The 17 best games of 2021
Sable, Hitman, Bowser’s Fury, and more fill out our list of the best video games of 2021
Games Lists Video games developed in Japan
2021 was a year of self-reckoning for video games. Sometimes, that simply meant revisiting classic franchises, with Ratchet & Clank reviving itself after nearly a decade of hibernation, and Resident Evil launching one of its most ambitiously weird installments in recent memory.
More often, though, games in 2021 reflected on themselves more directly, sending players Groundhog Day-ing their way through an enormous array of virtual time loops. These could run from the apartment-constrained action of Twelve Minutes, to the comedic violence of Arkane Studios’ Deathloop, to the far-flung space action of Housemarque’s Returnal. Given the long lead times on games production, it’s hard, as ever, to pinpoint why so many of the year’s games found themselves trapped in these cycling prisons—or to account for the wide variety of the end results.
The latter of which is what we’re set to do here, in The A.V. Club’s ranking of the best games of 2021. We’re breaking with tradition this year, offering up a ranked list, instead of our more traditional “Games We Liked” format. Partly, that change is intended to standardize Games with our colleagues over in Film, TV, Music, and Books; it’s also in the hopes of taking a somewhat stronger editorial stance on what gaming got right this year. (Don’t be afraid to tell us what you loved this year in the comments, though.)
And now, without further adieu: The A.V. Club’s Best Games Of 2021.
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Genre bias on clear display on a list that excludes Forza Horizon 5, Age of Empires 4 and Unpacking
Man Village… my expectations were high but damn it still topped it. From everyone’s favorite giant vampire lady to the best horror in the sequence in the series to campy nonsense. It has it all!
House Benviento felt like Capcom taking off the kid gloves after years of people calling Resident Evil games cheesy. “You want scares? We’ll give you scares!”
Pretty much. The series has never been super scary, so to see the best Silent Hill sequence in years show up out of nowhere is truly remarkable.
About the best horror, I assume you’re talking about the Benviento, section because omg. The unease of being in that house is the exact type of horror that really gets to me, and I actually froze in terror when that abomination finally showed up. Marked my first “Game Over” up to that point playing
Yeah the fact it took quite a while for anything to happen was off putting in a great way. Just walking through a house with nothing happening was eerie and once things started it still took a while to reach the crescendo in the form of the most off putting baby monster I’ve seen in a while. Made several magnitudes worse via audio, its clearly a real baby’s cries but modified just enough to sound wrong. Castle Dimitrescu is my favorite segment of the game but anyone who says House Benvenito is the peak is something I 100 percent understand.
Deathloop gets my vote for GOTY (with the caveat that I haven’t tried Returnal, because the inability to save during a run was a deal breaker for me until they recently changed it). Going back to read the review here, I can agree with most of what was said, but it’s also a REALLY easy problem to fix. I turned off leads early on, and I’ve been figuring everything out myself. I did the same with the Hitman games. It’s much more satisfying to make your own way through things.
To some. I hate having to aimlessly wander until I find something that advances the plot
This feels a bit harsh on Deathloop, which is definitely higher up in my personal rankings for 2021. I can understand the critique that some of the game’s rich asshole villains are cartoonish, but, well…[gestures at penis space rocket]. And there’s more depth there that you uncover as you go along, through their overheard conversations and documents. Having just finished it yesterday, I found the ending and the revelations about your relationships to be more affecting than I expected.
Do we just take the incredible style and the fun gameplay for granted when it’s a game from Arkane? As someone who always went for savescum stealth in their Dishonored games, I found myself really enjoying the balance they forced here – stealth is viable but if/when it goes to hell, there’s a panicky kick to fighting and fleeing. I found myself most often equipping the invisibility powers along with the Havoc powers that turn you into a froth-mouthed berserker. For someone who was really fixated on getting all those stealth achievements in previous Arkane games, this felt like the developers patting me on the back, saying: “It’s okay to be spotted, son. It’s okay. Here’s a pistol that makes people vomit.”
