Board 8 > Mac ranks 63 games played in 2021

(+) Yeah! (+)

I normally don't play this many games in a year, but for a few reasons, I ended up playing a whole ton of games in 2021. The pandemic contributed a bit, along with me not playing any super long games (I think I only spent > 70 hours on one of them). I also tried to keep up with 2021 games to some extent, and a lot of those were shorter indie games. Plus, I got a couple of those $1 for 3 months Gamepass subscriptions. But yeah, I went all out in 2021, and played an absolute ton of games. One of these I haven't quite finished yet, but I think I will by the time I get to it on the list (unless it shits the bed later on), so I'm going to rank it anyway.

This won't have any objective scores or anything, it'll just be how much I liked them. I've finished 90+% of the games listed I think, but there are a few I dropped, mostly because I didn't like them, and a couple because they were too hard. I'm mostly done the writeups already, and they vary a lot in length. Some are very short, with some being reasonably lengthy, but nothing more than a post I think.

Final note: almost all these games are acclaimed, so don't be surprised if you see some good games lower on the list. I do have some fairly despised games highish on the list too though, so you can just blame that on my bad taste, haha.

Feel free to make predix, though please don't if you already know what's on top :p.

The list, in alphabetical order:

12 Minutes
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Astral Chain
Astro's Playroom
Axiom Verge 2
Boomerang X
Bravely Default 2
Chicory
CrossCode
Crusader Kings 3
Cyberpunk 2077
Deathloop
Death's Door
Doom 1993
Ender Lilies - Quietus of the Nights
Fallout: New Vegas
Final Fantasy 7 Remake INTERmission
Final Fantasy VII R
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker
Firewatch
Forgotten City
Forza Horizon 5
Horizon Zero Dawn
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
Inscryption
It Takes Two
Judgment
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
Lost Judgment
Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle
Metroid Dread
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139
Omori
Overboard!
Persona 5 Strikers
Psychonauts 2
Quake
Rabi-Ribi
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Severed Steel
Shin Megami Tensei V
SM3DW + Bowser's Fury
Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Spiritfarer
Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order
Tales of Arise
Thumper
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
Towerfall Ascension
Tsukihime Remake
Unsighted
Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception
Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth
Va11 Hall-A
Wildermyth
Yakuza 3
Yakuza 4
Yakuza 5
Yakuza 6
Yakuza Kiwami 2
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

63. 12 Minutes (2021) - PC

I didn't hate this, but I definitely didn't like it. It's a time loop adventure game (which I've liked before - see some of the later games on this list), but it isn't as well executed as some others. It has some good aspects - the presentation is pretty nice, there's a lot of dialogue for doing different things, it has a lot of stuff you can do if you think through it and the story has a solid flow. But the story never really "hit" for me. The twists and turns were neat, and they managed to be both surprising and well foreshadowed (other than the one really dumb twist that made no sense and is stupid even though I didn't mind it that much). They simply never hit for me. I don't think the dialogue is particularly excellent. It's just like, normal game dialogue. Not particularly hard-hitting or funny, which it should be in a game like this. Gameplay-wise, I found it more confusing and frustrating than fun most of the time. It was tough to figure out what to do sometimes, and even tougher to figure out how to do things, so you end up repeating loops a lot, and the skip functionality isn't as good as some other games (see some of the later time loop games on this list). I dunno, just doing things is kinda enjoyable, but most of the time I wasn't having fun when I was playing on it, and looking back on the story, that wasn't too great either.

62. Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (2019) - PC

I hereby grant JFO the honor of being the worst Star Wars game I've played. Something about it just feels real bad to play. I hate exploring, the puzzles are bad, and the map is useless. It feels like Uncharted, but not designed as well. The combat's pretty solid, but I don't love it or anything. I had more fun playing the Jedi Knight games back in the day. The strongest aspects are the nice presentation and the story. The story's engaging all the way to the end, and definitely gets better as it goes. It's still not as good as the best SW game stories (KotOR 1 and 2) but it's good stuff, with an excellent finale. Dunno if I'd be interested in a sequel, since a lot of the exploration-related choices felt intentional.

