Summary of Games We Played in 2021

 

Written by Vixichrome

Yeah, this year we MEANT to start including game reviews under the "Let's Talk About" umbrella, but obviously that ended up falling through as our reviews just got ridiculously long, and THEN we started doing Let's Plays and bah. It'll definitely be something we'll try again for next year, but we'll try to keep the scale smaller this time. (No, seriously, we started writing a BotW review but about two and a half pages on a text document ended up being about the Great Plateau alone, oof.)

But what we'll still do for this year is have a nice neat little round-up for all the games we've played this year. And because we have a tendency to play older games again, we'll include those as well. The way this'll work is that we'll list the games we've played this year in no particular order, each one getting their own personalized little award as we talk about what each game did for us, and at the very end we'll name a worst game of the year, then give a Top 3 Games of the Year. (Obviously, games older than this year won't be legible for that.)

🏆 Game That Somehow Lived Up To The Hype

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)

We put off Breath of the Wild for a WHILE, haven't we? Between both the Switch being hard to get ahold of at first, and the SHEER amount of hype surrounding this game, we've just kept passing it up because "Surely there's no way it lives up to the hype, right?" Well, it may not be a masterpiece like a lot of people have been saying, but we still think the 165+ hours we've put into the game and the fact that we went and bought the DLC to prolong the adventure even just a little bit more says a lot.

As a Zelda game may be where it falters, things like dungeon design, enemy variety, and a tragic lack of cool key items leave a lot to be desired, but as an open world game it's simply unmatched. So many play sessions lasting far longer than we thought by simple virtue of getting lost and immersed in the traversal of Hyrule is something else. It's hard to deny BotW surprised us with how it lived up to an impossible standard, its key flaws being something that could (hopefully) be fixed in the sequel coming next year.

🏆 Best Long Overdue Sequel

New Pokemon Snap

The utter shock of seeing this at a Pokemon Direct. Pokemon Snap has to this day been our favorite Pokemon spinoff, and this is EVERYTHING we could've possibly asked for in a Snap sequel. It has more than doubled the amount of Pokemon, it has more courses, it has variants of the same courses, it has actual alternate paths for some courses. AND they even included a feature where each Pokemon has a certain star-based scoring for how rare an interaction is, which is much appreciated in a game that already feels like there's a lot to snap photos of. They even made new "Boss" levels in the same vein as the Mew level from the first game!!

New Pokemon Snap definitely delivers on being a flash new sequel for a long-awaited game, and the advent of social media even made it the perfect time to bring this thing back. Here's fingers crossed we don't have to wait another 22 years for a third Pokemon Snap.

🏆 Best One-Sitting Game

Sizeable

Sizeable is a quaint little puzzle indie game where you mouse over objects and use the scroll wheel to change their size, which changes their affects on the little dioramas they're a part of. It's super cute, and easily beaten in a single evening, even with all the extra-puzzling bonus content. Though apparently they've given out free updates to it as well, that we've yet to check out. Either way, cute game!

🏆 ):

Balan WonderWorld

Probably the most tragically mediocre game to come out this year is the attempted successor to NiGHTS Into Dreams. While we've never actually played a NiGHTS game, we adore its dream-like aesthetic that Balan took a lot of cues from. But sadly Wonderworld just ends up being a boring, by-the-books platformer at best, and at other times just generally unpleasant. The platforming doesn't feel very natural and even from the angle of a game with a super simplified control scheme, this feels like it goes a little too hard in that direction to a point where it just gets annoying to not have a dedicated jump button, just by virtue of costume-swapping taking a non-zero amount of time. Even other platfomers that are prided on their simplicity and accessibility like Yoshis and Kirbys have more going on to them than this.

...Though we DO feel the need to list some positives because of how unfairly this game got treated. Cause boy is some of the hate a bit much. The graphics are fine, if rough. We have a hard time harping on graphics for a game like this, especially with the strong art style it has. It manages to look nice if not outstanding. And we DON'T understand where all the aggression at a lack of directly spoken story is about. Maybe it's our age showing but platformers always have really simplistic narratives like this. This ain't something unique to this game.

