Normally I do a top five list for each end-of-year subject, but this time around I'm going to do a "year in review" instead because I think it might be hard to generate a proper top 5 list, when so much of 2021 was janky and weird at best. 2020 had excuses.....but 2021 felt like 2020 threw everything off and this was the year the toll came due.
For gaming this year, the world of computer and video gaming is essentially dominated by bad ideas, scandals and a mess of games that somehow failed to hit the mark (even when they still landed on the target). Examples:
Ubisoft and Activision - how not to allow abusive corporate culture to ruin your businesses.
Ubisoft and NFTs - as Penny Arcade states, even shitty ideas must have their start. I am disappointed that this appears to be the trend now, and NFTs are a prime example of how federal regulation and oversight is failing us.
Halo Infinite - amazing single-player game, excellent multiplayer, but a complete mess when it comes to the execution of a season pass with XP gain. The story has been how hard it is to earn the XP to gain the gear, but the real story of course should be why the industry now assumes every game must of necessity have a Skinner Box season pass to begin with.
Battlefield 2042 - I bought a used physical copy on the PS5 since I suspected I'd probably end up wanting to trade it in. My experience thus far has been that this game clearly suffered from a sense of direction (it was initially supposed to be a battle royale, I have read) and ended up being retooled into a half-assed experience which seems to displease everyone. I've played about 10 hours and am already done with it. The problem isn't even bugs....it's just not very fun. 128 player events are simply too much, and organizing even within a 4 man squad means nothing if you're watching the raw chaos unfold. Things get twice as bad if you're on the side with nothing but inexperienced players and the other team is loaded with old Battlefield pros. At that point? You're not there to be entertained, you're just there for someone else's entertainment. I've only seen one other game as messy as BF2042, and that was CoD: Black Ops IIII, which also suffered from late game design changes leading to an identity crisis.
Call of Duty Vanguard - I won't say anything bad about this, it's actually pretty fun and the renovations on their zombie mode are cool. Vanguard works because it dials the formula back to the familiar, then innovates in small but meaningful ways (such as cover not being invulnerable and some being destructible, maps being built to encourage use of cover, and the controls feeling more natural....something Cold War somehow got wrong). But for many, Call of Duty Vanguard is too mundane this time around, and it is admittedly still not as impressive perhaps as the latest Modern Warfare was.
Rogue Company - I got in to this one when it released last year, hoping it would break the Fortnite spell. It's gameplay options, while fun, were too anemic to substitute, but the game has slowly built up and is still enjoyable to jump in to. Like the others it has a season pass, which is especially grindy, but playing it on double XP weekends helps. If you're wondering what it is: it's a short-match team-based PVP experience where you essentially hold territory, defuse/set bombs, and most recently some straight team deathmatching is also an option. Diverse characters with lots of distinct abilities and styles mixed with very smooth third person-view gameplay makes for a very nice game, its just a pity it doesn't offer more modes or even larger maps with some sort of battle royale. Like Apex Legends, its characters are designed to work in teams, however, so I don't think they wan to compete in the BR space even though it would be a good fit (with some adjustment to character abulities).
Fortnite - They got through their Chapter 2 seasons and started a third season. My son still plays, I still play, but I also desperately want to not play this game anymore. I know this is exactly where I sat with it last year, too. The only difference is....this time, with their new chapter, I feel less and less of the pull to experience the content, and no more desire to spend money on stupid virtual skins. Maybe I'll try quitting it again as a new year's resolution; this game has nothing new to offer at this point. But....it's a fun game to play with my son, so maybe that is unrealistic.
Returnal and other Roguelites - This year was a year for roguelites. Hades was popular; I had trouble getting in to it, but my wife loved it. Dead Cells which came out....last year?...remains fun in short bursts but hard to get in to since it starts you over as is common for the genre. The one roguelite I most enjoyed (but still couldn't get far in was Returnal on PS5. Amazing game! I just wish it was not a roguelite, it would be so much better if it were a more conventional game that offered some hope of advancement for those who have actual lives and can't keep playing through entire levels to die 27 times to the first boss.
