Our favorite video games of 2021, 'ranked' (as if)

It's been a strange year for video games. There's no way for any of us to know just how much release schedules were impacted by the pandemic, but there's no doubt whatsoever that changes had to be made. A nixxed feature here, a shifted release date there. The year-plus spent at the mercy of COVID was an inescapable chaos agent. Again and again, games that no one saw coming or which had been written off for whatever reason defied expectations.