2021 Community Game of the Year

1. Old World (PC): I thought I was done with 4x games. After playing a ton of Civ V (and considering it the best of the series) I had purchased Civ VI at launch and followed with all the expansions and finished a grand total of 1 game. But then Old World and Humankind (more about this one much further down the list) came along and completely reinvigorated my love of the genre.

The feature that really makes Old World stand out is in the Crusader Kings lite character and event system. Like CK, your civ/nation/whatever is made up of a collection of characters who have stats and traits that change throughout the course of the game thanks to the fairly expansive events system. Characters interact, form friendships and rivalries, and generally make the gameworld feel more alive. Each character’s ‘class’ will be one of a handful of archetypes (orator, hero, judge, etc), and which archetype they are will impart specific bonuses and archetype-specific actions depending on whether they’re the civ leader, the governor of a city, or a general attached to a unit. Various events and event chains also have resolutions that require specific archetypes. It’s all very slickly designed and makes me feel a sense of attachment -- whether positive or negative -- towards both the characters in my civ but also the people leading the other civs in a way that no other 4x has managed to do.

The ‘orders’ system also deserves some mention. Every action you take on the map (build a mine, move a unit, attack, etc) or via character missions (tutor child, trade mission, improve relations, etc) costs a set number of orders. The number of orders you get per turn depends on a handful of factors -- your current ruler and how long they’ve been in the position, city buildings and projects, current trade deals, etc -- and on the higher difficulties, you’ll never have enough to do everything you want to do. Let’s say I have a builder standing next to a forest hill that I want to build a mine on. In order to do so I have to spend 1 order to move, 2 orders to remove the trees, and then 1 order per turn for X turns to build the mine. So I’m using 4 orders this turn to build one mine. If I’ve got 5-10 cities, each of which having 1-2 workers, you can imagine how quickly that adds up. Now what if I’m in a war and need to move units and attack with them -- and I have to attack as defending units do no damage to the attackers. Suddenly I’m in a situation where there’s actual meaningful choice when it comes to how to manage your empire on a turn-by-turn basis.

And there’s so much more I could go on about -- the fact that there are 3 production currencies in the game means city specialization is something that matters and you’ll want to really pay attention to what you’re building in each one; the lack of a traditional diplomacy screen -- everything is handled through the character and events systems; the limited victory conditions resulting in fewer games finishing by pressing end-turn until your victory condition triggers; the soundtrack; the built-in Game of the Week; the included scenarios; the ‘RPG mode’ where you don’t get shown the results of your choices prior to making them; how moddable it is -- it’s all just so damn good.

The most amazing thing here is that the designer of Civs III and IV managed to change up the Civ formula far more than the team who made Endless Legend. Having listened to Soren Johnson talk about design on various podcasts over the years, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I can’t help it. Anyway, if you’ve avoided this one because you’re a Steam diehard (coming to Steam and GOG in Spring 2022) or think that you’re done with 4x games, I’d encourage you to give it a serious look. It’s a brilliant game and it deserves to have more people playing it.

2. Dyson Sphere Program (PC): I dabbled in Factorio in late 2020 and early 2021 and then I stumbled onto this game, which seemed like better-looking Factorio without the combat (though that’s coming next year) and I immediately picked it up. After ~40 hours, I think that initial impression pretty much holds up. I stopped right around the time I had to up my production to get the second to last science tier, and am planning to go back once the game reaches 1.0. Not much separates this and the next game, but what bumps this one slightly ahead has been the combination of looks, openness (seriously – flying between planets is great even if it’s a bit time consuming until you get some suit upgrades), and the way you actually lay everything out. Plus, I’m more of a single-player gamer and that’s how I played this one.

3. Satisfactory (PC): In contrast to Dyson Sphere Program, I played this game almost entirely in multiplayer with my brother. It was a fun experience, but it’s generally not how I prefer to play games, especially given how I only randomly even have time to play. Anyway, prior to Old World releasing, I was sure this was going to be the year of Factorio-likes for me, and the main question was which of them was going to be #1 and which was going to be #2. The one thing that bothered me nearly the entire time I was playing this one was the first-person perspective. While it’s great for traversing the world, trying to place buildings from that viewpoint sucks. There are some hotkeys that help line things up, but I’d still prefer an overhead view for placing stuff.