Playstation 5 - speaking of losers, Playstation 5, despite being my favorite overall console so far in terms of what it can do feels like the loser of 2021. It only generated a smidgeon of console exclusives, such as Returnal, and all of its prospects lie in the future, yet to be realized. I did grab Deathloop on it, only to discover that was not really an exclusive after all. PS5 continues to be the hardest console to actually find, and the sheer frustration of securing a new console this year has been a very bad look. People aren't just being thwarted by scalpers, they are being thwarted by the online retailers who continue to maintain shoddy, exploitable storefronts or set up expensive membership exclusive programs. Its fucking embarrassing.
Xbox Series S - who knew the diminutive lesser cousin to Xbox Series X would be the winner of this year's console sales? A year ago everyone felt that the Series S might be a mistake, but it turns out Microsoft knew what they were doing, The distinctively cheaper console still runs the newer games, looks good, and provides the most important feature a console could ever want: accessibility, as in its something you can probably find somewhere on store shelves right now. I bought another one just for my back room, and find myself playing on it more than my Xbox Series X, if only because I think my Series X has some issues (wifi drops and controller connectivity which randomly cuts out, none of which the Series S has issues with). The Series X is awesome, sure, but I now realize I would have not noticed much if any difference had I only been able to find a Series S.
Bottom line, though: Xbox has a clear advantage over PS5 right now with its Game Pass, PC integration, streaming options, and the simple fact that the Series S is a $300 box you can actually find and buy on shelves. What a concept!
Switch OLED - this is another one I can't really say anything bad about. Should you trade up for one? Absolutely yes if you want the best handheld experience out there. The OLED screen is noticeably better as an experience in handheld mode. The minor improvements are all worth it. But if you're fine with your current Switch? You are okay, you don't need to upgrade right now. For me, I bought three, one for myself, my wife and my kid...we all benefitted from an upgrade and it was well worth it. Had I been less affluent (and impulsive) though I would have been just fine sticking with the old Switch.
The only embarrassing part of the OLED was how obsessed the entire vlog and game news industry was with obsessing over a mythical Switch Pro, and their inevitable outrage and disappointment that imagining something based on flimsy rumors from unreliable sources and then deciding it must be gospel is, as usual, bad journalism.
So! What games have I actually spent time with this year, though?
Ghost Recon: Breakpoint - I played this over the last 18 months and finally finished it earlier this year. I was briefly interested in the new campaign they announced, but that interest was shattered when I realized the timing was likely deliberate to lure suckers back in for their new NFT offerings.
I liked Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and wish that Ubisoft's desire to shy away from all controversy didn't push them to create Breakpoint as a fictitious island populated by tech mogul bad guys. It was the easy way out. They released the game 18 months earlier than they should have, and populated the DLC with what amounted to quality of life patches. But it was still fun to play, to a point. The idea that they expect someone to play the game for 600 hours (60 is quite enough) to earn an NFT is insane.
Crysis and other older FPS Shooters - I actually finished the "remastered" version on Switch, and it was somehow both as fun and less buggy than my experience playing and finishing it on PC many years ago. I've also divested more time in older shooters that I had finished ages ago, but enjoyed returning to: Singularity, Rage and Bulletstorm specifically, though all three on Steam. Rage is especially interesting, as this game apparently used a unique approach to its environments which actually looks better in meaningful ways on contemporary GPUs.
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne - still playing this old classic, re-released on Switch, and anjoying it despite the at times bizarre and insane approaches it takes to story. With SMT games you either see the bizarre elements as selling points or you bail. I feel that is one of their charms.
