A Few of My Favorite Things, 2021 Edition

It's almost the end of the year, and you know what that means!

"Heaving a sigh of relief that 2021 is almost over?"

Well, that too, but it's also time for that familiar video game journalism cliche tradition, the end of the year awards! I haven't played enough games from this year to cover those exclusively, so I'll be widening the net to software, hardware, and accessories I experienced this year, whether they were released in 2021 or not.

Will this get followed up with a "worst of" list? It's certainly a definite possibility! Check local listings for time and availability.

EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING
Black Bird
Onion Games

You're not losing track of bullets in
backgrounds like these.
(image from Nintendo)

If you wanted to be reductive about it, you could call Black Bird a clone of Sega's silly shoot 'em up Fantasy Zone. However, that would do the game a disservice, as Black Bird goes a long way toward addressing all the nagging issues that made Fantasy Zone a drag to play. Instead of assaulting the player with blinding psychedelic colors, Black Bird opts for dreary, muted tones in the background, which not only sells the dingy Victorian era setting but makes it easy to focus on the flood of bright orange arrows coming your way. Instead of shops that put the brakes on the action to sell you weapons with steadily rising prices and the robust staying power of Hassium-271, you power up your gun with bouncing gems, and any boosts in firepower stay with you for the remainder of the game.

Finally, instead of losing interest after five minutes of Fantasy Zone's bright colors and questionable deaths, you'll stick with Black Bird until the end... even if that end happens to be delivered by a drinking bird in a tutu. It's a weird game, but compellingly weird, like the early films of Tim Burton, rather than loud and obnoxious, like that Yellow Submarine meets McDonaldland thing Sega's got going on with Fantasy Zone. If you don't come back for the intuitive gameplay and the perfectly tuned challenge, you'll give Black Bird one more spin for the soundtrack, an opera apparently performed by Dudley Do-Right and Popeye the Sailor after throwing back a few too many beers.

THE THING THAT WOULD NOT DIE
Tie, Dreamcast and Playstation Vita
Sega and Sony

The Dreamcast had this award wrapped up last year, thanks to the release of dozens of games originally designed for the Atomiswave arcade hardware. Granted, not all of these games were good, but between Dolphin Blue, King of Fighters 11, and Fist of the North Star, there were plenty of reasons to dig Sega's last console out of the closet for an encore performance. 

Unfortunately, this Dreamcast renaissance couldn't last forever, and when the top tier Atomiswave titles were exhausted in February, all that remained were throwaway games in the Sammy Family Entertainment Series. (Any family that would be entertained by this series must live extraordinarily dull lives.) That left the Playstation Vita to pick up the slack with over a dozen classic games, mostly of the first-person shooter variety, ported by fans. 

Personally, the most tantalizing of these homebrew titles was Space Cadet Pinball, an addictive and wonderfully noisy silver ball sim that was oodles of fun on Windows computers back in the 1990s. It's a little awkward to start on the Vita, but once you've launched that first ball into orbit, good luck trying to come back down to Earth.

TINY BUT MIGHTY
Tie, Neo-Geo Mini and Super NES Classic
SNK and Nintendo

My beef with the Neo-Geo Mini is
that it looks like some arcade
cabinet that exists somewhere,
but not at all like a proper
Neo-Geo MVS unit.
(image from Amazon) 

By my estimation, the problem with mini-consoles is that you obsess over them for a week, maybe two, then forsake them shortly afterward. The Neo-Geo Mini manages to buck this trend, possibly because its built in screen and the instant gratification provided by its games make it easier to pick up and play than its competitors. Stick a battery charger on the back and it becomes completely self-contained, making it faster and easier than it's ever been to get a quick endorphin rush from a couple rounds of Mutation Nation.

Not far behind is the Super NES Classic. It's not as convenient as the Neo-Geo Mini, but the interface, the quality of the emulation, and the games available are all outstanding. Yes, it's got half as many games as the Genesis Mini, but nearly all of them represent the best this system has to offer, unlike the Genesis Mini where at least a half dozen of the available titles are best left forgotten. Besides, if you want more games, just add some with HackChi. (Just don't tell Nintendo about it afterwards.)

SECRET TOY SURPRISE
Gaplus, in Namco Museum Archives 2
Bandai-Namco

Gaplus' headlining feature is that
you can actually grab the bugs
yourself, instead of vice versa.
(image from Internet Archive)

As classic collections go, this isn't one of the better ones. Like its predecessor, Namco Museum Archives 2 is an assortment of creaky old NES ports, rather than the arcade games you really wanted. You can't remap the buttons, and a small menu window hangs distractingly over the bottom left corner of the display... it's not impossible to turn it off, but Namco didn't make it especially easy, either. 

However. What makes Namco Museum Archive 2 worth a look anyway is a surprisingly tight NES conversion of Gaplus, the third game in the Galaxian series. Gaplus was released around the time of the video game crash of late 1983, and feels desperate as a result, overburdened with features that sometimes add to the experience but usually don't make much sense. 

Having said that, this NES port of Gaplus is a technical marvel, as dead on as an arcade conversion gets on the hardware. Where this came from or why we're getting it now is anyone's guess, but hey, I'm happy to have it!

FIST, MEET FACE
Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate
Warner Bros. Games

The latest Mortal Kombat game dabbles in time travel, with the 1990s versions of the characters teaming up with their older, wiser counterparts to defeat the scheming chronomancer Kronika and her daughter Cetrion. It's a convenient way to tie up loose ends in the plot and introduce guest stars like Robocop who probably shouldn't exist in this universe, but beyond that, it feels like introspection on the parts of the developers. We're all a lot older than we were when the first Mortal Kombat first hit arcades in 1992, and MK11 was an opportunity for Ed Boon and his team to reflect on what this game used to be, and what it's become in the years since.

