The gaming Internet lost its shit yet again earlier this month. This time it was the turn of Xbox fans after information was leaked that Xbox were going to be making some of their exclusive titles available on Playstation and Nintendo Switch. Known for their rational and level-headed approach to speculation, Xbox Twitter quickly descended into claims that Halo, Gears, Forza, Starfield, Indiana Jones and other titles would launch on PS5 and that Xbox would completely stop making hardware and die as a brand. Phew. Xbox boss Phil Spencer added fuel to the fire by not denying the rumours and only stating Xbox would release a business update the following week. So what’s going on?

Well, it’s that time of year again. The earth has travelled another 584 million miles or so, people are making all kinds of resolutions about how they’ll be different now that a number has changed, and we’re all looking back at the year just ended. Somehow COVID is still kicking around, although at least here in the UK things are a bit more open than they were, people still can’t get hold of the Playstation 5 or high-end graphics cards, and it seems like the world has gone daft for NFTs (including some game developers looking to get in on the action - please don’t).

Here’s my annual rundown of the games I’ve enjoyed playing in 2021 and the ones I’m looking forward to trying soon.

So, 2020 is over. What a weird year. The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the globe, impacting everyone in different ways. While some claim it’s a hoax, others have cut off all human contact. Personally, I’ve been in a fortunate position and it’s not been too bad, and I’ve managed to keep playing games, including taking in some good new titles and the launch of the new console generation. It seems like lately the only posts I actually get round to are these “best of” ones! As with previous years, these are only titles I’ve personally played, and only covers Xbox, with a couple of non-demanding PC games thrown in for good measure. Also, personal opinion only of course, happy to hear what others have enjoyed via the comments below.

Surely not another “games of the decade” post, I hear you moan? Yep, absolutely. Everyone’s been doing these, so why not me? For no particular reason other than to organise my own thoughts and take a nice trip down memory lane, here they are. I’m not saying these are necessarily the best (everyone will have an opinion), just the ones I’ve personally enjoyed the most. Also Xbox only, since I really only play on Xbox:

It’s that time of year again where we’re recovering from eating and drinking too much, and looking forward to the new year filled with exciting opportunities and a chance to do better. Who knew that an arbitrary point in the Earth’s orbit round the Sun had such power? I’ve definitely neglected the blog this past year or so (I’ve been a little more active on my dev blog, but only just) and I’m contemplating just migrating all the content from this site over to picnicerror.net and focusing my efforts on one site. Anyway, I digress. I think my last post on this site was looking back (very belatedly) at my favourite games from 2017, so it seems kind of fitting that my next post is this one.

We’ve hit that time of year where everybody’s doing a “top games of 2016” write up. I’m not going to differ.