Taagendaas

61. Fallout: New Vegas (2010) - PC

I didn't beat this. I played it for around 4 or 5 hours and quit because playing it made me feel so bad. The story and characters were barely there, and even the quests seemed lame. I did get up to a quest that was a bit more interesting (the one with the ghouls fighting the demons), but navigating that area was too much of a pain. It reminds me of why I often like 2D games so much better than 3D games: it's way easier to navigate a 2D area than a 3D area, unless you have a real good map and signposting. New Vegas has neither. The bad area design is the worst part of the game, but honestly, I disliked everything else about it too. The combat is awful, with the VATS system being a stupid halfway between turn-based combat and real-time FPS (Outer Worlds combat was much more fun, despite mostly being a basic FPS where you can freeze time). The "running" speed is absurdly slow, and though I mostly fixed that with mods, it was kinda too late. The world's super empty - there's no need for the game to be so big. And it's a very ugly game. Not just in terms of fidelity - everything's shades of brown and grey. More color would make it way easier to navigate, I think. Kinda feels like a game they could make a great remake out of - put this in the Outer Worlds engine and I'd be way more willing to play through it. As it is, it's the worst game I've played in over a year.

Tag

Ender Lilies - Quietus of the Nights

I almost bought this a while back, interested to hear your take on it.

Oh right I should be doing next game hints whoops.

Next game: Not quite a time travel game, but kind of sort of like that.

tag

Taggin' daas

Tag yeah

60. Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception (2015) - PS4

A game with some peaks and valleys, but mostly the latter. To start with the good: the battle system is reasonably fun, though a step below, say, most FE games. Some of the serious story bits can be pretty solid, especially the ending. Quite liked what they did there. Unfortunately that's about it for the good stuff. The comedy in this game sucks, and it takes up more than half the game. It uses all the worst anime tropes, with girls hitting the main guy for even less reason than most anime characters do, and almost all the characters are real dumb. I dunno if I laughed at all. I felt like the sequel has more promise, since most of the bad stuff was in the first half of the game, and the ending set up things to be much less annoying. We'll just have to wait and see how that places on the list!

Next game hint: It's time to party!

Forza Horizon 5 (2021) - PC

When I got the three months of GamePass for $1 deal again, I used it to play a few games I wanted to play, and also grabbed this when I was a little bored to see what it was all about. It's actually pretty cool in a lot of ways! The "story"/dialogue/framing is great. The idea of the Horizon Festival, where everyone's obsessed with doing everything by the power of racing, and how joyful it is, is just awesome. All the characters celebrate what an amazing driver you are - it'd be great if games in other genres had characters cheer you on like this. All the challenges are kinda neat too, as well as how they set up their open world. Unfortunately I don't find the racing particularly fun, which is basically all the gameplay, so that kinda ruins it. I like the feel of stuff like F-Zero or Mario Kart a lot more than this. It'd be great to see a game like that get treatment like this...

Next game hint: Surprisingly lacking in incest, despite much ado to the contrary.

58. Crusader Kings 3 (2020) - PC

I played this for around 5 to 7 hours, and while there were enjoyable parts, I found the experience profoundly frustrating in general. I'm a fan of the Civilization games, but this seemed way more complex. Figuring out how to do stuff seemed incredibly difficult, even basic stuff like selecting units and moving them around on the map. I hated the map so much. There was a lot of interesting stuff to do, but honestly it felt like way too much for me to handle. I felt revolted by the experience of playing it at several points, and eventually decided to stop rather than press on. I feel like it could've gotten fun eventually, but I have no idea how long that would've taken. The weird mix of real-time and turn-based also felt a bit awkward to me, and when I had it going in real-time, it always felt like I should've been doing more to optimize my play, while when I had it turn-based it felt super slow. I wasn't too into the character/story situation stuff either - some of the events were quite fun, but they didn't have a good flow to them, and those could be slow too. I think I could've liked this a lot more if it had a better tutorial/was simpler.

Next game hint: not a horror game, despite the name.

The not-Mario Kart racing games have always felt like something I could enjoy, but I've never been able to get into any.

Guessing Death's Door next.

Good guess, but not quite!

57. Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (2018) - Switch

The weakest of the 2D Metroidvanias I played this year. The game itself does have some cool aspects in two primary areas. First, and most obviously, the art is vibrant and well done. I didn't like the style personally, but I can appreciate the good execution. Second, there's a lot of variety. The game lets you transform into a bunch of different animals, all of which have a selection of powers and uses. It feels pretty cool to unlock new ones and get all these different powers to manage, though it can occasionally be a bit of a pain switching between them. Unfortunately, that's all the good stuff I can say. The game feels bad to play - it's very slow until you get some speed upgrades several hours into the game, and even after that the controls aren't the best. It's very long for the genre, with each area feeling like it goes on forever. The music sucks. The bosses get really annoying near the end, particularly one with some random elements that ends up causing a lot of time just waiting to be able to damage it. There were periods were I enjoyed myself a good amount, and I didn't hate the game or anything, but there wasn't really anything going for it, unless you want to see a certain brand of SNES platformer turned into a Metroidvania.

Next game hint: a sequel that's kind of a different genre.

56. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (2019) - PC

Boy, I sure did play a lot of PC-games I'd rank low this year...

I dunno what was wrong with it, but I just didn't find it as fun as I should've. Some of the levels were solid, but there wasn't as much variety as, say, the DKC games, and the overworld was bad/time consuming. The final level, The Impossible Lair, was the most fun part, but it was frustrating at times too. I ended up having to beat some bosses a lot, and they weren't super fun.

Next game hint: more known for being a big PlayStation must-have, but I played it on PC.

55. Kena: Bridge of Spirits (2021) - PC

Feels like a game that fell really short of its potential. It generally feels well-made - movement feels pretty good, and environmental designs are solid. The graphics are nice (though they didn't wow me as much as I expected, considering how much people rave about them) too. There are just too many things holding it back. The combat is okay, but it doesn't get interesting until you get more powers around halfway through the game. The puzzles/exploration in the first half of the game are once again pretty boring, due to the lack of powers. The map sucks and I got lost several times because of how undetailed it is, plus the signposting is ass (lots of times the quest giver will just be like "go to this location on your map"). The early bosses are pretty meh, because of - you guessed it - not having interesting powers. The story is also really boring for most of the game, though since that has nothing to do with powers, I'm not sure why it didn't get interesting until later.

Once you're done with the first major questline (which is by far the longest), though, the game takes a step up in quality. I was already a good ways into the game and thinking of quitting by this point, and I still didn't love it, but it was definitely better. And then you get to the third (and final) questline and the game actually becomes fun! You have enough powers that they can make interesting puzzles, the signposting is much tighter to the extent that I barely used the map, the bosses are more interesting, combat's more fun with all the powers, the story comes together, and the last boss is very cool. The main thing that stays weak is Kena herself. There are a couple scenes about her, but mostly she's a bit of a cipher and feels unrelated to the game's story. Almost would've been better if she were a silent protagonist or something, haha. All in all, almost a bad game that was redeemed by its later parts. It feels kind of like a lot of Metroidvanias in that way, but usually they give you enough powers by the time you're an hour two in that the fun starts relatively quickly. Too bad that wasn't the case here.

Next game hint: a legendary Ouya hit

Oh hell yea

54. Towerfall Ascension (2013) - Switch

This game suffers from me not playing it the right way. It's from the Celeste dev, and you it has a lot of the same mechanics. Similar air dash and such. It's not the same kind of game, though. It's primarily meant as a 4-player party game where you fight against each other with bows and arrows, kinda similar to something like Duck Game or Gang Beasts. I only played it 2-player though, and mostly the co-op mode. The competitive is still fun with two players, but it doesn't get as crazy as I feel like it would with more people playing. The co-op/single player parts have you fighting waves of enemies. The good mechanics mean that it's a fairly fun game regardless, but there's not much to it. The last couple levels get reasonably difficult, but it still only took us a couple hours to finish the co-op campaign. Maybe I'll go back to it someday when a bunch of people want to play a fun 4 player game...

Next game hint: the closest I've come to playing D&D in year.

I should add, starting with Towerfall these are all games I'd say I liked. I enjoyed most of what I played!

