The Best Game Animation of 2021

so i'm always trying to stay on top of the latest game releases but this time i was determined to go the extra mile i was gonna check out the animation in as many 2021 games as possible what a good idea january 2021 me thought to himself this will make that end of the year game animation roundup video so much more thorough and probably easier to make what a good good idea no it turns out that looking at the animation in so many 2021 games has in fact made this the hardest round-up video to write yet because now i am cursed with the knowledge of how many games could potentially be included in this list and narrowing it down has been a nightmare but since i can't go back and unsee all of these games i guess i'm just gonna have to try to squeeze in as many as i can here is a list of some 2021 games that had some great animation in them and just to keep things halfway organized let's try to lump these into categories first up let's kick things off with the games that i've basically already covered by association starting with guilty gear strive i have already sung the praises of grand blue fantasy verses and dragon ball fighterz and i have an entire video dedicated to breaking down this faux 2d animation style slash magic trick this studio has become known for still i love the confidence on display here the animation is still crafted to imitate the look of 2d sprites but this more dynamic approach to lighting and shading these characters suggests to me that they aren't really trying to trick you into thinking you're looking at 2d animation anymore they've already proven they can do that now they can just focus on combining the strengths of 2d and 3d to give guilty gear a hybrid look all of its own and it still looks amazing then we have monster hunter rise i honestly do not know what to say that i have not already said about monster hunter world and iceborn i guess i could mention that these two palicos are drumming in time to the actual area music and the fact that somebody went to the trouble to make that background detail functionally work just makes me very happy but yeah monster hunter continues to have some of the most inventive and appealing boss creature animation in the business and the rest of the animation is loaded with both functional style and goofy completely unnecessary charm in equal measure which is why they will probably keep showing up in these videos then we have final fantasy vii remake intermission this incarnation of yuffie is pitch perfect i love how expressive she is her combat animation looks great and her traversal has all of these wonderful character touches that set her apart from the rest of the playable cast but i already talked about final fantasy 7 remake last year there's more of this remake coming later and i'm eventually going to have to cover this game's animation in depth for that final fantasy series i'm doing anyway so let's just move on to i'm kind of used to gorgeous hand-drawn animation being something of a rare treat in games so i really was not prepared for the quantity 2021 had to offer and from so many different countries from brazil we've got dodgeball academia a dodgeball rpg that is basically as shown in sports anime and i cannot look at it without smiling i love the range of different personalities on display i really love all the way those personalities get expressed on the court even just that little additive bob on the characters when they talk is such a fantastic little touch behind the frame is a small but beautiful little narrative puzzle game from a team out in taiwan the game is obviously not aspiring to nearly the complexity or quantity of character animation in a ghibli film but it does still manage to capture that uniquely studio ghibli vibe of cozy mundanity immediately grounding you with just a few tiny but lovingly observed and animated details from this painter's routine tohu meanwhile is a point-and-click adventure from a team based in poland in this game you play a troll girl thing who lives on a giant fish and can turn into a robot and you must figure out how to solve puzzles that basically operate on wonderland logic it's adorable and a lot of that whimsical charm is largely thanks to both the character and the environment animation it really captures that old-school kid's adventure game energy where half of the fun is just clicking on something to see what sort of animated weirdness will happen then from russia we've got they always run a 2d action platformer with some really stylish traversal and combat animation this character's movement feels exactly right for this sci-fi western bounty hunter genre thing they're going for especially in combination with the dynamic lighting on these character sprites stringing together a bunch of flashy counter-attacks in this game will make you feel extremely cool but the 2d game animation that grabbed me the most this year belonged to chicory a colorful tale i was surprised to see how streamlined the animation in this game actually was when i went back to study it even when all a given character has is just one or two simple animation loops which does appear to be the case for a surprising number of these characters at no point do any of them feel like they lack expressiveness those animation loops do everything they need to the motion complements their design and gives you an instant impression of them and when the game does need to pull out all the stops for some big moment that animation looks fantastic too chicory is just a great example of a game knowing exactly