My Favorite Video Games of 2021

7 min readDec 31, 2021

Another pandemic year down, and another year of staying home 97% of the time. What better way to pass that time than to dive into some new virtual worlds? Let’s start things off with: Games I Didn’t Play Because I Put Too Much Time Into Releases From 2020 Like Animal Crossing and Valorant: Chernobylite, Deathloop, The Forgotten City, Forza Horizon 5, It Takes Two, Metroid Dread, and Psychonauts 2.

There were plenty of games I enjoyed that didn’t quite make the final list of ten. Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order): Alt F4 (ridiculous and challenging platformer), Antonball Deluxe (retro-style mashup of Breakout and Mario Bros), Knockout City (online dodgeball game I didn’t spend enough time with), Sniper Ghost Warrior: Contracts 2 (a tight sniping experience with multiple ways to approach areas), and Splitgate (a free-to-play Halo with portals).

And now, the Top Ten:

10) Halo Infinite (multiplayer) (PC / Xbox Series X)

Microsoft made a bold decision to flip the multiplayer portion of the release into a free-to-play. Because of this, everyone I gamed with on PC was playing this for a week or two. It felt exactly how I remembered Halo, but with a bunch of new weapons. Once the nostalgia wore off, I moved onto other games, but it’s still quite popular (and deservedly so). Also, props to 343 Industries on the PC port: It’s smooth as silk.

09) Crab Game (PC)

A janky-on-purpose mixture of Fall Guys and the hit Netflix series ‘Squid Game’. 40 player lobbies with open chat (which usually turns toxic), buggy-eyed character models, and over-the-top exploding bodies when people lose. It’s free-to-play and was the cause of many laughs when it dropped on the world this fall.

08) Chivalry 2 (PC / PS5, PS4 / XSX, XB1)

64-player medieval combat! Limb removal ala Monty Python! Trebuchets! Perhaps only a marginal improvement over the first game, but a great way to let off some steam with friends.

07) Far Cry 6 (PC / PS5, PS4 / XSX, XB1)

The most polished game in the series. Plus, Giancarlo Esposito is the main bad guy, and you get a rocket-launcher backpack that can bail you out of some tough situations. AND, they brought back Boomer from part 5 as a companion! If you like the previous games and aren’t tired of the formula, get on this.

06) Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart (PS5)

If you’re familiar with the franchise, then you know what you’re in for: Colorful platforming levels and wildly-imaginative weapons. However, I wasn’t prepared for the ‘rift jumping’ ability (made possible through the PS5’s fast-loading SSD) and then I upgraded to a 4K television on Cyber Monday and OH MY LORD is this game beautiful. The level of detail in the worlds is astounding, and they recently added a 120hz mode too. It’s no surprise that Digital Foundry gave it ‘Best Graphics of 2021’.

05) Before Your Eyes (PC)

Less a ‘game’ and more of an ‘interactive experience’, the narrative only moves forward when you blink your eyes (using a webcam to track your eye movements). While the tech wasn’t quite perfect, the story was. It only took 90 minutes to finish, but like a great movie, it earned real emotion by the end.

04) Sable (PC / XSX, XB1)

An open-world exploration game made in a gorgeous art style by TWO PEOPLE? The soundtrack by Japanese Breakfast fits the vibe perfectly as well. There’s no combat, but honestly, it’s better off without it. I do wish the framerate was a little more stable, but again, it was made by TWO PEOPLE, and that in and of itself is a great accomplishment.

03) Hitman 3 (PC / PS5, PS4 / XSX, XB1)

Agent 47 closes out the trilogy with a bang. The ‘Knives Out’ mansion might be one of the best levels in the entire franchise (up there with the F1 race in H2 and the birthday party in Blood Money). I wasn’t a fan of the short final level, but it’s a small complaint, as the overall goal was to wrap up a three-game story arc. If you have a dark sense of humor and like a challenge, this is the best smaller-scale ‘sandbox’ experience out there.

02) Resident Evil: Village (PC / PS5, PS4 / XSX, XB1)

I gotta ‘hand’ it to Capcom, cuz they made the best haunted-house thrill ride of the year, and what is now my 2nd favorite in the franchise. The pacing is superb, and the ‘boss’ characters and their specific areas of the city had a good amount of variety (one of which inspired a lot of cosplay throughout the year). The game is oozing polish, and they throw curveballs at you from start to finish. A truly triple-A experience that also looks pretty good on older-generation consoles.

01) Returnal (PS5)

Deep space astronaut Selene is piloting a small spaceship that crashes on an alien planet where the population has long since abandoned it, and all that’s left are hostile creatures. She picks up alien technology and uses it to try to survive, and to figure out what happened to the planet. Eventually, she dies (because you just started playing and don’t quite know what you’re doing yet). And when you die, Selene enters a time loop and starts over back at the crash site and you lose all of your progress, and the alien world reorganizes randomly. And you will die again. And again. Over and over and over. But you start to learn enemy attack patterns. And you start to level up weapons. And you find items that unlock for future attempts. And you slowly get better. And you eventually get to the boss of the first ‘biome’.

And then 40 hours later, I defeated the final boss, and learned somewhat of what’s REALLY going on with the story. And then 10 more hours later, I reached the ‘secret ending’ which explains more of Selene’s history that brought us to this place, and things become a bit more clear.

I’m not one who widely appreciates ‘roguelike’ games or ‘bullet-hell’ shooters. So how did a bullet-hell roguelike climb to the top of this list? It’s beautiful, with some of the best particle effects I’ve ever seen. It’s challenging, invoking what some people love about games like Dark Souls (but with a stronger sense of fairness). It shows us different weapons and enemy types right up to the very end. It controls like a supercar, including gameplay-specific implementation of the PS5 controller’s haptic feedback triggers. And it runs like a dream, locked at a buttery 60 frames-per-second.

This is truly a ‘next-gen’ game, something no developer could’ve achieved on a PS4 (at least not with this level of detail, particle effects, and framerate). Sony recognized all of this and purchased the developer (Housemarque) soon after the game’s release, and deservedly so. Whatever world they create next, I’m all in.