Finger Guns Presents: The Games Of The Year 2021
Paul Collett’s Choices
This cutesy platform adventure for Oculus Quest was was a surprise hit for me. Expecting an uncomfortable vomit inducing VR nightmare turns out to be one of the best games you can get for the system. Granted the game is a pretty standard cartoon platform affair, borrowing heavily from pretty much all Mario games, but when it’s done this well I don’t think it matters. My fears of feeling sick while playing where soon dispelled as the developers have somehow made this game one of the smoothest VR experiences I’ve had. All in all an amazing game. I wouldn’t be upset if they made Lucky the Oculus mascot.
One game that remains at the top of my list of favourite games of all time is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. At the time, the original game pushed the boundaries of what the PS2 could do with one of the largest open worlds to date. The gameplay was fun, the music was amazing and the story was one of the best in the series. Now that the Remastered edition is out. I’m happy to say that San Andreas is still one of my favourite games. The game is as good I remember: enhanced massively with a bunch of modern gameplay implementations. San Andreas now plays like GTA V! As much as I loved the original game, the controls, compared today were awful. So the new control system makes such a difference. and the graphics upgrade is pretty special too. No more fog or awkward pop ups. Now we have a draw distance so we can see the shimmering lights of LA. It genuinely feels like you’re playing a brand new game.
As you can see I’m only talking about San Andreas here but let’s not forget you get GTA III and Vice City thrown into the package, so there is some GTA for everyone.
The original Little Nightmares came out in 2017 and captured my imagination like no other game at the time did. Creepy distorted humans in a world that would give Alice in Wonderland nightmares was a triumph! Now we have sequel (or a prequel as it turns out) that gives us a new hero to control, new puzzles to solve and new creepy residences to experience. Although the gameplay is largely the same as the first game, it’s the imagination of the world that keeps me glued to the screen. New paper bag wearing protagonist Mono is as good as Six, who of course makes a return in the sequel. Little Nightmares 2 doesn’t shout at you to play it, but play it you must.
The combination of beautiful 2.5D graphics, puzzling platforming and an atmosphere that could put most AAA games to shame makes Little Nightmares 2 a game of the year contender. Amazing.
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