The best video game titles of 2021

In some methods, this year felt like far more of the same. 

The COVID-19 pandemic continues and offer chains continue being choked. Isolation might not be the norm, but for quite a few, it is however the default. The release plan felt altogether quiet, as an increasing range of blockbuster online video games moved out of this yr and into the subsequent. 

But in making an attempt to discover a unifying thread for the video games that defined the final 12 months, I’m struck by the simple fact that this year was not definitely calm at all. In fact, it was a bizarre, fantastic, disorienting labyrinth of stunning titles. With less AAA awareness magnets, and a renewed collective appreciation for the escapist and social benefits of the medium, it felt like we had been all more willing to try a little something that fell exterior of our comfort zone.

Some online games were being about combating self-question. A further was about crushing wealthy individuals in Argentine wineries. My personal favored was about storytelling by itself, and our skill to weave our have inside narratives out of emergent fantasy adventures.

I’m tricky-pressed to describe so a lot of of 2021’s very best game titles due to the fact, effectively, so many of them are really hard to describe. It turned what felt like a weekly occurrence below at Polygon for anyone to unmute their microphone through a Zoom conference and say a thing together the strains of: “So, I performed this video game referred to as Inscryption this weekend. I’m not certain what it is, just. But you all need to engage in it.”

As I see them all laid out on this web page, I also figure out that many of the year’s very best titles have been about hope. Unpacking explored humans’ talent for earning a home, even as we grieve. Unsighted posed that age-aged question: If we’re all going to die, then why treatment about just about anything at all? In one particular way or yet another, a slew of our favored video games ended up about the methods we offer with disaster, and move ahead in its wake.  

Movie games are a towering monument to our collective imagination — they are aspect haunted castle, element Freudian psychoscape, aspect interactive museum whose exhibits each and every bleed into the next. Genres are useful in the brochure, but they can only get you so far — at a specified stage, you require a bit of tolerance, a lot of curiosity, and probably a tour information or two.

That’s where we appear in. Whether you’ve been next along with just about every new launch during the year, or you are popping in now to see what you missed, the subsequent is a assortment of games that we imagine encapsulated 2021. Some experienced a thing to say about our cultural landscape, and some had been just actually damn pleasurable. And even though several may in good shape cleanly into a one genre, numerous far more defy a essential label. And that’s fascinating.

In any case, enough from me. Let’s get to the excellent aspect.

—Mike Mahardy, senior editor, assessments

How the Polygon leading 50 list will work

Over the previous month, the Polygon team voted, debated, re-debated, and resigned by itself to the collection of compromises that is our major 50 online games of 2021. Any movie game titles that had been released in 2021, acquired big updates in 2021, or obtained renewed cultural relevance in 2021 are suitable for this record. Any concealed gems we stumble on above the subsequent number of months will be suitable for upcoming year’s record.

Upcoming 7 days, we’ll also start rolling out in-depth essays about the top rated 10 video games on this listing, together with pattern items, opinion content, and retrospectives about the year as a entire.