53. Wildermyth (2021) - PC

It's extremely cool that this game exists. It's kind of like a mix of XCOM with a D&D campaign. The game procedural generates characters and quests for you to go on, which you complete with XCOM/Fire Emblem-esque battles. The quests are fairly well written for the most part - I assume they did a lot of writing and only have to mix and match/fill in a few elements based on the party members you bring. The main story only has a few selectable campaigns, but they don't take up the majority of the story parts. One nice thing compared to XCOM or FE is that you don't need to have a huge number of characters - you can recruit, but I only had a party of 3 for most of the game, until I recruited up to 5 at the end. Makes the relationships between them feel more personal. You can choose what kind of characters you get, too - gender, height, sexual preference, age, etc. Fun to get an all-woman party.

However, a lot of this stuff doesn't matter to me, since I only played it once. It was alright, but nothing I'd be thrilled to play again. The gameplay's not as interesting as FE or XCOM. The individual quests can be neat, but they generally don't flow together across a campaign. There are choices you can make that affect how the relationships between your characters develop, but I'd like for there to be more of those. The art isn't great. I mostly enjoyed the game, I was just never enthralled.

Next game hint: this series has multiple games on this list, but this is the only one of them with a subtitle.

Yakuza 6 - The Song of Life (2018) - PC

Damn, what a disappointing Yakuza this was. The worst one other than 1, unfortunately. Beforehand I heard that it had less content than the other games, which sounded fine to me, since they generally have a ton of stuff I don't do, but the content that was there wasn't as great as it could've been either. There's a real limited selection of karaoke songs, and the unique minigames aren't really that special. The story goes a lot of dumb places too. I hated what they did with most of the cast. Some of the side stories are pretty good, and the villains are mostly quite enjoyable. Beat Takeshi's character is hilarious but also badass. There's some great comedy, too. But man, it just didn't have the high points most of the Yakuza games do.

Next game hint: the oldest game on the list, I think.

51. Doom 1993 (1993) - PC

Crap, I keep forgetting the numbers...

I think I enjoyed the first episode of Doom the best. Not because it was the best one - just because it felt the freshest. Episodes 2 and 3 had some cool new ideas, with fun enemies and mechanics, but at their core they're basically just more Doom, and that wasn't really what I wanted. Ep 4 felt too hard for me so I guess maybe I'm just bad at Doom as well. Anyway, Doom has some cool stuff in it. Level design is generally fairly interesting, with lots of secret areas and exploring. Only got really confused on a couple levels. There are lots of ways to get through most of the levels, and you can ignore 90% of what's there if you know where you're going. Lots of the enemies are totally optional for killing, and in some of the later levels, you pretty much have to skip killing a good chunk of them due to the limited ammo. The variety of weapons is pretty good, with the only unfortunate thing there being the lopsided ammo distribution. I found myself using the shotgun like 75% of the time due to getting WAY more shotgun ammo than everything else. The shotgun's pretty great, so it wasn't a big deal, but it would've been nice to be encouraged to switch a bit more. It's definitely no Doom 2016 on that front.

Neat stuff overall. I can understand why it was so revolutionary at the time... though when you think about it, it was only released a year before the PS1, which makes it a bit less crazy, heh.

Next game hint: the spiritual successor to one of the games already listed.

50. Quake (1996) - PC

I would score this the same as Doom. It's interesting to compare the two. I didn't realize before playing it, but Quake is basically Doom 3 - everything in it is an evolution from Doom, and it really feels like a sequel. Some things about it are different, mostly for better, and a bit for worse. It's a 3D game (one of the first) so you can actually aim up and down, which mostly feels better than Doom's weird shooting where you hit enemies above/below you by shooting straight forward. Some enemies (like those exploding blob things) can be tough to hit, though. Enemy design is different - Doom throws huge waves of enemies at you, while Quake has you fight more powerful enemies in smaller numbers, which I preferred in this instance. Enemy design feels pretty good in general here. The main thing I wish is that the game had more weapon variety. You technically get seven guns, but three of those are alternative versions, so it's more like four, and Thunderbolt ammo is rare enough that I barely used it. Doom had a pretty similar arsenal, but it at least had the BFG9000 and the Chainsaw to use occasionally for a little variety.

