Good games emerge in tough year
’21 delivered excellent fun despite woes of industry
With 2021 in our rear-view mirrors and the promise of a better 2022 flitting about somewhere just beyond the reach of our metaphorical headlights, we are zooming (and Zooming) into a new year.
But before we zip off to the future, let’s take a quick look back at video games in the year that shall not be numbered.
Perhaps the biggest stories about video games in 2021 were everything that isn’t actually about games, with game studios seeing labor disputes; chip shortages that jacked up graphics card prices and made PlayStation 5’s hard to acquire; a pitched legal battle between Epic Games and Apple that essentially ended in a draw; and the Wall Street Bets community taking on short-sellers by buying up shares of brick-andmortar retailer GameStop, causing some hedge funds to lose billions.
It was in some respects a pretty tough year for video game studios, with many shut down because of the pandemic — scuttling scheduled release dates — but many people also spent a lot more time at home, working remotely — and likely more time playing games, too.
And despite the number of big-budget release dates that were pushed back, many smaller, indie game studios put out some great games.
Top among those for 2021 is “Valheim,” an open-world survival and sandbox game about a monster-filled land where slain Vikings go to prove themselves fit for the halls of Valhalla, and it was created by a five-person development team.
Released in early 2021 to rave reviews, it dominated on Steam, selling millions of copies. The dev team, to their credit, have gone allin on making the game even better (see my review at arkansasonline.com/13val).
Another indie game that has received all kinds of critical acclaim is “Wildermyth,” with a pop-up storybook and boardgame aesthetic that offers a strong fantasy adventure matched with lots of replayability. The game paired narrative vignettes with probabilistic outcomes, and it just worked, somehow turning
randomized encounters into heartfelt moments with characters that felt quite real.
As the game progresses, your characters get older, marry and have families, and eventually die, often with their offspring taking up the mantle and creating dynasties and legends (see my review at arkansasonline.com/13myth).
Other indie games started strong, but some storms petered out faster than others. That’s perhaps an ironic analogy for “Loop Hero,” an endless role-playing game that takes place in a randomly generated world where players change that world by placing environment cards rather than directly controlling the main character.
It’s definitely a unique take on the idle-game genre, an odd-from-the-outside category where people like to play games that play themselves, with minimal input from the character, especially in combat sections.
At one point, “Loop Hero” had more than 50,000 concurrent players, but its fanbase quickly dropped off.
LOOKING FORWARD
There’s quite a bit of promise on the horizon for 2022. Right out of the gate we’ll see “Pokemon Legends: Arceus” this month, an open-world RPG for the Nintendo Switch that will have players being the first to discover new pokemon and has “Breath of the Wild”-style gameplay.
And then for the horror genre, zombie-survival with parkour standout “Dying Light” brings out its sequel, “Dying Light 2: Stay Human” on Feb. 4., with more overthe-top undead-slaying and updated graphics. It’s one of the titles I’m most excited about (but remember, pre-orders are for suckers — don’t be baited into paying extra for hype).
“Stay Human” is set 20 years after the events of the first game and features more than 3,000 parkour animations set in a massive urban open world, and will be released for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox.
Also coming in February is “Elden Ring,” a collaboration with FromSoftware (“Dark Souls” series, “Bloodborne”) and fantasy author George R.R. Martin. It’s still very “Souls”-like, but also features an open world, horseback fighting, four-player co-op play and PVP. It looks pretty stunning and comes out on Xbox, Windows and PlayStation.