The top 5 (plus some) games I played in 2021

This year I tried keeping a list of all the games I played in 2021. I kept to it for most of the year, but some probably slipped through the cracks. I did manage to play a lot of good games this year though. This is a list of the ones I think stand out the most. Some of these are new games, and some are games that I didn't play until this year, but this isn't a games released in 2021 list, it is my list.

To start off I have two games that I couldn't include into my top 5, but I just have to mention them because they are worth talking about. These two games deserve to be talked about more.

Pokémon Unite

Pokémon Unite was kind of an anomaly. I honestly had no idea this was coming out until it did and I saw people playing it. I am not the biggest MOBA fan so I have never really played a lot of League of Legends, or DOTA 2, or Smite. But this game is different. It is a MOBA with Pokémon, but it is simplified down some and made learning how to play a MOBA a lot easier for me.

I played almost only Snorlax for the couple of weeks I played it; with a bit of Cinderace in there. But Snorlax was just too good and I loved playing him.

This game is still getting new Pokémon added, and new events and content as well, and even has a mobile version for phones.

If you like Pokemon and/or MOBAs this is worth checking out for sure.

Brawl Stars

Now, this game did not come out in 2021, and I have been playing this game pretty consistently since 2017.

It is a mobile game made by Supercell better known for Clash of Clans and Clash Royale.

It is a 3v3, MOBA lite style of game where you control a character from a top-down view.

If you can imagine a MOBA with less strategy, and the match is played over about 2 minutes; that is what Brawl Stars is.

It can be good fun for quick burst, and it has potential for a lot of good gameplay with the several different modes that they have built over time.

It is what I consider one of the best mobile games available, and now as of this month has 52 brawlers to play and just about all of them are viable to use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptRsyrfnLEg

This game is a bit harder for brand new players to hop in and play because you unlock most characters through loot boxes and depending on the rarity of the brawler it can take a while to get several brawlers.

I have played this game since it was soft-launched in 2017 and played over the years through several changes.

Just this month they announced a huge update that adds quite a bit of depth to each brawler and has made my almost maxed account now nowhere close to max. ( I like the update, but that made me a bit sad cause I was almost fully maxed)

This game has a pretty large competitive scene and is constantly doing tournaments for big prize pools.

It has normal modes, ranked modes, and now clan vs. clan modes that have just been added.

There is a lot of game here for a free mobile game and while it is simple on the face side underneath there is a lot of complexity that keeps growing with every update.

If you like mobile games at all this is one that everyone should check out because it gets very little love since it is under the negative 'mobile game' connotation.

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Now into the list of the top 5 games I played this year.

5. FF7 remake

I got a PS5 in March of 2021 and bought the PS4 version of Final Fantasy 7 after they announced the upgrade for FF7 coming to PS5 in the summer. I didn’t play FF7 until we were in between moving houses and had to live with my wife’s parents for a few months. They didn’t have the internet at their home so I was able to spend a lot more time playing games offline. This opened up the opportunity for me to play FF7 finally.

This game is a very interesting one for sure. I have never played the original game so I went in somewhat blind to the story and characters. The character design in this game is phenomenal. My wife who is very not interested in a lot of video games was amazed at how the characters looked and seemed like real people.

Obviously, they have their anime/JRPG designs at heart but they still looked and felt like real people in a lot of ways.

Branching off of character design the thing that I love the most about this game was the story, the characters, and the way I felt connected to what was happening. I felt like I was a part of the story and my emotions were actually impacted by what happened as the story progressed. I was able to make connections with the characters that not a lot of games present the opportunity to do. Some parts were cheesy and I don’t think that really tampers with the experience it more so adds to the charm of the game.

I am not an avid JRPG player so I spent about the first 10-15 hours of the game playing it like any normal action RPG. I was struggling in many of the combat sections. I was so confused for much of the time until I had a friend tell me about certain weapon types and the abilities that were better for types of scenarios. That opened up the game’s combat parts a lot more for me and I really enjoyed it a lot.

