Runners Up

10) Biomutant

Back well before I even could comprehend what a Tweet was, I was a lil pre-preteen gamer whose understanding of games was based solely on G4, conversations with classmates, and the 2-5 games my parents could afford in a year. During those years, with my insatiable thirst to play as many different kinds of games as I could, I abused cheap and free demos at every opportunity given to me. PSP Demo Center was my second home back then, and whenever I had a spare $5 lying around, I begged my parents to take me to Walmart to pick up a Jam Packed PS2 disk. I played so many mediocre platformers, beat ’em ups, and vehicular combat games during this time. But with my limited awareness of the heights games would eventually reach, I thought they were all great.

Fast forward to now, and my perspective on and tastes in games have been both changed and expanded greatly. I’ve played AAA masterpieces like God of War, I’ve played off-beat indies like Virginia, I’ve played impeccably designed multiplayer games like Apex Legends. Yet, despite all of that, I never truly lost my appreciation of janky, yet charming PS2 games like those I sampled as a youth. And Biomutant is the game that made me confident in that fact.

I’ll be the first to admit that the narrative in Biomutant is so aggressively forgettable that it even once put me to sleep. Replacing character voices with one narrator delivering every line of dialogue and lore really made all of its writing fall flat. But other than impactful story choices, the game delivers on everything it promised. It does have a fairly deep crafting system that allowed me to create a wealth of weapons, from electric machine guns to dual ice blades. The melee and gun combat was satisfying enough and switching between both styles was always fluid and fun, especially with its many supernatural powers. And even if the open world feels more like an empty set than an actual place, exploring it for resources and collectibles was always fun. And the many wacky vehicles they give you to do so make it more entertaining as well.

I never beat the game, but I sank several hours into it and, especially after some recent gameplay updates, I do plan on returning to it. But it was a nice bit of nostalgia for me not because it brought me back to a particular property, but because it put me back into the headspace I was in when I played the demo for Whiplash on repeat and liked it. And that was frankly quite refreshing, if only for a moment.

9) Outriders

Outriders is another game that felt vaguely nostalgic but in a totally different way. With games like Apex Legends, Rouge Company, Fortnite, and even some others later on in this list, there’s a relatively recent subsection of games that expect you to play them for a literal slice of forever. They’re always getting new content or updates that keep you coming back over the years, but sometimes I resent the fact that I can’t just get my fill of them and feel content in leaving it behind for good. Well, Outriders comes from a time before this was the case.

It is still a looter shooter with cross-platform play and three-player co-op. But upon release, all it ever promised was a fun campaign and only one raid-like activity for endgame play. There was no expectation of People Can Fly adding a battle pass, new missions, new weapons, new character classes, or any loot boxes, non-earnable cosmetics, or any other hooks for additional monetization. I found this incredibly refreshing, so when it dropped on Game Pass, I gave several hours to it. Playing something with a gameplay loop so susceptible to being exploited by greed, but isn’t, made it feel like I was playing something from the PS3 or even the early PS4 generation. It kinda felt like a slightly more polished, multiplayer-enabled version of something like Binary Domain or Dark Void: forgotten PS3 shooters that had the charm to balance their lack of originality. But even then, Outriders has more going for it than that.

If Painkiller, Bulletstorm, and Gears of War Judgement weren’t enough proof, People Can Fly know how to make a good shooter, and Outriders is no different. The gunplay in this game is as varied as it is satisfying. Enemies blow up real good, but the dozens and dozens of effects you can put on weapons make them blow up in so many different ways. Plus, despite being a looter shooter it doesn’t suffer from the problem Borderlands 2 does where only a handful of the millions of generated weapons feel satisfying to use. This is mainly due to how many options the game gives you to repurpose your loot. You can feed gear into other gear, break gear down into resources to upgrade or buy other gear, or even take individual aspects of gear and reapply them to stronger gear you come across as you play. And all of that is before you even account for the different class abilities and skill trees, which make your character even more powerful.

The game isn’t really doing anything new on its own, but it is repurposing ideas from other games in smart ways. It does the “kill to earn health” thing that Doom Eternal does, but in third person now. Plus, its characters and story give Sci-Fi original series energy in a good way, even more so than Sci-Fi’s own Defiance video game, thanks to more playful writing and better presentation overall. This is another game that I never beat but, especially with the improvements made in the New Horizon update late last year, I look forward to cleaning up its last few hours.

8) Grime

I never thought a game like this would end up in my Game of the Year list. But when I look back at other games I love, why wouldn’t I? I brought up my love of sci-fi Soulslike The Surge 2 earlier in this same article and Guacamelee got me to fall in love with Metroidvanias many years ago. Plus, while I’ve barely played any of it, the gothic horror setting of Bloodborne did intrigue me. So, why wouldn’t a Soulslike, Metroidvania with a surrealist horror setting tickle my fancy?

Grime’s combat is satisfying, and its focus on parries over dodges and blocks keeps me engaged with every encounter. If Bayonetta made it clear how much I love a good slo-mo dodge, then this game made it clear to me how much I love a good parry. But here, it’s not just a defense tactic, it’s a major way to improve your abilities. Killing an enemy with the rebound damage of the parry will absorb them, and absorbing enough enemies will give you a stat bonus or even completely new abilities. Plus, while this isn’t really a loot-based game, there are a handful of weapons and armor sets that let you switch up your gameplay styles.

