Ghostwire: Tokyo is a flawed game. Some of those flaws jump out quite obviously during gameplay, ripping the player out of the experience if even for a moment. Some are as elusive, immaterial, and yet ever present as the yokai that confound or trap a number of spirits throughout the game’s urban environment. Some of these are perceived flaws based on an open-world design philosophy that is becoming increasingly tiresome and outdated to many in the gaming audience.

It didn’t take long, then, for me to begin spitting out words of back-handed defense while playing on stream. “It’s not great, but it’s still pretty good!” It was as if I was more afraid of over-selling the game than I was under-selling it, or reflexively trying to explain why I was having such a good time playing a game with such middling reviews. I had forgotten that there’s a reason I do not trust most game reviewers these days, particularly if they rely on numbers to summarize and assess a game’s quality.

Instead of trying to defend Ghostwire: Tokyo, as if it does not have the right to be as enjoyable as it is, I should instead be digging into what makes the game so engaging for me. Not only could this provide proper feedback to the development team by acknowledging its strengths, but it would help us better understand why some games in this tiring open-world “genre” are still able to be fun. Or, perhaps, it can simply help us understand what it is we enjoy and appreciate the most.

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It’s been a month since Elden Ring released, which is about enough time for the honeymoon phase to be over. Theoretically, at least. Crawling through the Elden Ring sub-reddit, it’s easy to find a number of still-obsessed players turning their experiences into memes to share, discussing the New Game+ experience, and even new players to the “genre” expressing their love for the game. There has been no shortage of controversy, what with the poor PC performance at launch leading to review bombs on the Steam platform, only to turn around and be critized by developers of Ubisoft and Guerilla Games in a rather unprofessional manner. The ensuing discussion could have led to the possibility of Horizon fans review bombing Elden Ring with dishonest intentions.

Of course, nothing has stopped the game from selling over twelve-million copies worldwide. Elden Ring was lauded by many websites, publications, and communities as the most highly anticipated game coming in 2022, but rarely do the niche opinions of an enthusiast audience cross over into the mainstream in this manner. While we cannot calculate the number of players trading the game back to GameStop after just a few hours of struggle, we can occasionally see a first-timer post in the aforementioned sub-reddit a joyful celebration of taking down their first few bosses or, at times, the entire game.

It may seem odd to say, but the aggregate praise, the sales numbers, or the nit-picking complaints of a handful of disgruntled developers and journalists don’t mean anything to the actual quality of the game. Is it a “masterpiece” as many have lauded it as? Well, obviously not, but… yes, actually. It’s a complicated issue, as Elden Ring is the culmination of over a decade of refining a flawed game-type, or style, in a flawed engine, by a flawed development team. Comments regarding the inability to adjust text-size in the UI as regards to accessibility are legitimate, and is an issue the studio should have sorted out years ago. That this game cannot hit a stable 60fps on the most up-to-date console hardware and has myriad performance issues on PC is inexcusable. It still baffles me that I cannot compare my current gear’s stats to that which is available in the shops. None of these issues have anything to do with the silly “difficulty argument” and therefore would not change the core of the experience, save for improving it. It is, without a doubt, an imperfect game.

At the same time, I am nearly one-hundred hours into Elden Ring, have crawled through every cavern and crevice I’ve been able to find thus far, and not only still have several more hours of content ahead of me, but have continued to miss little paths, quests, or details throughout my adventure. I’ve continued to be surprised and gasp at various revelations and discoveries. Unlike Breath of the Wild, where I stopped around some seventy-to-ninety hours due to feeling as if I’d seen enough and was ready to be done, I am continuing to plumb the depths of Elden Ring because there is so much to see.

It’s kind of difficult not to perceive such a game as being a masterpiece when that is your experience with it. Nonetheless, I certainly am inching ever closer to that feeling of being absolutely done with Elden Ring... for now, at least.