Level design is probably in Doom's favor too in terms of how good it was. Doom had a lot more open, memorable levels, whereas Quake has mazes where you have to figure out the right way to go and get keys and such to unlock paths. I got lost less often in Quake though, and was probably having fun more often. Quake feels more like it's about facilitating fun while Doom focuses harder on being interesting? In the end, Quake's a bit more enjoyable overall, but Doom had the advantage of coming/me playing it first, so liked them pretty similar amounts. Solid games, but I didn't love either.

Next game hint: an unlikely crossover.

Tag. Good write ups so far!

Glad you're enjoying them!

49. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (2017) - Switch

There are some good things about this game, but there's a whole lot of meh stuff too. The basic concept is cool - Mario characters doing XCOM style battles. It's a bit silly that they all use guns (why not have them use fireballs, an actual Mario power?), but gameplay-wise it works. Most of the battles are fairly fun. The one weakness here is that they could use a little more variety. There are 36 levels in the main campaign, most of which have two battles, and there isn't a huge variety of objectives or opponents or level designs. Unfortunately, the other gameplay kind of sucks. XCOM gives us the fun base-building stuff between levels, while Kingdom Battle gives us... an isometric overworld you explore without any Mario powers? It's filled with basic, uninteresting block puzzles. I enjoyed it more early on, where you'd basically run around a minute or two seeing the (pretty) sights between battles, but these interludes get much longer as the game goes on.

The other elements are a bit of a mixed bag. The Rabbids are sometimes funny and sometimes annoying - Rabbid Mario was my favorite of the bunch, for his dry sense of humor rather than being crazy. I like how he looks like a porn star. The game has a weird start where it begins on Earth, and never goes back to that. Most of the villains aren't particularly exciting, except for the Phantom, the only character in the main game with voice acting, who sings and disses you during the boss battle with him. His fight kinda made the whole game worth it and is glorious. Too bad the game didn't have more stuff like him.

Next game hint: I haven't played a Pokemon game in years, but I have played this!

Guess: SMT V?

Not quite, though I do have a tendency to call demons Pokemon, hehe.

48. Inscryption (2021) - PC

Inscryption's a complicated game. The central gameplay component of it is fairly simple - it's a deckbuilder with mild roguelike elements, or at least it starts out that way. I spent a lot of time playing TCGs from grade 5 to grade 10 or so, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Magic is great, and the other ones I've played have generally been pretty enjoyable too. This feels a bit different due to the mechanics (it's apparently most similar to Pokemon, which I haven't played a ton), but it's reasonably enjoyable in that first part. Making broken cards by combining cards together is probably the neatest thing (creating a card that combines the cost of one card with the power of another to make a free card that's incredibly powerful, for example). What makes the game special is everything surrounding the gameplay though. The atmosphere is through the roof, which makes playing the card game a lot more compelling. Some of your cards talk to you, you're trapped in a mysterious cabin playing against a pair of glowing eyes, you can get up from the table to explore and discover more mysteries, and a bunch of the mechanics have extra creepiness built into them - one of the powerups lets you rip out your teeth with a pair of pliers for extra points, for example. The plot of the game is quite interesting, and it's presented in a very unique way. The more you play, the more interesting it gets, especially since you never know what part of the plot is going to be shown to you next due to the unique delivery method.

The other aspects of the game are strong as well. The visuals and audio are quite effective in terms of making the game more atmospheric, and the way they change throughout the game is really interesting. The main weakness (to me) is the way the gameplay changes. I was down with at first, but it totally lost me in the second part of the game. The mix of atmosphere and gameplay goes way down, and the gameplay itself is less fun to me as well. It recovers some before getting extra cool in the finale, but despite the goodness of the story, the gameplay kinda ruins it for me. At least it's an interesting game from start to finish.

Next game hint: what happens when you combine words representing game trends and fundamental parts of games?

Glad I was wrong; I got SMT V for Christmas, haven't started it yet, and am hoping that it's good...!