This game almost perfectly blends the combat of hack and slash ARPG type games with the strategy and turn-based combat of a JRPG and I really liked that a lot.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent playing this game and can’t wait to finally get a part 2 and 3 eventually.

4. The Forgotten City

This is a much more recent one since I played this once it finally came to game pass for PC at the beginning of November. I heard about this one a while back after knowing about the popular Skyrim mod for a while and was really interested in playing it after seeing that the small dev team had made their own game.

This game had me hooked the whole time. It feels very much like a Skyrim/Fallout game where the emphasis is only on the dialogue. There is a small bit of combat but it’s almost laughable and such a minor part of the game.

I absolutely loved this game. I was able to play through it in basically one Saturday. The feeling of uncovering a mystery and learning to solve the puzzle over multiple loops of time where the world gets restarted each time is so addicting.

(And no I have not played Deathloop yet, but this game has moved that game up on my list of when I will play that.)

One of my favorite types of open-world styles is when the open world is made on a smaller scale and is something that can be super memorable and as you play you feel like you learn the world. Dead rising games have always been some of my favorite open-world games because you feel like you learn the layout of the mall and know when you need to go somewhere and how to get there you can do it without looking at a map.

That is how I feel about The Forgotten City. While it isn’t really an open world and more of a larger sized level it is a city you step into and learn the ins and outs of overtime as you loop over and over trying to solve the mystery.

The characters and dialogue options provide for a lot of choices and with multiple endings, there is a lot to do here. I was able to get the “good” ending through my playthrough and I was just taken aback at how the story unfolded over time.

This was a great time and it has me begging for more games like this. Remember don't break the Golden Rule.

3. Sea of Thieves

This is not a new game, but I finally played it during the summer of 2021 and I absolutely love it.

When Xbox announced Sea of Thieves I was amazed and was really hoping this game was going to be great. Sailing the seas with your pirate friends sounds so cool. It came out and reviews weren’t great and it kind of just got forgotten.

But you got to love a comeback story. There is a handful of big games that were set up to be pretty crazy games and fell flat on launch. No Man’s Sky is the biggest example. Sea of Thieves was right there with them. But they worked on their game and over time it has now become one of Xbox’s big games that are played by hundreds of thousands every day.

So cut away to e3 Xbox announcing the Pirates of the Caribbean update for Sea of Thieves and so then I knew I needed to play. The first couple of days I played I basically spent just learning the game a bit and doing some random missions and getting sunk by other players.

Then one Friday morning I got on and met a guy who had been playing since the game came out. He taught me a whole lot about the game and showed me a ton of things I had never even known about. That opened the door for me to play a ton trying to level up my pirate and get better at ship fights and killing the megalodon and fighting bosses. Then the Pirates of the Caribbean update came out and it was like an interactive pirate ride at Disney world but in the game and it was fantastic.

I highly recommend trying this game out and understand it is a very special type of game that no other game has come close to what this game feels like.

2. Age Of Empires IV

RTS games are back? Or maybe they never left and I just didn’t care about them for several years. Either way Age of Empires 4 launch has blown out expectations on a new RTS in 2021 I think.

I haven’t played an RTS on PC since Empire Earth 2 and Age of Mythology (which because of AOE4 I have found that it has a pretty good competitive scene.

I did not play those games in the past competitively in any way. I always liked playing the campaigns and playing against A.I. and making as many troops as I could to destroy their base.

I played Halo Wars 1 on my 360 pretty heavily and loved playing against people and grinding ranked mode with friends on it.

But AOE 4 is my first time learning to play an RTS and trying to play other people.

And it has been an absolute blast. There is so much to learn in an RTS and trying to learn how to manage resources and troops the best way possible has been a mountain of a task but I have enjoyed it a lot. I spent a lot of time watching some pros play and watching streams. One thing I can say is I will never even attempt at playing at their kind of level because the amount of stress I get playing solo quick play is already too much. Watching some pros play gives me stress just by watching.

That being said this feels like a great return for RTS games and I hope that the success of this game is an indication that we want more of this.

1. Valheim

Man, what can I say about this game that hasn’t been said already by many other people? This game took the gaming world by storm in January and February of 2021.