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From a layman’s perspective, it makes little business sense to release your game anywhere close to February 25th, 2022. While some titles such as Horizon: Forbidden West are big enough themselves to sell regardless, most other titles are doomed to loom in the shadow of Elden Ring. It has been over two weeks and only now are players starting to lose some degree of steam from what has become one of the largest launches of the industry. The game was not only incredibly well hyped, it actually managed to deliver in comparison to recent disappointments such as Cyberpunk 2077.

So why did Square Enix release a demo for Babylon’s Fall, a game already struggling to find an audience, on the same day that Elden Ring released? Why did Babylon’s Fall release a week after while their “Souls-like” reimagining of the original Final Fantasy, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, is launching three weeks after and bound for comparison? In fact, why is Square Enix releasing four different games clustered together throughout March, all competing for audience attention and retention?

The answer most likely resides in Square Enix’s fiscal year concluding in March. As I am no investor nor business man, I can only speculate that Square Enix is releasing these titles all within the March window in order to meet some form of sales expectations or promise to investors. Would it have been better to delay some of these games out further? It once more seems that way from a layman’s perspective. Now that Forspoken has been delayed to the Autumn, its original release slot in May could be better filled by Stranger of Paradise. Games such as Triangle Strategy and Chocobo GP seem to be targeting different demographics than Elden Ring, but if From Software’s latest adventure is truly hitting Red Dead Redemption 2 numbers, then it is clearly appealing to quite the broad audience of players. Even fans of tactical RPG’s may find it difficult to slot time in for Triangle Strategy as they scour the lands between. As for Babylon’s Fall, it is doubtful that a better release window would have saved it, though it may have at least done a tad better than its current peak numbers.

I’m not writing this to speculate on Square Enix’s reasoning for such a condensed set of game launches, however. I am instead writing this because I’ve played demos of three of their four releases, and can only shake my head and groan at the news coming out of the fourth. In some ways, I think the media is being unfair. In other cases, the looming presence of Elden Ring has deterred me from what might otherwise be a somewhat risk-taking purchase. Instead, I want to take a moment to look at these titles, recent reveals, and additional business decisions that the company has been making lately.

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When Shamus and I had decided to play Resident Evil 5 on stream, we both had a goal to be as positive about the experience as possible. I, in particular, didn’t want it to just be a “hate play” where we did nothing but criticize the experience. On my part, this is partially due to having played the game enough that I know I enjoy it. It’s not “bad” in the sense that it has little redeeming value beyond a lesson of what not to do.

However, standing in the shadow of Resident Evil 4, it’s easy to find little mistakes or frustrations that drive one’s perception towards a great sense of inferiority. In comparison to its predecessor, Resident Evil 5 is bad. Compared to other games, however, is it really as bad as the game’s reputation suggests?

Well… yes, but, no. The Gears of War trilogy managed to provide a consistently good experience across all three games around the same time period. Imperfect, as all things are, and with their own number of frustrations, but ultimately Gears of War “feels better” to play simply due to a more consistent experience (and we don’t talk about Gears of War 4... erm, beyond that time I spoke about Gears of War 4). The same is true for the Halo franchise in this time period. Halo 3, ODST, and Reach were all consistently good experiences for connecting online with a friend to combat alien hordes. Resident Evil 5, meanwhile, chose to step into the co-op arena in a franchise not only known for its isolation and focus on single-player experiences, but using the mechanics and design of its solo-play predecessor instead of crafting a co-op experience from the ground up. It’s no wonder it was immediately condemned by a good chunk of the series fanbase.

Most of that audience bought it anyway, of course, because that’s just how fandoms are these days. Resident Evil 5 is still one of Capcom’s best selling games, and combined with the sales of its ports and remasters, is the top selling Resident Evil title altogether. I don’t think these numbers can be chalked up simply to brand loyalty. I think that, while Resident Evil 5 stumbles, it is a good game. It just… invites insult and criticism so easily.

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It came close. It came really, really close in terms of my favorite release in 2021. At first glance, Metroid Dread doesn’t seem to do nearly as much as Resident Evil Village in terms of honorary “favorite of a whole year” status. The latter has a far greater variety of set pieces and gameplay, higher production values, and the upgrades and unlockables make for a better incentive to replay the game than Dread’s selection of artwork.

