I Have Words on the Top and Bottom 5 Games I Played in 2021

Another year, another list.

You did it. I did it. We all did it. We made it through another year without complete and total destruction. To be fair, anything after 2020 was going to feel leagues better, at least to me. And that may be true for the games played as well, because I noticed when compiling this year’s top and bottom five that I had a much harder time picking out my bottom five. I just didn’t play many games this year that could be considered outright bad, and that’s in a year where I honestly tried to find some bad games to play. I’d say that’s something of an achievement.

Since it’s been a year and this is only the second time I’ve made such a list, let’s go over how this works. First off, this is not a “Best and Worst of 2021” type list. The games listed have been released at various points in history, whether it be in the present year or all the way back in the late 80s. This is just a list of the games I played this year, new or old. Additionally, in order to appear in this list, I have to have written about it at some point within the past year. This does include games mentioned in Backlog Variety Hour Volume 2 or the Switch Online series I’ve been doing, so you may see a handful of games from either of those blogs. As we go through entrants, I’ll be alternating between the top and bottom pick. And that’s everything you need to know heading in. Now, let’s get to ranking, starting with my bottom 5 pick. It’s a simple one.

BOTTOM 5: NATSUME CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING

Original blog: Grading Nintendo Switch’s SNES Games (Chapter 4 – Kong Country)

Okay, I have to be honest with you, this is literally only here because I needed something to fill out the bottom 5. Frankly, despite my honest attempts, I didn’t play many games this year that I would consider outright bad, certainly not bad enough to warrant listing it as one of the worst I played. But something had to be here, so I decided to pick on a sports game again. I didn’t say much about it in the original blog, but there’s a good reason for that. It’s kind of unplayable. As noted in the blog, characters would do things on screen but I never understood how the buttons I pressed related to the actions on screen. It just felt like the game was doing its own thing. I tear into sports games frequently in the Switch Online blogs, and that’s often because they’re so awkward and clumsy to play. This game might just be the most awkward and the most clumsy sports game I’ve played to date. And I played NES Baseball.

But as I said, this is really to fill out a list. That should go to show you how few straight up bad games I played this year. Most of the “worst” games were just titles I found to be middling. They weren’t bad, but they were far from great. Actually, a fun fact for you – perhaps the most common rating I saw when looking back on this year’s blog entries was C- or B ratings. C- is middle of the road, but heading towards being straight up bad, and B is the “good, but not quite mind blowing” kind of rating. So, yeah. Um…that’s what I have to say on Natsume Championship Wrestling? I dunno, game’s bad though.

TOP 5: AXIOM VERGE

Original blog: Grading Axiom Verge

The first entrant was a very tight race between a handful of games, but in the end I gave the #5 spot to Axiom Verge. This year I played a lot of great metroidvanias (as you’ll soon see), and Axiom Verge gets to be one of them. What set it apart from the rest of the games I played was the impeccably recreated feeling of playing the NES Metroid game, but without all the hassle and frustration that comes with playing that game. Laid out like this, you can see just how cool that original Metroid could have been had they had the technology we do today. But enough comparisons, for while Axiom Verge wears its inspiration on its sleeve, it’s still a really good game in its own right. It’s got cool story, fun weapons and powers, a bizarre and captivating world, and some great music as the cherry on top. Diehards of the metroidvania genre really don’t want to skip this one.

And what’s more? Axiom Verge was made by a single developer. Maybe it’s because I’m a solo dev myself, but I love playing games created by individuals. They’re inspiring in a way that games with substantially sized teams, let alone the thousands of people seen in AAA titles, just quite aren’t. That’s not to bash the people who are involved in those bigger projects, but I find there’s something special about the games with a single creative mind in control. Axiom Verge is a game that knows what it wants, and presents it to you with nothing held back. It’s not the kind of game that’s going to please everyone, but I’m not convinced it wants to be that. It wants to be itself, and I respect and love it for that.

