Board 8 > Mac ranks 63 games played in 2021

(+) Yeah! (+)

Forgotten City (again) regarding it being made into its own game? shrug

6. Severed Steel (2021) - PC

Hell yeah they finally made a game that makes you feel like you're in the matrix. This isn't the first shooter where you can slow down time, or even the first one I've played this year - Boomerang X feels similar in a few ways - but it's definitely the best one I've played. You get a few fun mechanics in this, mostly catered to enhancing your movement options. You can slide (which goes incredibly far), double jump, leap forward (this works in the air), wall run, and slow down time. The neat thing is that when you're performing stunts, you're invincible, so the game really encourages you to do all that fun stuff. It's a shame when a game includes a fun mechanic but it doesn't help much gameplay-wise, and Severed Steel knows exactly how to avoid that. You also get time slow gauge and health back if you kill enemies while stunting, so you basically never want to be simply running around. The wall run is easy to do and you can essentially do it forever as well. It feels like a good evolution of parkour like in Mirror's Edge in that sense, though there's not a ton of platforming. It's more of an option that lets you get to the enemies faster and more funly.

The other neat mechanic is that you play as Steel, a woman with one arm, so you can't reload your guns. Whenever you run out of ammo, you have to throw your gun away and grab a new one. Stealing weapons from enemies feels awesome. They nailed the feeling of grabbing a new weapon from an enemy when you kill them or steal it from them, and all the weapons feel balanced, though there aren't a ton of them. Limited ammo in each gun keeps you always on your toes and aimed at killing more enemies to get their guns, so it really drives the action. On top of that, you get a special weapon later on that you can use to blow holes in walls. Just about every wall and ceiling is destructible, so you have a ton of options for how to approach each level. The levels are pretty well designed, with lots of ways to accomplish your objectives. There's not much to the story, but it serves as a framing device I guess. I've seen complaints that the game's short (it has 25 levels and will probably take a couple hours), but they maintained the fun all throughout, so I didn't mind. It's only on PC now, but I think it'll be on consoles too soon (announced for Q1 2022). Definitely worth checking out.

Next game hint: there are no bad people. Only bad deeds.

5. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox (PS4) - 2021

The first 2021 game that I played and highly enjoyed. This one starts out with the MC in prison, accused of a crime he didn't commit, and has a bit of a darker atmosphere than the other Ys games, to its benefit. It started out slow, but got better as it went. There's an incredibly intriguing mystery that gets introduced a few hours in that took my full attention. Ys 8 was better, mostly because it was a bit more of a cohesive experience, but this was still excellent, with some very cool gameplay innovations. Every game with open world/exploring should have advanced movement stuff that makes you go way faster IMO. It had some performance issues in certain places too, but they weren't terrible at least. I do wish I'd had my PS5 to play this on, since performance there apparently has no issues. Ys 8 actually had a bit more modern style of game design, but this was cool in its own way, and it's nice that not all the games in the series are the same. It'll be great if they do something new and exciting with the next game in the series too, though speculation has the next game as another remake, which could be good or bad. I wasn't that into Oath of Felghana or Memories of Celceta, but maybe they'll do something more my style with another remake.

Next game hint: fear the power of the gun.

Falcom have said that the next Ys game will be X, though if it is a new style i expect the next game after to be a Ys 5 remake

Oh? Cool if true. New game > remake. There were 7 years between Ys 7 and 8, then 3 years between 8 and 9. New Ys in 2022 would be awesome, though we'd be waiting longer for it here, of course.

4. The Forgotten City (2021) - PC

I played this pretty late in the year, and apparently I waited until the later part of the year to play most of the year's best games. Forgotten City is a really neat experience that falls into the apparent new trend of time loop games. You find yourself sent back in time 2000 years to an underground city where, if anyone commits a crime, everyone in the city will die. The city has 23 residents, and you basically have to go around talking to them, solving their problems, and investigating the city to find out the secrets behind everything and who's likeliest to commit crimes. The small scale kind of makes it feel like Disco Elysium or something. The characters are generally pretty compelling, and I always enjoyed talking to them. It's fun being able to change their opinions of you with knowledge from past loops, but it's also fun when you meet someone whose opinion of you never changes no matter what secrets you discover about them. Some of them have pretty shocking secrets, while others are basically exactly what they seem, but it's neat to discover more about them regardless.

I found the game to be incredibly smart with its game mechanics. I've gotten used to losing stuff every run in time loop games, but here you keep your stuff every run, so you can do fun stuff like looting the same chests for money every time to become rich, or collecting multiple copies of blackmail material so you can blackmail someone every run. They also do stuff to save effort - you can basically automatically do all the stuff you "need to do every run" right at the start in no time, and there are shortcuts through conversations with people who you've talked to before. It doesn't take a lot of runs to beat anyway (I finished on my eighth run), so it never gets super repetitive. The city's well designed, so it's easy to get most places, even without a map. I rarely had troubles finding my way where I need to go, and I learned where basically everything was after a couple runs. You can do all sorts of fun stuff that has logical consequences, and it always feel good when you "cheat" the system in some way.

