It has been 12 months, or as some might say , and there have been video games. In fact, looking at Eurogamer’s top 10 of the year as well as your own top 50, it’s clear there have been some mighty fine video games too, undermining the impression that 2021’s been something of a lull for the industry.
Yes, there might not have been so many big ticket titles, and yes we’re having to wait until next year for the likes of Breath of the Wild’s sequel, Starfield, Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West, but we’ve not been short of crowd pleasing headliners.
For those who like to leaf through turn-of-the-century issues of Edge and believe the golden age of gaming was the early noughties – hello, welcome to the club, take a seat and sorry about the smell – we had the triumphant return of both Samus Aran and the Master Chief. For those with more contemporary tastes, there was Deathloop and Returnal proving lavish single player productions can still find plenty of space to innovate.
For those who are drawn to the more experimental it’s been a golden year, from the musical extravagance of The Artful Escape to the soothing strategy of Dorfromantik. The abundance of more modest productions in both our own and the reader’s list is encouraging to see, and their prominence is down to a handful of factors. Of course, the relative paucity of tentpole games and the delays of some of the year’s biggest prospects into 2022 play a part, but so too do services like Game Pass which make it that much easier to broaden your horizons.