nothing is labeled and there is no map, so you basically combine the worst of each of the above and smash them into one masochistic game.

I ultimately decided to go back to finish Wolfenstein: TNO after farting around for a couple nights looking for a damn bomb blast suit with zero progress.
 

CriticalGaming

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All that’s got nothing on Metal Gear, where you’re expected to memorize dozens of…screens, where the only difference is color scheme and placement of obstacles. Nothing is labeled and there is no map, so you basically combine the worst of each of the above and smash them into one masochistic game.

I ultimately decided to go back to finish Wolfenstein: TNO after farting around for a couple nights looking for a damn bomb blast suit with zero progress.
All the more reason why I never cared for Metal Gear. I do remember playing Solid 1 and 2 as a kid, but I was stupid and had a lot more time back then.

Actually that's interesting to think about. A lot of classic games were actually designed like shit because they were likely expected to be played by kids with loads of free time. A lot of old school game design that lead us boomers into claiming that gaming is dumbed down, is more likely because games are better designed and therefore you spend less time being stuck on stupid shit.
 
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meiam

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Well game grew out of arcade, where they had a very good reason to make sure player would fail often. Nowaday most gamer don't even finish the game they buy so they have every reason to be short and hand hold in the hope that as many player finish the game so they get a memorable experience (and stick around for DLC/MP/sequel).

Game have gotten better at cutting out the tedious stuff, but I don't think it has anything to do with kids and free time. It just takes a long time for the industry to learn what work, what's annoying and how to cut the tedious part. Tools are also getting better at quickly (relatively) creating large environment so they don't have to recycle as much as before.
 
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CriticalGaming

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Well game grew out of arcade, where they had a very good reason to make sure player would fail often.
But the thing about Metal Gear and Metroidvania's to a certain extent, isn't difficulty or constant deaths. Those games had the problem of requireing the player to memorize the map just to get to the next part, even if there aren't any enemies alive so there isn't really a danger of the player losing anything but patience.

Game have gotten better at cutting out the tedious stuff, but I don't think it has anything to do with kids and free time. It just takes a long time for the industry to learn what work, what's annoying and how to cut the tedious part. Tools are also getting better at quickly (relatively) creating large environment so they don't have to recycle as much as before.
Yeah I can agree with that to a degree. I don't think game design originally meant to be as wasteful as it used to be. I think there were just some principals that developers needed to learn about what makes good design and what makes things annoying for a player. I think the retroactive by-product of that is that us older people can look back at those games that were still fun to us as kids and forget the bad shit about the designs only to apply the idea that new games just aren't the same anymore. Which is true, games today are better full stop than old NES titles. But that doesn't mean we can't be blinded by nostalgia that erases the bad parts of old games we loved.
 
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