I had a great time making my way through the game, and it brought everything together perfectly in the end. The answers to all the mysteries both made sense and were surprising, which is one of the best ways to conclude a mystery story for me. There are multiple endings, all of which are interesting in their own ways, and the final ending gave me everything I wanted. This is my favorite story-based game of 2021.

Next game hint: Every game in the top 3 has multiple protagonists. Coincidence? Yes.

The game where me and Mac got divorced

galerius character of the year, an absolute g

Nice writeup on Forgotten City. What did you think of the action/stealth sequence after you get the get the golden bow? It's a very different style of gameplay to the rest, caught me a bit off guard even with the warning.

PumpkinCoach posted...

galerius character of the year, an absolute g

He really is the goat, saves so much time each run and trusts you within seconds.

Galerius's gameplay support power is amazing. Duli was pretty good as a character too.

andylt posted...

What did you think of the

It wasn't my favorite part of the game, and I think it probably could've been a little shorter. It wasn't bad for a palette cleanser though.

3. It Takes Two (2021) - PS5

The next evolution of co-op gaming. I dunno if anything's felt this good for playing co-op before? Or if there's been a co-op game made on this scale? First, it's just a plain really good game. It's a 3D platformer with ~9 big worlds where each world has its own unique powers that the characters get. There's a buttload of variety, and not only because of the special powers - the worlds will switch up the gameplay type all the time, too. It'll switch to an on-rails shooting segment, or you'll be racing like you're playing F-Zero, or you'll be playing a rhythm game - it's always giving you something new to do. And these things are basically all executed well! Flying mechanics are good, swimming mechanics are good, platforming mechanics are good. It feels great to play this. It's like a well-executed Mario platformer with all the variety it has.

And then they add the co-op stuff on top! Both characters get different powers each world, and have to work together to solve puzzles and defeat bosses and such. I feel like it would have a lot of replay value playing as the other character, because it'd be a pretty different experience for a big chunk of the game. I think I've heard more criticism of the story than anything else, but it worked for me. It's basically something to facilitate the gameplay, and it works excellently in that respect. Plus, I found basically everything that happened to be hilarious. Some of that is probably unintentional, but I think the writers know how ridiculous a lot of it is, so it worked to enhance the game in that respect. I'd love to see the devs make another platformer like this.

Next game hint: Should I really do hints for the top two? Whatever, here's a vague hint: this game technically came out before 2020.

The one with robots

2. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (2020) - PC

Da greatest story of 2020 (though it released in 2019 in Japan). I really enjoyed this! The gameplay's surprisingly fun (kinda like Fire Emblem with ATB in a way), the music's fucking great, and the art's amazing. Some parts look incredibly good, especially whenever a Sentinel gets summoned. Even the background characters look surprisingly nice. For the first half of the game, the story was constantly blowing me away. I felt like I was constantly getting hit by awesome plot twists and had no idea what would happen next. Unfortunately, it slows down some after that - it might've been better for them to figure out a way to back load some of the twists better? I dunno. I wasn't huge on the final main twist either, but they followed it up with some pretty good complementary twists, so that was okay. Still a really great game, and I liked it better than the other Vanillaware games I've played overall. Would highly recommend!

Next game hint: two of the greatest games in one! Wow!

I liked Ys 9 pretty well but it had a lot of small and medium sized issues that got on my nerves enough for me to not give it a super high rating in the end. Mostly story related.

13 Sentinels was pretty amazing though, really clever and well thought out.

1. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (2021) - Switch

Bowser's Fury is fucking great. I may be being a bit overly generous with it, but it's the most fun I've had with a game this year. It's crazy how Nintendo keeps releasing Mario games that are among the best Mario games ever made (I'd put every 3D console Mario in this category other than Sunshine). The game has everything you'd want from a Mario game with a ton of innovative new ideas. The levels are full of fun designs and one-off tricks. I'm not sure if putting all the levels in a big overworld necessarily makes the game better, but they executed it so well here that I think it does in this case. If you're not familiar with the game, it takes place in an ocean full of islands (mostly connected islands) and you travel from island to island collecting Cat Shines (everything in this game is cat and it's great). You can basically look out over the whole map, and it's beautiful. Plessie is the transportation method, and she's a joy to ride, moving fast on water and also quite entertaining on land. There are a bunch of Cat Shines in the ocean to collect as well, so you get fun little surprises as you travel between islands. There's basically no point where you're not having fun.

