2021. It was 2020 again, but weirder. On my side, I’ve been stuck in my house, working from home, since March 2020, I’m fine with that. Just working, working out, watching an unhealthy amount of vtubers and playing an unhealthy amount of video games. I had cataracts all of 2020 and early 2021 so I could barely see for a while, I got those fixed this year so that’s nice. I don’t really have much else to say on the non-gaming side of things, no big health emergencies in the family this year so that’s good. Not much activity overall. That said there was SOMETHING new… this website. I talked about this in the first post I made here, but I had a different site before this (called The Save Points, which originally was a group project but became a solo project fairly quickly), but ran into some DNS issues and decided to abandon the site I had built for the last 13 years. Switched how I did a few things, but yeah, having fun with this new site now. Definitely want to improve things a bit, I want to post more than I do.

As far as gaming, 2021 was actually pretty solid. I don’t know how it happened, but I constantly had something to play. Every month had at least 2 great games (plus a bunch of smaller decent games) which is not something that happens in most years. I didn’t even play all the games I was interested in this year, it was too busy. I didn’t even play too many stinkers, pretty much just Outriders, Axiom Verge 2 and NEO TWEWY.

So I have my own way of doing things for the GotY. Instead of being lame and choosing one winner, or being even lamer and doing a bunch of weird meaningless categories that have a ton of shitty nominations (made by people who hate video games), I just choose, like, 7 winners. I do put one winner on top of everyone else for maximum subjectivity, but yeah, 7 winners, the 7 best games of the year, let’s fucking go.

Since this IS an end-of-year post about the top games of the year, I do want to take the time to look back on some things, so I’ll rant about the console manufacturers a bit and whatever else catches my fancy, then select the 7 GotY winners. I also list a bunch of honorable mentions because I’m just a nice guy like that.

Oh hey I conveniently linked to the relevant sections if you want to skip my inane rantings. You’re welcome.

• Rant (seriously skip this part if you just want to see the winners)
• Games of the Year Winners
• Games of the Year Super Winner
• Honorable mentions

I will note before this that there are in fact games I haven’t played. So if a game you liked isn’t on the list, know that it’s either that I didn’t play it, or it sucked balls. It’s okay, you’re allowed to like bad games. Also I didn’t get a PS5 this year (for reasons I might rant about), so the one good exclusive on it is also a game I didn’t play. I’m sure Ratchet is great (impressions are basically all positive), I just didn’t want to buy a PS5 just to play that one game. I didn’t play Village (though I did analyze the gameplay from watching Gura playing it, it needs some help). I hear great things about Inscryption, I didn’t buy it. And there’s other games I’m interested in I didn’t play like Cruisn’ Blast, Super Robot Wars 30, Eastward and probably some others. I also literally just got a few other 2021 games that I will review later, maybe they’re good too.

Without further ado, let’s do this thing. 2021 Games of the Year let’s fucking go!

There’s a couple games that I recently played at least a bit of, but that I don’t think I’ll fully finish or get to the end of, at least yet. Some of those came from my recent subscription to PC Game Pass using the absolutely awful Xbox app on PC, some I got on Switch.

The 6 games I’ll be quickly “review” here are Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon, Prinny Presents NIS Classics Volume 1: Phantom Brave / Soul Nomad, Dodgeball Academia, Astria Ascending, Dark Alliance: Dungeons & Dragons and Forza Horizon 5.

So there you go, before I go into my GotY posts, here’s a couple games I’m not likely to post full reviews for.

Let’s go!

Pretty slow month for posts on my side, with 2 semi-long JRPGs being reviewed. I do have a few other posts on the way, I’m playing Ziggurat 2 and Voice of Cards and I have some other “backlog” kinda things to jump into once that’s done, so it’s not like I don’t have things prepared (and a rant that I’m making sure I’m fully satisfied with before I post it). And I’m gonna play a few new releases in December as well, including maybe looking at the 1$ game pass PC trial for some of them.

