While 2021 has been a terrible year, it was actually a pretty good one for games. Way better than the last couple, anyway.
Here, in the order I played them, are my favorite games of 2021.
Category: Xbox One
Thanks to its multiplayer mode being free, and super good, it’s easy to forget that Halo Infinite (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC) also has a single-player campaign. That is, unless you’re one of the people who prefer to play these games solo, and with its epic sci-fi space opera story driving the action. It’s for them — by which I mean us — that I present this assessment of Halo Infinite‘s story driven campaign.
Having explored the time before the first game (Karen Traviss’ Aspho Fields and The Slab), the time between the second and third (Traviss’ Jacinto’s Remnant, Anvil Gate, and Coalition’s End), after the fourth game (Jason M. Hough’s Ascendance), and both during the fifth and before the first (Hough’s Bloodlines), the novels based on the Gears Of War games are now mining the previously untapped era between the third and fourth games with Michael A. Stackpole’s military science fiction novel Gears Of War: Ephyra Rising (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Stackpole discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as why you don’t need to have played all of the Gears games, or any of them, to understand it.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: I love shooting Nazis in the face from the first-person perspective. And with all the shit going on in the world — people shouting “Jews will not replace us”; people wearing sweatshirts with Nazi symbols to keep warm while committing treason — my trigger finger is especially itchy these days. Thankfully, shooting Nazis is exactly what you get, and more, from the World War II first-person shooter Call Of Duty: Vanguard (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC). But what makes this installment really satisfying is how, across the board, the good people at Sledgehammer Games have added interesting new mechanics while keeping, and bringing back, what made this shooter series so great in the first place.
We like our video games sequels like we like new albums by our favorite bands: we want some evolution, but not to the point where it seems unfamiliar. Which is going to be a problem for some fans of the Forza Horizon series of open world racing games, since Forza Horizon 5 (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC) doesn’t add much in the way of gameplay to distinguish it from previous installments. But for people just looking for an engaging racing game — i.e., me — Forza Horizon 5 provides the same level of racing excitement as, well, previous installments.
It doesn’t matter what you put on a pizza; if the cheese, sauce, and crust aren’t good, the pizza won’t be good, no matter what you pile on top. The same is true for combative action games. If the combat is bad, the game is bad, no matter what other mechanics there might be. Which is the problem with Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC), a story-driven, sci-fi, third-person shooter whose problematic combat and other rather basic problems somewhat undermine an otherwise entertaining space adventure.
For Halo fans, Halo Infinite‘s December 8 release date can’t come fast enough. But it might come a little quicker — or at least seem to — if you read Troy Denning’s new Halo novel, Halo: Divine Wind (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview about it, Denning discusses what inspired and influenced this sci-fi space opera spy thriller, including why he thinks it might not work as a Halo game.
Like their previous games Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, and Evolve, Turtle Rock Studios’ Back 4 Blood (Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC) is a first-person shooter that’s meant to be played co-op. But unlike those games, Blood is also clearly made for people who’d like to play solo. Not to the same point a Call Of Duty sequel or Halogame, where there’s a dedicated story-driven campaign, but certainly enough that you can still have a good time even if you don’t play well with others.
I’ve been very open about the fact that if you remake a classic game, you need to update it to modern standards (my reviews of the Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 remakes speak for themselves). But I’ve apparently found the exception with the 2021 Enhanced Re-Release version of the sci-fi first-person shooter Quake (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, PC), which is mostly just a better looking version of an old game, but adds something new (maybe two) that makes it worth buying…especially at this game’s low price.