Let the memorable games this year were not so much, but we decided to collect only the best and most impressive projects in the opinion of our authors on this list.
The best games of 2021 (which you missed). Part one
Let the memorable games this year were not so much, but we decided to collect only the best and most impressive projects in the opinion of our authors on this list.
Loop Hero.
Vitaly Kazunov
Brilliant game from four Russian guys. Bold and unusual. Here the hero travels in an absolutely empty world where there is nothing but the road. This world can be gradually completing with memories cards. But no intervention passes without a trace. Put a forest – monsters appear there; Mountains – and departed stone ridges; The river – and now on the shore is watery. Many memories cards, and gradually the road begins to kish from monsters, which our hero is destroying in automatic mode, pumping up, picks up the clothes, and the player is watching the direction of development.
The main goal is to make such a hero who could overcome all bosses in one attendance. Therefore, it is not necessary to stake on its security. Against! The world should be cruel, at every step should be a battle, pumping should go as quickly as possible. But if you drive, the hero will not be able to withstand the pace and die along the way, without coming to the boss. Balance is important.
The game is full of surprises. Depending on which memories cards are combined with each other, strange combinations are obtained. For example, a vampire mansion next to the village turns it into an empty settlement with Zombies. Since there are many such combinations, the creation of a new world from scratch is always an exciting experiment.
In his free time, the hero returns to the camp – the only stable island in the empty world. For the resources produced during the adventure process, we will build a house for survivors. Thus, we get card memories, passive abilities and classes – the profession of the hero can be chosen before the race.
Despite the modest concept, the game surprises its scale and elaboration. It may be enough for tens of hours.
Disclo Elysium: Final Cut
Mikhail Skredov
Yes, Disclo Elysium came out in 2019 and then he was heard of honored awards. The project from the studio ZA / UM, in particular, won in four nominations in the framework of The Game Awards 2019: “The best story”, the “best role-playing game”, the best indie game “and” the best debut of the indie developer. ” Yes, DISCO ELYSIUM: Final Cut is only an extended and completed edition without complaints about rethinking the original.
However, in 2021, a Russian localization appeared for Disco Elysium: Final Cut. Still in the game a lot of text and plenty of specific terms. The project is not in vain called “interactive novel”, since most of the time the hero has to communicate both with the voices in his head and with other characters.Now Revachol has opened its doors to Russian-speaking users who want to immerse themselves in this cruel and exciting reality. Such a significant event deserves attention, and Disco Elysium deserves another award.
The hero of Disco Elysium wakes up on the floor of a rooming house, remembers nothing and suffers from a terrible hangover. His journey begins with the search for a second shoe and attempts to remove the tie from the ceiling fan. Subsequently, you become a participant in debates on political topics, then a social drama is played out in front of you without embellishment and attempts to smooth the corners. The perception of the world is influenced by the fact that the hero himself is that multiverse. He is constantly arguing with the skills in his head. Moreover, skills do not always give valuable advice, and fierce disputes can bring an unlucky drunkard to death.
The game plunges you into thinking about the place of the hero in this world, the fate of ordinary citizens, ideology and relationships. The hero faces many moral dilemmas, which are allowed to be dealt with in different ways, which affects the perception of the surrounding reality. You can come to terms with your past, try to become a better person, do something good for another person and take advantage of your position, while not agreeing with the system, or immerse yourself in a dark disco atmosphere with drug addicts. After the credits, a lot of questions and thoughts remain in my head about what actions were worth doing and which were not. Thoughts about how life could have turned out for people who fell into the ruthless grip of this world.
Dyson Sphere Program
Dmitry Krivov
The main factory hit of 2021 from the Chinese Youthcat Studio team, consisting of five people. The Dyson Sphere Program is based on a theory devised by futurist Freeman Dyson about the concept of a structure encircling a star to generate energy. A hypnotizing game that is incredibly difficult to break away from. And it will take hundreds of hours to saturate.
The usual for such simulators (Factorio, Satisfactory) start with obtaining the simplest elements and the construction of uncomplicated structures will develop into a planetary-scale construction. Each chain plays a small role here, and the whole system is a gigantic organism capable of producing and launching into space the high-tech elements that form the Dyson Sphere. The game attracts with beautiful three-dimensional graphics, a huge technological tree, ease of control, a pleasant interface and a musical component.
The game's procedurally generated world consists of many celestial objects, including stars and resource-rich planets. And almost every one can be landed and explored. The most important component of the gameplay is the micromanagement of the entire complex with sane chains. Otherwise, the gameplay will turn into a living hell with incredibly complex manipulations and inconvenient operations.
The main character is the Icarus mecha, equipped with the latest technology.The robot will install facilities that produce electricity, build factories, organize assembly shops and take care of optimization.
Do not be afraid of early access – there are no critical bugs in the Dyson Sphere Program. The obvious love of the developers for their brainchild is also pleasing – the peak of sales and the maximum online are behind, but the authors continue to fulfill their promises and scrupulously release patches with gameplay improvements, as well as new features on the way to the full version.
