It’s time to talk about the top games of 2021, but first...
This week’s top gaming news:
- John Madden, who put his name on a football series of video games that has become one of the biggest franchises ever, died at 85
- Riot Games settled a gender discrimination suit for $100 million
- A former PlayStation chief created a SPAC
The best games of 2021
It’s a miracle when any video game is finished. But during the age of Covid? Every developer who successfully shipped a game this year deserves at least a couple of statues. Especially when they turned out to be great.
Most of this year’s big titles were delayed at one point or another due to production challenges caused by the pandemic (or because the pandemic was a useful excuse for production challenges that would have existed regardless). In the end, though, there were some great games released this year. Here, in alphabetical order, are my favorite 10 games of 2021:
Bravely Default 2
In 1990, a Japan-only game called Final Fantasy III introduced what was called the “job” system: Instead of being assigned to an archetype, like so many games before it (including Dungeons & Dragons), each character could switch classes on the fly. You could swap between jobs like White Mage and Knight whenever you wanted, customizing characters in a way that was never possible before. The formula has appeared in many, many subsequent games from Square Enix Holdings Co. It has gotten a lot of improvements over the years, but fundamentally, it’s what makes a game like Bravely Default 2 so good. Killer music, a fun story and a solid combat system don’t hurt, either.
Deathloop
Time loops were a big theme in video games this year. That’s a coincidence (since almost all of this year’s games entered development well before the pandemic) but also a fitting theme for 2021, a year in which everything just kept repeating. Deathloop, the latest game from the design geniuses at Arkane Studios, sends you to an island where everyone gets to live the same day over and over again. Your job, as security expert Colt Vahn, is to break the loop by defeating eight of the people who created it. To do that requires you to uncover the quirks and mysteries of each character so you can manipulate them into being at the perfect place to be murdered. It’s a smart conceit that’s unlike anything I’ve played before. One big tip: Turn off all the quest markers. With them on, it’s a very different (and far worse) game.
The Forgotten City
An ancient Roman city lives under a strange curse: If one person commits a sin, everybody dies. You play as a modern explorer who gets stuck in a time loop inside of this city. To escape, you have to figure out who keeps committing sins and why, by going around talking to the residents of the city and solving their problems. The Forgotten City started off as a fan-made modification to the iconic game Skyrim, but it’s oh so much more.
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
I’ve long been obsessed with the Ace Attorney series, a set of text-heavy games in which you play as a defense attorney who must get innocent clients acquitted. This latest entry in the series, the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, is a duology set in 19th century Britain and Japan. The story starts off with a bang — you’re a law student framed for murder — and just gets more wild from there, eventually leading to the unraveling of a worldwide conspiracy.
The House in Fata Morgana
You don’t really do anything in the brilliant, haunting game the House in Fata Morgana other than read. Calling it a game might be a stretch. This is a visual novel, set in a single mansion across centuries of love, loss, betrayal and grief. It starts with three seemingly unrelated stories — about a sister’s jealousy, a mad man and a greedy entrepreneur — and then ties them all together with a denouement that can only be described as epic. This isn’t your typical game, but if you’re into literary fiction, it’s worth checking out.
Metroid Dread
The first new single-player Metroid story in 11 years delivered in a big way. The developers at Spanish studio MercurySteam do a great job of capturing what makes Metroid great: that feeling of vast exploration, the looming sense of danger and of course, game mechanics so smooth you just want to keep playing and playing.
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
Outer Wilds, released in 2019, is one of the best video games ever made — an archeological tour through a solar system full of mysteries, puzzles and dead aliens. This year’s expansion, Echoes of the Eye, takes you to a beautiful, baffling new area called the Stranger and introduces you to its former inhabitants. Outside of a few frustrating sections (horror does not mix well with exploration), it’s just as great as its predecessor.
Overboard!
It’s 1935. You’re on a cruise ship from Europe to New York. And someone has been murdered! But here’s the twist: You did it. In this brilliant game from Inkle, makers of the equally brilliant 80 Days!, you’re given less than eight hours to get away with the gruesome crime. You’ll roam the ship, talk to other passengers and try to figure out how to “prove” your innocence — or frame someone else. If you can’t pull it off, you can start the day over and try again, with the newfound knowledge of where the other passengers will be and what they might know. Putting together and executing a meticulous plan is a thrill like few others.
Psychonauts 2
Platformers, the genre of video game pioneered by Donkey Kong and then Super Mario Bros. in the 1980s, remain as delightful today as they were 40 years ago. Psychonauts 2 is the perfect example. Playing as Razputin, a psychic acrobat with the power to infiltrate people’s minds, you set off on a series of missions with the rest of the Psychonauts, a sort of psychic spy agency. With creative levels and some hilarious writing by designer Tim Schafer and crew, this game is pure joy.
Tales of Arise
Games in the Tales series of Japanese role-playing games are kind of like fast food. They always taste the same, and you’re never going to get much nutritional value out of them, but when you’re in the mood, they really hit the spot. A lot of recent Tales games have felt like McDonald’s or Burger King, but Tales of Arise is much better. Let’s say it’s Shake Shack.
What to play this weekend
Any of the above!
In other gaming news
Fortnite, one of the biggest games on the planet, had some pretty bad downtime this week.
Things are looking grim for the tech show CES, which is still on track for next week despite many major players pulling out.
Development of the much-anticipated Final Fantasy XVI was delayed due to Covid, but the developers promise that news is coming in the spring.
You can reach me at jschreier10@bloomberg.net or confidentially at jasonschreier@protonmail.com.