Alex, Tom F and Chris present Our Caveats About The Games of the Year. Among the games at least partially endorsed are: The Ascent, Chicory, Valheim, Hitman III, Deathloop, Metroid Dread, Halo Infinite, Life is Strange: True Colors and Chivalry 2. Happy holidays, and see you in 2022!
- This is a pod about the games that came out in 2021 – so let’s start with the games that didn’t come out in 2021 that we played anyway!
- Tom’s been anaesthetising himself with Slay the Spire, and socialising Graham with Supreme Commander
- Alex’s has continued to fiddle with his MiSTer. He’s insatiable. You’d think getting a dog would have helped.
- Chris played Cyberpunk 2077 and is thankful for the absence of Huge Beams.
- Now moving logically on to the games of the year of someone not even on the podcast. The Ascent – a play-above-you game where you are a little-man-run-and-jump. Tom S likes it, but not that much. GOTY!
- Tom F, the Present Tom, liked Chicory (from the makers of Wandersong) – a wholesome game about a dog who paints the world, and which touches on darker subjects of self-worth and depression.
- Greg Lobanov is Chicory’s designer and Alexis is the artist and animator. Talented folks.
- Open-world survival building game, Valheim came out this year, somehow, and was briefly and intensely enjoyed by Chris and Alex.
- Hitman III, the boringly good, hugely generous assassination sandbox beloved of Masters of Stealth: Tom F and Chris.
- Chris enjoyed the action spectacle of Deathloop as much as the acrobatic stabby delights of any Arcane game. Tom F not so much, but was still obsessed with it for a time!
- Normal game coming out the normal way: Alex says Metroid Dread feels great in motion but a little incoherent in its geography and brutalising boss-battles.
- Plomking past the ick, Halo Infinite inherits the robust combat mechanics of past Halo games and adds a grappling hook, bananas for marines and ice-cream for dinner. Everyone likes it.
- Beautiful mood-piece, Life is Strange: True Colors is a game about sensing people’s pain and healing them. Tom F makes it sound dead good.
- The simple pleasures of medieval ultraviolence are captured well in the exuberantly silly Chivalry 2. Chris like to be yelling-man-fall-in-hole.
- Honourable mentions: Demon’s Souls, Guardians of the Galaxy, Psychonauts 2, Rift Wizard, Olija, Ynglet, Slipways, Far Cry 6, Subnautica: Below Zero, The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye DLC, Griftlands, Inscryption, Resident Evil: Village, Splitgate, Forza Horizon 5, Super Auto Pets.
- And that.
- And that?
You can hang out with us and our community on our Discord channel. If you have a question for a future episode, send it to us at questions@crateandcrowbar.com or tweet us @crateandcrowbar. You can also listen to it on YouTube, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you like.
The Crate and Crowbar is kindly funded by our Patreon backers. If you’d like to know more about supporting our podcast and its spinoffs, click here.
Our intro music is by The Mandibles from their track Clambake. Many of the band members now tour as Count Bobo And The Bullion.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS