Games of the Year 2021 - Runner Ups

Moving on from our more fun categories, we are now getting into what people really want to know. What hit the top of the list? Well for that you'll need to come back tomorrow but in the meantime check out our 2021 runners up entries to our games of the year.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Pierre-Yves: Echo Generation

Into one of the harder decisions that I had to make this year, Cococucumber's Echo Generation is taking my runner up spot for my Games of the Year. This RPG had it all. Aliens, Monsters, Ghosts, Horror, epic music tracks and the house cat as an ally and healer. Short and sweet clocking in around 10-12 hours, it never overstayed its welcome and everything that it did it did well making it a fun ride and a great placeholder while we wait for Stranger Things Season 4!

Check out our full review of Echo Generation by developer and publisher Cococucumber for the Microsoft Xbox Series X.

Richard: Tales of Arise

This is the Tales title I've been waiting for since Graces came out. The combat was great, the dynamic environments, the battle system, the unique characters, everything just came together really nicely. While I did feel the game sort of fell apart in the storytelling in the second half, and it was extremely unfortunate not having a coop mode, Tales of Arise was a game I had a lot of fun playing and that's why it's my runner up for the year.

Check out our full review of Tales of Arise by developer Bandai Namco Studios and publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment for the Sony PlayStation 4.

Susan N.: Outriders

Puzzle and Mystery games will always trump other video games on my list. Occasionally, a title knocks it out of the park, even if it’s not in my regular repertoire. I’m talking about a cover shooter being my runner-up game of the year. Outriders surprised me as a game that I would enjoy, but I'm glad that I enjoy it as much as I do. There are sporadic shooters that I play, yet Outriders is among them. Not only did they give players a free legendary weapon for continuing to play when things weren’t going well, but they added an outfit customization system that costs players nothing. Given that the story has some hilarious knee-slapping dialogue, even the twists and turns make the title exciting. Plus, rookies like me can drop the world tier down a notch or two when things get dicey. For that, I give People Can Fly a virtual medal. Outriders is a fantastic game that I enjoy playing as a solo experience or with friends.

Nick: Hot Wheels Unleashed

Tons of cars, many of which call back to my early childhood? Check. Creative environments that remind you that these are miniature vehicles? Check. Oodles of settings, modes and a high degree of accessibility? Check. Simply a blast to play? Checks all of the boxes. Hot Wheels Unleashed hooked me with its aesthetics when I saw the first trailer, but the excellent gameplay and variety of cars and modes combined with a solid progression system had me coming back time and again.

Check out our full review of Hot Wheels Unleashed by developer and publisher Milestone S.r.l. for the Sony PlayStation 5.

Robert: Star Citizen

While not quite as rich as my 2021 Game of the Year nominee, my runner up to this year’s Game of the Year is none other than Cloud Imperium Games’ absolutely massive immersive space sim, Star Citizen. When all is said and done, this massive, explorable (and fictional) wing of the Milky Way galaxy will house over 100 systems, with dozens of planets, moons, asteroids, and other space-related doodads, all without loading screens.

Pioneering some of the most fascinating and sophisticated technologies, Star Citizen pushes the bounds in every way- from the extremely high fidelity graphics to the rich and expansive universe (a part of which you can experience now in the Persistent Universe!) full of heroes, villains, and everyone in between. Having more than a few hundreds hours behind my dual VKB Gladiator NXT flight sticks in Star Citizen this year alone lands it in contention for the top spot and with Cloud Imperium Games releasing massive game-altering evolutions every quarter, Star Citizen isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

 

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Echo Generation - XBSX Review

Echo Generation by developer and publisher Cococucumber—Microsoft Xbox Series X review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

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It's the middle of summer, you're getting ready to make a movie with some of your friends based off of a script you wrote. You wake up, your mom tells you to hang out with your sister or forfeit the rest of your summer allowance. So stealing a traffic cone for your sister to get out from in front of the TV, the two of you and the house cat set out on an unbelievable adventure making you wonder what the hell is really going on in this town.

Seriously though, what the hell is up with this town? Echo Generation by Canadian developer Cococucumber is an RPG set in a small town plagued with… everything. Aliens, ghosts, killer puppets and racoons which will easily show you not to mess with their territory, this town has it all and you'll get to experience all of it over the course of a few days of your summer vacation.

With Halloween just around the corner, Echo Generation is perfect for it as it easily hits light and fun vibes before going totally creepy in a Stranger Things kind of manner and it all just fits together. Featuring a pair of siblings as your protagonists, this adventure quite literally will bring you from one event to the next without really missing a beat as it's all for some reason natural to those experiencing it. I mean they are aided by the talking house cat as a party member...

There are a few immediate notes that stood out for me in the demo earlier this year as well as in the full release. Graphically, Echo Generation uses a voxel base which is generally seen in more open worlds when developers want something more fleshed out than a pixel look as they happen to be a bit more versatile when going for that more “blocky look”. Unlike these more open world explorations with monsters or environmental terrains exploding and then showing the ground with the remaining pieces, this adventure uses it for visual appearance alone in a set isometric view. The graphical approach works really well though. Whether from your more human looking human NPCs to killer monster puppets, aliens or giant destructive mechanical beasts, everything looked like it fit and the voxel approach gave it just that little bit more realistic oomph in a world that is very far removed from reality.

Aiding the visuals for presentation is the second big item and hats off to the musical talent behind this adventure as there's music for every type of fight in the various environments. From big mechanical monsters to secret government agents really looking like a famous duo (Reno and Rude even if it was probably meant for Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones), there's a track for it. This makes each boss or story based fight feel unique from one another as while I love a good boss track, never knowing what you’re in for was something of a treat. The other part of this treat is that the music also seemed to fit the mood of the environment as well as the type of foe you were facing off against. Again, hats off for that.

Now getting into a bit of what worked both really well and at times not, is the exploration. While the events pushing the story work really well as they are all intertwined fetch quests in order to get what you need set up for your movie production, getting to those points is not always the smoothest process. Split between the suburbs, downtown, the forest, the farmland and the side of the highway with a few branching areas here and there, the overall space that this adventure takes place in is not very big. That part is not an issue as there will be lots of running back and forth trying to figure everything out. What doesn’t work so well on this though is that there’s no real way to keep track of anything and you often don’t really get hints as to what you should be on the lookout for.

There are perhaps two things that I would have liked to have. The first, would have been a journal to keep track of what’s been done and what items could potentially be used for what. The second, would have been a map of the area to know how it’s actually all interconnected as while you do unlock shortcuts after a while, there is no fast travelling and if you don’t know what you need to do, you’ll be combing through each and every area to figure out what you missed. Oftentimes? It may already be in your hands but you didn’t know it or know how to use it.

It wasn’t the end of the world as I did finish my adventure with almost everything to be obtained in under twelve hours, but a lot of that time was spent running around trying to figure out where to go, what to do, and then potentially grinding for experience as combat can be rather unforgiving and this town? After a few beatdowns several bad guys stop coming out to play a la Dark Souls 2. So grinding for experience isn’t exactly easy making you really have to know the ins and outs of your party and their skills as items cost money, and with no bad guys, there’s no money, so if you want to really keep moving you’ll have to backtrack a lot to the three beds around town in order to fully heal up.

Combat itself though? Stupid amounts of fun. Not a single attack in anyone's repertoire from the protagonists to their companions (the house’s cat, robot, dog, raccoon, alien jackalope) is straightforward and it’s entirely a hands-on experience. From the standard attack over to throwing ninja stars, shooting hockey pucks, throwing wood axes or rubbing a balloon for a static attack, everything has its own input sequence. Pressing a button at the right time, making a star fall into the right basket, pressing the right sequence of buttons on the controller, moving a reticle into the right space, and so on. If you want to do real damage, you need to pull off these sequences otherwise you’ll never win. Think of it as a 2021 version of Sony’s The Legend of Dragoon.

To keep things interesting, as all attack patterns require input, so do the defensive ones. Whether single attack or party wide, you’ll have to perform an action in order to reduce the amount of incoming damage. For the most part, it’ll be hitting the button at the right time as it’s kept simple enough. Other times though, for gatling gun styled attacks, you’ll have to press a sequence of buttons and hope to not get it wrong. For super large foes, there can even come a time where you have to literally move the party out of the way or risk getting crushed. It really is stupid amounts of fun once you get into it as it always manages to keep you in the action instead of have you sit in a passive role and hit “A” repeatedly to attack until the enemy is dead.

