Posted on by Jordan

Year in Review 2021: Video Games

Best Video Games I Played in 2021

  • Dead Cells (2017)
    Synopsis: You have to break out of prison and also there’s a plague I guess. You, uh, don’t play this game for the story.

    Relatively early on I found a crowbar that does critical hits for several seconds after smashing through a door, which was funny but didn’t seem all that useful—until a dozen or more runs later when I unlocked an item that lets you summon a door.

It’s stuff like that which had me still intrigued by the game even after rolling credits, and while at this point I’m moving on to other games I’ll probably still come back to Dead Cells every once in a while. There’s not a whole a lot of story, but there doesn’t need to be, and the little bits of worldbuilding you get from the loading screens and find scattered around various secret areas definitely build a vibe.

What keeps you coming back for more are the mechanics. The main draw is the variety of weapons, items, and randomly-assigned effects, but there are also various traits (“mutations”) that you assign over the course of a run that let you hone a playstyle, and an ability you get after your first successful a run that completely changes how you can approach the game. The game also goes out of its way to encourage either hack-and-slash speedrunning or careful completionism, such that you can kind of go either way on any given level depending on your loadout and how well you know that map (though the levels are procedurally generated to an extent, each one has a certain degree of consistency, particularly in the earlier levels). And with a few upgrades, you can start each run with a random loadout rather than the defaults, making every run fresh right from the start, unlike Enter the Gungeon or Hades, where you start with the same basic loadout every time (or I guess one of 5 basic loadouts).

Also, speaking of those games, Dead Cells has a surprisingly large world, with most levels branching off in at least two directions, so you’re not just playing through the same 5 levels every run.

All of which makes Dead Cells one of the most replayable and least exhausting rogue-likes I’ve played.

Also there’s a katana that lets you do the anime slash-through-the-enemy-and-then-they-get-hurt thing for a critical hit, which is very fun.

  • Dishonored 2 (2016)
    Synopsis: Emily Kaldwin has been deposed by an aunt she didn’t know she had and now has to try to get her empire back. Or I guess you can play as Corvo but that’s an incredibly boring choice and it would be weird if you chose to do that.

My one major complaint is that rune-crafting is completely pointless. It takes 9 runes to unlock it and then it takes 9 whale-bones to craft one rune. At best you might get a couple more powers this way, and only if you don’t want to use any bone-charms. Maybe it’s worth it for the lethal run, as a lot of the lower-cost passive abilities are more geared towards that. But I feel like a lot of the bone-charms are geared towards lethal too, so I don’t know.

Other than that, though, the level design is great (shout out to Clockwork Mansion and The Grand Palace, probably the 2 best missions in the whole franchise), the new mechanics completely change up the game (Domino is OP and I don’t care, it’s great), and most doors don’t have swarms of rats behind them, which is a nice change. And there’s a heist side-mission that I stumbled upon completely by accident. Very fun game.

  • GRIS (2018)
    Synopsis: A young woman loses her voice and also all the color in the world and has to get them back.

    This game is like platforming through a watercolor painting. The puzzles and platforming aren’t particularly challenging, but they contribute to the aesthetic goal of the work in surprising ways that make progression satisfying, as does the way the world changes as you progress through each chapter, following a sort of dream logic that’s novel and yet makes sense. Finally there’s Berlinist’s amazing soundtrack, which really brings out the emotions at the core of the game. A beautiful, melancholy experience and an enjoyable way to spend 3-5 hours.

Also, hands down best underwater level in any game ever.

  • Inside (2016)
    Synopsis: A young boy is running away from some dudes and ends up in some kind of creepy science facility where he starts controlling people with his mind. Then it gets weird.

    Evocative environmental storytelling (and with an added layer of Stranger Things-esque sinister science) and just the right level of challenge (I think Inside leans into the puzzle a bit more than the platformer, which I absolutely do not have a problem with). And the more complex art style (relative to 2010’s Limbo) adds some scope to the game, making it feel a bit more “epic” for lack of a better word, without being distracting or overdeveloped. As with Limbo, I have only one problem with it; this time it’s the body horror. Weirdly though my problem isn’t just the presence of body horror, which I generally can’t stand, but also that it gets kind of undercut? Like, at first it’s very serious with the whole rampaging through the lab thing, feels very Princess Mononoke, but by the time you are tossing a flaming box over a sprinkler system and then catching it on the other side—literally just playing catch with yourself—it feels a little absurd, and takes away from the emotional thrust of the game. The ending just didn’t do anything for me because by that point I was completely detached. But it was really good right up until that whole body horror section. Anyway, I’ll keep playing these as long as they keep making them.


  • Metroid Dread (2021)
    Synopsis: Samus, once again stripped of all her powers for reasons, has to investigate a mysterious research facility that was…doing something…that I don’t remember. Also she continues to be part Metroid.

