Has 2021 Been An Overall Weak Year For Video Games?

[Blackmist]

It's been a decent year for games. Maybe not so great a year for massive AAA tentpole videogames.

We're at the start of a new generation, the consoles can't keep anywhere near demand, COVID has shafted huge studios and remote working can take some getting used to for bigger teams.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I don't see anything unusual about this year. Gaming after the 2000s became pretty meh, with only maybe 1 or 2 notable games each year.

[Floofi]

Seems like a pretty average year to me. I think it's just a few of the big AAA notables that came out this year crashed and burned (GTA: Definitive, BF2042, New World, leftovers of Cyberpunk 2077), didn't live up to the hype (Deathloop, Back 4 Blood), or were plagued by controversies (GTA again, Halo Infinite monetization, Blizzard's whole ordeal) that put a sour taste in peoples' mouths.

[Zenfoldor]

Yep, there were some good releases, but overall the year was lackluster. Mainly due to delays. Plenty of good games to keep me busy, but definitely the slowest year in a while.

Good news is, 2022 is looking very solid.

Console exclusives helped a lot this year, so if you are only gaming on PC your year was probably much worse. Availability of consoles and GPUs sucked this year, and Switch OLED should have came with an internals upgrade, so not a great year on the hardware front either.

And before you think I'm hating on PC, you're wrong. Inscryption and Valheim(like Crusaider Kings III in 2020) are legit. The only problem with PC gaming is exclusive games on consoles that don't get ported(and lazy, sloppy, common "no money left on the table" ports, which can be really frustrating). It doesn't seem like a big problem, but if you look at gaming overall in 2021, it is just a much better year if you have access to all the games that came out. Identify any one gaming platform and they generally will compare poorly with previous years releases.

My top 10 games this year in no order:

1. RE: Village
2. Tales of Arise
3. Rift Apart
4. Dread
5. Mass Effect Collection
6. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury
7. It Takes Two
8. Forza 5
9. MH: Rise
10. Valheim

Other great games like Infinite, Returnal, Inscryption, Deathloop, Psychonauts 2, GotG, Strive, Knockout City, ect.

[Jastall]

For me it's been average. Only 2021 game I bought and really enjoyed in its entirety was Metroid Dread. I also loved ME: Legendary Edition but that's a re-release. Deathloop and Age of Empires IV were good, but not as much as I expected. Subnautica: Below Zero was also quite good. But that's it for decent games this year.

But 2022 has God of War on PC and Total War Warhammer 3 in its first two months, so that's already shaping up quite decently. If I get a PS5, add Horizon 2 to that list.

[Tikishock]

Dang, no love or appreciation for Halo Infinite here...

[Chilela]

Dang, no love or appreciation for Halo Infinite here...

Or Deltarune Chapter 2, which I've been meaning to get around to.

That said, this year generally felt pretty forgettable, outside of the abundance of lolcow-tier titles.

[hellhamster]

I downloaded this game. I played a little bit of it, and was so confused by what the point was, I stopped.

Can someone explain to me what this game is supposed to be? I don't mind revisiting it with a different set of expectations.

It's a one of a kind noir detective RPG. You basically wake up after a bad alcohol bender with no memory of what happened or who you are. You try to piece the story together using 24 different parts of your brain, like your fight or flight instinct, encyclopedic knowledge, rhetoric, visual calculus, or a sensitivity to the paranormal, etc. These are skill points you develop, you can combine them and make many different builds for your character, such as making him a Sherlock Holmes-like super logical cop, a schizo madman cop who listens to the wind and invisible black holes in the world for clues (and predict the world's end), a junkie/alcoholic who uses drugs and alcohol as a boost, etc, there are many possibilities and they are all viable and fit with the story. Each part of your brain, depending on how you develop it, plays a role in each conversation, such as perception and visual calculus helping you when scoping out the crime scene, rhetoric and drama when trying to spot a lie, etc.

There are skill checks you pass depending on a dice roll and your skill development but none are vital to progress the story. In fact, in many cases it's hilarious to fail the check. In the beginning for example you don't have any money to pay the hotel manager, if you succeed the check you can run away successfully, if you fail it you also make a run for it but mid-flight decide to double-flip him and crash into a grandma in a wheelchair.

There is also a political compass you can choose from depending on your responses, or not at all, that's pretty hilarious and pokes fun at your chosen belief no matter what you choose. As the game progresses you pick up ideas as you talk with other people, and internalise your thoughts for stat boosts, such as believing you are a rock star for a Drama skill boost.