47. Deathloop (2021) - PC

This game sure got better over time! My biggest initial frustration with the game was the crashing. I played on PS5 two months after launch and had three hard freezes in the first day after starting the game, two of which lost me a fair amount of progress. I only had one freeze after that, but it's still pretty inexcusable. I lost more time to Deathloop freezes than I did to glitches in Cyberpunk. It also spends a LONG time in tutorial mode. This isn't uncommon for games nowadays, but it feels extra long because of how many options the game feels like it has vs. how limited you are. The game's not that fun before you get any powers either. Even right after getting out of the tutorial mode I wasn't having that much fun with it, since it felt like there was an overwhelming amount of stuff to do and doing it wasn't that much fun due to being powerless.

Once I got more powers and guns it got much more entertaining, thankfully. The invisibility power-up is fantastic and makes stealth feel way more attainable (I got an augment for it that makes it last forever if you're standing still which makes it very useful for hiding). The other powers were cool too, though I didn't use all of them. It feels like you can pick and choose depending on the playstyle you want to go with. Probably the coolest one is Nexus, which connects enemies - you can connect a close enemy to a more distant enemy, stab the close enemy in the back, and have both of them die. It's great. The game's all about assassinating specific targets, and it feels like you have a bunch of options to do so. I ended up killing all of them more than once and usually used different methods when doing so (since it's a time loop game). It never really felt like I was playing the "wrong" way, so that was nice.

I wasn't as into the characters, unfortunately. The setting of the game is cool, and finding out about its background is great (if esoteric - there's a lot of lore I had to look up after finishing). The general arc of the story is cool, with you having to kill all the Visionaries (the main targets) in one day, and figuring out how to get them to the locations where they need to be. But the characters themselves are mostly boring? The main character, Colt, is a decent player avatar, but his motivations mostly feel half-baked. The rival, Julianna, has even more ridiculous motivations, and most of her lines are ridiculous when you think about them. Most of the Visionaries don't get enough development. I wanted to know more about them, so that I could either like or hate them. Outside of Wenjie, who I felt like I got to know relatively well (having a role in the tutorial helped), most of them got barely any dialogue/screentime. Kinda takes the wind outta the game's sails.

I ended up mostly enjoying my experience, but I wish those things that took me out of it weren't there. I liked it a lot more than Dishonored at least.

Next game hint: this doesn't deserve to be its own entry, but I made it one anyway because of when I played it.

Yakuza 6 did give us Korean Vergil so I give it props for that but yeah it's overall a weaker entry

Yeah, I mentioned the villains in the writeup, but that was mainly about Joon-gi Han. I love all the scenes with him.

46. Final Fantasy 7 Remake INTERmission (2021) - PS5

What a name. This is what they decided to call the DLC, for whatever reason (because it's a mission that takes place during the main game I guess?). Anyways, it's mostly pretty alright. Yuffie's combat style is pretty fun, and added some new spice to the battle system. The Fort Condor minigame was quite fun too, I thought, and there were few enough opponents that it never got old. I didn't do much of they Happy Turtle flyers, but that whole concept was a bit dumb. I've always liked Yuffie quite a bit, but I definitely liked her less here than in the original FF7. All the additional animation and voice acting only served to make her annoying, and even her serious segments felt a bit awkward. Sonon was actually the funnier one of the two, IMO. The way he takes everything seriously is great. The best part of the game was how in battles, Yuffie is the player character, so if she dies, Sonon immediately commits suicide to resurrect her from the dead and Yuffie cries out with grief whenever that happens. Laughed every time. The worst part of the game was probably the villains. Scarlet's the least interesting of the Shinra crew, and the trials she makes you do feel kinda repetitive. Then we get Nero and Weiss, who are extra dumb. Not sure who asked for them to come back. The epilogue at the end was mostly fun, though it didn't really have anything to do with the rest of the DLC. I'd say the DLC feels pretty inessential overall, though it's nice that they put enough effort into it to feel like a unique experience. The two chapters we get here are weaker than the average FF7R chapter (though better than the worst ones...).

On a side note, I played this on PS5, while I played FF7R on PS4. The upgraded frame rate and textures were quite nice, not to mention the lack of load times.

Next game hint: a more sinister type of portal.