    So even though I was in the middle of three different games (Dead Cells, Bloodborne, and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, in case you’re wondering), as soon as I found out this was a direct sequel to Fusion I had to play it.

And…it’s fun. It plays well, and I like some the new mechanics like the Phase Shift (really could’ve used that when fighting the SA-X) and the melee counters, especially when you do a melee counter while running and it just looks cool as hell. (I will say I had a hard time getting used to the free aim, and spin jumping and double-jumping is still just as finicky as ever.) The boss fights are fun (the boss boss fights, not the “Oh hey it’s my 5th Choza warrior fight where he does almost exactly the same things as last time” boss fights), and none of them are as frustrating as Nettori. The environments are cool, I like the way they play with the 2D space, and the animations are great, especially the boss counter sequences and quicktime events.

But in some ways it’s kind of shiny and boring. Like I said, the environments look great, but none of them have that claustrophobic, mysterious vibe that Fusion‘s environments have. And the bosses are just…they’re just shiny monsters. Where Fusion‘s artwork is evocative, Dread‘s is representational, and it just isn’t as interesting. There’s nothing in this game that matches Nightmare, for example, both the foreshadowing when you see it just floating around in the background and the boss fight itself. Similarly, the idea behind the E.M.M.I.’s seems to be “Hey, the SA-X was scary, what if we just do that 7 times?” But where the SA-X is unpredictable, you always know when you’re going into an E.M.M.I. zone, and I never felt the same tension running away from them that I did when suddenly the SA-X shows up and it’s time to run for your life while dodging plasma beams and ice missiles.

In some ways, Metroid Dread is to Metroid Fusion what EA’s Battlefront is to actual Battlefront. Where the original has depth despite its limitations, the newer game is shallow despite (or perhaps because of) its vast resources. This is isn’t a wholly fair comparison as Dread definitely has a lot more going for it than EA’s Battlefront, but the general arc of rough-but-deep to shiny-but-shallow(er) is similar enough. The trend these similarities suggest calls to mind Disney live-action remakes and the MCU, and while independent artists seem to have a stronger position in the games industry than they do in film, I don’t know if it’s strong enough to make up for the increasing Disneyfication of AAA offerings.

Well, that got dark. Anywho…

Storywise, Dread really saves it all for right at the end. Where Fusion reveals the SA-X relatively early and just lets you sit with that knowledge for a bit, Dread rarely shows you anything outside Samus’s POV, and there’s not really any “Oh, what” moment until right at the end, when you find out [spoiler warning for literally every major plot point in the game] Samus is a Metroid now, the computer was actually Raven Beak, also Raven Beak is Samus’s dad, all in one cutscene. Other than meeting Quiet Robe, there’s not really any other narrative development during the course of the game.

So Fusion keeps the crown, but I’m glad there’s more 2D Metroid, and it was a fun 10 hours.

p.s. There was absolutely no reason why they had to show Samus waking up before showing the [first] fight with Raven Beak, and it was really confusing. I have no idea why they chose do it that way instead of just presenting the events in order.

  • Metroid Fusion (2002)
    Synopsis: Samus, once again stripped of all her powers for reasons, has to investigate a research facility that was studying a dangerous new organism called the X. Also she’s part Metroid now.

    After comparing Prey to Metroid Fusion (see below) I felt the need to play Metroid Fusion again so I did and it was great. Perfect level of difficulty, perfect progression rate, perfect length, very satisfying when you figure out the strategy for each boss, and when you first get the Varia suit the blue X still attack you before they figure out you’re no longer vulnerable to cold and then start running away from you which is just such a great little detail.

Admittedly, re: my Prey comparison, it was a lot less creepy than I remembered, but that’s at least in part because this was the fourth or fifth time I’ve played it so I remembered all of the major setpieces and wasn’t surprised when SA-X showed up. But also I didn’t remember that Metroid Fusion also has an enemy called the Nightmare, so…still think the comparison holds up.

As does this game. Really, do yourself a favor and play it. (You can play it for free online very easily not that I would in any way publicly endorse doing so.)

  • Ratchet & Clank (2016)
    Synopsis: A young mechanic named Ratchet finally gets to become the hero he’s always wanted to be—just not in the way he thought. Also he meets a robot named Clank.