So December 2021 is a bit weird. In the sense that it actually has several interesting games. December is usually, weirdly, an off-month for game releases, with sometimes a game or two worth looking at. But this time there’s a couple cool ones actually, and this is with some big-ish games getting delayed. For December 2021, I’m listing: 8 multiplats and 4 Switch releases. I’ll probably be playing 3-4 of these games.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

This was a pretty good month post-wise. I’m also writing a rant right now, it’s a good one, not sure when I’ll post it. Still have some things ongoing that I will review soon-ish-maybe. Kinda randomly bought Caligula Effect 2 (despite not having played the first), and there’s a couple things I’ll be getting that are out soon or in November. Surprisingly my “want to buy but haven’t yet” list has been going down smoothly enough, much of the stuff remaining in it that came out this year isn’t very high-priority stuff anymore. So things may calm down a bit, but there’s still plenty for me to review this year.

This month I’m highlighting: 13 multiplats and 4 Switch releases. As far as big releases, November is pretty quiet, but there’s still some cool stuff, including the SECOND hypest game of the year. Wow! I’m getting a couple of these.

Also I’m going with some weird inclusions I usually wouldn’t look at this month, because I figure it’s fun. The theme? Games from the same company (Microid), all based on franco/franco-belgian comics, that actually have weirdly okay collector editions and the games themselves don’t look quite as shit as they probably should. It’s really weird, not sure why there’s 3 of these this month. But there you go.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Actually got several posts out in September, that was decent. 2 of them were reaction posts, which is fine. I don’t always do these, but sometimes I feel like it makes sense. I wouldn’t do a reaction to the Smash showcase on october 5th, for example. That’s not really worth reacting to. As far as future posts, I do still have a so-called “backlog” (i.e. games I want to play but haven’t bought yet), I haven’t bought No More Heroes 3 yet, or Axiom Verge 2 (amongst many others), and I was made aware that Deathloop may actually be an okay game so I just started that. And there’s obviously upcoming games I’ll write about. So I still have plenty on the go writing-wise.

So this month I’m highlighting: 17 multiplats, 2 Switch games, 2 PC games and 1 PS4 exclusive for some reason. For me, in all that, there’s only 2 “getting for sure” games, 2 I’m probably getting, and a couple that are going on the maybe list. It’s actually a weirdly quiet month despite having the hypest game of the year, so I might be able to get into some backlog games.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Well I sure didn’t post a lot since the last release list post. NEO TWEWY just took really long. And I’m playing through Great Ace Attorney right now, I’m almost done with the first game in the pack. And I didn’t get time to play that much else though there’s a bunch of games I do have on my “must-get” list. I still gotta get Blaster Master Zero 3 and Axiom Verge 2 and No More Heroes 3… And more, less “urgent” stuff… and that’s just recent ones, there’s a bunch of older stuff I eventually want to grab. And of course September has a couple games I want. I’m definitely not running out of things to review.

So this month I’m highlighting: 19 multiplats, 6 Switch games, 1 PS5 game and 2 PC games. There’s some good stuff in there too, I’m at 3-4 games I’m getting for sure, and like 5 maybes. Definitely a decent month.

*EDIT 09/10: removed a game that is not coming out this month that searching on google still has the wrong date lol*

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

July has been a great month so far, and there’s still games coming this week, with the Great Ace Attorney collection and NEO TWEWY and Blaster Master Zero 3 (and I’m curious about The Ascent so that’s a maybe). I reviewed a bunch of stuff in July, and ranted about the Steam Deck, and I have plenty more to go. August is a bit of a quieter month, so maybe I’ll get to some time to play other things I had skipped in the year to play the more high-priority stuff… Or not. Definitely a few games I skipped that I want to play. I’m not running out of games to review, that’s for sure.

So in August we’re getting: 9 multiplats, 4 Switch games, 2 PC games and 1 PS4 game. As for heavy hitters, there’s a few, but I think the more interesting games this time are smaller releases. There’s actually only 2 “for sure” purchases for me, but there’s a whole lot of maybes. So lots of potential reviews.

