Top 10

Rich Meister's Top 10 Games of 2021

Rich Meister's Top 10 Games of 2021

What a year. 2021 has been arguably the best year and a string of horrible years. Sure, we’ve still got that whole pandemic thing, and our country’s moral and financial integrity is crumbling from the inside out, but VIDEO GAMES! Also, that Spider-man movie was really good.

Despite the horrible odds, I’ve made it through another calendar year as Sword Chomp’s EIC, and I played a lot of really cool games. Tons of people said there weren’t many good games this year; those people are dumb as shit. Here are the ten games I thought kicked the most ass in 2021.

Shea Layton's Top 10 Games of 2021

Shea Layton's Top 10 Games of 2021

How do you sum up gaming in 2021? It was absolutely wild, filled with delays, developers and publishers being ousted for being terrible organizations filled with trash culture and management, and ongoing difficulties of being able to find a next-gen console for purchase. Despite all of these issues, there was A LOT to be pleased about this year when it comes to gaming. Even though we saw a healthy number of AAA games being delayed, that paved the way for smaller and indie games to get more spotlight shone on them.

Josh Mcmullin's Top 10 Games of 2021

Josh Mcmullin's Top 10 Games of 2021

Hi, I’m a sometimes contributor to the ever-excellent Sword Chomp series of podcasts, Josh Mcmullin, aka THE Bebopman! I got asked to do a top ten list for the site and here I am. Look at me, ma! All joking aside, let’s get one thing straight, okay? There was A LOT of talk during the year that 2021 just had no games and that everything important was being pushed back due to COVID still being a thing. While I agree that several big highly anticipated titles were pushed back, that doesn’t mean that 2021 lacked good or even great games. As evidence, I tried my hand at a little challenge that one of my co-hosts set out for my own podcast. The challenge in question was to complete 20 games that we had never beaten before. I rarely play games to completion unless I really like it and this year, I hit that challenge. I played 31 games this year and completed 20 of them. What’s even better is that outside of my top three, which just flew up my rankings upon their launch, I had an incredibly hard time ranking most of them because they were all so good. That’s a long way of saying that 2022 was a great year in gaming and the games speak for themselves. So, without further ado, let’s talk about my top 10 of those games.

Ray McGill's Top Games of 2021

Ray McGill's Top Games of 2021

2021 was a shitty year for sure, and I am not heading into 2022 with much confidence. However, while society falls apart, video games have been pretty great. That was a depressing, yet also probably trite sentence to write at the end of this year. While society continues to grapple with sickness on unprecedented scales, it becomes more the role of video games to make our lives feel more normal, more fun. In a year where I had only recently been to a movie theater, and where I don’t feel comfortable at things like bars, the stories and experiences we take in come increasingly through a screen at home. Whether that be a television, computer screen, tablet, or phone, we need to have fun, and be able to remind ourselves not everything is doom and gloom all of the time. That being said, maybe don’t use the television to watch the news…

Rich Meister's top 10 games of 2020

Rich Meister's top 10 games of 2020

Congratulations, despite everything, you made it through the fever dream that was 2020. Despite the strange circumstances surrounding this year, a lot of good happened on my end, like officially joining the Swordchomp crew. I wanted to use this intro to thank the community for embracing my integration into the podcast and encouraging the work that all four of us do here. It’s just the beginning of the road for me, so I hope to bring you more great written content and even more in 2021.

Enough of that, though! Do you know what else happened in 2020? I played some fucking video games. Some good, some bad, some weird, but these were my ten favorites.