I barely play any video games other than Destiny (dabbled a bit into Infinite multiplayer), but I do play board games fairly frequently. This year I learned Winter Kingdom (which is a redux of my favorite board game, Kingdom Builder) and Wingspan. I can see Winter Kingdom becoming my new favorite, but I need to get some more plays in.

We played a lot of Wingspan this year. Was a surprise breakout for me.

I played Hades on Switch when it first released, but I played through quite a bit of it again when it hit Xbox last year.

Been playing Wordle for about a week now, after hearing about it on a few different podcasts. It’s great!

One a day? That's poop!

(Got today's in 4, then was told I had to wait 12 hours for the next one. Ew.)

It took me four as well.

I like that it’s one a day. It’s something I open in the morning, and if I get stuck I can just let it hang and come back later. One a day also means that everyone has the same word, so it can be fun to compare guesses at the end of the day.

Been playing Wordle for about a week now, after hearing about it on a few different podcasts. It’s great!

One a day? That's poop!

(Got today's in 4, then was told I had to wait 12 hours for the next one. Ew.)

You should push through RDR2. Arthur Morgan might be my favorite video game character ever, and it’s worth seeing his journey.

See too some Witcher 3, Splinter cell and what not, but I've played those before... they don't count. Some clips at the end though.

Of them all, I'd have to say... Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Should be Red Dead Redemption 2, but it isn't. Why? Well read on!

Red Dead Redemption 2 - Wow... wow. Wow. Let me just start off with that. This is my first Rockstar game I've ever played and... well, ok. That might not be true. Earthworm Jim 3D & Max Payne come to mind, so maybe its better to say that it's been a while, and this is my first modern Rockstar game I've played. In any event, despite it's "Grand Theft Auto in-the-Old-West" core... it's more as if made for me then not. The Tech. The Environments. The attention to details... all so well crafted into a pot of... I traveled back in time. I actually traveled back in time.

This game gave to me it's price of admission and more with one beautiful moment. I cherish it. It's something only this sort of media could ever provide. Know too that while I am no Historian, I do have a solid if occasionally lightly smudged map of history. Old west included.

For the sake of the story, I'm going to include a visual (which is not the story its self). This clip here starts off right after I tossed a knife into the back of a would be robber, saving a couple. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The old west m i rite?

Make a mental note of the environment right afterwords when I turn around and call my horse.

Finally the story; So in this game there are vaudeville style shows, as there would be at this time. I totally ignored them. Waste of virtual cash, I thought. That despite the option, it would be some cheap trick. As we play video-games, or at least for me, as I enjoy I also know that its all simulated. So I just ignore the shows and why not... have I mentioned how utterly GORGEOUS the environments are in this game? OH-My-LAWD! Just to have the idea was silly. (Side Note: Goodness its so odd to praise how good the game looks and not mention... you know... REAL LIFE.)

Then I finally reached a point in my exploration where I uncovered on my map, Saint Denis. The "Jewel of Lemoyne". Wow. At some point, I had on my person enough funds to say... you know what, sure. There is nothing to lose, what do ya got Rockstar? So I went to the local vaudeville theater, purchased a ticket, and watched. And man folks, credit to Rockstar, it was a full on vaudeville show. I was surprised that song was as old as it apparently(?) is. (Presuming they did their homework, but looking around in the game, I have no reason to aggressively doubt it.)

It was indeed, in some way, fun. A good time. Got out of the virtual seat, left the theater, and as it always seems to happen, day was now night (with the bonus of some very atmospheric fog). When I walked out of that theater *SNAP* that's when it happened. I time traveled.

You ever just... you walk out of a theater, totally jazzed and satisfied by the entertainment, only to walk out and be met by a similarly fine ambiance of the evening? The cherry on top of a particularly fine experience... it's a beautiful night. Calm air matched by the distant songs of equally satisfied folks walking in their respective directions as needed. It's simply lovely. It's good. Everything is good and as it should be, if only for the moment.