This is also why it is understandable that others might choose Resident Evil Village themselves. What I’ve learned discussing the latest Metroid title with others is that it has very specific goals in mind, and those goals don’t appeal to all fans of the franchise. Village, on the other hand, more broadly caters to a variety of players, regardless of whether they’re a franchise fan or not. Even if the focus on action has increased from the previous entry, it is better balanced between different set pieces and locations. Horror fans can experience more harrowing or terrifying moments; some environments are linear and straight-forward or amusement park in style while others focus on that puzzle-box building of the original entries in the series; there are also plenty of treasures, collectibles, and optional bosses for fans of exploration to discover.

On paper, Metroid Dread is a really good game, but has less to offer in comparison. However, there’s a lot of stuff going on underneath the hood here that, for players of a particular nature, not only begs a return to its extraterrestrial world of ZDR, but to further master and improve on one’s abilities. It is for this reason that Metroid Dread inches its way past Resident Evil Village for me, earning the crown of my favorite game released in 2021.

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Keep in mind that these are all the games I played and enjoyed but have yet to discuss. In truth, Resident Evil Village was favored more than any title in this list, and Monster Hunter Rise now tempts me on PC for its superior framerate and performance. Nonetheless, these are certainly the remaining games that made the most impression on me throughout the year, save for my most favorite.

There are still plenty of titles I would have loved to add, however, had I the chance to play them. Tales of Arise, It Takes Two, Famicom Detective Club, Psychonauts 2, NEO: The World Ends With You, Caligula Effect 2, and so many more. As I had already stated, 2021 was a surprisingly incredible year of releases, and there was simply too much to keep up with. This is especially true after the already mentioned impact of Game Pass and the knowledge that I could wait for certain titles to potentially reach the platform.

All in all, however, the following are the games I played in 2021 that I had a blast with. My overall satisfaction may vary from title to title, but each provided something of value to me compared to other games I had played. Even the weakest of these is superior to many of the games played in prior years, and therefore all contributed to why 2021 was one of the best gaming years I’ve had in a long time.

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My relationship with indie games has been an odd one. For a while there I was not quite taken by them, finding their titles to be a bit janky or unpolished even compared to their inspirational forefathers on 16-bit hardware built with more primitive tools. Only on occasion would I be floored by the craftsmanship of a title like Hollow Knight or Iconoclasts, games whose polish and effort was as top notch as the best of the publisher-supported studios.

I find that I’ve been languishing behind the times, as there are plenty of indie games out there of superb quality and often more befitting my interests than what the larger publishers have on offer. Unfortunately, I also find myself struggling to pick out the diamonds in the rough, or to find the titles worthy of standing alongside my favorites.

As a result, 2021 has essentially been the first year where I fervently began to pursue the fruits of independent labors, learning what does or does not work for me, and what I ought to be careful of when making purchasing decisions. Most of all, it has also given me plenty of independent publishing labels or smaller developers to keep an eye on in the future.

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Everyone has highly acclaimed titles that they never got around to playing at release, or prior purchases just sitting on their hard drives and bookshelves gathering dust. No one is able to play every game of interest that crosses their path, and they are often unaware of certain titles that may be up their alley until word of mouth hits them months or years later. Then come the recommendations of friends and compatriots both in person and on the Internet, demanding an interruption in one’s schedule to play this latest game that will surely blow their minds away.

Just as I’ve made it a point to replay games I’m familiar with, I also try to go back and play games that I once missed. Oftentimes this is a better choice than to play the latest releases; rather than get stuck with something that’s okay but brand new, I might find myself deeply enveloped in a game that’s fantastic though older. This was especially true the prior year when my favorite game turned out to be Bloodborne, a title five years old by the time I finally played it.

None of the previously released titles I played in 2021 made quite as strong of an impression, but several of them were notable nonetheless. As such, I wanted to spend some time discussing them before I detailed my remaining favorites of the past year. Of course, since I’ve already written about some of these games, this will also turn into a bit of a look back at my essays of 2021 as well.

