COGconnected Writes: I finally got some quality hands-on time with Cyber Shadow, the terrific 8-bit ninja adventure from Mechanical Head Studios and Yacht Club Games.
VGChartz's Craig Snow: "My version of this article last year was fairly well-received, so I decided to revive the concept. Hopefully this article gives the eight titles I felt were most under-played relative to their acclaim in 2021 just a little bit more publicity."
The Artful Escape was great! I checked it out on Gamepass and loved every minute! That was trippy as hell and a totally unexpected thrill ride. I highly recommend that one!
One of favourites last year was "lost in random"
Totally went unnoticed yet a gem of a game.
Tim Burton style visuals, fantastic characters, interesting story, fantastic game play mechanics with real time and turn based dice mechanics also quite a challenge with some bosses.
That's one that really comes to mind to me. Absolutely fantastic game, and barely a peep from anywhere on the game.
I did play the Artful Escape though. But I agree, the rest of those titles were never even on my radar.
Wildermyth deserves a spot. so fucking entertaining and gets better the more you play it.
VGChartz's Christian Evans: "Ever since Nintendo released Donkey Kong all the way back in 1981, the 2D, and later 3D, platform game has oft been the staple genre of choice for tentpole releases, while also birthing many major gaming mascots along the way. No longer just about hitting your jump point, the platformer fosters all kinds of weird and wonderful mechanics & styles, always seeming to cultivate creativity in design, and pushing the boundaries of what has come before. 2021 was no different, and was indeed a very good year for platformers of all types."
Good choice, PN2 was clearly the best platformer of last year. It Takes Two is a close second though, the fact that it has couch coop is awesome.
Yeah, have to agree with you here. It Takes Two had so much heart put into it. The couch coop was great, the characters charming but the platforming itself was a tad on the simpler side. But, Psychonauts 2 was just fantastic, from the visuals to the gameplay. It's one of those rare cases where I felt that they improved on pretty much everything over the original title.
Psychonauts is definitely mine, but all of the obvious ones pretty much stand toe to toe in quality.
I've played better 2d platformers than Cyber Shadow over the last couple of years, and didn't feel the need to get too far into it.
Personally, I thought it was one of the weaker R&C games. Graphically the best it's ever been, but weaker in almost every other area. It doesn't come close to being as fun as the early games.
Digital Foundry : As an incredible 2021 reaches its conclusion, the Digital Foundry team present their favorite games of the year. Kicking off with an exhaustive list of modern, retro and retro-modern titles, it's none other than John Linneman!
Some good games on his personal list. I really need to get Returnal. I hear so many good things about it. Psychonauts 2 is such a great game, I only wish it had a physical release. But like cuphead... I have to settle for digital (for now at least)
Not getting Psychonauts 2 until the physical release comes out. Microsoft is a trillion dollar company. There's no reason why they can't give us a cool physical release with a poster, stickers etc.
In the flip side of you. Would never purchase this game. But as it was on Gamepass, i set it to download, made dinner, and by the time I finished eating it was ready to play. It ended up being one of my favourite gaming experiences of the year too, like John. It wasn’t a game I was interested in and I’d never played the first and the art style put me off. But having it easily available to me digitally in Gamepass made me give it a try. Very glad I did.
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