As you can tell from the typography, Back 4 Blood is almost a one-to-one replication of the late-’00s classic Left 4 Dead. Turtle Rock Studios freed itself from the yoke of its corporate overlords and immediately got to work on the exact same type of game that originally made it famous. The Guardians films thrive when the stakes are small, and Square Enix mirrors the magic brilliantly. Gamora is embarrassed about her action-figure collection, and it’s up to Star-Lord if he wants to be a dick about it. Rocket is afraid of water due to some long-standing phobias unfortunately, there’s only one way across the river. The combat is mediocre, and I endured a ton of technical issues during my playthrough on PC, but Guardians contains an intimacy that is rare for the medium. I expected the worst, and what I found was a genuinely moving single-player narrative that seemed desperate to atone for the sins of its forebearer. Publisher Square Enix was still licking its wounds when it unveiled Guardians of the Galaxy, once again recruiting an ersatz cast of not-quite-Hollywood actors to fill the roles of Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Gamora, and Drax. Last year’s Avengers packed a decent combat system and a compelling narrative into an absurdly dull grind - embodying all of the worst instincts of triple-A development. The MCU’s early foibles with video games have been spotty at best. Here are the highlights from the year so far, listed chronologically by release date.
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So maybe the barren holiday season should be taken as a blessing: Rather than chasing after every massive open world and interminable experience grind out of some grim professional duty, we can instead settle in with the games that actually spark joy. It’s not surprising that the breakout titles of 2021 so far have been predominantly born of small budgets and limited scopes - the sort of gameplay experiences that could reasonably be attainable in a plague-ridden year. The pandemic may have afflicted Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, but it’s harder for a virus to stop a team of three wrestling with their own bespoke assets in home offices all over the world. With triple-A publishers regrouping and recalculating, a rush of indie studios has taken center stage. This reality is reflected in the list below.
By the end of the year, it’s likely that many gamers will be sitting at home with two brand-new consoles that are mired in a historic dearth of software. But studios that were counting on 2021 for the final stretch weren’t nearly as lucky, and the ramifications are disorienting.
The games released in 2020 were already at the tail end of their production before COVID broke the supply chain, and they managed to slip into their shipment schedule undeterred. And other franchise megatons that were allegedly right around the corner have been conspicuously MIA. Already, several high-profile games like Hogwarts Legacy and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum have been pushed into 2022. The pandemic has wreaked havoc on every creative industry, but the deeper we get into spring, the more it becomes apparent that the fallout from the global office shutterings and the economic contraction will be felt most acutely in the months ahead. So far, 2021 is one of the weirdest years on record for video games. Photo-Illustration: Vulture Photos by Nintendo, Bethesda, Coffee Stain Studios, EA Games, Toukana Interactive and Capcom
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