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It is no secret that my favorite Nintendo franchise is Metroid. I’ve even played some of the “worst” games in the property multiple times, finding something of value in each title. Despite the indie scene exploding with imitations in the “Metroidvania” genre, however, there are few games that properly sucked me in as much as their mother inspiration.

I think there are multiple reasons for this, one of which being a shift in creative direction on part of the developers themselves. Hollow Knight, for example, is a far more ponderous world. While the Metroid series is certainly an inspiration, it is only one of many, including several more platform-intensive games of old and the recent rise of the Souls-like. My first impression of Hollow Knight was initially positive, but eventually grew more exhausted as I had felt directionless and as if new abilities and power-ups were coming all too slowly. It was only after I had played through Bloodborne that I understood how much From Software’s atmosphere and world design had combined with the inspirations of Metroid to form Hollow Knight’s expansive world, one in which player choice of exploration was emphasized. Once I had that fresh new perspective, I was able to appreciate Team Cherry’s game as its own thing rather than comparing it to the Metroid franchise I knew and loved.

There has always been one other element of the equation missing, however, and that is the “-vania” portion of the genre title; I’ve never truly played through a Castlevania game, despite the franchise sharing a variety of traits in common with my beloved Metroid series. In 2021, I had begun to try and correct this.

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The seventh generation of consoles was unkind to a lot of seminal Japanese game developers. Be it the advent of HD gaming and its more expensive demand on visual fidelity, the sudden emergence of Western game developers onto the console scene and taking over, or Nintendo’s new focus on a non-gaming crowd, it was a time when many of the most prominent publishers and studios of the 90’s were left scrambling to maintain relevance, appeal to a Western audience, and abandon much of what had made them a success in the first place.

Approximately one decade ago Keiji Inafune’s detailed his belief as to why Japan had lost its seat at the head of the console gaming industry. I do not currently wholly agree with his sentiments regarding Japan’s “failures” against the rise of Western games, and Keiji Inafune himself would ruin his reputation among gamers due to the mismanagement of Mega Man spiritual successor Mighty No. 9. Nevertheless, many studios tried following some of Keiji’s advice in working with foreign studios or trying to transform their properties into an imitation of the new Western gaming demographic: a primarily younger group that had hopped aboard the hobby via Halo, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Xbox Live.

Capcom is one of the most prominent examples of such attempts to appeal to the young new Western gamer. The reinvention of old icons such as Bionic Commando into a gruff, mean looking soldier with an edgy attitude and unnecessarily dark past; handing off new successes like Dead Rising to Western studios for sequels that failed to capture self-aware wackiness that the first wave of fans fell in love with; chasing co-op trends by forcing them into their Resident Evil franchise, in addition to spending unreasonable amounts of time and money on a nonsensical campaign filled with so much explosive noise but meager substance. There were still occasional gems such as Dragon’s Dogma being released under the publisher, but most players that discovered the studio on the NES, Super Nintendo, PlayStation, or even in the arcades were becoming increasingly disappointed, disenfranchised, and seemingly abandoned.

Somewhere around the turn of generations, however, as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sailed into the sunset and the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were leaving port, Capcom had changed course. While I think it’s a simplification to blame outsourcing to foreign studios as the cause of Capcom’s losses, I do believe the shift back to internal development has forced Capcom to tighten their belts, refocus, and simply do what they do best. The release of Resident Evil VII in 2017 was effectively the start of a brand new era for the company, and now, four years later, I feel as if we’re seeing them truly hit their stride. It is possible that Capcom has never been as good as they are now.

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I don’t know the last time I spent so many hours playing games in a single year as I had this one, but it still wasn’t enough to get to all the titles I yearned to play. Admittedly, 2021 was overall a more positive experience for me than 2020 had been despite continued struggles to better balance mental health and all that other lame junk. Whether I’ve steadily been doing better on that front or the greater quantity of top notch releases are the primary reason it was a better year remains a mystery. All I know is I’ve even had a good time with some of the year’s greater let downs or disappointments.