Summary

So overall, fans of RPGs, fans of the occult, fans of aliens, ghosts and crazy science experiments, I would seriously recommend checking out Cococucumber’s Echo Generation especially over Halloween which is the perfect time for this kind of story. Well written dialog and an interactive and engaging combat system supported by an amazing soundtrack, this is going onto my Game of the Year list.

Score: 8 / 10

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Echo Generation - XB1 / XBSX Preview

Echo Generation by developer and publisher Cococucumber—Microsoft Xbox Series X preview written by Pierre-Yves with a limited time Xbox Live demo.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Closing in on the end of the year, our final thoughts for Games of the Year and titles just trying to squeak themselves into the 2020 calendar, I found myself falling for a quirky RPG that after 5 minutes had me wanting more. Sadly, it cut me off 25 minutes after that basically telling me to come back next year for more. Available until December 15, 2020 through a limited time free demo of the alpha build, Cococucumber's RPG Echo Generation is going to be a contender in 2021.

While the art style and the premise caught my eye, it was both the gameplay and some of its quite clearly Canadian features that sold me on Echo Generation. starting off by picking up a hockey stick and a hockey magazine in your bedroom you head out to face the world, or your mother telling you to spend time with your sister. Asking you sister to tag along, she says sure, but you'll need to get her a traffic come first as decoration for her bedroom. So heading out the door, that's exactly what you set out to do!

The world of Echo Generation makes me think a little bit of Earthbound and a little bit of Citizens of the Earth that came out quite a few years back now. The colors are vibrant, there's stuff littered everywhere to interact with and who knows what you'll use it for down the line. If at all.

So setting off to find that traffic cone you soon encounter a group of raccoons that won't let you pass because a three-on-one fight just isn't fair. Thankfully, there's a one-on-one fight to be had which leads you into a quick battle to teach you the ropes. And by teach you, I mean figure it out for yourself as the controls are intuitive enough.

Using a bit of interaction to keep things interesting, battle is a more hands on than your average RPG. Once you decide to attack, you'll have a timer that appears in order to press at the right time in order to do more damage. The same is done when it comes to defending yourself. It has a little bit of QTE (Quick Time Actions) for the normal stuff but it has a lot more for your special attacks.

Special attacks which require points to be used, and are refreshed per battle, are fairly hands on if you don't want to waste your points while using them. This is where you'll be wanting to pay attention as attacks can range from inputing a sequence of buttons to properly hitting the sweet spot as your cursor slides across a meter. They really pack a punch so don't be afraid to use them especially as you get a new set of points for every battle.

While perhaps short, you do get a glimpse into the RPG leveling up system. Once enough experience has been acquired and your characters level up you can choose one of several stats to be increased. Hit points, attack power, special points, and more will all be useful in the coming battles as I regretted not taking extra hit points for the boss that ends the demo as it really came down to doing more damage than he could before they wiped out my party of two.

But it's more than all these mechanical aspects that make Echo Generation interesting, and I'm saying this after only a half hour. The environment has some quirkiness to it, there are a lot of little details here and there that you take in while running around town trying to find your way to that traffic cone, and then it's just the way that it's displayed. Walking from one street it's up to another there's a blurriness effect that brings things into focus the closer you get to them. Time was taken in order to put this together and this is just the alpha stage.

Acoustically, Echo Generation also has some interesting sound effects and music to go along with the short glimpse into this adventure. Perhaps one of the most interesting was actually the battle music which actually doesn't sound like something you would expect to be playing in the background while in the heat of battle. If anything it's this quiet catchy tune that you would expect is a pre- or post-battle while characters are bantering before finally getting to the good part. it just blends in so well I didn't even notice the first few times until I actually stopped and listened and went huh, this isn't bad at all.

Summary

So overall, even if it was only half an hour, I want more and Echo Generation has the potential to be a hit in 2021 if it does indeed release within the next calendar year. From the base look of exploration to the battle systems and the soundtracks along for the ride? I have some high hopes for this RPG.

Score: N/A

 

Nick
Susan N.
Hayden
Richard
Natasha
Jim
David
Robert
Pierre-Yves
Dimitris
Chris H.
Hamza
Jedediah
Lauren
Mylène
S.M. Carrière
Izzy

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