5. Microsoft Flight Simulator (Xbox Series X|S)

It made it onto our Game of the Year list in its PC form last year, but this time around it's back in its Series X|S incarnation, a brilliant console edition of a quite frankly astounding achievement.

Yes, number six on our list this year is Microsoft Flight Simulator, a superlative, in many ways ground-breaking experience, that's just as fun to spend time in for virtual tourists who just want to fly over their actual real world house as it is for die-hard aviation fanatics.

Fraser summed it up best in his review:

"Microsoft Flight Simulator is nothing short of revolutionary, featuring an almost impossibly large, authentic and living open world that's bound to take your breath away. Asobo and Xbox Game Studios have delivered a truly special entry in this historic franchise, and it's only going to get better in the years to come." Amen.

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4. It Takes Two (Xbox Series X|S)

Hazelight Studios have had an absolute banger of a year and it's been absolutely deserved. It Takes Two picked up The Game Awards 2021 Game of the Year just a few weeks back and boy oh boy does it deserve it.

Genuinely funny, thrilling, nerve-wracking and actually full-on emotional at points (we didn't cry, you did!) this is a spectacular co-operative adventure that genuinely never puts a foot wrong. It delivers on handling tricky subject matter, delivers on a non-stop rollercoaster of excellent set-pieces and totally delivers on successfully implementing its co-op mechanics so that you and your partner will absolutely need to work and grow together in order to see it all through. As we said in our review:

"From scene-to-scene, you could be (spoilers!) bouncing on frogs, skating down ice, engaging in third-person combat with makeshift weapons, creating literal music with virtual samplers, reversing time, playing a freakin' fully-fledged dungeon crawler, and much, much more. That's the genius of It Takes Two - you're never stuck doing the same thing for very long, and somehow, it never manages to run out of ideas."

A Way Out was good, It Takes Two is near-perfection.

3. Psychonauts 2 (Xbox Series X|S)

Tim Schafer's Double Fine returned this year with a sequel to their 2005 cult classic, Psychonauts, and let's face it, they absolutely nailed pretty much everything they set out to achieve with this one.

Psychonauts 2 is easily one of the cleverest, most inventive and just downright fun games that released this year (or any other year, for that matter). As we said in our review, "after 16 years, the expectations for the sequel were so high it felt as though they were impossible to meet. We don't know how they did it, but the wizards at Double Fine not only met them but smashed through them with ease."

Yes, there's definitely a bit of noughties clunk to the platforming here, but the story is so well-written, the world is so carefully crafted and expanded upon that which we experienced in the original, and the whole thing is full of so much child-like wonder and genuine emotion, that it's easy to overlook these minor mechanical issues. Psychonauts 2 is an absolute delight that fully deserves its place right up near the very top of this list.

2. Forza Horizon 5 (Xbox Series X|S)

One of the most exquisite looking games currently available on any gaming platform, that also happens to be just about as good as arcade racing games get? Yeah, that'll be Forza Horizon 5.

Playground Games' latest may not do anything particularly new for the franchise, but it doesn't really need to, this is their open world racer's exquisite gameplay loops honed to absolute perfection and plonked down in the very best, and most spectacular, setting that the series has seen so far. An endless array of wonderfully flashy sports cars, tons of events, seamless online functionality and constant, almost overwhelming, bells, whistles and unlockables see every moment you spend with this game feel like some sort of crazy, car-based sugar rush.

You could definitely argue that the next Horizon entry needs to start to shake things up lest we all grow a little tired of the whole thing, and we'd find it hard to disagree, but for now this is the pinnacle of fast, flashy, arcade racing action on Xbox and a game that fully deserves its place in our number two slot this year.

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1. Halo Infinite (Xbox Series X|S)

Well, here we are at our number one pick for Pure Xbox's Game of the Year 2021, and is anyone out there in the least bit surprised at what's snatched victory?

Halo Infinite has been the big one that we've all been waiting impatiently for this year and 343 Industries went and absolutely smashed it, taking the series' spectacular combat and honing it to perfection then successfully fusing the narrative-driven gameplay we know and love with a brand new open world setting that gives players a great big playground in which to indulge their Halo fantasies. As we said in our review:

"Halo Infinite feels like a big step forward for the franchise, a slick shift into the open world arena that manages to strike a fine balance between the traditional narrative-driven Halo of old and all-new levels of freedom and emergent gameplay."

We absolutely loved our time with this one, its combat feels perfect, the story - while it does trail off a little towards the end - is pretty much everything we wanted and expected, and the whole thing is just so much genuinely hilarious fun that it's hard to stop jumping in for just one more blast around Zeta Halo.

The multiplayer side of things too, even with that irksome progress system, is just sublime stuff that's reinvigorated our love for jumping into battle online, something we'd genuinely grown tired of over the past few years. Put all of this together, that great big open world campaign, and a superb multiplayer component that will only grow and improve over time, and you've got a great big meaty package here that feels worthy of one of gaming's most enduring icons.

Welcome back Master Chief!

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