The other central conceit of the game is the titular Bowser and his fury. He's become gigantic, and every few minutes, he goes on a rampage and tries to kill you. He goes away if you die or get a Cat Shine or if time passes. This can be moderately annoying, but I almost always found it to be a fun mechanic. It's cool when you're doing a challenging Shine and it gets even more challenging because you have to dodge Bowser's attacks. One neat mechanic they add for this game is that you have power-ups saved which you can use at any time, so if you're close to dying you can just give yourself some extra defense so he won't kill you. He'll also destroy some obstacles for you and some Shines or only grabbable when he's around, so I usually felt like I was happy to see him. His arrival kept the game having lots of variety. I was a bit annoyed by him once or twice, but it generally wasn't a big deal.

Some people complain that the game's too short (it's maybe 5 hours if you 100% it), but I found that to be a perfect length to have lots of fun with it. The only real complaint I had is the game's implementation of running: you hold the y/x button to run, which sucks because you often want to run but you also want to use the right stick for the camera, since this game requires a lot more camera control than 3DW or the Galaxy games. I really wish you could map it to one of the R buttons instead so that I wouldn't have to use a claw grip. It mostly wasn't that big a deal, but it stood out as a flaw when Mario games generally control extremely well. Overall, it's an awesome game that every Mario fan should play.

I actually think the single player for 3D World is a bit worse than Bowser's Fury. A lot of things about it are better, particularly how the camera and running work. It used fixed/limited camera angles for most levels, so you almost never have camera issues, and having to use your thumb for the run button isn't a big deal. The design is extremely consistent, so the game has basically no lows. I'd rank it lower than most 3D Mario games, but the worst levels here are better than the worst levels in the Odyssey and Galaxy games by a long shot. The highs aren't quite as high is all. There are awesome parts like the final battle, and the space world is cool, and there are a lot of highly fun levels in general. Cat suit is awesome (way better than Bee Mario), and being able to play as 5 different characters is wonderful. Every Mario game should let you play as Peach and Rosalina! There's a ton of care and attention put into every detail of the game, and it results in a great package.

The multiplayer is where it really shines through though. The co-op isn't perfect, and there are some levels that are very difficult to play multiplayer, but I played the whole game with a friend a few years ago when it came out and we had a blast together. It actually feels like the game was made for co-op, unlike NSMBW and NSMBU. There's plenty of room for two players to move around in, and playing co-op can make some of the challenges more fun or easier rather than merely being a complication. We beat everything other than Champion's Road together (which we came close on, but ended up doing single player since it's a bit easier that way) and had fun the whole way through. It's amazing that Nintendo managed to make a game that's really fun to play both singleplayer and co-op like this, and combined with Bowser's Fury, it makes for an incredible package.

Next game hint: it's over!

Sceptilesolar posted...

I liked Ys 9 pretty well but it had a lot of small and medium sized issues that got on my nerves enough for me to not give it a super high rating in the end. Mostly story related.

I'd agree that it had a lot of issues. I didn't even like the game that much early on. But everything came together, and the ending was great IMO.

Thanks for doing this topic!

Bowser's Fury has been getting much more love than I thought it would, I expected it to be a little DLC-size chunk of filler to make the rerelease feel like a new game (5 hours is a bit more than I expected tbh). I would probably be playing the game solo so I haven't been too enticed to try 3D World, but maybe I should if only for Fury...

3D World is still a great game even solo imo

I 100%'d 3D World solo and this version in particular is fantastic. Bowsers Fury is the main draw imo but 3D World is still worthwhile

Gonna keep this alive for a while.

I played Ys IX on the Switch, because it was on sale. The performance issues there were far from minor. Maybe that's on me for playing it on the inferior console, but also, I played Ys VIII on there and had no issues.

To be more specific, the horde battles/tower defense sections are extremely busted from a challenge standpoint. Combat is never hard, but I did find the camera/auto-aim system extremely difficult to manage, which ended with my tower being destroyed in literally one or two attacks (on hard).

Also I just didn't buy the aesthetic. Liked the movement options but I think it's ultimately a failed experiment.

Ys VIII was a Vita game while IX was a PS4 game, and it already performed poorly on PS4 Pro months/years before the Switch port came out. I'm really not surprised the performance was terrible on Switch. I wouldn't be surprised if the aesthetic's worse on the Switch version too.

I wonder if that had something to do with the tower defense parts being harder? I found all of those extremely easy.

I don't know. 95% of the time they were extremely easy, but that other 5% of the time a boss/strong enemy would spawn near the crystal and wreck it extremely quickly. And this is with levelling it up too.

I know, I know git gud. But again, my issue isn't necessarily with ambushes/strong enemies but the imbalance of it being a cakewalk and then losing out of nowhere.

Also! (and here I am admittedly just complaining for no good reason) I hated how setting lock-on to automatic is the right play EXCEPT for the maps where you had to "destroy all the crystals," where it becomes a nightmare to play. It just required me to go into and out of the settings menu a bit too much.

Hmm, I don't think I used lock-on at all, haha.