Video Games Issue 2021

2021's best video game yet owes it all to one unforgettable character

Resident Evil Village takes the top spot.

by Tomas Franzese

It’s only July, but the game of the year discussions are already heating up. While some heavy hitters like Deathloop, Halo Infinite, and Metroid Dread have yet to make their debut, many great games have already arrived, and players have sunk hundreds of hours into them.

To get a better idea of what gamers expect to be game of the year, we polled 1,568 Inverse readers to see which games were their favorite. The frontrunner highlights how games with a strong internet presence will stay in the hearts and minds of fans.

The Video Games Issue 2021 is an Inverse celebration of retro favorites, forgotten gems, and the latest and greatest in interactive entertainment.

The responses from Inverse’s readership were surprisingly diverse, but there was one frontrunner: Resident Evil Village. Of the 1,568 people that Inverse polled, 368 of them (27.8 percent of the total respondents) stated that Capcom’s horror game was their favorite title of 2021 thus far.

It’s not too surprising that Resident Evil Village came out on top. As one of the biggest games so far in 2021, it doesn’t have much AAA competition. Inverse gave the game a 7 out of 10 in our review, explaining that “Village successfully blends the setpiece combat and eerie settings of RE4 with the slow, anxious atmosphere of RE7.”

Resident Evil Village is a game that managed to get mainstream attention, mostly because it featured a villain that the internet fell in love with. Lady Dimitrescu took the internet by storm when she made her debut. Countless memes, images, and posts about her have continued to pop up months after Resident Evil Village’s release.

Resident Evil Village has been a hard game to ignore, so many people have tried it out or are at least aware of it. As such, it’s understandable that it’s currently the game of the year for Inverse’s audience.

While this wasn’t an overwhelming majority of votes, it still had over 200 more votes than the games that came in second (Monster Hunter Rise with 135 votes), third (Hitman 3 with 115 votes), and fourth (Valheim with 105 votes). 287 respondents decided to choose “Other” as their option.

Some of these people wrote in games from previous years like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Ark Survival Evolved, and Call of Duty: Warzone. The weirdest responses include “Absolutely none just pure disappointment” (fair) and “I legit need an anime game to be free” (we recommend Genshin Impact).

The poll results of the game of the year question on Inverse’s survey.

Inverse

While none had an overwhelming majority of support, the presence of live service games like Hitman 3, Monster Hunter Rise, Valheim, and Call of Duty: Warzone can’t be ignored.

Over the past year, many of us were drawn to games to play with friends or sink time into when we were bored, and live service games helped connect us and fill that niche. Resident Evil Village is a single-player game, so those games definitely aren’t going out of style.

Over 4.5 million people have already bought Resident Evil Village. With a multiplayer mode and DLC on the way, don’t expect Resident Evil Village to exit game of the year discussions before the end of 2021.

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