Every year, my podcast runs a game of the year show. Highly original, I know. But you see, we have a twist. In an effort to remind everyone that we are filthy casuals, our games of the year are broken down firstly by games we played that year – release dates be dammed! And secondly, it’s all personal awards. This means we never get into fisticuffs when it comes to awarding the game of the year as it’s each a personal choice.
Now with the podcast done and out in the wild, all the listeners will know what I chose and why. But when it comes to podcasting for two hours, little nuances get left out, you can’t say everything you wanted to, and some things you just forget. This is my effort to expand on my list, and to highlight other games I didn’t mention for… reasons.
Right, with that long winded explanation out the way, these are my top games of 2021.
Remember, these are games I personally played in 2021, not necessarily games released in 2021. The point being that my backlog is huge, and my Xbox game library is sitting at about plus or minus 500 games…
Strap yourself in – this is going to be a long one! In no particular order…
Gears! Tactics
Anyone that knows me knows that I love the Gears of War series. Nothing captures pure American action quite like this series. At its core, it’s a game about hiding behind chest high walls and shooting endless enemies in the head. In between that, we had an amazing story about brothers in arms, personal sacrifice and doing what’s right, instead of what’s expected.
Last year, the Gears franchise started to expand into more than just brown and grey gritty gunsmith and ventured into the mobile space with Gears! Pop and then into the TTB (Tactical Turn Based) realm with Gears! Tactics. Having watched Paul get absorbed into other tactics games like X-Com and how complicated it looked, I never thought I’d like it…
Technically I started Gears! Tactics on PC last year while we were still in New Zealand. But with the release of the Xbox Series consoles, Gears! Tactics jumped ship. Having tried it on PC and being impressed, I started it again in earnest on my Xbox. After all, this is the year I gave up PC gaming to become solely an Xbox gamer.
I started on Inconceivable and Iron Man mode – meaning that
1. It’s very, very hard.
And 2. Any units who die, stay dead. If the main characters die during a mission, you could potentially lose the entire game and have your save wiped…
Gears! Tactics has blown me away with an engaging story, many great characters, amazing graphics, and the ability to make me sit down quietly and spend hours and hours running the same mission. I want more Tactics in my life, and Gears is the perfect place for it. I enjoyed it so much that even though it’s on Game Pass and will never leave the service, I went and bought it.
I never expected to love a tactics game so much. All it took was a setting that I am familiar with, and of course putting the Gears name on it. Which brings us to…
Gears 5: Hivebusters
Oh Gears 5… What a disappointment. What starts off as a great game quickly devolves into a chore when the game decides to focus on two of the worst supporting characters I’ve ever seen. Kate and Del – supporting characters from Gears of War 4 – take center stage and proceed to bore the living daylight out of you for the next 20 hours. No amount of action can take away the fact that these characters are just not very interesting.
Luckily the Hivebusters expansion comes to the rescue! With Gears 5, a brand-new multiplayer mode was introduced – Hive. In this mode, three players are given one gun with extremely limited ammo and must fight their way out of a locust hive – fighting from deep underground to the surface where rescue awaits. Scavenging weapons, staying alive and dodging both enemies and poison gas is the aim of this game.
In the Hivebusters expansion, we get the background story of the three characters that were introduced in the multiplayer mode, and right off the bat, it’s a Gears game. Non-stop action set in one of the most beautiful Gears settings ever. The Coalition have become masters of their craft in terms of environments and thankfully did away with whoever was responsible for the train wreck of Gears 5. Each character shines, each character has different abilities, and the story feels like it matters.
While short, this is everything a Gears game should be. Characters you care about, amazing environments, non-stop action, and a story you can follow. Simone and I played through this and when Lee jumps in, we’ll go through it all over again. If Gears 6 is anything like Hivebusters, then the franchise has a bright future.
Halo
This is a big one. Simone and I played through Halo 3 and 4 this year, and we even started Halo 5 in preparation for Halo Infinite. I must say, Halo 3 was amazing – I absolutely loved the non-stop action from the get-go. Opening with Master Chief falling from orbit, crash landing in a forest, and then getting given a gun in the first 5 minutes. That sums up Halo 3 to a T. Action, action, action!
Then Halo 4 came along and really shook things up. Like a lot. Being the first game from 343 Industries after Bungie left the series, it had a lot riding on it. And I’m super pleased they delivered. Amazing graphics, incredible new guns and enemies. A story that actually made you feel feelings… I loved my time with Halo 4. It’s such a good game and they absolutely nailed the intense action that is being Master Chief.
Then of course, Halo Infinite Multiplayer dropped, and just absorbed me and all my friends. At one stage it was what everyone on my friends list was playing! Everything about Halo was on show and it drew in people I never thought would ever touch Halo. And it was just so good! Simone claims I am good at Halo, I maintain that I just know when to run and hide.
Halo Multiplayer sucked me in in ways I never imagined it would. It plays to Xbox’s strength of just jumping into random multiplayer games with or without your friends. And this has led me to spend a lot more hours playing Halo multiplayer than even I thought I would.
I mean I even watched the Halo World Championships! And I got excited! And I understood what and why they did things! All this is very big for me – being a typical single or co-op player.
Halo is back, baby.
The king has returned!
Sea of Thieves: A Pirates Life
At E3 this year, out of nowhere, A Pirates Life was announced. As a collaboration between Disney and Sea of Thieves, it told the story of Jack Sparrow on the quest to find The Black Pearl. And as the player, you were helping out. Rare had done the impossible and made an exceptionally good Pirates of the Caribbean game. The character models and voice acting are superb. And the graphics made it one of my most visually impressive games this year.