🏆 Best Vibes

Cozy Grove

Cozy Grove is a pleasant, peaceful little life-sim where you camp out on a deserted island and talk to the ghosts of bears as you help them cope and come to terms with some undealt-with baggage from when they were still alive. It's like Animal Crossing where it runs in real time, and has daily events. This rolls with the game's theme of taking life at a steady pace, and how healing doesn't just happen overnight. It's gotten free updates, though sadly we feel like after spending upwards of 80 hours on the game, we've gotten our fill of it. Still an adorable art style and a nice, cozy if you will, atmosphere,

🏆 Best Remake

Metroid: Zero Mission (2004)

It's the coldest take in the Metroid Fandom to say Zero Mission is just about better than the Original Metroid in almost every way, just by pure virtue of more or less being a mechanical sequel to Fusion. The only real issue with Zero Mission is that apart from a stealth segment after the actual game, it's a little on the easy side, but that can simply reinforce how it's one of the more accessible Metroid games. But it also has a pretty awful "Victory Lap" problem for 100% since you get Power Bombs mere minutes before the final boss. Still though, it's a very worthy remake to an old relic of a game that sparked a whole genre.

🏆 Best Test of the Waters

Metroid: Samus Returns (2017)

Honestly feel like Samus Returns' legacy is mostly just gonna be how it's the prequel to Dread, more than anything. We don't think this game is outright bad, but it's definitely missing something, both as a remake and a sequel to Zero Mission. The Original Metroid 2 was a dark, dank, and claustrophobic game that felt like a constant descent into a never-ending abyss to the point where you can't help but feel the weight of just how deep underground you've gone just by seeing how few enemies aside from the titular Metroids are even left. This game wrecks all that with brightly lit vistas and, if anything, making the lower levels MORE dense with enemies. And don't get us started on the hour-and-a-half-long victory lap to get 100%. Traversal also feels just a little bit stiff, with how you're having to constantly stop to wait on enemies to react to you before countering and moving on. It's still a competent game, but it's far from an ideal remake of Metroid 2.

🏆 Best Game We Still Haven't Beaten Yet

Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin

Yeah, we should probably get back on that at some point. Either way, Mon Hun Store 2 is a nice little adventure RPG game that's taught us that we've really underestimated the appeal of Monster Hunter monsters. We thought they wouldn't be our thing since a lot of the flagship creatures are just some vaguely cool dragons, but then it turns out that there's actually a lot more personality in the monster design there. The game is a little repetitive, which is ultimately why we've had a hard time picking it up again, but it's still something we're looking into playing a lot more of.

🏆 Best Game We Used To Not Like That Much

Super Metroid (1994)

Before this year, the last time we played Super Metroid was on the Wii Virtual Console back in 2010-ish, and we were not a huge fan of it back then. And while we can still admit Samus doesn't control as gracefully as she does in later games, this game is still a wonder of perfectly executed exploration and atmosphere and some of the most gorgeous pixel art we've ever seen from a game, retro OR retro-inspired. While the speedrunning side of this game is a little inaccessible for our stupid ass, it's still a blast to play through this game over and over again, AND, get this, it has no "Victory Lap" problem! You can get pretty much every item on your way to beating the game as normal if you're just vigilant enough! Wow!

🏆 Best Game We Slept On

Metroid Fusion (2002)

We played this game three times this year, yeesh. Metroid Fusion is a daring game that sees what Super Metroid, a game even at the time this one came out was regarded as a masterpiece, was doing and said "Nah!" Which is bold to say the least, and extremely fortunate that it sticks that landing with a lot of grace. This is the best Samus has controlled up until Dread, and they take advantage of that by making sure even common enemies can kick your ass. It's a horror Metroidvania more than anything, especially with how easy it is to die and how piddly every health drop is. (And even then, the health drops are trying to kill you too). It's a game that aims to make you feel more vulnerable, which is once again bold for a Metroidvania where the point is usually to eventually become an unstoppable killing machine. It also works to make you feel claustrophobic in ways not just limited to atmosphere, but also in narrative as well. Its only glaring flaw is, say it with me kids, a pretty bad 100% victory lap, this time hidden behind obscure walls only destructible with the final ability you get in the game.