4. Hitman 3 (PC): I don’t think this is the best of the new Hitmans, but it’s still a good package of levels overall and the murder mystery mansion is definitely one of my favorite locations in the entire series. Actually, the more I think of my time with it, the higher up my list it’s climbing. Dubai and the winery are fun levels, and Berlin was different from anything else in the series. Really, the only level I dislike here is the final one. Anyway, it’s more puzzle-box muder fun and the fact that you can play the content from all 3 games in this engine is just icing on the cake.

5. Tyranny (PC): Played as part of the CRPG game club early in the year. One of my goals for the year was to join in on a few of the game clubs and this seemed like a good place to start given that it appeared to be pretty short compared to other CRPGs. The start of the game was tough, though. As someone who always ends up playing a ‘good’ character, the intro and early part of the game sure makes it seem like you’re going to have to play the part of occupying-force-leader. Luckily, the game opens up and allows you to develop your character far more than seemed possible at first, and I ended up really enjoying my time with it. Enough so that I may go back at some point and explore some of the other paths through the game, and that’s definitely not something I’m likely to say about a game that takes 80 hours for a single character.

6. Armoured Commander 2 (PC): It’s a combination of the two genres that I think I should like but almost never love: wargames and roguelikes. I think that combination, though, makes the overall package more interesting than it would be as just a wargame or just a roguelike. The game feels like it could be a solo board game, but instead is presented as an 80’s-era DOS game with a fairly intuitive keyboard interface. The game is definitely not for everyone, but if you’re looking for either a wargame or a roguelike with a ton of different scenarios, you could make a worse buying decision than picking this little gem up.

7. State of Decay 2 (PC GamePass): Never played the original, but watching the Nextlander streams of this game made me give it a shot and I ended up having a pretty good time despite the game having some obvious issues. Like, it wants to be a co-op game, but the co-op is a confusing mess and doesn’t work remotely like you think it would. On the other hand, the single-player experience leaves a bit to be desired as well. The difficulty encourages you to take someone along on trips away from the base, but the AI co-op partners are almost completely worthless. If they didn’t provide a place to store stuff and draw at least some enemies towards themselves there’d be no reason to take them along at all. And yet, despite those complaints, there’s just enough here to be an enjoyable experience. The combination of base management and away missions makes it real easy to sit down for an hour and feel like you really accomplished something. Not all games are able to pull that off.

8. American Truck Simulator (PC): I didn’t realize that I was missing driving places, but as we approached a year of COVID stay-at-home status and I picked up ATS, that’s exactly what I discovered. There were a couple of months there at the beginning of the year where I’d come down to my office after getting the kids to bed, throw on a podcast, and drive around the western US. It was surprisingly cathartic. I had high hopes for this one with my 4yo, but this year was all about smashing lawnmowers together for him and driving big trucks just made him bored after a few minutes.

9. Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (Switch): I picked this one up last holiday season and was initially pretty disappointed. I was aware of its cult hit status but bounced off pretty quickly thanks to a combat system that I found pretty impenetrable. For some reason I didn’t give up, though, and after reading up on it some more I was able to have a pretty good time with the game. The combat is fun, the different classes are really quite different, and mixing and matching abilities and buffs from them is great. What eventually made me stop was how empty the world was. Which, thinking about it now, is interesting in light of Breath of the Wild being my #1 game of 2018. Maybe the focus on exploration in that game pulled me along in a way that the combat focus of this one did not? I dunno.

10. Wreckfest (PC GamePass): My 4yo still loves cars, and he really loved wrecking lawnmowers. Racing games generally aren’t my favorite, but there is some fun to be had here and I’m always happy to play any game that gets my kids interested in the hobby.

• Civilization VI (PC & Switch, #4 2016): I think there might be a pattern where I buy Civ games and all their expansions at launch, and then don’t actually get into them until several years later when all the content has been released. I played a ton of Civ IV leading into Civ V and then didn’t really like Civ V at launch. I eventually came around after the second expansion and played an absolute ton of it right up until Civ VI was released. At which point I felt like I was burned out and barely touched it until Humankind came out and made me take a fresh look at Civ VI. What I found was that 1) I really like it and have put way more hours into the game in the last three months than I have up until now and 2) the amount of micromanagement required to play optimally on higher levels is way beyond me. But that’s ok. I can continue to play games here and there on moderate difficulties and have a good time.
• Good Sudoku (iOS): I can’t believe I found a game that was able to make me understand the y-wing technique.
• New York Times Crossword (iOS): I’ve gone down a crossword hole in the latter half of this year. My solve streak is currently at ~100 days as I write this (12/12), and while I do occasionally have to look stuff up, I’ve gotten significantly better.
• Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch): I didn’t have a WiiU, so this was my first exposure to this game. It’s pretty enjoyable as a hop-in/hop-out quick puzzle game while I’m cooking dinner or otherwise doing things other than concentrating on a video game. Kids like watching it, too, so that always helps.
• Assassin’s Creed 2 (PC): Like with Assassin’s Creed 4 a few years ago, I played this one right up until there was a mission that I failed a handful of times for stupid reasons. This time it wasn’t a stealth mission, but poor-parkour-controls-in-too-small-of-an-area isn’t much better. I was enjoying it up through that point, though, and it was the only third-person action game I actually spent significant time with this year, so it must’ve been doing something right.

