“The Deadsuit. Quiet for many years… On this day, something stirs within. Something new…” And with these ominous words, the adventure that is Ghost Song begins. A sci-fi, third-person, side-scrolling shooter for Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, and Switch, Ghost Song is a modern version of a classic kind of game that manages to be as unique as it is familiar, and as flawed as it is fun.
One of the hallmarks of the Call Of Duty series is that these first-person shooter games’ annual installments usually only makes incremental changes, not big ones. Not since 2007’s Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, anyway. And while that’s certainly true of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, PC), some of the changes they have made in this installment make things rather interesting.
As an old fool, I often like it when people kick it old school. Especially when those people are game designers making a first-person sci-fi shooter. But I also love modern conveniences. Which is why I was excited to try out Prodeus (Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, PC), which the good people at Bounding Box Software have described as being an old school shooter with modern touches.
Unlike sequels, the expectations for add-ons are usually low. We expect there to be new missions, new locations, new enemies, and new weapons, but we don’t expect much in the way of new mechanics. And that’s okay. Take Worldslayers, a new add-on for the sci-fi third-person action / adventure shooter Outriders. While it does add something (which I’ll detail in a moment), that something doesn’t add much at all. Which is fine because while Outriders: Worldslayer — which is available both separately and as a part of a new, more complete version of the game (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC) — may not be an improvement on the core game, it more importantly doesn’t ruin it.
At a time when tired anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are being updated and mainstreamed — I’m looking at you, “Jewish space laser” lady — it’s nice to be able to vent my frustrations by shooting virtual Nazis in video games. And few games make this as satisfying as Sniper Elite 5 (Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC), a third-person, open world, stealth action World War II shooter that’s as deep and compelling as the best WWII gun games.
Inspired by the titular movies and TV show, Evil Dead: The Game (Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC) is normally a co-op-focused third-person survival horror action game in which players must work together to defeat the infamous Kandarian Demon…or get to be the notorious K.D. as they take down their friends.
But as is so often the case these days with co-op games, the people who made Evil Dead: The Game — Saber Interactive and Boss Team Games — insist that it can also be played by those who prefer to go it alone.
What follows is my assessment of Evil Dead: The Game as a single-player experience.
Like the Tiny Tina’s Assault On Dragon Keep add-on for Borderlands 2 that inspired it, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC) is a fantasy-flavored spin-off of the normally sci-fi space opera shooter series Borderlands.
But by going even further with the fantasy elements — and the tabletop fantasy role-playing game elements — Wonderlands does an even better job of being as fun as a normal Borderlands game while not being just another Borderlands game.
With Forza Horizon 5 and Gran Turismo 7 representing the best that racing games have to offer these days, you’d think every other racing game would pale in comparison. Or at least not put out a new installment just a few weeks later. But GRID Legends (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC) manages to hold its own, more or less, by having equally solid controls, good places to test them, and a nice variety of ways to do so.
By any measure, 2021 was a terrible year. And while some games made it better — hence their inclusion on my Best Video Games Of 2021 list — there were also some that made it so much worse.
Here, in the order I suffered them, are my least favorite games of 2021.