All that said, Hitman III is certainly my Game of the Year. Just an absolute masterpiece, vast, inventive, and darkly funny. My first time going through the Berlin level was one of the most tense, rewarding times I’ve ever had in a game.
I liked Deathloop but found the endings to be extremely unsatisfying
I just personally found Deathloop boring to play eventually. Its little loot system got old fast, and the gameplay was…fine, but didn’t capture interest. I might try to get back to it at some point but I don’t see that happening soon. It doesn’t help that I had just finished Returnal, and Deathloop felt VERY slow in comparison. Maybe I need a fresher start with it.
As for the writing, dialogue, etc. – meh? Meh on that as well. Serviceable but not deserving of awards. I did like the art direction and design though, I’ll grant it that.
Returnal is very deserving of the top spot there – even if the story isn’t all that, the way it feels and plays is beyond satisfying. It feels like the ancient past and far future of gaming at the same time. I plugged about 130 hours into finishing it and another 5 or 10 on top getting the Platnium trophy. I’m thinking about deleting my save and going from the start again.I’m halfway through Deathloop at the moment and I think #11 is generous. It’s solid but way too samey and shallow, especially when this list can’t find space for true gems like Lost Judgement (an inventive and endlessly playable game with true wit and human insight instead of Deathloop’s misanthropy) never mind lovely diversions like Toem, Warioware, Townscaper or Dorfromantik.
TOEM is so good. Just whimsy and feel good vibes all around baked into a beautiful art style with clever, pleasant puzzles.
I always look at Best Games of the Year lists and wish there was filter to remove anything whimsical. It would leave a lot less games but I’d be happier.
God forbid you have to ever even glance at something that doesn’t suit your personal aesthetic preferences. Would you like a blankey and a pacificier, too?
I can clearly identify a type of game that does not appeal to me. I’ve tried to play so many meandering, fairytale, whimsical games and they leave me cold. I find that purpose and wit and intelligence are usually replaced by over-simplistic, child-like, wide-eyed flatulence in these games and I want no more to do with them.
Inscryption FTW!
Metroid Dread is, sadly, not as good as Super Metroid—a genre-defining masterpiece that stands as one of the best video games ever made. But nearly two decades after the release of the last mainline entry in the Metroid series, isn’t any sequel better than no sequels at all?Jesus Christ, do you love anything, Barsanti? You start off by whining that this isn’t as good as *checks notes* a classic that kickstarted an entire genre and influenced modern gameplay design of the next 25 years after it. Then you make this goddamn game sound like some “it’s meh but it’s better than nothing” bullshit and not one of 2021’s best reviewed titles that most people agree is the next best installment after the aforementioned Super Metroid.Why the hell does praise and a place in the top 10 has to be caked in this lip-smacking bullshit? Why write “it’s not as good as Super Metroid, because nothing ever will be, and this is still pretty good” in the most roundabout, insulting, dishonest way possible?I think this finally broke me in regards to the AV Club. This place is a cespool of cynism and nothing of value. I’m done. The video game columns were always my little place of joy here, but after Hughes inevitably leaves there will be nothing left here beyond cynical Barsanti-isms.
That’s an interesting list, thank you!
You know, at the beginning of the month, I wondered if I had missed what can often be observed in other years: A sort of rallying around a few, often obvious heavy hitters that dominated the discourse for a while. This seemed to lack in 2021, if I’m not mistaken (the closest thing I can think of was Resident Evil, I think, and maybe Deathloop a bit, or Halo?). But this makes the Top 50 lists all the more fascinating to me. I mean, there are parallels between this list, and, say, Polygon’s (p.ex. Returnal and Inscryption scoring high, which is delightful), but in between, there’s a lot of space for games I had missed or that didn’t register as “must plays”. As somebody who is eternally behind the release schedule anyway, having the GOTY list being not only an event to nod along, but also one to put games I hadn’t paid much attention to on my wishlist, is great. And how it should be, I guess? (And now for the cross-referencing with How Long to Beat, seeing what I can realistically play in 2022…)
In truth, it was a kind of weak year, and there wasn’t some indisputably great Heavy Hitter that we COULD rally around. But that does make the end of the year discussion and arguments a bit more fun! 2019 felt the same way.