• Horizon: Zero Dawn (PC)]: Looked nice and seemed fun for the few hours that I played it, but I had a real hard time getting into any third-person action/adventure games this year. Probably because I have so few hours each week to actually sink into a game that I gravitate towards games that I can play an hour at a time and not forget everything if I come back to it two weeks later.
• Slipways (PC): Neat little optimization puzzle advertised as a “2x”. This feels like the sort of game that, much like the factory-builders, I’d get sucked into for hours upon hours if I gave it a chance.
• Forza Horizon 5 (PC GamePass): Like Forza Horizon 4 last year and Wreckfest this year, this is a game I only play with my 4yo son. He loves it, so we keep playing. Looks and runs surprisingly well at 4k on my aging AMD R5 2600/1080Ti.
• Approaching Infinity (PC): Roguelike #1 for me this year. I was deep into Star Trek: TNG when I picked this up as the theme seemed to fit pretty well. Unfortunately, I picked up Dyson Sphere Program a week or so after buying this game and that was the end of that. The developer keeps updating it, though, so I’ll definitely get back to it at some point.
• Conquest of Elysium 5 (PC): Roguelike #2. An episode of Three Moves Ahead sold this one to me. Picked it up over this month and almost put it pretty high up on my list despite very little playtime. I’ve spent the last several days thinking about it constantly, which is generally the sign that a game is going to stick with me long-term.

• Humankind (PC GamePass): I don’t think this is a bad game, but I was looking for something more adventurous than ‘solid Civ clone’, especially coming from the Endless Legend studio. I feel like they mostly played it too safe, which is why this game is here and Old World is the best game I played this year. Even their most adventurous feature -- switching cultures each era -- mostly didn’t work for me. I liked it for my own culture, where it’s basically used to apply various bonuses to my civ at each era change, but it made the AI civs feel like they completely lacked personality. Old World nails this by having the player interact with leader characters who change every so many turns, and even in Civ VI I can trick myself (assign motivations to, hold grudges against, etc) into believing there’s a personality there when there really isn’t. But here it’s just ‘Wait -- where the hell did the English come from? Oh… they used to be the Chinese.’ And then I end up just referring to the factions by what color they are, because that doesn’t change.
• Gears of War Tactics and Empire of Sin (PC GamePass): I love the modern XCOM games. I have 100-200 hours into each of them. But no other tactics game has really hit for me. I tried Phoenix Point in the last few years and found the combat unsatisfyingly slow. This year it was Gears of War and Empire of Sin, neither of which stuck with me. I think EoS would have stuck if the combat felt better. The management stuff surrounding the combat seems cool, but I find the combat boring, and like PP, far too slow. The combat in GoW was better, but there’s literally nothing but combat in that game and I need more than that for it to stick – though in that game’s case, it might not have mattered because I could not care less about anything GoW.
• Into the Breach (PC, #8 in 2018): Played as part of the Strategy Gaming Club over the summer. I played a lot of it while watching the Olympics and was reminded how good the game is.
• Morrowind (PC): For the second time in two years, I’ve attempted to play Morrowind. Thanks to OpenMW, I made it further this time and didn’t have to spend hours beforehand just modding the game, but I’m skeptical that I’ll stick with it long-term -- the world might be more interesting than the generic fantasy landscape of Oblivion or cold, nordicness of Skyrim, but playing the later games is so much of a better experience that it’s hard to go back.
• Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (PC): I’m a sucker. I only really love Mass Effect 1, and I’d played it recently enough that it was still plenty fresh in my mind. But I bought it anyway and, predictably, only played the first game. Prior to this, you could make the original game look pretty decent if you were willing to spend a few hours installing mods. Not having to do that anymore is nice, and honestly, EA did a pretty good job with the graphical improvements to the first game. Anyway, I’m not upset that I spent the money, but it really was a stupid purchase.
• Super Mega Baseball 3 (Switch, #3 2020): The Mariners were inexplicably in the playoff race until the last day of the season, and that got me back into playing this game. Still the best game of baseball you can play.