It hit at an absolutely perfect time for me and my friends because an Ice/Snow Storm hit and everyone was home for over a week with limited responsibility. (I was working from home but still.)

This game looks and even plays pretty similar to every other early access survival crafting game you have ever tried out of the hundreds that are out there.

But in Valheim it just works.

The game is much more polished than many of the early access games that come out and the art style and feel of the game were just so great.

You start as a naked Viking dropped in the middle of a foreign area surrounded by forrest and as you learn what to do and what tools to craft the game just drip-feeds one thing after another that continues to open the playing field of what you can craft, build and fight while playing.

I think what played a huge part in making this game so much fun was the sheer amount of discovery we had while playing it, we did everything as blind as we could. Not looking up crafting guides, not looking up how to get to certain bosses, nothing. We did everything through the discovery of us all playing together and learning how to do things.

This game was made by five people and they absolutely delivered. The game blew up so much that they had to delay most of their roadmap for content because there was so many people were playing that they had to commit almost all of 2021 to fix issues with the game they never imagined would have been a problem.

Now, there is one new content update that has come out with several more on the way. We are planning on waiting until most of that is out so we can jump back into the fully complete and new world that will be available after they add everything they said they plan to add. (Which is a ton).

If you like survival crafting games and somehow still haven’t played this game. Go ahead and play it, because it is fantastic.

QUE HALO INTRO SONG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoWQ0LjWJPM

Now I have given you my list of the top games I played this year. 2021 has gone by fast as frick for no reason. But I still played some great games.

But none compare to this one.

Halo Infinite with the surprise multiplayer drop has cured the world's ailments.

It has provided me with a new purpose.

It has taken me by the hand and carried me off away from the hate and pain in the world and laid me to rest in a suit of Mjolnir armor and handed me a Battle Rifle to fight alongside every man and woman who claims to be a gamer.

The beta to the multiplayer has been out for 3 days and I can confidently tell you I will not play another game this year. (Other than Clash of Clans, and Brawl Stars, and maybe somehow Skyrim when the overwhelming urge of winter forces me to return to the Windhelm again.) But other than that I WILL NOT PLAY ANOTHER GAME. BECAUSE THE KING IS BACK!

COD Vanguard sucks, Warzone SUCKS!, Battlefield 2042 looked really promising but it SUCKS.

AND NOW THE KING HAS RETURNED and taken the throne as it rides in on its mighty free2play steed.

The dev’s at 343 have returned Halo from the brink of death after 6 long years, 9 if you started counting from the launch of Halo 4.

HALO IS BACK. Halo Infinite is the truest successor to making a sequel to Halo 3 that has ever been created.

The community of old heads have complained for far too long about how they just wanted more Halo 3. And now 343 has acted on the promise of delivering the game we all wanted. They have taken what made Halo 3 so good and built it into something new.

Halo Reach was great, Halo 4 was pretty good, I think Halo 5 was actually pretty good, but I can understand why people didn’t like it because it was very different from Halo.

But Halo Infinite has brought it back down to what everyone liked about Halo 3 and has made it so well.

Please tell me the last time a Multiplayer game launched and on day one it had nearly zero issues. No server queues, no wait times, no game-breaking bugs.

Please tell me the last time a big competitive game with this much hype launched and had a ranked playlist alongside the social playlist.

If you have spent any time on the internet looking up information about Halo Infinite the only complaints you can find anywhere are that the battle pass levels up to slow!

Doesn't that say something great about the game if that is all that people are upset about? (And 343 has said they are working to change the system to be more like what players want.)

Halo 5 is the best running and looking game on the Xbox One. And Halo Infinite is starting to look like it may be one of the biggest releases from Xbox ever. In 2 hours it was already the largest steam release for an Xbox studios game to date.

OH YEA ITS ON STEAM. XBOX HAS DONE EVERYTHING RIGHT LATELY AND THEY JUST KEEP GETTING BETTER.

If you have a PC or an Xbox you need to download Halo and try it out cause it is heat. And if you don’t have an Xbox or PC then go get one cause Halo is that worth.

What are your top games? Let me know.