That I became more invested in streaming games may have also contributed to my enjoyment. I was able to exercise some creativity in overlays, broadcasting myself creating the sort of cartoonish artwork that I hadn’t been drawing in a long time, and even figuring out a method of transitioning the Eh! Steve! Podcast to video. It has allowed me to connect with others via the platform, and has now given me a way to collaborate with Shamus Young. While a good chunk of my gaming time is still done as a solitary experience, streaming has helped me remain social, which has been especially useful as the old Destiny 2 fireteam has all but disbanded.

What I wish to discuss, however, are the games that really helped shape this year for me. Before I discuss specific releases or studios, I’d like to go over some of the broad strokes of games discovery, gaming habits, and my approach to purchases and games completion. This is the year that I’ve put my money where my mouth is in terms of declarations of what is and isn’t a better manner to spend one’s time, and it has ultimately contributed to why I’ve felt all the more positive towards the hobby in 2021. It will be interesting to look back at the end of next year and see if many of these habits will have only grown or will continue to ring true.

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I vaguely remember one school morning when I, a pimple-faced freshman in high school, met up with one of my closest friends for our usual round of pre-homeroom chatter. With a mocking grin on his face, he informed me that Microsoft was making a “Direct X Box”, a brand new console to compete with Sony and Nintendo. His laughter and dismissal were understandable at the time, for conventional wisdom held that, much like political parties, no third system could possibly survive. We had watched as the Atari Jaguar went extinct, were barely familiar with the existence of the 3DO before it crashed and burned, had witnessed the SEGA Saturn barely make a name for itself next to the N64 and Sony PlayStation, and were mourning the inevitable demise of SEGA as a console manufacturer. The Dreamcast was failing to make a dent in the market while all eyes were on the PlayStation 2 and upcoming Nintendo Dolphin. Your best bet was to dethrone one of the top dogs just as Sony had done against SEGA, and there was no foreseeable way that Microsoft could kick either Sony or Nintendo to the curb.

This was nothing to say of Microsoft’s reputation at the time. We were in the middle of the disastrous Windows ME, perhaps the most buggy and crash-happy operating system I’ve still ever used in my life. You were more fortunate to be running Windows 2000 instead, though it, too, fell victim to the dreaded Blue Screen of Death on a fairly regular basis. For a bunch of young punk teens that were witness to the birth of the Internet age, however, we were also becoming increasingly aware of the limitations and inconvenience of Microsoft’s proprietary measures. MS Paint was vastly inferior to any other image editing program, be they free like GIMP or more costly like Adobe Photoshop and its affordable Elements line. Windows Media Player was an unnecessarily large application both in screen real estate and resources, swiftly replaced by the likes of Winamp for music by most. This was not long after Microsoft was taken to trial for an attempted monopoly by bundling their Office software, and were effectively seen as an evil, world consuming empire of gluttonous greed.

Nonetheless, I shrugged my shoulders and told my friend I’d wait and see what they did. We still did not have enough information on what the system would look like, how it would differentiate itself, and what games would be on it, and until Sony came along with the PlayStation no one expected SEGA to be conquered by a new challenger so easily.

Four years later, this time a taller, hairier, and somewhat less pimple-faced freshman in College, I had packed both my Xbox and GameCube to occupy my dorm room for gaming. The PlayStation 2 was left at home to gather dust, for all I had cared.

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Today is the release of Metroid: Dread, the “fifth” entry in the “main” Metroid narrative. More specifically, it is the most recent canonical release beginning with the progenitor Metroid on the Nintendo Entertainment System, followed by Metroid II: The Return of Samus on GameBoy, which was then succeeded by Super Metroid on the Super Nintendo, and then continued with Metroid: Fusion on the GameBoy Advance. If there is a specific storyline that has been running through the entire franchise, then these are the games considered to be the “main” ones.