BOTTOM 4: KINGDOM HEARTS III RE:MIND

Original blog: I Have Words on Kingdom Hearts III Re:Mind

This entry is weird, which is very appropriate given we’re talking Kingdom Hearts. You see, this entry is specifically for Kingdom Hearts III’s DLC titled Re:Mind. The base Kingdom Hearts III game is pretty good, even if it fumbles its already convoluted story by the end of it. But Re:Mind? Bleugh. Re:Mind is how you do DLC wrong. I don’t usually review DLC on its own. Heck, I rarely talk DLC in my blogs period. But Re:Mind was so awful a DLC that I simply had to make a whole blog dedicated to tearing it apart. I have one request when playing DLC that is supposed to be expand on the original game – I want new stuff. That could be a new class in an RPG, an epilogue chapter (not the canon ending, EA), or a totally different playable character. Re:Mind’s crime is that it doesn’t do any of this. You replay the base game’s finale all over again, with only a few minutes (we’re talking ten minutes, tops) dedicated to playing as different characters, and you get one new boss fight at the beginning and end of Re:Mind. That’s it. Diehards will point out the Limit Cut episode that grants a bunch of new boss fights, which…fine, okay, but you still have to slog through the rest of Re:Mind to even get there.

Think of all the great DLCs of gaming. Bioshock Infinite had Burial at Sea, a completely new story set in Rapture, the setting of the first Bioshock. Smash Bros. gets new fighters and stages. Skyrim gets a whole new land and questline. Exceptional DLCs are pretty rare, but there are great DLC packages out there that show how it should be done. And Square Enix opted to ignore all those and make the worst DLC I’ve ever gone through. It’s really that bad. The only reason this isn’t ranked higher (or is it lower?) on the Bottom 5 is because it has the solid foundations of Kingdom Hearts III’s gameplay. If not for that, Re:Mind would be an awful experience. Heck, it probably wouldn’t even exist. And maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

TOP 4: RESIDENT EVIL 4

Original blog: Grading Resident Evil 4

You ever play a well regarded classic and ask yourself what took so long getting around to it yourself? That was me with Resident Evil 4. This game was great, and a really enjoyable way to finish out the Halloween season. I like the goofiness and the way the game just sort of leans into it. Despite being a horror game, Resident Evil 4 is surprisingly funny. Whether it be silly dialogue from Leon or the how a game will throw in a short dude dressed like Napoleon at you for seemingly no reason, Resident Evil 4 is humorous in a way that I don’t think any game will ever replicate. But, this isn’t to say it isn’t scary. While it’s no Amnesia, Resident Evil 4 is remarkably good at building tense scenarios, and gets surprisingly scary in later parts of the game. Those Regenerator enemies are honest to goodness one of the more frightening enemies I’ve encountered in a video game, right up there with the likes of Amnesia’s grunts which have permanently scarred my psyche. And again, it’s so wild I can say that about a game where the protagonist round house kicks enemies on the regular.

It’s honestly impressive how it manages to just be…it. There’s a confidence to Resident Evil 4 that you it probably shouldn’t have, but I can’t help but admire it. The gunplay, though certainly outdated, is still really solid. Yeah, it might be like literally driving a tank, but the game was clearly designed around that. It would have been easy to make the game harder, and thus more frustrating, by making you move slow and enemies move fast, but that’s not what happened here. It’s about careful shot placement, knowing when to fight or run, and exploring the environment for resources. The game is impressive, even to this day, and definitely deserves the acclaim it has gotten.

BOTTOM 3: TOTAL OVERDOSE

Original blog: Grading Total Overdose

Of the games I deliberately set out to play that I expected would end up on the bad list, this was definitely one of the worst. Had to have been to end up here, right? Total Overdose tried to be both Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne, a sound idea that unfortunately did not play out. It’s all down to the gameplay for me. It’s just so…bland. There’s not much in the way of reflexes or even strategy here. You just kind of hold down the shoot button until all your enemies are dead. The game has its moments where you feel like a true action here, but those moments are very few. Story is perhaps where the game shines brightest, but it’s still forgettable all around. I think the only reason I give it any credit was because I thought it was amusing, which it thankfully was trying to be.

What baffles me the most though is its open world. Just like Grand Theft Auto, you can hop into a car and drive your way through the world as you please, navigating to missions or collectibles as you do. But Total Overdose let’s you skip all that entirely by letting you start missions from the menu. I mean, I appreciate not having to slog through an open world, but it’s so bizarre that you’d go to this trouble to make a world that you can completely skip. Not even accidentally miss, or just potentially miss details…no, you can outright skip it all. Feels like wasted effort. I have no doubt the people who worked on this game worked really hard on it, but as it stands it just feels like those people were asked to waste their own talent and time on something I reckon many will ignore.