Add to that, the pure joy that A Pirates Life bought with it. It felt like Disneyland on your Xbox! During our time with it, we couldn’t stop grinning, or taking screenshots, or yelling at each other to “come over here and look at this”. If there is any game that bought out the kid in me, it’s this game. It’s familiar in all the right ways. The adventure is grandeur, the enemies are all interesting and the environments stunning.
I can’t gush any more about the pure joy that A Pirates Life brings to Sea of Thieves. It’s made me excited even more for the future that is this game and what other surprises await.
No Man’s Sky
Released in 2016, continuously provided with free content updates, and delivering on all the promises – both made and assumed – No Man’s Sky is probably the most amazing story of what happens when the developers believe in their game. I was there when it launched, and thought it was a chilled space exploration game. It wasn’t terrible but it was just ok.
This year, the game got an update for the Series X which updated the graphics in a major way. And all I can say is wow! No Man’s Sky has become a game I want to live in. Everything is super pretty! The limitless possibilities and playing with Simone all come together to make this game greater than the sum of its parts. If you wrote this game off a few years ago, you’re doing yourself a disservice. The universe Hallo Games have built is alive!
My favorite part about this game is the absolute freedom it gives us. Simone has found a new ship that is pretty beat up, so now her mission is to fix it. I want to build a big base on a beautiful planet, so now that is my main goal. In between this, we’ve gone off and taken down evil space pirates, hatched a giant beetle, ridden on some weird creatures and even had a picnic together.
No Man’s Sky is one of those games that I’ll be continuously playing. Jumping in to fly around with friends. Starting it up when I get inspired by all the amazing photography on Twitter. Or even when I feel like a chilled space game.
It really has become something super special. Hallo Games have been absolutely amazing in what they have done with this game.
Scarlet Nexus
Ah, Scarlet Nexus. What an amazing game! And my personal Game of the Year.
What makes this game stand out to me? Firstly, I love JPRG’s and anime stories. There is nothing quite as bonkers as a Japanese Anime story told in game form. Where they can take their time with stuff, instead of being confined to 12 or 24 episodes.
And believe me this story is quite bonkers. If you have not played it, I will not spoil it for you.
The graphics are gorgeous. Give me more 3D cell shaded anime please! It just works and looks so good in 4K60. The voice acting is great, the characters are (mostly) interesting, but what makes this game really stand out is the combat dynamics. You have a team of three, each with powers you can use to supplement your own. One character uses fire, so you’ll set your sword on fire when you attack. Another is able to become impervious to damage – great when fighting an enemy that charges at you. And you can mix and match these powers together.
And the setting is amazing. Think Cyber Punk Tokyo in alternate history where humans have brain powers, and you end up with what the game calls Brain Punk. The music also plays a big part in the setting – being a fusion of jazz dubstep and techno rock. It shouldn’t work, but it does. All these come together to make it one of the best games I’ve played this year.
But what really solidifies it as my GOTY is the fact that in my 80+ hours with this game, not once have encountered any bugs. No crashing to dashboard, no enemies clipping through objects, no characters getting stuck, nothing. It’s been a 99% flawless experience. In this day and age, that’s unheard of.
Scarlet Nexus does a lot of things right. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again – it’s the Final Fantasy game for the 2020’s.
Short Games
These games are games I stumbled upon – either for our April Achievement Challenge, games that are marked as quick completions, or because of my own FOMO. But what these games all have in common is that they turned out to be really good at what they offered. And all for a bunch of different reasons.
Bullet Beat
While I played this during our April Achievement Challenge, it really stuck with me. The movement, the music, the bullet hell all come together perfectly in this 2-hour experience. It’s short, it’s fast, it’s frantic and it’s amazing all the way through.
Some people would class this as trash and Gamerscore padding, but it’s way more than that. I urge you to give it a try if you can. If for nothing else than the fantastic German techno dubstep soundtrack.
Omno
A cute little adventure with your typical Unreal Engine look, Omno tells the tale of someone chasing a dream. While trying to reach the goal set before this little onion-man, challenges and friends are met.
The setting is pure imagination and dream-like. The characters are full of personality and the levels make for a chilled challenge. It’s a very nice little story and well worth your time.
Donut County
LOL.
This game has changed the way I text. That’s no small feat! I started this game when Simone and I had just moved over to Melbourne, and I was confined to playing games on my old XPS. I wanted a quick game that my laptop could handle, while getting some achievements.
Donut County is a simple game – you control a hole that swallows things up. The more you swallow, the bigger you get. The bigger you get, the more you can swallow. You can see where this is going, right?
What makes this game amazing is the story it tells. Raccoons run donut shops. People order donuts. The donut is actually the aforementioned hole. And before long, the whole town has been swallowed up and is now underground… Why does the raccoon do this? To get enough points to win a quadcopter… Seriously. You even get to fly the quadcopter at the end of the game and believe the raccoon’s hype – this quadcopter is sick!
Ultimately, it’s a story of friendship and knowing when you mucked up, told in a very humorous way. I loved the way the character interaction felt so normal, even when you’re a human girl texting a racoon…
Conclusion
This year was a great one for gaming. I played so many great games, and many, many bad games.
But it made me realize something – like all things in life, those that don’t plan, plan to fail. While gaming is one of my main hobbies, it also needs to be managed due to it being something I do for the podcast.
Before years end, I will be sitting down to plan my next year in gaming. Taking into account all the events the podcast runs, in addition to games I bought and really want to play, but never get around to. Thanks Halo Multiplayer. Or Gears Horde Mode. Or Sea of Thieves. Or…
Once I have a rough idea, I think I’ll blog about it.