2020
Decade (2010s)
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
2. Metroid Dread
3. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
4. Psychonauts 2
5. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
6. Ghostrunner
7. Inscryption
8. A Plague Tale: Innocence
9. Black Book
10. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Clang! You did it, FromSoft, you finally got me. How did this one stick? Isn't this your hardest game yet? Well, it's the only one I've beaten, so empirically speaking it must be the easiest. Clang! In some ways it really is the most casual-friendly. Builds? Stats? You're a sword guy, here's a skill tree that you'll mostly fill out by the end. Here's another sword guy who's always ready to be your training dummy. Clang! Here are some NPCs telling you what to do in fairly clear terms (by FromSoft standards). Maybe that's what sold me?

Clang clang clangity clang-clang-clang! Oh, right. It was the sword dueling rhythm game that convinced me to give this a shot, and I'm glad I did. After I played and enjoyed Ghost of Tsushima last year, this was the graduate-level seminar. Getting stomped by most bosses and gradually picking their movesets apart... You've heard FromSoft fans go on about their victories. They're insufferable, aren't they?

Now I need to decide if I'm feeling the hype for Elden Ring or not...

2. Metroid Dread
This was a big year for sequels to the forgotten hits of 2002-2007. It felt like a risk for Nintendo to come back to the old formula, now that there are approximately one billion indies designed around the same gameplay loop. Somehow, this is much more than Just Another Metroid.

I'm a Fusion hater for the awkward way Adam constrains Samus' free wandering. I liked Samus Returns even if I had issues with the new melee counter. This game feels like it's finally grabbing what those two were reaching for. The counters are tweaked, and movement in general is so polished that it always feels good to dash ahead and try for one more save point. And for the first time as a Metroid fan, the twists have me invested in finding out what happens next. Hopefully it doesn't take 19 years this time.

3. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
I remarked early on that this game's rather simple real-time-with-pauses combat system looks like something from the 3DS, scaled up to HD. And it takes a long time to ramp up the challenge, even after the tutorials finished. In short, all story, no gameplay? Not something that usually grabs me.

And yet. Between the bewildering list of sci-fi tropes (maybe one or two twists too many, if I'm really being picky), the characters who all surprise and delight me, the music that I've been listening to on loop all year, the stunning animations and backgrounds, and the actually-this-is-a-lot-of-fun gameplay, I couldn't tear myself away. And for the record, its whirlwind of parallel stories couldn't have been told in any other medium.

4. Psychonauts 2
This was a big year for sequels to the forgotten hits of 2002-2007. For a while, I wondered if this quite captured the brilliance of the first game. Then I watched a few let's plays of the old game and decided, yes actually, this series has come a long way. Seriously, time has helped us forget how janky the first one was, even if a little bit of the jank lives on in the platforming.

If there's a flaw it's that it shows its best stuff pretty early on. As cool as some of the later levels are, nothing tops Feast of the Senses. 17 years from now we may be talking about that the way we talk about The Milkman Conspiracy.

5. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
In so many ways a better Spider-Man than 2018's Sony's Playstation’s Disney's Marvel's Spider-Man. The new abilities are good (Invisibility! Zap!), the story is a little more focused, it doesn't have those elements that proved so disturbingly prophetic in 2020, and it looks amazing on a PS5, if you can find one.

Everything I liked about the first one still counts. New York has never looked better; brawling is addictive; swinging is a joy. And yet it didn't quite grab me the way the first one did, maybe because I have, for the most part, seen this before. So this time, it lands in the middle of the pack.

6. Ghostrunner
Of the painfully difficult sword-ninja games starring a guy who loses his left arm in the prologue but comes back to defeat what is actually a well-disguised rhythm game that I've played this year, this was my second favorite. The driving cybertechno music suits it perfectly, and it's the best wall-running since Titanfall 2.

That wall-running leads into a lot more platforming than I expected. The designers may have gotten a little carried away with that; some moments are almost Celeste-like, if Celeste was a hyperviolent first-person game with ray-traced graphics. So, not Celeste at all.

7. Inscryption
I have an allergy to roguelike deckbuilders, so listen when I say this is worth putting up with. Unless we’re not tallying Inscryption as a roguelike deckbuilder? Then what do I even write here? This is a conundrum.

