froghawk on 27/12/2021 at 12:06

---

I only played Hitman 3, RE Village, and the new quake episode. All 3 were pretty good but not quite as good as their predecessors IMO (though in quake's case, the predecessor I have in mind is Arcane Dimensions, which set the bar far too high).

PigLick on 2/1/2022 at 00:16

---

the only game from 2021 I played was Lost Judgment on the ps4. Its a Yakuza spinoff, except you are a private detective. Its pretty good, with all the incredible drama and wackiness and convoluted plot of the yakuza series.

edit forgot about Metroid Dread, that was also good, although I found the enviroments a little sterile.

Aja on 3/1/2022 at 19:32

---

For me the best game of 2021 was Echoes of the Eye, the expansion to Outer Wilds. It preserved the sense of the sublime from the base game while enriching the story and introducing new gameplay mechanics that get subverted in startling ways. I did occasionally get frustrated with it and almost gave up at one point, but in retrospect it was amazing, and it seems that most of what troubled me about it has been adjusted with a new patch. I know I keep harping about Outer Wilds, but I truly feel that it's one of the best games I've ever played, and it makes me sad that I can only experience it for the first time once.

I also enjoyed the expansions to Animal Crossing; the Happy Home portion makes the game feel like an HGTV show and solves the problem of wanting to decorate with different styles but not wanting to grind out collecting all of it. And the capitalistic overtones of getting a job designing vacation homes are at least balanced out by the free part of the expansion, which lets you create a hippy collective. Plus the coffee shop is back, and that's all I ever wanted.

Metroid Dread is a very good game that needed more artistic vision, which I hope will happen in a sequel.

Psychonauts 2 was the opposite: a game with great artistic vision that I wish was more fun to actually play. The story and level design was memorable, but I don't feel compelled to finish collecting everything.

"Deathloop" I'm still on the fence about. I thought it was going to have more puzzle solving, but the game does most of the thinking for you, and my time so far has mostly been spent practicing killing everyone so that I can eventually kill everyone. I'm having a hard time following the story, too, and it's got more than a bit of Bioshock echoes in that it's an interesting thematic concept that maybe shouldn't have been shoehorned into an ultraviolent FPS. But it's breezy and fun to play, so I'll stick with it. Since everyone else has listed their favourite Arkane games in order, Prey is still my number one, the original Dishonored after that, and then maybe "Deathloop" in third (I'm following the official style with those scare quotes though I wonder why they included them on the cover/title screen).

Forza 5 was ultimately a disappointment but maybe it shouldn't have been because all reviews indicated that it was more of the same Forza Horizon, and I can't seem to get on with the Horizon template. It's slick and beautiful and the even though the driving model is fairly deep, it felt hollow overall, with little sense of progression. And since the races themselves weren't fun enough on their own, it petered out pretty fast for me.

Games from 2021 still on my list to play: Sable, Unpacking, Toem, Bowser's Fury, Ratchet and Clank

Malf on 4/1/2022 at 12:51

---

I'm ashamed to say that the only game that was specifically released last year that stood out to me and wasn't early access was Deathloop.
I may have played other games that were released last year, but I'm struggling to remember any others that stand out.

Although saying that, I have just remembered Psychonauts 2, which was fun enough while I was playing it, but has since dropped off of the radar. I feel a bit bad about it, but I can't really call it one of my "Games of the Year".

Early access-wise, I've sunk a lot of time in to War Tales, which has the same draw for me as something like Mount & Blade. But it's definitely not complete yet, and could do with some further balance passes.

Edit: RPS reminded me that Wildermyth came out last year too, and that's a truly great game. It'll probably stay permanently installed thanks to its relatively low install footprint and procedural storytelling.

And a few more thoughts on Deathloop:
I did enjoy it, and I think it's a really good refinement of Arkane's Dishonored-style gameplay. It takes the same approach as Death of the Outsider in moving away from punishing the player for breaking out of one particular gameplay style and refines it further.
Arkane's games have needed this for a long time, with the original Dishonored being one of the worst offenders with its very binary morality system. You get all these wonderful toys, but then get punished for using them.
There's none of this in Deathloop, and it benefits greatly because of it. You're not constantly hovering a finger over the quick save/load keys just in case you accidentally kill someone or break stealth. It's something Hitman could learn from too.

But having said that, there's something holding the game back from me declaring it Arkane's best. A lot of it has to do with the AI, which is really stupid and has cripplingly long flavour animations, completely removing any sense of threat. That same AI would be more challenging in a more traditional Arkane game that's more stealth-focused, and I suspect that's the real problem. Arkane simply don't have the experience yet to develop sophisticated, action-oriented AI.
Also, with all the restrictions removed from using the wonderful toys Arkane games give you, there's very little their current AI can do to counter the player.

And despite the overall jovial tone and fantastic voice acting, it's hard to actually like any of the characters in the game, and I think that's simply a restriction of the scenario. No-one on the island is there because they're nice. They're all assholes.

Still, a good game overall, and I can't wait to see where Arkane take their formula next.