My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge
Mikhail Kazachkin
My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge is a small smartphone game, even by mobile standards. But if you look not at the duration, but at the quality, it turns out that it rises above the “mobile swamp” like Everest. While other publishers are trying with varying success to smuggle yet another donation dump onto the market, trying to cover up the shame of monetization systems with the fig leaf of a popular franchise, Devolver Digital and one-developer studio Dead Toast Entertainment gave mobile gamers pure adrenaline action.
The nameless hero in a black mask, armed with firearms, in a spectacular slow-mo flies three dozen levels with his friend Pedro, cracking down on various villains. His goal is to rescue the banana family from captivity. As soon as you get used to the management, the massacres of the bandits begin to bring only positive emotions. I want to pass the levels cleanly, without getting a single scratch, and shoot the opponents quickly and efficiently: one shot – one corpse.
The game stimulates the search for the ideal path. I would like to be faster, not to let the adrenaline concentration fall, to effectively deal with the next enemy, and then get the coveted three stars for passing and all the achievements, including the most hardcore ones. After that, you feel like the protagonist of the movie “John Wick”. And then, cooling down from excitement, you say to yourself: “I did it!” and feel the real thrill.
This causes a truly drug addiction, and now you are already screaming into the phone: “More!”, But, alas. Thirty-six small levels pass very quickly. And this is perhaps the main drawback of My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge.
You will get this mobile masterpiece absolutely free of charge, and the monetization system based on viewing ads will not cause much trouble. However, you can disable all the restrictions of the free version quite inexpensively. The emotions that My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge is able to give are much more expensive.
“Black book”
Nikita Demidov
I highly value originality. The decision to make a game that will be noticeably different from existing projects is not easy and requires some courage. And the Morteshka studio has this courage.
If it’s hard for me to understand the comparisons of King’s Bounty 2 with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on the Web, then the Black Book collectible card could claim it absolutely deservedly. Yes, the performance is poor.Yes, the balance is off. Yes, the 3D graphics are terrible, and the animations are wooden – and a couple dozen other little things like that. But I was captivated by the setting, really dear to my heart.
The atmosphere of the very Slavic flavor that The Witcher is remembered for. I was captivated by the careful and inventive use of the mythology of the Permian peoples, its characters in the plot of the game. Subdued and the story itself, reminiscent of ancient Russian fairy tales. I like how the creators of each new chapter try to surprise the player with new conditions and environments, make him change his approach, slightly shifting the emphasis in the mechanics. It is impossible not to note the work of the artists: from the stunning, detailed and atmospheric images of the characters, and ending with the miniatures on the maps and in the menu. The card system, for all its simplicity, allows you to very flexibly adjust the deck to new conditions.
The Black Book is that rare example for me when, returning from work, I launched the game not to quickly pass the review, but to plunge into this adventure again. Those 50 hours that I spent in it left the impression of a good book – one that I will definitely return to.
Deathloop
Maxim Dragan
Arkane's most controversial game deserves to be on this year's “best” list for many reasons: its signature game design, excellent level logic, well-developed world, and good main characters.
Like any other game from this developer, Deathloop requires the attention of the player during the entire passage. You can run it “by the marks” in the magazine and finish the story in 10-12 hours, disappointed in the ending. And you can intently vacuum every nook and cranny, easily spend two or three times as much time and understand what is happening in the world of Deathloop in general. This approach in Arkane projects is always rewarded.
Exploring the Black Reef, enclosed in a time loop, is not only interesting, but also fun. Each of the four locations is an impressive sandbox, where the player is free to decide how to get to an important point on the map or kill one of the eight ideologues. “Ingots” help in this – supernatural abilities like teleportation, invisibility, shock waves and others. They open up new paths, allow you to effectively and efficiently destroy crowds of residents, or make it possible to get close to the target as quietly as possible.
The main feature is the invasion of other players in your game session. This not only adds variety to the same races, but makes each new passage of the loop different. Some players prefer to act quietly, others gather a crowd of residents and come looking for you with a shotgun drawn. It is impossible to predict the behavior of the “intruder”, which additionally gives adrenaline and makes you change the style of the game on the go.
Yes, Deathloop is full of technical problems and even on the PlayStation 5 did not work well at launch.But developers are still releasing patches, improving game mechanics, artificial intelligence of enemies, and fixing the network code. It can be seen that they put their soul into the project, and did not try to work out the contract and forget it. Many thanks to Arkane for this – this approach pays off in the modern gaming industry.
The Medium
George Petrovich
At one time, the developers of The Medium laid down a serious burden of responsibility. Being an inexpensive project, the game, in the eyes of many owners of the Xbox Series X|S, did not justify spending on a new generation of consoles from Microsoft.
But, having a very modest budget and a small development team, the game clearly showed that even with such input, a monumental project with a complex story, an incredibly beautiful presentation and, albeit useless, but a very unique game feature, can turn out.
The Medium is valuable, first of all, for its artistic design. In all of 2021, few projects can boast such meticulously detailed environments, as well as an atmospheric and innovative visual style. Series X users have finally been shown what they paid a lot of money for.
