Best games played in 2021

Because half my GOTY list is Deltarune and the other half is Guilty Gear Strive

Feelings on which games I like the most may change in time, but this list and similar ones will not be edited after their end of year draft in order to reflect my thoughts at the time of publication

22

ASCII people deserve love, too
Look mum I'm a hacker haha
proceeds to splatter his face on the pavement falling from a skysraper
Holy crap, do I actually love photography? Brb, gonna find a nice camera and some lenses
When this is your sophomore game, you know you got some good shit in you
Read The TFoRI entry but change the setting to Hard-Boiled Hong-Kong Action French Noir

17

Off

"The road to hell is paved with our best intentions"
-overused quote I pulld out my ass beacuse I am tired and need to get off my machine to get some fucking sleep for uni tomorrow
I may or may not have bought this solely because the soundtrack came included for free
These songs are so good wtf
If there's something Yeo excels at, other than writing, is the incredibly immersive atmosphere of his stories. Turns out this Japanese high school delinquent tale penned by a Russian hits really hard

13

Midway realised DOOM could be really scary and went all the way. Good for them honestly
I still get nightmares about those fucking [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]

11

Niko is best boy, he deserves peace
Now there's a pretty meme! Exquisite!
Green iz bezt! Vote Wurrzag fur WAAAGH!lord or he'll turn youze into a zogging squig!
THAT'S IT LADS, ROCK 'N' STONE!
Almost made me cry

6

Dusa is best Supergiant girl, fite me
Games shouldn't be allowed to be so unabashedly bold. Hell, some crazy dev could go crazy and we might get another Half-Life 2!
I will bring the game's final explicit message with me for as long as I live
I know it's on my GOTY already but fuck it, it's great and I will keep preaching to choir because I bloody love this stuff

2

I remember a Noah-Caldwell Gervais review (planescape torment?) which mentioned a short story featuring a videogame with a main character who has to sacrifice parts of their gear and abilities in order to progress. While I would have to track down the story in order to effectively talk about it, I am glad Pyre gave us the closest thing to it, an absolute masterpiece of design, presentation, music and art.

Also canonically a game where nearly every character is literally BALLIN'
Some pieces of art are so good they are maddening, making you think "How the actual hell did they make something so good?".
Obsidian achieved the impossible and created one of the best games ever despite everything working against them, ultimately paying the price of a game that, in retrospect, was set up for failure.

Veronica ily (platonically) so much

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