I walked out of that Red Dead Redemption 2 theater, this video game, and suddenly... I was not playing a video game. I was in 1899 and I was walking the quiet foggy streets of New Orleans...er, Saint Denis. I would, for about 5 minutes time, completely lose myself and just... be there. It all just jelled... just a beautiful experience, a waking dream, cognizant and alive. And yes, I did realize it and yes I did indeed shed a tear.

...fantastic. Best I can, but the words just don't do true justice.

Then I must 'posit the question; With such an experience alone, not even including the rest of the praise this game well deserves, how is it that this isn't my favorite game I played in 2021? One thing. This one choice totally became a gamestopper for me. For a game to be so... so BRILLIANT, for this one thing, this choice... I just. It's a darned pebble in a shoe, and suddenly I can't walk anymore.

A big part of game is speaking in ever old west fashion, guns. Could say more, but you get it... I'm pretty sure a tumble weed just rolled by just now. What surprised me starting out this game, is that while in your "bullet time" there was no manual control of the "where to fire" aim. You just sweep the cursor over, and it auto ticks for ya. Fine. Felt rather unwieldy at first, but as I played the game at my own pace, I got better with it and ended up enjoying it. I got used to it and was able to play the game as I wanted to.

Well, I can't say how deep into the main story, but deep enough, apparently when you play a particular one of these unskippable story missions, you suddenly "gain" the ability to manually aim the "where to fire" and there is no option to change it back. This is such a shit, piss poor... I just can't. It's like mid-way playing Mario, hitting bricks doesn't break them, it just causes a concussion. A core rule of how to play the game has been ripped from me. I would feel the same way if it was the other way around too, the game should not be taking away options to play, but adding to it. That's the brief of it anyway, and I've not touched the game since. I reverted a save in-case I want to play around in the wilds again, but as far as the story goes, I'm stopped. And it's a darned shame.

Shadow Warrior 2 - This game is a candy enema. It's stupid, it's sloppy, and despite being shit, is pretty good if you just want to sit down, turn your brain off and dice demons. So... like Doom I guess, but its cheap cousin that's been eyeing across the room.

Prototype 2 - Only got this because it was on a heavy discount, and I recalled wanted to get it back in the day, and never did. Writing is more of a vapid joke then usual, but writing isn't why one plays this game either.

Katamari Damacy REROLL - Oh Japan.

Starting in October, I decided that I would start playing side games that generally matched a theme of that month. Nothing absolute, just a push towards expanding the styles of game I play.

Starting with...

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - I've had the disk for this for over a year. This game was totally off my radar until I just so happened to circumstance my way into... (don't ask; just work with me here)

---There are Spoilers in this Video. Come back after you have played!---

...this.

I was in that audience. Chatted with Tameem Antoniades after words. The big takeaway from this video above is the great effort they took in authentically representing the different shades of severe mental phycosis. To which I must now admit; I am a straight sucker for honest and authentic representations, but often in the case for the past. Historical movies and what not. Yet these folks claim they've in-great-effort congealed from the abstract and anarchic nature of the mind, thoroughly authentic representations of extreme human experience? BRO I'm SO IN. And I say that knowing I'd be about to confront the visual manifestations one can find in the dark caky corners of a human soul, but... well... sister, I'll be that extra voice for ya. After all, what's one more!

Really though... this game is not to be trifled with. It is not casual, as it's topics are not either. THIS GAME IS NOT FOR CHILDREN, and that ain't in just age there folks. When a Blood Eagle is one of least gruesome visuals seen, no more need be said there. And if you don't know what a Blood Eagle is, don't look it up. The nice version in description would be... what if lungs were wings? Yeah. And each moment, each "flavor" of phycosis is based on the experiences those with phycosis have had. Yes. Even, apparently, the meat hell. It's not funny, I'm actually glad I can't comprehend anymore then I can.

I really can not say it enough, this game is not for those whom are weak in stature or stomach. You are visiting through some of the most extreme and incomprehensible experiences a human can have, all with no control to bare! If you can survive this game (not that it's hard in that way), I can say with some confidence that you will be ever wiser from the experience. That alone makes it my game of the year for me, but of course there is more.

