Since we halfway into the year I thought id ask do you have a best new game of the year?

 

Mine isnt new but its one i discovered end of last year and one im obsessed with in 2021..Apex Legends.

The game I've played most this year is probably Shadowverse.

 

precis: Hearthstone but not Blizzard so less problematic, much better of a meta for free players and balanced, less-random games, and anime aesthetic (plus a fair bunch of cool anime tie-ins). CCGs are my favourite multiplayer type.

 

Got myself currently mainly piloting a tough-to-handle but decent Bloodcraft deck built around an iconic robo-waifu 'Mono, Immortal Garnet', where the object is to use the Bloodcraft concepts of Vengeance and Wrath (normally sitting at low health but there are ways around that) plus buffing your cards to buff Mono and charge my opponent down, which I find fascinating as there's a lot of ways to do the order of playing cards wrong, so I have a challenge in getting it right and also surviving all the broken overpowered stuff other players throw at me first.

 

seen lots of people (primarily vtubers who I otherwise enjoy) get obsessed with Apex, it's not really my thing I don't think though.

I've played so few actually new games that Kaze & The Wild Masks wins just by being a competent DK Tropical Freeze etc knock off. If we expand it to older games, then though I started it last year, Slay The Spire has had me hooked like no other game. Also shout out to Dark Souls 3, Outer Wilds, SUPERHOT, Paradise Killer, Bug Fables, There Is No Game, Ace Attorney 5, The Pedestrian & Papers Please for also being bangers. Also also Fall Guys circa 2021 is a lot better than Fall Guys circa 2020 and not just because I have all the achievements now and don't have to harbour resentment anymore.

Oh yeah I've also played a lot of Hearts Of Iron IV this year as I search for ever better political simulators - I was never really interested in WW2 much for history before getting interested in this one, just a shame that I find the combat the least interesting thing about it even though it is very detailed and good when I actually focus, I'm just more into the 'enact an internal communist revolution' style of history/political sim and even though it's not the main focus of the game it's still better than most others like that out there.

 

And I'm currently having a blast going through 428: Shibuya Scramble after putting it off for ages.

 

(hell yes at Slay The Spire, though it's been a while since I launched that up myself)