Nintendo has recently announced the cast for the upcoming Super Mario Bros. film adaptation, and in response a friend of mine asked me who I’d wish-cast into the role of Samus Aran should she receive a film of her own. It is a question I answer begrudgingly, for I’d prefer there be no film adaptation of Metroid at all. It is not a series whose traits work well with the motion picture medium, grounded too much in an isolated atmosphere of exploration and mystery. From its inception to its modern interpretations, the best entries are those where the plot is minimal and the story is developed through the experience of the player.

It was days later that I stumbled upon comments on some blogs and forums that brought up the much maligned Metroid: Other M and the faults with its writing. Reading and responding to such comments led me to a realization: the greatest problem with adapting Samus Aran to screen is the same as whenever series co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto insists on giving her a voice; Samus Aran is not a character, and the franchise is at its best when the story is not about her.

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Goichi Suda, founder of Grasshopper Manufacture and creator of the No More Heroes franchise, describes his creative philosophy as designing games with the spirit of punk. He grew up with the musical genre in much the same way he grew up with video games, and as such wants to avoid safe, conservative ideas and to instead try and push the boundaries with what games can be. Of all the games he had worked on prior, it is No More Heroes where this spirit stands out the most.

Booting up the remastered release of No More Heroes on PC earlier this summer, I found myself struck by that very do-it-yourself “punk” nature that was rebelliously birthed in the music scene in retaliation to the prog-rockers and Simon & Garfunkels of the time. If I were to summarize the game as succinctly and accurately as I could, it would be in comparison to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’s opening performance of “Launchpad McQuack”. It doesn’t take a professional to recognize the unbalanced audio levels that cause each instrument and mic to blow out the amps and speakers, nor does it take much to observe the lack of sophistication in the song composition. Yet there is an undeniable rawness to it that defies the systematic, corporate cleanliness of what you’d typically hear on the radio. This is expression, and you cannot help but be caught up in the energized emotion of the performers strumming those chords and banging those drums with as much fervor as they can muster.

(There is a degree of irony to this, seeing as the songs were written to specifically sound half-baked and shoddily composed. However, that’s partially because the songs themselves were rushed and given no opportunity to be cleaned up, retaining all mistakes and problems for the final cut of the movie.)

There was something of this spirit lost in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, perhaps due to Suda51’s shift to “Executive Director”. What that means is uncertain, though Suda’s time away from the director’s chair following the first No More Heroes has been widely published. He was still contributing ideas to the many projects within Grasshopper Manufacture, but he was not in control of them. It is, perhaps, for this reason that Desperate Struggle feels less like a sequel and more like an imitation. Like the corporate moneymen that believed they could imitate Michael Bay’s style and achieve the same success, the sequel title feels like a superficial understanding of what made the original game work while failing to capture the same heart of its unpolished “Launchpad McQuack” of a game.

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Back in February I wrote about the design of the game Salt & Sanctuary, specifically calling out its adherence to the design template presented in the inspirational Dark Souls. The conclusion I came to is that I’m far more interested in games that glean some lessons from the franchise, but otherwise put their own spin on the Soulsborne genre.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I like it when a game knows how to blend certain design elements together in order to generate something fresh. I enjoy Darksiders 3 as much as I do because the elements it chooses to blend happen to fit snugly together, like LEGO bricks stacked into a colorful tower. It’s not enough to mix and match genres. You must take into account the goals of each individual game and which mechanics are used to achieve their vision. Some of those mechanics may not be compatible with those of another game, no matter how similar.

While the prevailing label to Death’s Door is that it is a Zelda-like rather than a Souls-like, that Dark Souls inspiration is still present. However, most acknowledgment seems to be in the game’s combat and leveling mechanics. Yes, you collect “souls” of enemies when you defeat them, and then use those souls to level up and improve your combat prowess. However, the most significant inspiration from Dark Souls has little to do with its combat, and instead fits snugly into the philosophies found in the Zelda franchise.

Death’s Door deftly combines the Dark Souls approach to map design with that of The Legend of Zelda.

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