🏆 Best Funny Animal Game

Trash Quest

Trash Quest is a micro-Metroidvania that's so short you can blind 100% it in one sitting. The whole conceit being the map is so small that it has no checkpoints or save points other than  right before bosses. This admittedly gets annoying because some parts felt like we spent most of our time getting back to where we were rather than progressing. But it's a nice little challenging platformer, and some of the bosses are the best platformer bullethell things we've played. Cute tiny game.

🏆 The Game We Bailed The Hardest With

Pokemon Unite

Even though we did genuinely enjoy League of Legends, we quit it cold turkey about a year before this game was out and it was actually kind of freeing to do so. It's wild having time to play other video games again. But for Pokemon Unite itself, we slowly started to fall into the exact same set of bad habits that made LoL so hard to get away from. Desperately cramming games to get daily win rewards and feeling like an utter brainlet while doing so and getting frustrated because this is the third game in a row where we had a lead but threw Zapdos and AGH, no. No. We are not getting caught into this loop again. No. Fuck that. No.

🏆 Best Spiritual Sequel

The Wild at Heart

The Wild at Heart is a Pikmin-like, where you command tiny little woodland sprites as you explore the otherworldly forest. Unlike Pikmin, however, getting caught out after dark doesn't mean forcing to sleep until the next day, rather, The evil Never creatures come out to hunt you and your spritelings. It's a game with a very thick atmosphere between both its art direction and its soundtrack that never fails to set a mood. ESPECIALLY the music that plays just before night time, the most haunting "hurry up before it comes" track since the End of the World theme from Majora's Mask.

Definitely living for this time where Pikmin is officially old enough that it can now have indie games taking inspiration from it. (Especially in a world where Nintendo is dragging its feet on a fourth instalment). This game does have a couple of unfortunate glitches (Spritelings and even the second player character getting permanently stuck on terrain until going to bed) and being sadly on the short side, but the game doesn't outstay its welcome and is an adorable, if eerie, jaunt through the woods.

🏆 You Made Us Want To Play Other WarioWares

WarioWare: Get it Together!

We think other than the low-hanging fruit that is BDSP or Balan Wonderworld, this is the most disappointing game to come out this year. WarioWare was a series we've always been interested in playing but just never got around to doing so until this game, which tragically is... merely okay? It still has fun moments when you're using characters you actually like using, but some of the characters are borderline unplayable and it feels like runs of "Use All" get ended because you just happened to be unlucky enough to get 9-Volt on a weird physics challenge. Well, either way, we'll probably get around to playing the WarioWares that are probably better than this one.

🏆 Best Speed Game

Metroid Dread

We went into this game trying our best to keep expectations as in-check as possible, knowing full well it could just be another Samus Returns. But boy howdy, has this game managed to become our favorite of the 2D Metroids, and second-favorite Metroid game overall only just a bit behind Metroid Prime 2. Samus has never controlled better, and they improved EVERYTHING ten-fold. The counter move is snappier, more satisfying, and now has a dashing counter move to keep you on the move and not having to stop at every enemy encounter. And the game is so designed with sequence breaking and speedrunning in mind, that there's even secret quick-kills for bosses like Kraid and Escue if you bring items you got earlier than you're supposed to into their fights. It's gotten US to utilize speedrunning tech like the Psuedo-beam to make our runs faster. We can hardly play the game now without doing a skip to get Grapple Beam early simply because it makes a detour into Burenia to get Flash Shift SO much faster.

The only flaws we can really point at this game other than a kind weird story are pretty superficial (Cross Bombs seem like a cool new power that feels underutilized because it was gotten less than an hour before the final boss) (The detour to get the Varia Suit feels oddly railroad-ey to get you back towards fighting Kraid) (It feels kind of lame to end with the Gravity Suit yet again). Also, gosh darn it, the getting of Power Bombs mere minutes away from the final boss means yet another bad "victory lap" for 100%. Though it's at least the least bad one thanks to the teleporters unlocking.