Playstation 2 - Way back in 2019 I got this idea of jumping in to the retrogame collector's field (watching too much Metal Jesus I think!) and secured a used PS2 slim, a console I hadn't owned since around 2005. The PS2 is unique in many ways, one of the largest console bases out there, and many of the games that came out for it are still exclusive to the system. Back when PS2 was current I actually spent more time playing on the Xbox, but there were a lot of specific titles I enjoyed, and a few I missed. As I have slowly rebuilt the "core" collection of games I wished to replay or play for the first time on PS2 I've managed to secure gems like Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill Origin, Resident Evil Outbreak File 1 (working on getting #2), Armored Core 2, Armored Core 3 (other AC games are a bit pricey), Splinter Cell and so forth. Two real gems, being the SMT fan I am: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 I somehow found on Ebay in new condition, still in packaging. These are great games, weird and atmospheric with interesting difficulty curves according to some. Getting to play them on the originally intended system is well worth it.
Retro Arcade Gaming - Beyond the PS2.....it's been collecting arcade games, either on Xbox or Switch, as many classics can be found out there to let me recreate my own version of the arcade from Shady Grove Truckstop in 1986 that I used to spend way too many quarters on. Pac-Man 99 is literally Pac-Man with a battle royale element. Remakes of Asteroids and Centipede can be found. Evercade handheld (and the soon to come VS) let you replay many obscure console and arcade versions of these games. Oddly I can only find Defender and Joust in a Midway collection on the Xbox 360, luckily retro-compatible on the Series X/S. I am finding a quick bout of Pac-man or Asteroids is much more satisfying than a game that requires a minimum 2-4 hours time commitment to feel like you got somewhere, these days.
I assume the retro gaming interest I have is a byproduct of age. The arcade titles stem back to the eighties when much of my gaming experience centered on a truck stop (Shady Grove) which had an amazing arcade room with about forty arcade machines. The PS2 stems back to the "golden age" of really interesting games that looked impressive for the time, but still relied heavily on story, atmosphere, and making the best of the processing power at hand to create an engaging experience, in an era before DLC, games as service that never end, and constant monetization was implicit in design.
So what has fallen to the wayside? Destiny 2, for one. I will probably get the upcoming Witch Queen expansion, but I haven't played it for a while now, finding that the game's unfocused approach to storytelling in which it mixed solid single player story moments that lead to hideous and mindless grinds to migrate to the next story bit are simply not worth it. Now that Halo Infinite is out, I feel even less compelled to subject myself to Destiny except on a whim. Their pricing scheme on the upcoming expansion doesn't help. My inability to get any value out of their insanely grindy season passes does not help, either.
I also have a laundry list of games I keep wanting to play but can never find the proper time to do so. All of the Dark Pictures Anthology of games, for example. The Outer Worlds looks like an obvious choice for me, but I keep pushing it off, waiting for "the right time" which I am forgetting was 10-12 years ago, before I had so many more time responsibilities as a business owner and father. If I am to pay the Outer Worlds it must be in smaller chunks, now, or never.....and so it also is for games like Greedfall, Dying Light (which I am playing on Switch, and can't believe it looks and plays so well in the OLED at least), and even finishing Cyberpunk 2077, which I stalled out on midway through due to the fact that I figured it might be best to just give it time and see what lots of patches might end up doing for it.
2021 was a bad year for new games, in many ways, but a great year for games in general, and exploring the "Steam back catalogue" phenomenon. I think a lot of people have this issue. When the digital market exploded, it was with the notion that publishers could at last deal a blow to the used game aftermarket. What they did not predict was that they had created a much greater nemesis: the back-catalogue, in which every contemporary game must now compete with its predecessors. The efforts spent on games-as-service is of course a new way to combat this, by making games which keep people playing and paying, and also making games which, when the time is right, can be shut down and ended and just go away, to no longer remain competitive. Even as they do this, the interest in retrogaming explodes, as people realize the value of tangible hardcopies that cannot be shut down.
Well, 2022 will hopefully bear fruit for the new console generation. Here's to high hopes for the future, and a stocking full of 15-20 year old games! Ho ho ho!!!!
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