Note, this is a video game, and I've not even mentioned yet what it's like to play! What is the game? Well before I try to describe it, let me first say; headphones or a high end surround sound system is ABSOLUTELY required for full effect. This game grants content for all the senses, much like phycosis can do as well. No smell-o-vision though... thank goodness. So what is this game like to play? It's... very art house and very indie for starters. It is every method of telling a story. It's a moderate puzzler, and a mild fighter. I highly suggest you play this game on as easy a difficulty as you can, 'cus frankly, the fighting is more filler then not, which-does-not-mean it isn't enthralling or poorly done! There is just more to this game then swinging a slab around.

The clip is late in the game, but is at the same vain vague enough to tell you nothing all while showing you what I mean.

Alright folks... almost done with this one. What I'm about to talk about is what really makes this game the best game I have played this year. I could give more! I have plenty of praise for this game, but after this part here is where I'm going to end it. You're welcome.

So I'm about to share the very beginning to one of the experiences. Here it is.

How this was handled through out was done brilliantly. I can say no more. This game was the Best Game I played in 2021. Good Luck.

Carrion - Getting this out of the way first; the most common demerit of this game is its need of a map. And indeed, if you want to 100% all its levels, you will probably need to back track, when a map would be the most helpful. Fortunately in my play-through I was able to, through a mix of logic and dumb luck, weave my way to every which way I needed to go to allow me to 100% the game. Also, perhaps, mild memorization of locations, due to being aware of the issue mentioned. I knew that, for me, I had to dedicate my play time to this game, otherwise I would start forgetting stuff and potentially become lost. That's what is going against this game.

But...otherwise, it's a good time by and large. It honestly sells its self. Here are some clips. Cheers.

Sundered: Eldritch Edition - Grabbed this at a discounted whim. Why? Thought the art style (apparently this is hand drawn) looked neat. That's it.

This game, which has no new game plus might I add, starts SLOW, and there are definitely low points as you "clean the map" of the fog of war. Your untold figure it out your self (welcome!) task is to explore the whole map and gain power as you do it. Oh and there are morality endings too, but I'll say no more of that. It's a low tier metroidvania platformer. I had my fun with it, it had some cool bits. The clip below this is one of the more higher action moments, but there are some lulls too. The biggest enemy of this game is its uneven moments, and the biggest enemy in the game is suddenly becoming overwhelmed by the environmental traps & endless waves of foes slapping you around the map, with what you see below being some of the easiest to manage.

So yea, if you see this on discount, it looks interesting, and you are ok with high points and low points, then hey give it a go.

The End. "Some clips at the end though."

Life is Strange: True Colors
The best Life is Strange game. What more needs to be said? But I'll say it anyway. The core mystery of the game is interesting, even if the payoff doesn't quite land. Alex Chen is straight up the best Life is Strange character, though. She is so well realized and so relatable. The character writing in the game is stellar. The choices feel meaningful. I think the supernatural gimmick of this game is sort of a wasted opportunity. There's only a couple of really big moments in which you use the power, and I'm not sure they're really paid off all that well. But it's a great experience and easily my favorite one of these.

So, I was led to believe you would get to play D&D with Mikey as Steph in the Wavelengths DLC… did I just make the wrong choices? Because we set up to, but never did.

It’s also great to see how the developers continue to excitement and grow with each new zone, building on the core of exploration.

Genshin Impact
Anime was a mistake.

While my intro might seem awful negative, the truth is that I've been having a lot of fun in the latter half of the year, with this game that came out of left field for me, and has definitely been my favorite (or favourite) of the year.

I generally don't like games with an anime style for a number of reasons, and I've managed to avoid gacha games due to their inherently predatory nature (gacha games are games built around using currency, premium or otherwise, to buy a randomized loot box that can contain goods/weapons/characters/etc, and the games are usually designed in such as way as to make you hit roadblocks and barely-veiled paywalls that push you to pull that monetized lever so you can make progress.

