The 9 Games We Loved in 2021

it has been, once again, a year. Set aside the pandemic and you still had the chip shortage, console resellers, and the seemingly never-ending saga of Activision Blizzard. While a few of the year's most anticipated games were pushed back to 2022 (like Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West), there were still a lot of great games released in 2021.

From indies to AAA titles, mobile games to PC and console, here are the games that got us through the madness. They're definitely worth checking out.

Deathloop

PC, PlayStation

I was on the Deathloop train long before the game’s September 2021 release, and I’m still on it today. I know the hype cycle moved on from it pretty quickly—and don’t get me wrong, Deathloop isn’t a perfect game—but there’s a lot to love in this time-looping, mod-aesthetic stealth shooter, and I think it deserves a place on everyone’s Games of the Year list.

Maybe it’s just my absolute love for the post-'60s modern aesthetic that the game embraced. Or maybe it’s the absolute joy I felt seeing not one but two Black lead characters in the game at a time when the decision to include them is more important than ever. (Mixed in with a pinch of starry-eyed joy from the little Black boy who still lives in my heart, wishing he could see himself as the protagonist of anything, much less a big, popular action game like this.) But the game took me on the kind of interactive journey that a lot of people like me don’t get to experience that often.

Beyond that, though, it’s just a solid game and brought my mind rushing back to the days when I would load quick-save after quick-save playing Dishonored. I toggled between my instinct to cut into a level like a hot knife of death and destruction through the soft butter of the game’s levels and my better sense, reminding myself of the consequences of doing so—and to keep to the shadows for everyone’s sake, including mine later on in the game. If you’ve played it, I hope you pick it up again and enjoy it. If you haven’t, don’t let the restless hype machine fool you—this one has staying power, and it’s worth your time.

—Alan Henry

Death Stranding: Director's Cut

PlayStation

Like Pathologic, Death Stranding is one of those games that hits way harder during a pandemic. Kojima’s only mildly divisive masterwork stars a package delivery man as the sole hero able to keep an isolated world together, while everyone is stuck inside, disconnected from the outside world except through a futuristic internet. It came out in November 2019.

Two years later, Death Stranding Director’s Cut offers a chance to revisit the story with fresh eyes—and it’s much easier to overlook the game’s flaws now. The simple, cathartic challenge of figuring out how to walk from one place to another, with peaceful, gorgeous landscapes as your only entertainment on the way, strikes somewhat more optimistically now. When a couple in an isolated bunker enthusiastically thanks you for stopping by with a package of supplies and a way to download some new movies, it touches a nerve that wasn’t quite as raw in 2019.