Whoa, Fallen Order and Impossible Lair would both be top 10 on this list for me, but I've also only played like half the games here. Fallen Order in particular is funny because I really couldn't have cared less about the story, but exploration was so much fun, and I found the worlds compelling and varied. I'd probably put it over every Uncharted game save 2.

Those games feel specifically tailored to my tastes though - Metroid Prime and Tropical Freeze are both two of my favorite games of all time. And yeah, Impossible Lair certainly never hits the highs of DKC: TF. Anywho, good write-ups so far! One of these days I'm going to use my Game Pass subscription to play the Yakuza series.

I suspect your time to do that is running out, sadly. They took 0, 1, and 2 off a few days ago.

45. Death's Door (2021) - PC

This is a weird one. It's basically a 2D Zelda-like, with a lot of similarities to LttP, but with more advanced movement and combat. It's very competent in most ways, but it's also pretty lacking IMO? The lack of map is annoying sometimes, especially when re-exploring old areas to find secrets. It's something of a disappointment after the great implementation of a map helping you find secrets in some of the Metroidvanias that were released this year. More importantly, there's a general lack of upgrades/items. Zelda games have a whole bunch of cool items, and generally each game will have some cool new ones you've never seen before. Not the case here at all. You start out with arrows, then get fire arrows, bombs, and a hookshot. That's it. It's also a bit annoying how you use them, since you have to hold a trigger before pressing another button for whatever reason. The game was better in other aspects: it's really pretty, and the boss/enemy design is generally good (though I wasn't that good at the game, so I found some bosses a bit frustrating). And the story was fun, though it wasn't a super heavy element. I feel like it should've been a lot better than it was. Oh well.

Next game hint: a weird spinoff that focused on the wrong aspects of what it was based on.

44. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (2019) - Switch

There's a lot about this game that's really competent. The battle system's fun, the skill system's cool (though there are too many skills, IMO). Lots of refined systems that feel good. The dungeons are solid, though some of them get a little long. The most impressive thing about it are the crazy production values. There's SO much unique content. Sidequests will have fully animated cutscenes. Moves in battle will have crazy long animations (that are skippable). It feels like the biggest budget game Atlus has made, even compared to P5 or SMT5... which is sad, since the core of the game isn't that great. I don't like most of the characters much (though I don't dislike them). Kiria and Yashiro are solid, but Kiria's sidequests suck. The focus on the idol industry isn't super my thing either, though it's executed competently enough. It's a shame all the good things in here weren't applied to a game with better writing. Easily the worst SMT game I played in 2021.

Next game hint: the second Zelda-like in three games? Oh my!

43. Chicory (2021) - PC

I feel like this is a pretty well made game in general. The mechanics all flow together, there's good natural progression, the art is cool, and the story/characters are generally great. The main problem with it is that I just didn't like the gameplay that much. The drawing while doing other stuff was about as well-executed as it could be, but it still felt awkward sometimes. And some of the puzzles were a bit frustrating, especially near the end of the first half. I think the second half was better though, and the exploration was generally good. I enjoyed it more once I got the brush style that let me fill areas - made everything much faster. I enjoyed the story and characters the whole way through. Most of the NPCs had well-written dialogue, and the main cast was cool. Just a shame the gameplay didn't quite do it for me.

Next game hint: a game about the consequences of doing too much drugs.

Is Chicory that game with a storybook aesthetic where you're literally painting the world that you can travel on like it's Splatoon ink, or am I thinking of some different Indie with a similar name?

Edit: guessing Cyberpunk for next one.

Yup. It starts out black and white, and you can paint every screen in colors. You have to paint some parts to solve puzzles and make progress, and it's used for combat in boss battles as well.

I can scarcely believe BD2 hasn't dropped yet.

Your disbelief may last some time. I seem to have liked that game a lot more than most people did. <_<

Mac Arrowny posted...

I suspect your time to do that is running out, sadly. They took 0, 1, and 2 off a few days ago.

...welp, no one to blame but myself. I really wanted to play 0 this month. Kind of craving an open world game now, which is a rarity for me. Just played a lot of linear indie games lately so wanted a change of pace.

Well, here's hoping they put them back on eventually.