But much like Warframe launched at the time where Free-to-play was a cursed term, only to redefine what the F2P concept could be, Genshin Impact takes the monetization of a gacha game and removes almost all of the shady/unethical manipulations in such an impactful way (while simultaneously delivering a complete, polished, and visually gorgeous experience), that I was hooked almost from the get-go.

So what is Genshin? It's an action RPG where you build four-man teams to tackle escalating challenges across a vast open world. On the surface, it's a game that sells you on a more lighthearted romp with a bunch of fun character archetypes, and while that is the case for the most part, the game has a surprising amount of depth to the characters that you meet, the politics of the regions that you visit, and the relationships between groups big and small, often getting a bit dark and mature in its themes, but never to the point where things are grim. I think we all need a bit of optimism these days, and the game emphasizes people rising above low points rather than relishing in their suffering or dragging you through the bleakness of their backstories (looking at you, Last of Us 2; I love you, but sweet Jesus). This approach makes for almost universally-likeable characters who focus on building a positive relationship with you, and that caught my jaded and cynical heart off guard (though you might want to set the voice-acting language to Korean, as the English VOs are a bit too cartoony for my taste, and I grew up with FUNimation dubs, so that's saying something).

As for the gameplay itself, the game does a fantastic job of guiding you along the progression of all its systems (something certain other games have a lot of trouble with). You start out mainly using your basic attacks and abilities, until you progress enough to where you are using your team's different abilities to provide buffs/debuffs and elemental combos, and eventually you'll find yourself engaging with gear (called Artifacts) to create specific builds that can completely change and shape a character's role in your specialized team comp.
And the best part is that the game gives you the power to set the parameters of your own progression through a fairly simple but genius Adventure Rank + World Tier combo.

So where does the gacha part come in? While the game will give you enough characters and weapons to build a couple of different team comps, there are a few dozen or so characters to recruit (each with six tiers of perk upgrades), and dozens more weapons that all have different perks for your builds, and the loot boxes (dubbed "Wishes") are how you acquire the majority of these characters and weapons. The game is actually fairly generous with how often you can pull for Wishes, though, to the point where you don't ever feel like you have to pay real money even if you play somewhat casually (in fact, you have to dig through several menus to even find the premium currency tab).

And speaking of playing casually, the game's content drops are usually in three-week rotations, which is kind of insane. Every three weeks there's some new activity, time-limited gameplay event, or story quest. Often all three at once, and they almost always have premium currency as a reward to some degree. And yet, rather than requiring you to grind the same activity over and over and over (Bungie...), the premium currency is almost always front-loaded as your first tier of rewards, so you can just check in once, collect all your loot, and bounce if you don't have the time to delve into the deeper levels of rewards or challenges. It really respects your time in such a way that many other games these days deliberately don't.

Anyway, there's a lot more to praise, but I feel like I've Warframed this game enough... for now. I'll just throw in that the latest update dropping tomorrow looks to have more content in a single free event than Bungie's entire paid Anniversary pack... so, ya know...

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No Straight Roads
"Red Light!" "Green Light!"

One of the only games that I actually finished this past year, NSR is a beat-based third-person... Hack and Slash? -- More like Drum and Shred. It's mainly a boss-rush type game with some platforming and exploration thrown in as you fight against the different musical styles that EDM has sunk its tendrils into, from classical music to boy band pop. The catch is that the bosses attack to the rhythm of music, so you have to learn to match that rhythm in your counterattacks, while navigating the battlefield to build up combos or use the environment to your advantage (some light RPG elements help you in this regard).

It's a lot more straightforward than it sounds, and each boss has a scoreboard and several alternate tracks that you can unlock and battle to (and challenges that often unlock stuff like lore items and deeper insights into the bosses). It a lot of fun, and I found myself replaying boss fights over and over to achieve different goals. There's clearly a ton of heart that went into making this game, and while the humor doesn't always land, the music is just one banger after another, which keeps you going. It's not a super long game, but it's one that'll stick with you.

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Exo One
One giant leap for mankind.