what does and doesn't need custom animation and not wasting the effort where it won't benefit the experience my full compliments to the animator awesome work and technically we're not even out of the 2d category yet because now it's time to talk about as usual the indie scene is not only keeping us well fed but also continuing to prove just how much aesthetic range there is to explore within this retro-inspired art form for example mighty goose is a chaotically silly run and gun and the blend of retro style with modern enhancements works so well the explosions are punched up with full screen distortions and chromatic aberration effects the bosses and the vehicles are all constructed of these independently shuttering pieces that lend them even more mechanical cartoon texture your goose's sprite warps slightly with each jump a little bit of squash and stretch that makes its motion around the screen all the more appealing and come on just look at that run eastward meanwhile is a much less chaotic but still gorgeous love letter to old school jrpg and adventure games the first thing to grab your attention will probably be the environment art actually it'll probably be that traditionally animated intro but once the character animation manages to get a word in there is a lot to like this game has so many characters and they have so many interesting walks and idols and gestures it's an impressive quantity of subtle detail and it had my focus so zoomed in that the surprise moments of larger spectacle genuinely caught me off guard this game is just a real visual treat and i'm very very curious to see what the folks at pix pill will go on to make next also there's webbed a physics-based platformer with a pixel art style and animation cute enough to at least temporarily cure arachnophobia i mean do you hate spiders not this one you don't see look at her go look at those little legs there's a dance button you can dance at any time look look at the dance i just really need all of you to see how cute this game is but there was one showcase of fantastic pixel animation to see this year that very nearly slipped under my radar completely and that was steel assault there are a lot of pixel art games that try to replicate the look of retro classics but it's pretty rare to see one managed to so perfectly capture the essence of those classics to the point that i could have very easily been convinced that this was a re-release of some forgotten retro gem and not a game that literally came out less than a year ago the character animation is great the background animation is gorgeous some of these bosses are pushing alarmingly close to metal slug territory it's just a beautiful looking game and also hard as nails i wish i was good enough at it to see more of the animation i have instantly gone from never having heard of zenovia interactive to being very excited to find out what else they might have of their sleeves but now let's move on to a category that i didn't expect to need because i don't know where else to put these the first uncategorizable entry is the artful escape which i guess is mostly 3d character animation if you really want to be technical about it but thanks to the way everything is staged i cannot for the life of me tell where the 3d ends and the 2d begins the character hands are definitely 3d i can tell you that much for sure but as for the rest i don't know all i can tell you is that i have never seen anything that looks quite like it and i'm always a sucker for art and animation with a flavor this unique i also feel like warioware get it together is worth mentioning in this hybrid category and not even because the animation in the game is incredible in some exciting new way i'm just fascinated trying to imagine how this gets made the game just bombards you with every kind of animated imagery so fast that you don't even have time to fully recognize just how bonkers any individual element is before it's gone like just try to process all the different moving things on each of these screens before the scene changes here are some noses walking on mustache hair someone had that idea and then an animator went and figured out how noses should walk on mustache hair this one's wearing a crown and dancing and that's just one one element on screen for like four seconds i cannot imagine what working on this game is like but i'm definitely impressed but let's move on to our next and much more aaa category narrowing this category down is always a challenge especially knowing just how many intimidatingly skilled artists and engineers it takes to create animation like this for example death loop has some really entertaining moments of first person hand animation that wonderfully complement jason e kelly's voice work i just dropped myself what kind of the world is this why would someone put this whoa wow okay it's cold and weird those are some great line reads and the hand animation is only making them better guardians of the galaxy has some surprisingly charismatic performances that completely caught me off guard i really did not expect this new iteration of these characters to capture that familiar ensemble dynamic so well and for all of the flack they sometimes get the annual crop of big aaa sports titles is always built on some really impressive animation tech just thinking about the problem of how to animate the precise chaos of a full field of simulated players realistically colliding and blocking and tackling each other in a way that looks remotely correct to a football fan makes me start to feel a little dizzy but there