Welcome to my 2021 Game of the Year list! I decided to break it up into two parts, so the first part will be numbers Ten through Six, with the top Five coming at a later date. There will also be a Top Five Movie of the Year list, but there are a couple of movies that I want to see before committing the list down to paper. Before we get into the ranked part of the list, let’s look at couple of games that did not make the cut for one reason or another.
Maquette
One of the first games that I touched this year was an early PS Plus offering that used puzzle mechanics to tell the story of a relationship. Maquette tries to combine the telling of a modern love story, with simplistic puzzles that uses the perspective of objects to solve them. There is a model of the level in the middle that you interact with to make objects bigger or smaller to help solve the puzzles and further the story. The voice acting of the couple is done by real world couple Bryce Dallas Howard and Seth Gabel is better than other games this year that used celebrity voice acting (looking at you Twelve Minutes).
I wish the story went a little deeper that what it does and the puzzles are a little too repetitive. They always use some kind of orb or lever too unlock an entrance to get to the next part. Puzzle games always seem hard to strike the balance between too hard and too easy, and Maquette seems to drift more towards the later. In a weaker year of games, this would make the list, but for this year it still earns a honorable mention.
Forza Horizon 5
If you told me that I was going to have a racing game on my Top Ten list, I would have been so sure that Horizon 5 would be an easy pick but it did not grab me like I thought it would. It is still the closest thing we have gotten to a new Burnout Paradise in years. I think this will be a game that I come back to in January. It just felt like there was too much going on when it comes to menus, unlocks, and really anything that is system related. There is a great variety of events to do and the environments look fantastic, but other games came and took my attention away.
Alright after looking at a couple of games that did not make the list, lets start the official Top Ten list:
#10 - F1 2021
Since 2015-2016 because of a podcast I listen to (Shift-F1) I became a fan of Formula One. I started just listening to the podcast, enjoying the hosts talking about what happened during the race, to getting up and watching every race during the year, to choosing a favorite team. This year I decided to try the CodeMaster’s F1 game after staying away because sim racers usually don’t speak to me as much as arcade racers do. F1 2021 has blown me away with how great the onboarding process is for someone that is new to the sim racing genre like I am. You have complete control to how detailed you want the settings to be. I started out on the causal setting, which means the game automated most of the manual stuff for me. It made it really easy to to start and peel back.
There are also 2 great careers modes, one that you can start in F2 and work your way up to F1 and another called Turning Point, which is like what NBA 2K or Madden have tried to do with their career modes in recent games with crafted stories and cut scenes. I ended up playing way more of the the regular career mode than I did the story mode, but both were pretty fun. It also has one of my favorite uses of the Dualsense controller with the haptics making it feel like you are using a steering wheel, it almost worked to well because I had to turn it off because it made my left hand hurt after playing for a hour. I don’t know if F1 will become an annual purchase like I have done in the past with other sports games, but it gave me another level of appreciation for the real life sport that I love more and more every year.
#9 - Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island Expansion
I know this is technically not a game but a DLC that came out in 2021, but this is my list so I am making the rules! Ghost of Tsushima was one of my favorite games of last year, and this DLC really kept the ball rolling. Like I said in my review for this game when it came out, this game was something that hit me in my personal feelings and does such a great job of dealing with how family trauma effects us and how we can grow from our parents mistakes.
“What the expansion does is a good job of is making the story more personal and reflecting on samurai culture in a more historically accurate manner, and making Jin Sakai a more well rounded, interesting character has me extremely excited were they could take him on his next adventure.“ is what I wrote to end the review in September and I completely stand by it.
#8 - Unpacking
Unpacking just does something to my brain where I get into this zen state for a hour and just focus in o making this digital apartment as organized as it possible. Where the game tricks you is while you are enjoying putting everything in its right place, it hits with a very subtle emotional story getting told through the objects that move to different spaces with you.
The moment I realized that this game was more than just an organization sim is the 2010 apartment. You are moving into your male partner’s apartment, and you can immediately tell your bright toned stuff do not jive with the cool, dark tones of the apartment. Then it hits you when there is not enough room to put your college degree on the wall next to your partners and you end up putting it under the bed, hidden out of view.
If you have a Switch or Xbox Game Pass, it is definitely worth you checking it out.
#7 - Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
This is the biggest surprise on my list. When I first saw this game at E3 2021, it looked fine but this is coming from the same publisher that did that bad Avengers live service game so who knows if it will be good. It turns out that Edios Montreal delivered one of the best superhero games to come out in recent times. This version of the Guardians surpasses the MCU equivalents very easily. These characters, especially Gamora and Drax feel more fleshed out, and are given more of a background and purpose than just being on a team with Chris Pratt.
The story of this game does go on a bit too long, but it is deeper and more emotional than you would think a third-party superhero game would have. Gamora dealing with her past with Thanos, Drax and his family, Rocket and the experiments done on him, and Star-Lord and his mom. Each of the character’s trauma gets touched on and because the build up is so good, the pay off when they become a fully fledged team makes it so satisfying. I hope that Edios Montreal gets a crack at making a sequel, because if they tighten up a few things with the length and the combat, it could be even better.
#6 - Returnal
Returnal was the game I have had the most trouble slotting on this list. Even though I did not finish it, I put about 35 hours into it and got to the 5th world. It is a game that I have a very strong love/hate relationship with. Earlier in the year, this was in the Top Five, but as more games came out, it slowly started getting slid down. My GOTY of 2020 Hades unlocked this love of rouge-likes and it continued with Returnal. This is one of the best playing games I played this year, the gameplay is extremely tight and responsive and it moves at a pretty frantic pace that you get used to and your hands just move on autopilot. The difficulty of the game never felt unfair, but it does ask a lot of the player.
The hate part is how buggy the game was when it first came out, especially in the Part 2 areas of the game. I had multiple crashes and lockups that lost me hours of game time, which would not have been as bad if there was any kind of good save structure when the game launched (they have since patched in a save system).
One of my favorite soundtracks of the year goes hand in hand with the best boss fight that I had this year. Now that the game has save states and multiple patches since launch, now would be the prefect time to check this PS5 exclusive out. Can’t wait to what HouseMarque follows up with after what they have learned from their most ambitious game to date.
Alright that is the first half of my Game of the Year 2021 list, with #5 - #1 coming later. When I looked at what I thought my list would have been by the end of the year, there are a lot of surprises here. I am still moving around my Top Five, so we will see what ends up taking the top spot for 2021.