I saw this on Gamepass one day, and noticed that it was released alongside their cloud streaming feature. Figuring I'd test the latency with a simple game like this, I booted up the cloud and... proceeded to play through the whole thing in a few hours. The game is simple in design, and while there is a story told to you in sparse flashes of images and subtitles, for the most part it's just you, physics, and the distant beam of light that you're headed towards.

This game manages to capture the essence of the distant lifeless rocks in our galaxy so well, that despite the simple, relaxing nature of the gameplay, for me there was always a sense of anxiety, and a palpable fear of the unknown, as you explore some really alien terrains and the weirdness of space.
There are a couple of bumps along the way, as the devs were clearly trying to stretch what mileage they could get out of the game's basic mechanics, but ultimately, I came away really impressed with what they did accomplish, and I'll remember the experience of rolling on an icy planet and bouncing towards a Pulsar as one that I never knew I wanted.

Oh yeah, and the Xbox streaming worked like a dream... except for the couple of times that it lost connection and I had to restart the planets that I was on.

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Generation Zero
Robots have taken over the world! Our world!

If you're not familiar with the works of Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, you should definitely google him. His art (and "Tales From The Loop" works) captures the quiet moments of everyday Cold-War era folks in the country-side, with touches of mechanical curiosity... and horror. There is always something out of place. Something that the everyday people in his images have simply grown accustomed to as it looms prominently against the backdrop.

Generation Zero captures those peaceful moments, and gives you the violence that seems inevitably tied to them. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this small Swedish coast was besieged by an army of machines. You wake up as the only survivor of a boat that was trying to leave the island, and as you wander through the recently abandoned fields and farmhouses to try to meet up with the villagers who banded together with help of from the local military, you find that a lot of machines still lie between you and the people putting up a solid fight against them.

This is a game that has apparently been out for a while, but the first I heard of it was when it popped up on Gamepass. Recognizing the clear influences, I decided to give it a whirl. Figuring it would be a DayZ style game with robots in place of zombies. And... it kind of is, but it's more than just that. Gameplay-wise, it's mainly an exploration-based game, with a storyline told by notes, recordings, voice mails, and the environment itself. You'll find yourself crawling through fields to avoid patrolling robo dogs, using simple tools and supplies such as propane tanks and boom boxes to lure groups of machines into traps, and slowly building an arsenal to take the fight to them as you pick up the supplies left behind by the locals that refuse to go quietly into the night.
It's funny that despite having four-player co-op, I found myself wanting to tackle the game solo. There's an inherent loss of dread and gravitas when you've got a friend at your side, and the game teeters a fine line with its tone, just itching to become campy and fun, but choosing to play it dead straight and tense. I kind of prefer the latter in this case, which is a rarity in the current stage of my life where I'm itching to jump into any co-op game I can find.
I only played this game for a week or so, but I've already got enough anxiety-inducing memories and triumphs to carry me for a long while before I hop back in. But you definitely should, unless you've got a weak heart (seriously, I think this game broke me, as I used to be fairly immune to jump scares, but after this game, I'm almost at streamer levels of jumping at any shadow (just ask the guys I ran the new Destiny dungeon with; my heart was at its limit).

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Aliens: Fireteam Elite
Not to study, not to bring back, but to wipe them out.

Skill-Up puts it better than I can in the above video. Fireteam Elite is all we've wanted in an Aliens game, loaded with fanservice for every level of Alien fan (even you Prometheus-enjoying weirdos have several bones thrown your way). It's just crazy fun in co-op, and we have several videos where Sammy, my brother, and I are screaming incessantly as the alien horde swarms out of the walls, ceilings, and vents. We haven't finished it, but where we stopped playing was a truly magical sequence of terror that not enough co-op games deliver (see my above post on Generation Zero for more info). I don't want to spoil it, but my brother was so stunned, that he couldn't even scream, a problem I clearly didn't have when he succumbed to the horror.

All in all, a slow but successful year, though I could talk about Warframe's great "The New War" quest if y'all want. :P