8. A Plague Tale: Innocence
Or: the Rat Game.

I love Amicia and Hugo and the friends they make along the way. I feel terrible when any of them are in danger, which, um, is pretty often. I don't so much love some of the stealth sections where it feels like I'm just guessing at the One Good Path. It opens up a lot more when Amicia has a deeper bag of tricks. It will be interesting to see how the sequel manages the escalating power level.

I played this on PS5 and it was a great demonstrator for HD rumble and adaptive triggers. The sling felt great, and the sensation of a million swarming rats felt... differently great.

9. Black Book
In late 1800s Russia, Vasilisa, a newly minted koldun (very roughly, witch) sets to work helping the people of her village, all the while suspecting that the loss that set her on this path was not natural.

The art style attracted my attention, but what really drew me in was the folklore, only bits of which I had heard of. Vasilisa's culture combines elements of Christianity with the Permian religion that preceded it. The various household and nature spirits of Perm are recast as chorts or demons that have to be variously placated or confronted if humans are to have any peace or prosperity. Hence their dependence on the local koldun. The developers clearly want to share this culture with the player, and I’m here for it.

There is a card-based combat system, but this is no roguelike, unusually for card games these days. So when you discover a broken combo, feel free to keep it, build your deck around it, and generally abuse the heck out of it. Some might find that unsatisfying, but I find it suits the theme as Vasilisa's skills grow.

10. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
In a word, frictionless. It's not hard (I played on the default difficulty), it moves quickly, the banter is fun, the environments are pretty, and it's always easy to say, "one more task," instead of putting the game down. An effect of eliminating loading screens, perhaps? In a way it feels like an expanded version of Astro's Playroom. Except that game features motion-sensitive aiming and this does not.

And this after I bounced off of the 2016 remake.

Aeon Drive
Designed to turn good honest people into speedrunners. Playing it on release day at least allowed me to grab some top-ten times on a few levels; I have surely fallen off since then. This is a rapid-fire puzzle platformer where on each stage the puzzle is, "How quickly can you get to the goal?" It's smooth and addictive. I’m pretty sure it’s also the first game on which I've 100%ed the achievements, so that's something.

Forza Horizon 5
You’re here! You’re awesome! Here, have a car for being so wonderful! This game is so relentlessly happy to see you, I’d call it this year’s Animal Crossing. I especially had fun trying to beat GWJ rivals' times in the off-road categories, usually in my customized Porsche Cayenne. The leather seats make it go faster.

NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…
Ah, so this is where NieR Automata came from. It’s haunting and sad, and tragic sometimes to the point of cruelty. It’s also a slog. I thought Automata got a bad rap for repetitiveness, but in this case it may be deserved. There’s some new content which actually feels a lot like Automata, and surprise, I liked that the best.

Humankind and Old World
Hey, let’s reinvent Civilization! Of the two, I’ve played a lot more Humankind, perhaps because I knew the meter was running on my Game Pass subscription. Maybe I should play Civ 6 one of these days so I have a basis for comparison.

NEO: The World Ends With You
This was a big year for sequels to the forgotten hits of 2002-2007. The new combat system is pretty neat, even if some pins are clearly easier to manage than others. It’s always fun to try new ones and watch the numbers go up. So far I’d have to say the new characters are a little bland compared to the ones from the original. Perhaps they will grow on me. For now, my favorite moments are when those originals step onto the screen.

Freespace 2
Old school space sim. I dove deep into Star Wars Squadrons earlier this year, and I had fun playing online with a few other GWJers (it was an honorable mention last year). When I mused out loud that Freespace 2 had been in my pile for years and I should give it a shot, someone helpfully reminded me that the open-sourced engine has been tweaked and upgraded by the fan community. So I downloaded Knossos, copied the files over from my GoG install, and have been picking at it since. Next step might be to figure out something with UCR or Joystick Gremlin so I can go full HOTAS (the retooled game still only supports one controller).

Chorus
New school space sim. I’m still just getting into it. Adding psionic abilities to the standard space sim is a fun idea. “I just push this button, and I warp to where I’m sitting on some sucker’s tail?” The writing is earnest in its intensity: Nara is deeply troubled by her history of fighting for the evil Circle. Sometimes that’s powerful, and sometimes the delivery feels a little silly. There’s some classic Western energy in the opening act: think Shane, or the “Zuko Alone” episode from The Last Airbender.