Best Shooter of 2021 - Article
by Chinh Tran , posted on 14 January 2022 / 2,629 Views
In yet another year with dual Battlefield and Call of Duty releases, shooter fans had no shortage of options to choose from. Yet neither of the latest entries in those established franchises find themselves on our shortlist for Best Shooter of 2021. Instead, this year's nominees all brought something different to entertain players.
Turtle Rock Studios released a spiritual successor to the wildly successful Left 4 Dead games, bringing new additions to an already enjoyable core experience. 343 Industries finally released the long-awaited Halo Infinite, proving once and for all that the team there can indeed match Bungie's pedigree. Capcom's Resident Evil Village continued to demonstrate that Resident Evil 7's first-person perspective was the right call for the series, and finally Housemarque released its biggest hit to-date with Returnal.
The Shortlist:
Back 4 Blood
Halo Infinite
Resident Evil Village
Returnal
The Winner:
Halo Infinite
Runner-up: Resident Evil Village
After a disappointing gameplay debut in 2020, Microsoft and 343 made the difficult - but ultimately right - call to delay Halo Infinite for a year. In that time, 343 clearly made drastic improvements, proving Shigeru Miyamoto's saying correct once again. Thanks to a new open-ended arena to explore, new tools in Master Chief's arsenal, and gameplay that perfectly blends established elements from the classic Halo games with fresh ideas, Halo Infinite is the Best Shooter of 2021.
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Deserved win.
Halo was hands down best shooter of the year for me, not even a question.
Who the fuck would classify RE as a shooter? I mean yea, sure, shooting is a central gameplay mechanic within the game, but it's so purposefully slow, and awkward. Would any RE fan tell you that they think it's a great shooter? Would they even say it's a solid shooter? Are it's shooting mechanics among even the top 5 things they look for in a great RE entry?
I say all this not to try and minimize Village as a game. I'm actually playing through it right now, and very much enjoying it so far. I'm sure it deserves to be mentioned somewhere in the best games of 2021 discussion...but in the shooter category? Nah. Yall are weird lol
Scarlet Nexus is more action game than RPG. It has some rpg elements. NIoh is more RPG and that puts the emphasis on the action combat.
It's an ARPG. Stats are dynamic instead of fixed. Accessories,armor all matter. Upgrading weapons and stats like any RPG matters and enemies have levels Too low a level? Time to go level up. One enemy weak to something but strong against something else. Namco and the creator list it as an RPG.
Namco in japan does not list it as an RPG but as an action game. Action RPG as a concept barely exist in japan and stats and leveling has never been what classified games as RPGs from a japanese perspective. In both Japan and the west "action rpgs" are action games first and RPG is a distant second and is a subgenre of action game not a subgenre of rpg. The literal definition is "action game with some RPG elements" as they ignore all the regular rpg mechanics EXCEPT stats and leveling. Except action rpg has become a meaningless label because stats and leveling are so widespread in mainstream games. God of War 2018 has more RPG mechanics than Scarlet Nexus and i don't see anyone against calling it the same genre as all the previous god of war games.
It's an action game with more in common with devil may cry than either disco elysium or yakuza like a dragon. It really sounds more like you don't know what an RPG is.
Literally on their website listed as RPG. Also lol so wrong. Japan created ARPGs. The first JRPGs were ARPGs. Dragon Slayer, Ys for example. The mana games are ARPGs. Ys is still going. Souls games are ARPGs. I know more about RPGs than you can ever know. You probably think Dragon Age 1 is an ARPG and don't understand the stat system. You are ignorant who thinks all a JRPG is derived from Dragon Quest. You think TRPG is just a menu selection. Xenoblade is a Turn-based RPG. SN nexus creator from his own mouth several times and I talked to him on twitter.ARPG. Bugger off.
I was wondering the same thing when I saw the list... Actually had to scroll up to double check the title lol...
If Deathloop is considered a shooter that is the clear winner for me, otherwise Halo is fine for the winner if Deathloop is not considered a shooter.
Raiden IV on Switch for me but then again old game and I've played it on multiple platforms. I also really liked Chorus.
LoL what a crap list,
Returnal looks like it's out of place,
The majority is 1st person shooter,
Should've put deathloop instead of returnal and re village wasn't exactly a shooter either
Give a shooting game a shot. Har, you're so punny! ;-)
Anywayz, it's just not right that Returnal didn't even get runner-up status in this category. It was my pick to win. I really liked not only the basic game play structure and the story itself, but also, perhaps more controversially, the way the story is told. It makes one think a lot, and I mean about topics that deserve pondering. sighs Oh well!