There are two mysteries to solve here, the murder, and your past. The game is definitely weird, but it's also pretty genius.

I experienced the same thing you did at the beginning, it is kinda hard because you have to get used to walls of text, but it definitely scratches that Planescape Torment itch due to its excellent writing. Once you get used to all the writing, it will blow your mind. The Final Cut edition has every line of text read by excellent voice overs if you don't like to read. It picks up once you meet the race theory guy during the first hours or so.

The story has quite a bit of humour and is pretty out there depending on your chosen skills as you delve deeper into crazy territory, but when it decides to lay it on you and give you some heart-wrenching moments, it is not pulling any punches.

The ending is certainly mind-blowing, more so if you do one particular side quest, that is all I have to say. The soundtrack is phenomenal, it's worth buying the game just for that.

I think that overall, it's pretty much in my top 2 games of the decade, together with Bloodborne. There's a reason it has like a 97% score on metacritic.

[Evaddon]

Definitely, it was the year of Broken and Unfinished games almost across the board for triple A titles....I mean we came in to this year with the huge disappointment of Cyberpunk launching as buggy, filled mess with so much false advertisement I'm surprised CD projekt Red hasn't really gotten sued yet

2022 looks decent for gaming, but hoping for a game to come out without issues these days seems to be a fever dream...as me and my friend say now "Modern Gaming!"

[Akka]

I downloaded this game. I played a little bit of it, and was so confused by what the point was, I stopped.

Can someone explain to me what this game is supposed to be? I don't mind revisiting it with a different set of expectations.

It's an investigation RPG (as in the actual original meaning of "ROLE-PLAYING game") with a heavy cultural and introspective emphasis that attempt to make failure as interesting as success - failure being one, if not the major theme.
It's pretty brilliant, and at least very original. There is no fight at all, everything happens through dialogues and checks, the main point is really about "roleplaying".

The beginning can feel rather weird at first, just understand that the hero has serious psychological problems/trauma, and the different aspects of himself (intuition, logic, drama, strength, etc.) are presented as "characters" in his mind. So basically it's different facets of yourself that do their job and tell you what they think you should do and what they think of the situation.

[Zuben]

Considering I tend to play games way afterwards I wouldn't have noticed if the nominees in Game Awards didn't feel so lukewarm.

[Gamingsince1981]

I thought the gaming was fine unless all you own is an xbox and got shafted for an entire year again

- - - Updated - - -

Halo hasn't been a thing worth playing since the 360 ended

[Mysterymask]

Or Deltarune Chapter 2, which I've been meaning to get around to.

That said, this year generally felt pretty forgettable, outside of the abundance of lolcow-tier titles.

Deltarune chapter 2 was fantastic....can't wait till next year when chapter 3 suddenly appears out of nowhere....again

[kail]

It's a very personal take tbh. Endwalker is my current game atm, may have been the tail end along with Halo Infinite but they are likely to provide decent longevity.

[xmirrors]

Halo Infinite, Psychonauts 2, Endwalker, RE:Village, Forza, Guardians of the Galaxy, Tales of Arise, Deathloop...

I've been very busy this year, personally, and very, very satisfied. If it wasn't locked behind being an MMO I would probably consider Endwalker one of the best games I've ever played.

[dextersmith]

I haven't been excited about anything besides FF Pixels Remaster since Mobius FF. I hope they make a new futuristic Anno, homm, or old school turn based rpg soon.

[Powerogue]

Hard to say, the pandemic has left me mostly going through older games I bought on Steam Sale. So for me Outer Wilds, Little Nightmares II, Little Misfortune, Owlboy, and Control were all pretty great.

[Graeham]

I guess.

A handful of the games I was looking forward to were delayed or announced for 2022. I still managed to get my hands on some games that I enjoyed, but I haven't felt spoiled for choice since the PS2 era where it felt like a new game I wanted came out literally every week.

[Shakzor]

Oh, is this the yearly "has this year been bad?"?
People say that about basically EVERY year, despite none of them having been "bad", just that individual people didn't have much that interested them (and then also, mainly in the AAA space)

[Faldric]

I think it was on the lower side of average. Can't deny that corona put a dent in many studios release schedule and a lot of things got delayed to next year. For me personally the year was quite good, but I played mostly "old" games other than FF14 Endwalker and Marvels GotG.