TOP 3: TETRIS EFFECT

Original blog: Grading Tetris Effect

I’ll keep this one brief because, come on…it’s Tetris. We all know it’s good. And I imagine nobody is that interested in reading a couple paragraphs on why Tetris is so great, all the while the writer acts like nobody has ever heard this before. Tetris Effect is the classic game of Tetris everyone knows but presented at perhaps its most beautiful. It’s a gorgeous game with colorful, breathtaking backgrounds and excellent music. Said music is even partially created by your inputs, resulting in a version of Tetris that truly gives you that “Tetris effect” phenomenon. Seriously, I was seeing Tetrominoes in my sleep, that’s how much this game had infiltrated my mind. It’s a very responsive, mesmerizing experience, and one that I recommend trying out even if you’ve played Tetris in thousands of other ways before.

BOTTOM 2: THE IMMORTAL

Original blog: Grading Nintendo Switch’s NES Games (Chapter 5 – The End…For Now)

Have you ever played a game that just seems to do everything wrong? Gameplay is annoying, story is barebones or nonsensical, music and sound is rough, and even the graphics look bad? The Immortal is one of those games for me. I don’t think I can find a single good thing to say about this game. In fact, calling it a game feels like an insult to the medium. This isn’t really a game, more like a program for measuring your patience. And it turns out, I have very little patience. The Immortal commits perhaps one of the biggest sins in gaming – it punishes the player for being curious. Because think about it – most games ask you to discover things and be curious. Whether that be experimenting with spells and combos, or trying to figure out what happens next in a story, there’s something that the game wants you to find. Not all curiosities must be rewarded, but at that point you make it clear to the player why they shouldn’t do that thing. The Immortal does not have this. If you decide to go left when it wants you to go right, you are dead. If you wish to examine something closer, you are dead. If you do anything other than what the game strictly wants you to do, you are dead, dead, dead.

At first, it’s funny. Haha, I died for daring to breath on a rock. But it doesn’t let up. I really mean it when I say the game kills you if you go left when it wants you to go right. I’m also not exaggerating when I say most of the game’s items kill you somehow. Items! Your inventory is out to get you! What is this all about? And the combat, ugh…can you even call it that? Just press buttons and pray that you outlive the beast attacking you. But yeesh, good luck even getting there. This was a frustrating experience, and it completely baffles me that it’s on the Switch’s NES library over the many other hidden gems that are no doubt out there. But, I will say this…it’s an old game. And old games are riddled with the mistakes of developers before us. This just happens to stand out because it seems to do everything wrong, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt given its age. A tiny smidge of it at least.

TOP 2: ORI AND THE WILL OF THE WISPS

Original blog: Grading Ori and the Will of the Wisps

One of the first games I played this year also happens to be among the best. Ori and the Will of the Wisps takes what was so good about Blind Forest and just makes it better. Combat mechanics are the most obvious upgrade, going from Blind Forest’s incredibly basic “press X to shoot a homing laser” attack to a full suite of weapons to use. It’s so much more engaging, and that’s not even the best part. The world is split up in a way that lets you take it on in your own way, and of course the platforming parts of the game are just as good, if not better, than what had been done previously. It really is one of those few games that can say it took what it did before and did virtually all of it better. Both Ori games are great, but if you only play one, you need to make it Will of the Wisps. And hopefully by the time you finish it you’ll love it enough to give the first game a shot.

There have been a lot of comparisons to this game and Hollow Knight, and some of those comparisons are fair, but Will of the Wisps has its own spin even on those similar aspects. There’s even some parts that I think it does better than Hollow Knight, namely its equipment system. But in truth, the two games are still pretty different. Each have their own take on the metroidvania genre, and I happen to really like both. Ori and the Will of the Wisps is another great entry into the metroidvania style game, and could very well become known as one of the best in the genre. It really is that good. So much of 2021 had me thinking that this would be the number one pick for the year, but then a game I thought long dead managed to reveal itself and wow me. But Ori can still easily take #2, and it certainly is impressive that it stayed in this race for as long as it has.

