Author: Ray McGill
2021 was a shitty year for sure, and I am not heading into 2022 with much confidence. However, while society falls apart, video games have been pretty great. That was a depressing, yet also probably trite sentence to write at the end of this year. While society continues to grapple with sickness on unprecedented scales, it becomes more the role of video games to make our lives feel more normal, more fun. In a year where I had only recently been to a movie theater, and where I don’t feel comfortable at things like bars, the stories, and experiences we take in come increasingly through a screen at home. Whether that be a television, computer screen, tablet, or phone, we need to have fun and be able to remind ourselves not everything is doom and gloom all of the time. That being said, maybe don’t use the television to watch the news…
Okay, so video games, specifically new ones. I am not like Rich, Shea, or especially Josh who seems to be able to manipulate time to ensure he can play everything. I also tend to sink my time into longer games, also older games. So my list will not be a top 10, not even a top 5. Welcome to Ray McGill’s Top 3 list for the year 2021!
3. Lost Judgement (Sega)- Yakuza: Like a Dragon was my favorite game of the year in 2020. I loved how the RGG studio is willing to take a huge risk and flip an entire established formula on its head. However, even with such a change, it is great to see that RGG (maybe) has a franchise that can hearken back to the more visceral roots of their work in fictional Japan. Yagami came back with the whole gang for another mystery in Japan, and it was a…pretty good game. It was not as good as the first title, and it felt bloated in spaces, but it was a decent story with a payoff that made me happy it came out. I would love to see a third title in this entry, but who knows what Sega is going to be able to work out with the Japanese talent agency, Johnny’s. Even if this is the last we see of Yagami, the spin-off established itself early on enough from its Yakuza parentage that there are any number of well-developed characters that can take up the protagonist mantle. The combat is fun, if a little bloated due to the addition of new stances, the minigames are the classics we know and love, and the setting and characters look great thanks to what I consider to be a great game engine. I will still continue to miss bowling in RGG games, but maybe one day…one day.
2. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV (Falcom)- My Summer was absolutely devoted to the Trails of Cold Steel series. If this was a top moments list, it would be feeling the weight of everything that built up over 4 fantastic games, and really 5 more on top of that come to a crescendo at the top. This is one of the most anime adventures I have taken in video games, and that is friggin’ saying something. The cast got insanely large, but everyone gets their time in the sun, so you have no reason to forget a single soul you encounter through this massive undertaking. While the game brought everything it had to bear on players, it wasn’t a perfect experience, and suffered from pacing issues. While I love long stories, this game was too long. Also even though this game is meant to be the ending of an arc, the game doesn’t let itself truly end due to the setup required for the next series, which America knows it is getting...eventually. I loved the depth the combat took on in the third and fourth entries with the introduction of breaking enemies, and the graphics became a lot better, and a lot flashier as this series went on. I am pretty sure I said it in a previous article, but it bears repeating: Play these games, they are so good.
1. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker- I’ll go ahead and say another trite thing in this article. The work that was done to correct the absolute blunder that was Final Fantasy XIV is nothing short of miraculous. Ever since then, Square-Enix has taken a modern-classic and keeps piling more all-time greatest stuff on top of it. While the story may not hit the highest-highs of Shadowbringers, Endwalker has the unenviable task of taking every loose plot thread on the core world of Final Fantasy XIV, and tie it all in a bow, and make this world read for the next story arc. The gymnastics that have to be done to make this all work has been nothing short of stunning, and so far, Endwalker sticks the landing. The arc of A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and finally, Endwalker marks the end of one of the most ambitious projects in the history of narrative in video games. So much baggage had to be accounted for, so many characters used on top of the new folks, and even past that, Square has had to make sure that every Warrior of Light in the game feels like THE Warrior of Light, despite the fact everyone around you is also THE Warrior of Light. It is a massive single-player story tucked within an even more massive MMO, and it manages to thread the eye of a needle Square had no right achieving. Endwalker is still very new, so I refuse to spoil story points for anyone who reads this, but I cannot stress this enough: This game is the best MMO ever made. It is the perfect confluence of graphics, writing, accessibility, and dungeon-making that this genre has ever seen. I played World of Warcraft for close to 15 years, but it is no longer the biggest dog in the yard; arguably it hasn’t been for quite a while.