The game is a classic walking simulator with systematic exploration of the environment, searching for an item at point A and applying it at point B. The only time players will have to strain is in skirmishes with the main antagonist, albeit simple and straightforward. However, the horror and atmosphere that the developers endowed with these segments offset the scarcity of game mechanics. The main flaws can only be called single-cell puzzles and a sharp, unsaid ending.
What is the salt of The Medium? Being one of the simplest Bloober Team works in terms of game mechanics, the game still feels like a breath of fresh air! For his presentation, for his story, direction, sound design and music. The Medium, albeit a simple, but piece product.
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker
Viktor Gradulenko
The best add-on for Final Fantasy XIV so far, which managed to surpass Shadowbringers and set a new bar for quality. A long ten-year history ended with a bright finale. All story arcs, the paths of characters, countries and peoples intersected at one point and logically completed. The add-on leaves behind a nagging feeling of longing and a taste of sadness, but at the same time one can feel the passion and love that the development team has invested in their brainchild.
Game director Yoshida once again managed to surprise everyone. He powerfully and logically ended the story with a grandiose confrontation. Here, all the more or less significant forces of the world of the Source come into play, and the player sees with his own eyes the consequences of his labors and a long, long journey.
It's not just an MMORPG – it's a solid, well-executed role-playing game with MMO elements. After the final credits, there are practically no questions left, except for one thing – what's next? Yes, the Warrior of Light deserved a temporary rest, the authors managed to very gracefully solve the problem of the aging of the protagonist, without violating the logic of the story and the laws of their world.
But what's next? What other adventures await us? So far we have only hints and guesses. You have to be patient and wait. Already the first daredevils explore the depths of the mysterious fortress-prison Pandemonium, where the ancients kept the horrifying results of their experiments on magic and souls. Although the Endwalker is the end of the story of Gaidelin and the Zodiac, the story of the Warrior of Light is still going on.
Encased
Maxim Ivanov
Encased is an RPG inspired by the Fallout and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Seeing the project for the first time, the question involuntarily arises: how can it be ranked among the “best games of the year”, because it is full of flaws!
The second half of the game is frankly raw. Many mechanics do not work in it. Trying to create a survival sim resulted in unnecessary hunger and thirst systems. The inventory is full of rubbish. There are many ownerless cars on the location, but you can only drive one vehicle. Your companions are needed only for support in battle and carrying cargo. NPCs don't talk to them, you can't use their skills.
To all this, you can add a broken combat system. There are many collisions with the enemy, but they quickly get bored. The game has annoying “auto-leveling” – because of it, the numbers of opponents' health points grow by leaps and bounds. As a result, they will have to be killed long and dull. At the same time, in Encased there is not much difference between killing and neutralizing – there is no point in playing a good man.
But the positive features of the game are enough to compensate for the shortcomings.
The action of the game takes place in the closed space of the dome, where the smartest people of the planet have gathered to investigate the greatest mystery of the universe – the appearance of this anomaly. Already in the initial location, you can spend 2-3 hours, which is full of interactive objects. The characters are charismatic and the dialogue is well written. In the terminals you can find information about the local inhabitants and the world. You don’t want to leave here until you try out all the available mechanics, and you can play any character – from a complete idiot to a genius.
The game has many atmospheric locations, such as empty bunkers and laboratories, where you can find out the details of recent events. Through the environment and design, the player is told the story of the death of the world under the dome.
The developers from Dark Crystal Games managed to create a well-developed and interesting world, dozens of interesting characters – and everyone has the motivation to survive under the dome, it's interesting to talk with them. And one story is enough to enjoy Encased.
Forza Horizon 5
run.code
Forza Horizon 5 isn't without its flaws, but it's still the best installment in the Horizon series and one of the top racing games of the year – and the last few years, you know! It is bursting with content, and the graphics make you ooh and aah every time you see another landmark of the free interpretation of Mexico from the British studio Playground.
You can attribute something similar to the story campaign to annoying trifles, which is trying to tie the middle of the races. At a certain point, you simply cease to pay attention to the organizers who bubbly under the nose, switching all the attention to the sound of a ricking motor of your sports car and admiring the reflection of the sun in the windshield.
One of the main advantages of Forza Horizon 5, in addition to the huge amount of content, can be considered a low threshold of entry. Yes, Full dive lovers can connect the steering wheel with pedals and tinker with the settings, close by bringing the game of the simulators, but the default Horizon 5 is loyal as possible to beginners. Even at the level above the average, artificial intelligence does not try to overshadow the trip and as if he plays in a giveaway, giving it easy to overtake himself and consistently come to the finish line in the troika leaders.
From the technical point of view, Forza Horizon 5 can be deservedly called one of the most beautiful games. Even on the Xbox One x, the Playground project looks great, and there is almost no equal on Xbox Series X. Perhaps, with the release of Gran Turismo 7 on the PlayStation 5, the situation will change.
Forza Horizon 5 is simply obliged to be in the xbox console owner library. Yes, it is in Xbox Game Pass and it can be enjoyed, without overpaying for his personal copy, but it is just such games and it is worth maintaining the ruble so that the publisher and developers see that they have demand.