Favorite Games Of 2021

Well, 2021 is finally over, and not a moment too soon. This hasn't really been the best of years either, but it did end up producing some great games like Psychonauts, the new Ratchet & Clank game, and It Takes Two... that I'm not actually able to play. So to prevent this list from mostly just being Nintendo stuff, I wanted to also list some of the games I discovered this year that didn't actually come out in 2021. I highly recommend checking out all of these games.

My favorite games of 2021 are:

Metroid Dread: Easily my Game Of The Year, Metroid Dread was a game over a decade in the making, yet it somehow managed to completely surpass my expectations for it, becoming one of my favorite entries in the Metroid series. The level design masterfully guides you throughout the game so that you don't get lost while still being open to some really fun sequence breaks, the movement and combat is fluid and fast-paced, the boss encounters are tense and exciting, the art direction is striking, and the story does a great job at bringing many Metroid plot threads to a satisfying resolution. It's a miracle Metroid Dread exists, let alone the fact that it lived up to the years of hype behind it. 

Mario Party Superstars: I hated Mario Party: The Top 100. The lack of content, mismatched music, and questionable minigame selection wasted a pretty exciting premise, so I'm glad Mario Party Superstars ended up being a fantastic course correction. With 99 of the series' best minigames (and Cast Aways) and five incredibly fun and devious boards, Superstars feels like a love letter to the series that has an insane amount of love and care put into it. The graphics are amazing, the controls feels great (once again, outside of Cast Aways), the remixes are fantastic, and the sheer attention to detail shines through from the recreation of Mushroom Village, to the tweaks that make boards like Woody Woods and Peach's Birthday Cake more fun, to each board getting a unique remix for the last five turns of a match. Superstars is already becoming one of my favorite entries in the series, and DLC with some more boards, minigames and characters could be enough to bring it to #1.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale: Chicory: A Colorful Tale is probably the friendliest video game I've ever played. It's a Zelda-like adventure where you use a paintbrush to paint the environment, both for solving puzzles and just simply expressing yourself. There are so many options to use when painting, from brush sizes to stencils, and that's not even going into the remarkable amount of accessibility options. The dialogue has a charm and sense of positivity to it not unlike the Animal Crossing series, but the game still manages to tell a heartfelt and engrossing story about imposter syndrome that can and will punch you in the gut. The artstyle is clean and charming, Lena Raine's leitmotif-heavy soundtrack is fantastic, and the simple act of running around and drawing the environment is just so addicting. Chicory is easily my favorite indie game of the year and it deserved way more recognition than it got.

Warioware: Get It Together: This game was easily the most pleasant surprise of the year, as it was actually one of the games I was less excited about at first. The decision to have each microgame be played by controlling a character had me worried that Get It Together would lack the sense of unpredictability of other entries in the series, but wow, was I wrong! Get It Together's gimmick allows for fun physics-focused microgames with multiple solutions to them, and learning to master all the different characters was a ton of fun. The emphasis on multiplayer and tackling the microgames in different ways adds a lot more replay value, and the different characters makes trying to master each microgame individually a lot more fun and challenging. The artstyle is charming, and the soundtrack ranks as one of my favorites of the year.

Also, here's some of my favorite games that I discovered in 2021:

Katana Zero: I was not expecting to like Katana Zero as much as I did, but this indie gem is fluid, challenging, and a ton of fun. Controlling Zero feels great, and taking down all the enemies in each room without getting hit once feels incredibly satisfying, especially after dozens of failed attempts. I especially love being able to replay footage of your completed run at the end of every stage, it's always fun to have features like that. The pixel art graphics are super detailed, the music is banging, and most surprising of all, the story is genuinely great. I didn't know what to expect plot-wise going into Katana Zero, but the sheer amount of story routes and dialogue options here put Telltale's games to absolute shame. 

The Messenger: I actually went into The Messenger knowing about the game's big twist, but even that didn't stop me from absolutely loving the game. The standard Ninja Gaiden-esque first half was fun if a bit too difficult spike-y for my tastes, but once the game opened up in the second half, I was absolutely hooked. Being able to return to past levels to search for collectibles was a ton of fun, the new levels like Elemental Skylands and Riviere Turquoise are some of the best in the game, and being able to master the controls and traverse entire sections of the game in minutes flat felt really satisfying. It all culminates in one of my favorite final levels in any game ever, a true test of your skills that ends The Messenger on a high note. And of course, the soundtrack by rainbowdragoneyes is absolutely fantastic and makes the game even more fun to play.

Ristar: I got the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass, and while it was great to return to old gems like Sonic 2 and Paper Mario, it was especially cool to discover entirely new favorites. Case in point, Ristar is a platformer so good that I immediately wanted to play it again upon finishing. It takes a simple concept of being able to grab onto pretty much anything and really pushes it as far as it can go, forcing you to really master the controls by the end of the game. The level design is creative, the boss fights are godly, the difficulty curve is great, and the soundtrack is one of the best on the Genesis. If you have NSO, I implore you to give Ristar a shot.

Sin And Punishment: Another gem I discovered through the Expansion Pass was Sin And Punishment, probably my favorite out of the three Treasure games I got to play (though Gunstar Heroes and Dynamite Headdy were great too). Sin And Punishment is a run-and-gun shooter with quirky controls that feel surprisingly natural once you get the hang of them. It's short, but chock full of creative and bombastic setpieces, fun boss fights, and a great scoring system that incentivizes shooting as much as you can. Similarly to Ristar, I replayed this one immediately after completing it for the first time, and now I really want to get my hands on the sequel one day.