*Edit 7/28: Added a multiplat game*

*Edit 7/29: Removed a multiplat game because it was delayed lol*

*Edit 2 7/29: Removed another multiplat that was also delayed… you should’ve known a while ago about the delay, why wait until 2 weeks before release to announce it?*

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Well that’s that for June. Got a lot of E3 posts out complaining about the worst E3 ever, that was fun. And I got a few reviews posted too (and 2 non-reviews, though the Outriders one kinda counts as a review if you want it to be). I’m thinking of a rant right now, not sure it’ll go anywhere but it could make some particularly stupid people mad so… It may be brewing. And I have a few other games I’m playing for review too, so yay. And July will be pretty busy.

So July, which is usually not a big month, is a strangely big month this year. There’s many (hopefully) great games, combined with some end-of-June games that are also big boys to plow through like Scarlet Nexus and Disgaea 6 which will take some July time.

So for releases in July I’m highlighting: 14 multiplats and 2 Switch releases. Might not sound massive but there’s some really good stuff here.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Well E3 2021 is done. It mostly sucked. There’s one part that didn’t.

So time to rant about E3 as a whole! There’s not even that much to talk about here, but I think I can use that fact as a platform to talk about stuff anyways.

I’ll be grading each presentation, and talking about what bothered me about them and maybe get to the core of WHY all these presentations suck.

Well I guess before I get to the Nintendo Direct, I’m gonna write my usual intro.

In-between my last post (the disappointing Squeenix direct) and this one, there’s been a few presentations, they weren’t good. Back 4 Blood got a bit presentation, it looks fine. PC Gaming Show was fairly boring but it had some interesting indies. The Future Games Show was pretty boring. Take-Two wasted everyone’s time with something WORSE than the Koch Media presentation. Capcom did nothing, might have been more useless than the Gearbox thing. Wow this E3 is bad.

And now it’s Nintendo’s turn. Literally only they can save this terrible E3. The bar is set so low.

Nintendo has a LOT of rumors going on. 2D Donkey Kong game by the Mario Odyssey team, a 3D Kirby, a 2D Metroid (this is a leftover rumor that ended up false last year lol), something Fire Emblem (so many different versions of this rumor), an exclusive RE game, new Mario Kart, and probably a bunch of other stuff I don’t recall because there’s so many fake rumors I can’t keep track. The big one is the Switch Pro… which won’t be shown in the Direct if it’s a real product Nintendo wants to release. I don’t know if any of those rumors will be true. The safe bet is to say they aren’t but some of them are certainly interesting and possible.

Outside of the rumors, there’s a lot of things we can assume will be there or not. BotW2 is almost definitely showing up though I believe it will only come out early next year. We’ll see at least one Smash character (maybe 2). Seems like we’ll see a new Monkey Ball, that got a real leak. Maybe we’ll see some Zelda 35th anniversary… stuff (I’m not counting on it). We’ll NOT see Metroid Prime 4. We’ll probably not see Bayonetta 3 but there’s a chance I guess. I don’t think we’ll see Splatoon 3. I don’t think we’ll see any Pokemon but there’s a small chance since there was no pre-E3 pokemon direct. Pikmin 4 has been “sort of” announced for years, a real announcement would be… a thing. And Nintendo generally does announce actual things at E3 so… I figure we’ll have one decently-big announcement maybe, whether it’s something from the rumors or not. After how bad the rest of this E3 has been, I’m not keeping my hopes up, but it would be hard for Nintendo to fail as hard as any of the other presentations.

As usual these are my “live” reactions to the event, I’m gonna edit those to make them readable and write overall thoughts at the end. The intro is written before seeing the show of course.

So anyways, let’s go. PLEASE Nintendo save this terrible E3. It really needs help.

Note: No I won’t do a post about the Treehouse stream, but I may talk about it in my “overall” E3 post after the event is over if there’s something shown there.