But I dig this game for more than its chunky combat, I also love it for the fact that I just never know what’s coming next. The entire game is creepy, but less in a way that builds dread and more in a way that leads to fascination. The enemy and, especially, boss design is often gnarly and compellingly offputting. Plus, when moving across segments of the map, the art design matches the grotesque features of the monsters that live there. Seeing what new oddities await me was as much of a motivator to progress as seeing what new gameplay abilities I would acquire to get me to the next environment.

This was way more than just an excuse to get a Google Stadia exclusive on my Game of the Year list. Grime is legitimately one of the best Metroidvanias in many years and has the art direction, combat, and bosses to back it up. Now I just gotta wait for it to hit consoles so folks outside of Steam and Stadia can see what I’m talking about.

7) Resident Evil: Village

Funny how I claim to not like horror media when there are so many examples that contradict that claim. F.E.A.R. 2 is one of my favorite shooters of all time. I recently enjoyed lowkey horror classics in film like Suspiria and Raw. And I also realized this year that the Resident Evil series is one of my favorite game series. RE4 is my favorite, but I never regretted my time with Revelations 1 or 2 or RE 5. And my appreciation of the series only increased when I finally sat down to play through Resident Evil: Village.

Now, besides already being a lowkey fan of the series, I was already sold on the game once I saw Lady Dimitrescu. Her campily playful presence, along with her daughters, did a lot to decrease the intensity of the terror and increase the fun of the setting. Plus, yes, she’s hot. But it’s those welcoming introductory chapters that got me to give it a shot, because it contrasted with the much more intimidating, straight horror tone of Resident Evil 7. I had a lot of fun playing mouse to her cat, and getting chased around while puzzling my way through her manor was a blast. But little did I know, that campy tone would not only be left behind after the first few hours, but I wouldn’t mind that change much at all.

What I find most remarkable about Resident Evil: Village is that it is a sample tray of several different types of horror. The opening chapters with Lady D are reflective of the hot vampire vibes that movies like Interview with the Vampire give off. Later chapters play with the powerless fear of being chased by unimaginable horrors that games like Outlast dabble in. Then later on you get into the industrial flavor of horror that games like You Are Empty dabble in. And by the end, you are back at the over-the-top style of horror that the 5th and 6th Resident Evil games are all about. It truly feels like this game is hopping between every single popular style of horror from the last few years, and if that isn’t the case, it’s at least going through all of the flavors or horror that RE 7 didn’t already tackle. But none of it feels so intimidating to me, as the game revels in the artificiality of the scares, kinda like a haunted house does in real life.

On top of that, however, the game is also a surprisingly fun shooter. It still doesn’t match RE 4, but it’s close enough to give a similar impression to that game. Plus, the progression in weapons and character upgrades feel great, especially when I explored the village for additional resources and currency. 

Thanks mostly to the general memability of its tall vampire lady, Village really felt like a cultural event, even more so than the similarly successful RE7, RE 5, and RE 4. With everyone hopping into this game right around the same time, and some of my favorite video essayists making content about the franchise to coincide with the release, it had me looking back on the franchise as a whole. I never thought of myself as a Resident Evil fan, but I’ve played nearly a half dozen titles in the franchise at this point, and I still have the urge to play even more, including the most polarizing entities like RE 6. So, I wanna thank Village for being a game that so completely accomplished what it set out to do that no one could deny its quality. It’s not at all perfect, but it aims for one vision and delivers on it with confidence.

6) Splitgate

Longtime Emmett followers will remember that I got in on the ground floor of Splitgate years ago, as I played it for my Bad Boys for Life review back in 2019. Back then, I loved the game for what it was, but it wasn’t much at the time. It was clearly a blast, and many of the reasons I love the game now were present back then, but it lost momentum fast. The game had some positive buzz leading up to and at initial release, but people fell off quickly, mainly due to the fact it was a PC-only title.

Well, the good folks at 1047 Games didn’t take that lying down, and they went quiet until earlier in 2021 when they re-revealed the game, complete with a graphical overhaul, PS4 and Xbox versions, and cross-play on all platforms. It got me back into the game for the first time in a long time, and it made me remember just how much I love this game.

Splitgate is a game that wears its inspirations, Halo and Portal, on its sleeve, and those borrowed elements are hard to ignore. Using portals to traverse and outsmart opponents was always as satisfying as it was playfully joyous. And despite being a Halo novice, for the most part, its shooting mechanics instantly clicked with me.

But that is honestly a bit of an understatement. The gunplay in this game is immensely satisfying, more so than most of the multiplayer shooters I regularly visit. I have a hard time pinning down why that is, though. It has hit markers, fast weapon handling, a low time-to-kill, and satisfying sound design and feedback when connecting shots. But all of these aspects can be found in Apex Legends, Call of Duty, and other similar games. But I am nowhere near as good at those games as I am at Splitgate. Keep in mind, I’ve been playing on a controller only, even back when the game was exclusive to PC, but I am regularly topping the scoreboard whenever I finish a match. For whatever reason, I’m most able to just get in the zone and demolish folks online when playing Splitgate, and I certainly did so throughout this past year.

Now, I don’t want those new features to take too much of a backseat. The game looks a lot sharper on my PS5 and Series X, which are able to run games at a higher resolution than my PC. The addition of a battle pass, with items more unique than those in the PC exclusive release, new ways to rank up your character, like daily and weekly challenges, and new maps all make the game so much more engaging to play. And the fact I can party up with anyone on any platform makes the game so much more accessible as well. But, I’m being honest, the reason Splitgate lands a spot on this list is for just how satisfying it was to perform highly at it. That is a feeling any shooter could give me, but no other did, so it rightly earns a spot here.