On a fundamental level, Mortal Kombat 11 is very much like the first three arcade games, with 2D gameplay, combos performed with action buttons tapped in rapid sequence, and uppercuts that do hefty damage while launching your opponent a safe distance away. However, the gameplay has evolved, with "fatal blows" offered as a risky but wickedly satisfying way to tilt the odds in a losing match, and characters that can be customized with new outfits and even alternate special moves. The graphics are vastly improved, as one might expect from decades of technological advancement, but what you might not expect is the effort put into the story mode, which feels like a big budget action movie and fleshes out the inscrutable lore of the series.

There are plenty of great flagship fighting games for the Xbox One and Playstation 4, but Mortal Kombat 11 is easily the most ambitious and most fully realized of the bunch. Even the latest game in the Street Fighter series, once regarded as the high watermark for this genre, seems like an underachiever by comparison. It took nearly thirty years to reach the top, but ultimately, time was on Mortal Kombat's side.

BEST METROIDY, CASTLEVANIA-Y TYPE GAME
Iconoclasts
Joakim Sandberg

I used to love 'em as much as anyone else, but lately, the greatest challenge offered by search action games is just staying interested. I didn't finish Axiom Verge, didn't finish Timespinners, didn't finish Ori and the Blind Forest, and most certainly didn't finish Hollow Knight, which was praised by reviewers but just left me flat. Just what I needed, angsty insects. Where'd I leave my Raid?

Barring some occasional annoyances, this
was good to the 'clast drop.
(image from Steam)

Iconoclasts, though... that I did finish. I'm not sure what this game has that the other Metroidvanias don't... it's certainly more colorful than the titles I just mentioned, with top-shelf sprite work from its creator Joakim Sandberg. There's also the wrench, which functions as a melee weapon but doubles as a key for unlocking stubborn doors and triples as a means of conveyance. It's fun to charge up the wrench and catch a stray power line that sends you screaming through brick walls and into areas you previously couldn't reach. There's also the option to play in a "relaxed" mode whenever the need arises, taking the sting out of the endgame where you're expected to take down bosses many times your size.

It's not entirely without irritation, and the plot goes in some pretty strange directions, starting with a ruthless theocracy and ending with... uh, a parrot trucker hauling magic yogurt. However, Iconoclasts kept me in its thrall from beginning to end, which is the highest praise I can give to a game in this increasingly stale genre.

BEST "WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN" GAME
Part-Time UFO
Nintendo/HAL

This Hamburglar girl shows up in several
scenes, trying to steal things. Typically
you'll get extra coins by grabbing her first.

And now for something completely different! Adapted from a smartphone game, Part-Time UFO challenges you to finish a series of odd jobs using a crane suspended from a flying saucer. Whether it's catching fish, hauling turnips, constructing robots, or keeping circus acrobats balanced on a tightrope, you've got a time limit to finish each job. If you've got the time to spare, you can fill it by finishing bonus objectives, which add to the difficulty but put a little extra cash in your pocket. That money in turn can be used to buy hats for your UFO, which may increase its abilities but mostly just make it look silly. 

Even as the jobs grow in challenge to the point where each narrow failure will threaten to pop a blood vessel, Part-Time UFO never loses its cheerful optimism. It also keeps finding new ways to use that crane, keeping the action fresh and unpredictable. It must have been as fun for HAL Laboratory to make Part-Time UFO as it is for Switch owners to play it, suggesting that it was wise for Nintendo to lighten its grip on the leash and let its subsidiary stray from the Kirby series, giving it time to creatively recharge. Other game companies should take notes.

BEST GAME, PERIOD
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Sega

The numbers don't lie, folks. I've spent fifty hours with this game so far, and expect many more in the future. Why not? Like a Dragon is an incredibly robust and diverse experience, and it would probably take at least a hundred hours to absorb it all. It's a turn-based role-playing game, and yet also a successful extension of the long-running Yakuza series, with the same style and some of the same play mechanics. It's also (takes a deep breath) a dungeon crawler, a business management simulation, a racing game in the style of Super Mario Kart, a collection of Sega arcade games, and a compelling story about a disposable Yakuza thug finding his own value in friendship, justice, and the occasional delivery of super spicy kimchi.

"Hi, I'm Ichiban Kasuga, and I'll be your
poofy haired, goofball protagonist for the
duration of the game."
(image from Metacritic)

Sometimes that variety is to the game's detriment, with side stories distracting you from the side stories that distracted you from making meaningful progress in the main story. Tedious grinding for experience points (and job experience points, and personality points, and heaven only knows what other bars and gauges you have to fill) gobbles up an enormous portion of your playtime, and scenes that should be emotionally resonant lose a lot of their punch thanks to dead-eyed characters who set one defiant toe onto the edge of the Uncanny Valley. You guys do know Bioware was doing better cut scenes than this ten years ago on a last generation system, right?

Nevertheless, Yakuza: Like a Dragon has the same Jupiter-like pull as other classic role-playing games, which steal every spare minute from you and even a couple hours you can't spare. You know, legendary titles like Final Fantasy VI, Grandia, the early Suikodens, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and Mass Effect 2. When your game can be confidently mentioned alongside these greats, you know you've done something right.