My condolences. 0 frequently goes for $5, and is highly worth it, but the Steam sale just ended too.

42. Psychonauts 2 (2021) - PC

At first I thought this would be one of those games I wouldn't be able to finish. I kinda hated the act of actually playing the game early on, and thought about dropping it a few times. Even a few hours in, I was like "ugh I'm so dumb why am I not dropping a game I hate?" But I had a good reason for doing so - other than the gameplay, the game is pretty good! The minds you dive into are basically all great, and they basically get better as you go (up until the great PSI King level at least, which is the pinnacle of the game IMO). The designs are full of bespoke content. You'll run into puzzles they use once and never again, and they don't really reuse content much, other than basic enemies. It's great how you always get to run into something new or surprising in every world. The story and characters are good too. The best moment of the game is where (major spoilers) everyone is reunited, they see Lucy, and they just silently hug her with no hesitation, despite everything. I don't think I've seen something like that in a game before, and that's the kind of storytelling I would absolutely love to see more of.

But at the same time, the gameplay never really got good. The hub area's design is garbage, and is part of why I wasn't into the game early on. The combat sucks. There's a ton of collectables that feel pointless to get (moreso than average for a platformer). You frequently have to switch powers through a clunky menu - I feel like they could've taken advantage of more buttons on the controller to make this required less often. The main part of the gameplay (the platforming) is solid, at least. Running and jumping around and exploring feels nice. It's nice that the game "got good" but it would've been even better if they'd scrapped some of the combat and made the hub world smaller/more easily navigable.

Next game hint: I played two spinoffs from this company this year, and it turns out being less faithful to the original was a bad idea.

41. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (2020) - Switch

I played both HW games co-op with a friend, and both were fun experiences overall, but they're not amazing by any means. This one's probably a bit better than the original Hyrule Warriors overall? It diverges a little more from the basic Warriors formula I feel, particularly the cool map. The game basically uses the map from BotW, and puts quests on there rather than just picking from a list or something. It creates a more atmospheric experience that feels more immersive and heightens the connection to BotW. The game kind of frames it as you fighting to win every region back from the forces of Ganon (in that there are bonuses you get from clearing percentages of each area), which is neat. We generally did a good number of the side missions between each main chapter, but I think we ended up clearing a bit under 50% of the game's content, so you can probably tell that it's a huge game with a ridiculous number of quests. I thought most of the quests were generally fun, with solid objectives and not too focused on simply conquering outposts or whatever.

The combat's probably a bit better than the original HW too, but not too different. It's still pretty button mashy. The characters are mostly fun at least, other than the big ones, who aren't great. I feel like they hyped the story up for this one big time, and while it's definitely way better than HW's (the voice acting helps a lot), it's still not amazing. King of Hyrule is too much of a dick, and the villains aren't particularly interesting in general. Some character interactions are neat at least. Probably the best thing I can say about it is that we basically had fun the whole way through. There weren't any awesome parts as good as playing as Ganon and undoing all the heroes' progress in HW1, but there weren't any particular low points either. Easily the worst musou I played in 2021. :p

Next game hint: discovering the truth is certainly more fun than being deceived by it.

The 'alternate timeline where everyone wins' angle really soured me on what could have been a way more interesting story imo. We could've had a whole campaign on the level of playing as Ganon if they stuck to BotW's plot of the heroes losing at first. I agree that the villains are pretty bad mostly.

The gameplay was a lot of fun, though. I did miss the Warriors-style missions a bit, there was only one level in the entire game where I felt like I was playing one, but the game was still fun enough that I was happy to have played it.

...I really felt cheated when the alternate timeline thing happened. Up to that point I was pretty engaged in what I thought the story was going to be, after that I just checked out for every cutscene

Next game hint: discovering the truth is certainly more fun than being deceived by it.

Omori? Hope not though.

Mac Arrowny posted...

Next game hint: discovering the truth is certainly more fun than being deceived by it.

Sounds like a play on Mask of Deception/Mask of Truth so Mask of Truth.

Huh, I adored the alternate timeline twist!

I knew about the twist in advance, which might've helped, since I wasn't really disappointed.