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It’s the Games of the Year 2021 Awards!

I forgot to do this last year to be honest, but it was 2020. Was 2020 even a real year for people? I feel like we all just took a mulligan on 2020.

Not that 2021 was a lot better from a global perspective, or really from an online one, but I at least tried to keep track of what day it was in 2021. I also played some video games. This list will contain no real surprises because it turns out I’m very basic in my old age and mostly liked the things everybody else liked. That said, hit the jump.

Well folks, the bad news is we’re going to have to change the title of this project to “Steerpike’s Demo Decathalon” since I’ve kind of run out of demos that work (well enough to count). In a way it’s for the best, though, because just as I didn’t really plan out the games I’d play, I also didn’t put much planning into the order I played them. As it happens, the last two we’ll look at are actually interesting, so at least we’ll end on a high note. If I stuck with twelve then it’d be more of a whimper than a bang. We want bangs, not whimpers.

Project Haven! Bang!

I avoided Stardew Valley for years because I knew perfectly well that it would swallow hours of my life with its mix of time management and socio-career simulation. Eventually I gave in and found it just as charming as I’d feared. Oddly, I didn’t fall nearly as deep into the Stardew Valley black hole as I could have, which I put down to the fact that I played in co-op with my friends Eric and McShane, and while E and I slaved away under the burning sun every day to keep I Say Mechro Farms profitable, McShane tapped every girl in town.

Repeatedly.

Yowza. My hands still haven’t recovered from Blaster Master Zero 3. I shouldn’t be doing this right now. At this point I’m risking permanent injury.

It might be worth it for Severed Steel, though. This game a waffle sundae of awesome.

Ah, Mars. We just can’t quit you, little red buddy.

Anybody who knows me at all can’t be surprised to see this title listed. I’m a Chernobyl nerd, so obviously I was curious to see what we were dealing with here. This is tricky subject matter for a game, and it’s only fair to acknowledge that fact right up front. Games like STALKER are rooted in abstract fiction and use Chernobyl as a similarly abstract and fictional setpiece. A game that openly claims to simulate the Liquidiation, on the other hand, could be in rather poor taste given the fate of most Liquidators. The verdict there depends on how the developer executed this concept.

I was pretty good at Blaster Master in my youth. Not great—I never actually finished it despite trying all through middle school—but it was a favorite among my collection of NES games, and one I still think of fondly. I was vaguely aware that the Blaster Master franchise continued after I’d left it behind, but I never really looked too deeply down that rabbit hole until the demo for Blaster Master Zero 3 appeared on my Steam feed as I selected titles for our 12-day extravaganza. Turns out that not only has Blaster Master lived on, but it’s still alive three and a half decades after I ejected my venerable cartridge for the last time.

Obviously it had to be one of the games I’d try out. How often do you get to revisit a beloved childhood icon and see how it’s doing for itself?

In the interest of full disclosure, I want to say right up front that I am not a member of the Cult of Sable. I have nothing against the game beyond a vague, polite confusion borne of the existence of an entire subculture that’s been obsessed with it for going on two years now.

Were they right to be? That’s for me to know, and you to… also know, after you Like, Follow, and Subscribe click the little “Read More” button.

Could Bandit Simulator be the greatest game ever made? Yes. Yes it could.

I hate the environment. It’s where Nature comes from, and Nature is the worst. Seriously, Nature will sting you (with wasps and scorpions), burn you (with lava and the sun), eat you (with sharks and bears), break you (with rocks and rolling logs), and cut you (with claws and other, sharper rocks). List goes on.

Look, we went to a lot of trouble to stop being gorillas, and we did it to get away from the environment. Birds and meerkats and stuff, they chose not to evolve. Human beings said, “the environment is being kind of a dick with the rain and the tapeworms; let’s invent ‘Inside.’”

The price of Inside was a hundred thousand years of miserable self-awareness. Air conditioning? Hot Pockets? Insect repellent? We bought those things, my friends. And by God, we paid for them.

So I keep saying I mean to write more often (I never actually intended to write less often, it just happened, and then years passed). But it occurs to me that, as assertions go, “I plan to write more stuff” is rather vague. It’s like saying “I’ll be a better person.” There’s no there there. Then today while I was avoiding doing work it occurred to me that maybe what I ought to do is paint myself into a corner. Publicly commit to a concrete deliverable on an actual timeline. A binding contract* between myself and all the person who still visits the site.

It’s Next Fest this week on Steam. There’s over 700 demos of upcoming games! I will play and report on twelve of them. One a day, chosen at random† for the next twelve days! Hooray!

Click the thing for some ass-covering disclaimers.

Unfortunately Joel Goodwin of Electron Dance and I have not been able to do Side by Side this year due to, well, the nature of the series being totally at odds with a pandemic. Joel had always planned to do a deleted scenes episode for season 5 but he got distracted. Well, that time is now, or, it was, about a month ago when he put this together, but I got distracted and forgot to post it up. Lots of amusing clips here of what was a great selection of local multiplayer games. Fingers crossed for 2021…

He’s not! He lives. In fact he’s typing this. Hello!

I’ve failed to publish my Games of the Year (or much of anything) since 2016. I would like to do something about that. Strange as it may be to discuss my highlights from last year halfway through this one, it’s nonetheless what I’ve got for you today. Read on… IF YOU DARE.

Argh, this was meant to go out over the New Year period(!) but I’ve been burning the candle at both ends with work and… well, this turned out a lot longer than I expected!

I opened the door to 2019; felt like I was struck dead. Saw the future, but all the future was was the past repeating itself. “Fuck,” I exclaimed. “No!,” I pleaded. I tried to slam the door shut, cried in horror at the terrible revelations unfurling themselves. But there was no closing the door. Before I knew it I was on the other side, mistakes ready to be remade; but would any lessons be learned? I feared for the worst case. I was right to be afraid.