    So this might just be my own hangup, but I hated nearly every boss fight in this game. See, the weapons that are great for mowing down mobs—Pyrocitor, Groovitron/Proton Drum combo, Buzz Blades, Pixelator, Sheepinator (objectively the best weapon in the game)—are various degrees of useless against bosses, due to either low damage or low range (or just boss immunity in the case of the Sheepinator). So in order to make the boss fights not excruciatingly painful to get through (I’m looking at you, Mrs. Zerkon), you have to spend upgrade points on weapons you don’t use 90% of the time, like the Warmonger and the Plasma Striker, and hold back on using the few weapons that are great for both, like the Predator Launcher and…well that’s basically it, so that you have as much ammo as possible for the boss fight, which will usually give you ammo drops but make it almost impossible to survive long enough to scrounge around for them. It makes upgrading a choice between getting something that’s actually exciting and will immediately affect your experience or getting something that will be useful in an hour but completely pointless right now, which is kind of boring (not to mention those weapons won’t be as high level because you’re not using them all the time). I shouldn’t have to have less fun during the bulk of the game just to make the boss fights doable.

Also I might just be bad at the game, I don’t know. I’m just saying turning robot dogs into goats is a lot more fun than desperately firing the last of my Pixelator ammo at Nefarious hoping that I can kill him before he gets off another AOE blast that I’m only vulnerable to because the Pixelator is a goddamn shotgun and doesn’t have the range I need even when I’ve got over half of the range upgrades for it.

Also, respawning me past the point where a died is a little condescending and I don’t appreciate it.

  • Prey (2017)
    Synopsis: It’s your first day working with your brother on some cutting-edge scientific research, during which nothing will go horribly wrong.

    I, too, remember Metroid Fusion.

    And not just because you’re on a space station where an alien species that was being studied has broken free and is killing everyone and can change its form and it’s your enemy but also gives you powers and you’re having to go back and forth between various areas on the space station as you unlock new security clearances and technology but the aliens start to sense what you’re doing and try to sabotage your efforts and you have a computer telling you what to do and there’s one really powerful alien that’s hunting you and when it shows up you just need to run away and the game ends (possibly) with you blowing up the space station but (possibly) rescuing some of the lifeforms aboard—though that is a lot of it.

The other thing that makes these games so similar is how goshdern creepy they are. Granted, Metroid Fusion doesn’t get outright scary until the SA-X gets involved, and even then is still mostly fine when she’s not around, whereas Prey pretty much leads with trying to make you soil yourself and doesn’t let up. But both have a similar unsettling vibe even outside of the jump scares and nonononononono moments. It’s that post-apocalyptic human-settlement-minus-the-humanity thing, but somehow worse because they were just here a moment ago.

Not to mention the soundtracks. Both Metroid Fusion and Prey have generally spooky electronic music throughout, and it’s very good at setting the mood (sometimes too good, like when the Prey “Uh oh, there’s a typhon” music will just start going for seemingly no reason [and sometimes actually no reason as far as I could tell]). The music that really gets me, though, is Prey‘s main menu music. The first twenty seconds, when it’s just the guitar going, is some the most unsettling music I’ve ever listened to. Like, deeply unsettling. The combination of the creepiness and melancholy gives it this sense of inevitable doom that just…man, it hits me hard, every time. There were times when I booted the game up and then almost shut it off again just because of that music. And honestly, when it hits that first chord change and the synth comes in, I mean it definitely ups the menace factor, but it completely breaks the spell for me. That first twenty seconds, though…

Anyway, I eventually got tired, like physically exhausted, by how tense and kind of tedious the game was, so I switched to easy mode and just blasted through the last couple hours like Samus with a shotgun. If I were to play it again I’d probably play on story mode since there were definitely some storylines I didn’t end up following because it just didn’t feel worth it. But I liked the main storyline (mechanically I like the Dishonored games a little better because there’s nothing like blinking around the map, but narratively Prey is far and away the better game), and the reveal at the end was interesting, and I like that the game kind of tells you what it thinks you should do based on the choices you made, but still lets you make the final choice in case you happen to disagree with it. Honestly I’m kind of surprised that I ended up playing through the whole thing, given my general dislike of being scared, and that probably says a lot for how good this game is.

p.s. Just to be clear, I don’t think it’s a problem that Prey has so many similarities to Metroid Fusion, nor do I think that one is a substitute for the other. Metroid Fusion, for the record, is one of my favorite games of all time. (Also I wrote this review before my Metroid Fusion review above, in case that wasn’t clear. I’m starting to think I should just present these in the order I played them rather than alphabetical, since that’s how I write them, and apparently I make a lot of references to previous reviews.)

p.p.s. I forgot to mention, one of the biggest mistakes I made was thinking “Oh, I like using the turrets and I don’t want to have to be constantly fighting them, so I guess I won’t get any of the typhon neuromod upgrades.” That was stupid. Having powers and not having to just rely on weapons would’ve made the late game a lot more fun, and after about halfway through the game most turrets are broken or undeployed when you first encounter them, so while you’re giving up being able to use them (at least being able to use them safely), you don’t really have to worry about having to fight them.

p.p.p.s. The opening title sequence is really good and it made me wish more games did interesting opening title sequences. Like, it’s this and Borderlands, basically.

Honorable Mentions

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