2021 Game of the Year Awards — Genre Awards

This was a strong year for shooters. A lot of both sides of the scales here. Great experimentation and complete failures. The usual Battlefield and Call of Duty fair was some of the worst in the last decade with awful launches and/or not enough changes from the previous versions. Overall, it was still a solid year, better than last year even, with tons of heavy hitters and some actual newcomers to change the game up.

Deathloop

Deathloop is probably one of the most original games of the year, and the fast that it’s a new IP, was actually good, and moved the shooter genre forward all in one was just awesome. It had a rocky launch with lots of bugs, but Arkane Studios quickly patched a lot of them out and the game didn’t ship or need a stupid multiplayer mode for once. This is a rock solid time warping, looping, mind fuckery of a game that has great stealth and action parts all mixed into one.