THE WORST: ALPHA PRIME

Original blog: The Backlog Variety Hour – Volume 2

You know how I mentioned that The Immortal had the excuse of being old for not being the worst game I played this year? Alpha Prime doesn’t have that excuse. It also does so much wrong but it at least had the benefit of seeing the mistakes of the past. So where does Alpha Prime go wrong? Much of it comes down to the barely put together gameplay. On the surface, it seems competent enough. Shooting is fine and the guns…function. But the cracks reveal themselves very quickly. Enemies have impeccable aim and a high rate of fire, so your health is reaching zero fast. Hide in cover all you want, the bullets keep coming, so your only choice is to just shoot the enemies and pray you kill them before they kill you. This is not interesting first person shooter gameplay, it’s just luck of the draw. And if you do die, you’re reloading your last save. Checkpoints are some reason not a thing. Quick save is of course an option, but I’d sooner expect that out of an open world RPG than a fast paced shooter. And even then, they have autosave for a reason.

But it gets worse. The story is awful, voice acting is bad, and I was running into bugs and softlocks within the first ten minutes. It’s like nobody really cared about the story and what was being presented. They were just sort of…there. Though, it can be said that a badly written story can be fun. But I advise watching a bad story, not playing it. For you see, video games are not like movies or books where you can enjoy something for how bad it is. You have to actually engage with it and progress through its broken systems to see more of the funny bad stuff. This is why “good-bad” isn’t really a thing in gaming. Alpha Prime is a good example of this, and if it is remembered for anything, it should be for how not to do a game.

THE BEST: METROID DREAD

Original blog: Grading Metroid Dread

As the only game to get an A+ rating this year, it is still incredible to me that this game exists. It was supposed to be dead, long dead in fact. It had been rumored a few times over the roughly fifteen years, but after so much time, it was just assumed that Dread would never happen. But now, Metroid Dread is real. That is wild. And what’s more, it turned out to be pretty great. This is probably Samus’ best adventure since at least Metroid Prime, if not Super Metroid on the SNES. She controls great, brings lots of cool new abilities, and of course, revives the 2D Metroid series that fans have been awaiting for years. You’ve got to remember, Dread is releasing in a world where the last Metroid game was a remake, and the two before it were either not at all what people wanted or just straight up bad. Metroid had been in a funk for a while, not its first one either. Then Dread came along and just did everything so right. It was precisely the shot in the arm the series needed.

Dread brings a lot of cool stuff, but of particular note are the creepy E.M.M.I.s that stalk Samus throughout planet ZDR. Though not a straight-up horror game, Metroid Dread had plenty of horror elements and created an enemy that I think will be remembered for a long time. I can still hear the chirps of an E.M.M.I. now as I type this. Outside of that, we got a metroidvania that really embraces what it is, to the point that it clearly accounts for things like sequence breaking. You can seriously get special scenes if you get a specific item before a boss! It’s the kind of thing the developers honestly didn’t have to do, but they did it anyway. It plays great, has a cool story that properly concludes a major Metroid storyline, is definitely one of the best metroidvanias to come out in recent years, and just…everything! This game ticked every box so well that it reinvigorated my love of gaming. I look forward to playing it again, because let’s face it, I’m totally going to.

A lot of metroidvanias in here, aren’t there? Three of my top five games played this year fall into that genre. I promise, I wasn’t trying to do that. It just worked out that way. In a weird way, I’m glad for a bit more diversity in my bottom five this time around. Last time it felt like I kept pulling from that year’s Backlog Variety Hour, so it’s nice to see the bad games come from more than one blog post this time. But I do mean it when I say that it was difficult getting five bad games listed, because I didn’t play that many that I thought were outright bad. I guess that’s a good thing, but I do think there’s some interesting nuggets of wisdom to pull even from the bad titles. And sometimes, they can be fun in their own, terrible way. As for the good games, man did the good games hit hard this year. There may not be much genre diversity, but in exchange I got to play so really good games that I think will stick with me long after this.

2022 should be interesting. Supposedly all the delayed 2021 games are releasing here, though I half expect a good number of them to get delayed again into 2023. I don’t know of any major releases that I’m eagerly looking forward to off the top of my head, but I did amass a handful of indie games that I’m looking forward to next year or whenever they release. And yes, I’ll definitely be talking about those at a later date, because indie games are great and people should play more of them. Speaking of indies, I’ve got my own game in the works that I’m expected to release this year, which will definitely keep me busy. And it’s also a metroidvania, go figure. It’s like it’s the year of metroidvanias or something. I haven’t talked about it yet on this blog, but don’t you worry…I will. In the meantime, if you’re interested there is a Steam page you can check out, and I do humbly request you wishlist the game if interested. And with that, let’s head into 2022 and see what it has to offer.

All images belong to their respective owners. I claim only my words.