No It Takes Two? Did you all just have no one to play with?
17? A nice even number. Couldn’t make it 18 and include Death’s Door? Ok…
No mention of It Takes Two? Haven’t played every game on this list but that was my favorite game of the year. Played a few hours every Sunday for about two months with a good friend of mine and every session felt unique.
No Death’s Door or It Takes Two? The game that just won big at TGAs?
No mentions of It Takes Two???Solid list overall, though.
Hey, this isn’t a slideshow! Cool.
Not only is Metroid Dread as good as Super, it’s better in every way that matters. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug
Shocked and disappointed that It Takes Two isn’t on here. Im in tears.But in all seriousnes, it was the one game I immediately assumed would be high on this list when I saw the article.
GG not putting Halo on there, since it only just came out.
Hitman 3 deserves so much more love than it’s received on lists this year. Yes, coming out in January hurt, but the devs deserve a lot of credit for bringing the whole trilogy along for the ride. They continued what they did in Hitman 2 by adding the new features and graphical updates into the previous games (if you bought them already). The process for moving it over on PC was a little janky at first, but that’s fixed. It’s the game I’ve come back to the most this year just for the sheer amount of depth and replayablility.
I loved Hitman 3 as well, but I wonder if its PC Epic exclusivity had anything to do with it having a lower profile? Don’t want to relitigate their whole strategy of snaffling up great titles, but even as someone who loved the game I’ve found it occurs to me less because it’s not on the Steam launcher where I do 99% of my gaming. I was also quite turned off by their sin-themed DLC, with its glorified escalation contracts and gaudy suits as rewards. Would have much rather had another great map or two, like they released for Hitman 2.
It still released on console at the same time too. Honestly, it’s more because it was a January release and most publications skew hard toward the end of the year because of recency bias after slogging through a fall of big releases.
Dartmoor gets all the love, but the Berlin club, and the freedom of targets, starting with no gear, is absolutely my favorite map
Real weird list, but it was kind of a weird year, too. It Takes Two was the best game I played this year, with Psychonauts 2, Metroid Dread, Forza Horizon 5, and Halo Infinite all deserving GOTY consideration, too.
Returnal was probably the game that I was most split on. In terms of mechanics alone, it’s a GREAT game, probably the best feeling thing I’ve played all year. But the length of the runs, the incredible amount of luck that went into your success (some perks are WAY better than others, and it’s all randomized), along with the lack of any kind of save-and-quit at launch really soured the experience a bit. There’s very little that was just middling about Returnal’s design: I either absolutely loved it, or really hated it. The new Save and Quit feature might have changed my mind a bit, though.
It’s weird that Nier Replicant hasn’t really been in the conversation this year because it’s really one of the few games I’m looking forward to playing (it’s next up after I finish Yakuza 6, so sometime in the distant future.)
Metroid Dread is a brilliant game and makes the top ten and Barsanti’s insane take remains “ugh well it’s better than nothing I guess.”
Yeah, that was pretty weird. That dude is probably a drag to be around
About the only negative things I could say for It Takes Two were the sometimes grating nature of the three leads, and the way it just sorta…ends with a thud. But what a ride it was, almost infinitely inventive and surprising and delightful. My wife and I can’t wait to…uh…wait…a couple years until we forget some of its scenes, and then play it all over again but swap characters.
Wanted to love GOTG but it’s been a rough start….put it down and haven’t felt compelled to go back to it.
Funny! I don’t think I’ve ever hated a game as much as Returnal but that’s mostly because I find the difficulty level to be incredibly prohibitive.
I don’t do slideshows. Can someone list the games here, please?
Very happy with this choice for #1, but also gotta say how pleased I am with Forgotten City getting such a high placement. What an excellent game.
If I could only describe the scream I emitted when I saw The Baby in Resident Evil Village. It was a full-on Homer Simpson scream and it was 100% genuine.
