• Navigation
View RSS Feed

Serra

2021 BlueGartr Staff Picks -- Celebrating Another Trip Around the Sun

Rate this Entry
The end of the year is upon us, and like last year, 2021 has definitely been a strange year. The ongoing pandemic, global supply chain issues, and numerous scandals and crises have impacted the gaming world this year. All of those factors have led to a year without a lot of strong contenders for Game of the Year. Like previous years, the lack of great games has led to a limited number of selections this year. Or maybe it is just a sign we are all finally getting old and do not have as much time for gaming..

In any case, here are the BlueGartr staff’s picks for games of 2021!

Sonomaa

FFXIV Shadowbringers
Even though it came out before, the patches have added such wonderful content and such amazing stories that I cannot help but want to continue to play it on multiple characters.

Runner up: Satisfactory
I have dumped countless hours into building bad factories with even worse conveyor systems and I cannot stop.


6souls

I played a number of new games this year (Hitman 3/Tales of Arise/New World/Sable), but I've only finished one of them, Hitman 3. Arise scratched my JRPG itch that I haven't felt since Ni No Kuni II, New World provided hunting & gathering ASMR, and Sable is a calming exploration, but there is just something about finding creative ways to kill people in Hitman. I also tried a couple Early Access titles, Valheim & Dyson Sphere Project, but I've dropped them until they add content that I am interested in (DSP has been conveyor belt updates for the past half year).

Some of my older favorites got significant content updates this year. Skyrim got new and old mods from the Creation Club added in a neat bundle, Surviving Mars got new maps and official shit to do for the first time since 2019, and Destiny 2 (besides having an above normal year for good story content) got a Bungie 30th Anniversary pack that added a dungeon, a cringey, but fun gameshow playlist, & the D1 Y3 Ghorn. Solid.

Skyrim re-releasing again;

Quote Originally Posted by Krandor View Post
Can't imagine anyone on PC would be in any rush to play this with the limited mod support right now, it hasn't added anything of value for the PC crowd


My game(s) of the year are boring. I can't seem to put down and/or retire from Destiny 2 and Surviving Mars. There is just something about doing the same thing over and over again that feeds my need.




Also, for the meme;




Serra

This year was supposed to be an easy pick for me. Releasing at the end of last year, I expected Cyberpunk 2077 to easily be the best game I played this year. Instead, it is one of the few games to earn the dubious distinction of being a game I quit and returned. And as a result, I found myself searching to pick a game of the year this year. Partially because I didn’t play a ton of games this year, but I struggled to think of a game that really made a strong impression on me or which consumed a large portion of my gaming time.

While there was no game that met those criteria, there was one game that impressed me so much at the time I played through it, I one-hundred percented it twice in a row -- Metroid Dread. Metroid Dread is a bit of an oddity, given that it felt like an olive branch to appease fans until Nintendo has more news on Metroid Prime 4, but at the same time, it is the first side-scrolling Metroid game in nearly twenty years, it offered a brilliant update of the classic side-scrolling Metroid experience, and it can stand with, if not stand above, some of the great games in the genre that have released in recent years. And in a year with a lot of turmoil, Metroid Dread offered the right amount of familiar comfort and new fun to earn its place as my game of the year.


So those are our games of 2021, but what about yourselves? Were there any games that really impressed you this year or any games that consumed your gaming time? Let us know below.

And as ever, Happy New Year, everyone! Here's to hoping things start turning around in 2022!

Comments

  1. 6souls -
    6souls's Avatar
    Oh, I forgot about Outriders. Beat the story, but dropped it before doing endgame because it was a buggy mess.
  2. Serra -
    Serra's Avatar
    I totally forgot about Outriders. It completely fell off my radar with all those bugs (namely the losing all your gear bug) at release.