🏆 Best Revisit Of An Old Game

Pikmin (2001)

We genuinely feel like the first Pikmin game gets a little more flak than it deserves. It's got jank to it, no mistaking it, but it's still a charming little game that's fun to try and get through as efficiently as possible. It's always fun to revisit every now and then, but our recent LP of the game has had it resonate with us just a little more. Oh, if only they'd make a fourth...

🏆 Best Weird Little Serotonin Game

Pikmin Bloom

Well, that's not quite what we meant, but oh well. Pikmin Bloom is barely even a game to be honest, more of a wellness app than anything, but it's still surprisingly nice as something to just check in on every once in a while. Wish there was a bit more of an active element to it, but hey. It's nice to fill your neighborhood full of flowers.

🏆 Welcome Back, Old Friend

Mario Party Superstars

Mario Party's really fallen off. Hot take, we know. The last one we played was 8, and we've skipped 9 and 10 because of the boring-looking car gimmick, and Super Mario Party looked a little too bare for our liking. So we were of course surprised to see this game, which aimed to be a legacy collection of some of the N64 games' boards and some hand-picked minigames from across the whole series. The boards are just as we remembered them, if not, even better.

And it's a blast to play with a friend, as you can imagine. Hollering at a computer player who's doing some nonsense and begging to not have your hard-earned stars stolen and all. The only thing that's missing is just a little more to sweeten the deal, because 5 boards is a little on the weak side, especially considering all the games this one is based on had more than that. It feels ripe for DLC, but hopefully it's the free kind.

WORST Game of the Year:

Pokemon Unite

There's something resembling a fun multiplayer game in Pokemon Unite, but we have an utterly hard time recommending it when it utilizes such a sleezy business practice. Between the pay to win (No, it doesn't matter how minute the stat bonuses are, it's still paying for a statistical advantage), loot boxes, and ridiculously overpriced skins this game really is out to prey on anyone with very little impulse control. Especially considering this is a game aiming at children as well. It really is like Pokemon Company saw all the articles talking about how kids have emptied their parent's bank accounts over Fortnite and said "That's not fair! WE want a slice of that pie too!" Nah. Unless this changes, which from what we hear, it hasn't, this is undoubtably the worst game this year. A grim reminder that, despite their claims to being family-friendly, The Pokemon Company (And Nintendo, by extension) is not immune to stooping to the lows fans like to think Nintendo is above.

Our Top 3 Games of the Year:

#3 - New Pokemon Snap

We're clearly showing biases here for a silent little one-off game that magically managed to get a sequel in 2021, but we do genuinely believe this game is about as ideal as it gets for a sequel of a long-awaited niche spinoff for a major multi-media franchise. Yeah, that specific combination of criteria. It would've been so easy to just go for an easy nostalgia grab and little else, but it goes the extra mile to be a properly modern iteration of Pokemon Snap.

#2 - The Wild at Heart

It's sad this game hasn't gotten a ton of recognition. While far from perfect, it's still such a thick package of dense atmosphere and a surprisingly well-realized world full of weird creatures and characters. It's a game with a lot of heart, and for whatever it's worth, we WERE going to have a segment of mini-awards for things like "best soundtrack" or "best atmosphere", but The Wild at Heart over here just won almost all of them, so.

#1 - Metroid Dread

We've not been subtle about this on on Twitter, but yes. A game as masterfully made as Metroid Dread is truly rare. Especially considering this game is coming off possibly the weakest 2D game in the series, the fact that it's THIS good is a marvel. The fact that almost everything is so on-point and the only things wrong with it are so incredibly minor that it hardly detracts from the experience. AND Yoshio Sakamoto is teasing about the "next chapter" of Samus' story. Metroid's back, baby. (Hopefully)

Now it's off into 2022, the Year of Characters Standing and Staring Off Into the Horizon