Especially the build of tension, knowing “something” is in the house with you, but you don’t know what. Playing with no weapons, my palms started getting sweaty when you’re finding lockers to hide in, before you even know what you’re dealing with. RE has never done that before. It’s a brilliantly designed section.
The whole build-up solving the puzzles in House Benviento, you think you’re gonna get attacked by the puppets. There are doll parts all over the house, and in the well where you find the key to the breaker box. As soon as you hear the baby crying, you realize what you’re really in for.
By the time I fought Angie, I wasn’t scared anymore, I was angry. I was like, “This little bitch has gotta die for scaring me like that.”
I’m playing Guardians of the Galaxy currently, and I love it. It has me uttering “This game is awesome” basically every 5 minutes. And the dialogue genuinely makes me laugh. I haven’t played with characters this funny since maybe Tales from the Borderlands?
I’m also playing Life is Strange: True Colors, and I dunno. Many choices so far feel so inconsequential, and there’s not much by way of conflict (who knew everyone being nice is actually kind of boring?) These sequels just haven’t been as good as that first game to me.
Resident evil village was OK. It tried to to tie itself to resi 4 with some elements that were in the end worthless – the tetris-style inventory was one of them. The distinct sections each with their own boss were well made but uneven – house beneviento is great on a first playthrough and the become a chore subsequently; the same for the avoid the giant fish enemy. The final boss from the factory is so far removed from a typical resi boss, not to speak of the ones in this game, it sticks put in an unflattering way. Level and sound design were great, the fighting was better than in 7 and the sense of progression through exploration is intact. Ambitious as it was, I feel it could have been a bit tighter for me.
I’d have added Phantom Abyss to that list myselfhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/989440/Phantom_Abyss/Also the Digital Assistant/visual novel/Mystery/ARG that is Acolyte is quite good as well.https://store.steampowered.com/app/1516330/Acolyte/(although its ineligible for the list as theres only the prolouge available at the moment)
Needs more It Takes Two, Death’s Door, Forza 5 and Halo Infinite imo.
A calculated and borderline obnoxious list and rankings. Overall it was pretty bad year for games, with fewer than 10 really deserving of mention.
It’s ‘without further ado’, not ‘without further adieu’. It has nothing to do with saying goodbye in French.
Holy shit at the recollection that Bowser’s Fury was this year. God, what a long year it’s been.
I was going to be so, SO pissed at this list for not having Returnal…until you put it number 1. Which, yes, it’s deserved, and all the haters can go suck eggs, subjective opinions be DAMNED.
I 100%’d that game and felt hugely accomplished. I teared up when I found that final room in Biome 3 with the last cipher and realizing I had finally done it and didn’t have to grind that fucking drone-filled hellhole.
Nice to see Sable on the list. Some strident choices here made for just a really interesting and different experience. Yeah sure the mechanics could be frustrating but the world building is strong.
TOP TEN GAMES OF THE YEAR FROM SOMEONE WITH TOO MANY GAMES ON THEIR BACKLOGEr.None.Psychonauts 2 looks cool. It’s on my ‘someday, if I manage to clear enough backlog before I die’ list.Er.Maybe RE?We’re in a time when games are not being made for my tastes. I fully recognize the cyclical nature of this – I got my Skyrim, my Fallout, my ACs. Now is a time for games I don’t give two wet farts about, unfortunately.
My top 17:17. Root Film
16. KID A MNESIA Exhibition
15. Persona 5 Strikers
14. Genesis Noir
13. “Walking to the Sky” and “Devil’s Den” DLC for Necrobarista
12. Bright Memory: Infinite
11. Gnosia
10. Scarlet Nexus
9. Deathloop
8. Golf Club Wasteland
7. The Forgotten City
6. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
5. It Takes Two
4. Psychonauts 2
3. Adios
2. Hitman 3
1. OPUS: Echo of StarsongTales of Arise, Escape Simulator, and Chicory: A Colorful Tale are in progress, so I can’t rate them yet.