were a few standout examples that i did want to highlight starting with destruction all-stars [Applause] this one deserves a special mention not just for its generally great gameplay animation work but also just because of the brilliant choice to have all of these colorful characters express varying flavors of disappointment when you select them and then back out to pick somebody else nothing makes me happier than seeing some clever team find a great opportunity for characterization that wouldn't even occur to most of us i was also rather impressed by life estranged true colors not because the use of performance capture is groundbreaking in any way at least half of the other games in this category are using it too this is not new technology but it's not that often that you get to see such a great before and after demonstration of the difference that technology can make the original life is strange had some solid motion capture work and the sequel made a lot of big improvements to the animation of faces but when your game is all about character emotions and how your character reacts to emotion being able to capture each actor's body face and vocal performance simultaneously with all of those natural subtleties and their shifting expressions has an enormous impact but if there was one game with a character performance that truly grabbed people's attention in 2021 it was resident evil village i've been giving the resident evil games a mention in most of these annual videos and they deserve the recognition but resident evil village unexpectedly went and gave us something extremely rare there just are not a lot of truly show-stealing villain performances in video games oh we've got great villains for days every possible flavor lovable creepy theatrical you name it that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about the kind of on-screen villain acting performance that truly entrances people that is so electric and captivating to watch that they steal every shot they're in gaming doesn't really have many of those i'm trying really hard to think of some candidates and i can only come up with like one or two but given the response she received from trailer footage alone i think lady dimitrisk might be a strong contender she and her daughters managed to steal the show so effectively that i still sometimes forget how small their segment of the game actually is my compliments to everybody involved in lady dmitry's design as well as the performers and directors and the animators who put these scenes together this is some real lightning in a bottle y'all managed to capture i also feel like i should at least mention the matrix awakens i realize it's a tech demo and a largely non-interactive one but this push epic has been making to serve both the film and game industries simultaneously with their unreal engine is a fascinating development for the world of game dev technology i mean this one game engine is currently in widespread use by triple a studios indie developers and hollywood productions that is new and pretty wild and i'm really excited to see what comes of this over the next five or ten years and now for our final category [Music] always a personal favorite of mine and as with the rest of these categories an absolute nightmare to narrow down i mean look at what we're dealing with here metroid dred's incarnation of samus has some really nice gameplay movement with posing so strong that it reads clearly no matter how tiny samus might be in frame plus there's that really inventive traversal style on the emmy units and some fun spectacle sequences in boss fights just rock solid stuff or what about ruined king these combat animations are gorgeous the sense of weight the contrast between characters the attention to arcs and posing league of legends is a game full of top-notch character animation and it makes me very happy that the combat in this spin-off lives up to that established reputation and then there are all the anime style games that weren't made by arc system works i was a bit lukewarm on a lot of the animation in games like demon slayer and tales of arise but when it's time for some sort of ultimate attack the choreographed spectacle these games throw at you is kind of impossible to ignore and i do realize that the two games featured in the great ace attorney chronicles have been out in japan for years but now that they are finally available here i'm including them anyway and it sure is great seeing how much they've been honing this approach to hyper-limited animation i did a video on this topic already but i'm still just astonished at how much personality this series is able to convey using so few animations then there's psychonauts 2 a game i still even after finishing it can't quite believe is actually real there is so much entertaining personality on display here and this distinctly double fine animation style always brings out the most of each character's off-kilter design the animation is zany enough to squeeze the most comedy possible out of every scene but also sincere enough to bring genuine pathos and heartbreak out of what turned out to be some surprisingly emotional moments but if we are going to talk about top tier stylized 3d animation in 2021 we are going to talk about ratchet and clank rift apart insomniac games is a studio that invests heavily in animation tech and talent and that investment continues to deliver results the gameplay is gorgeous the cinematic performances are so full of cartoon appeal and the amount of polish on display here is a little bit out of control whoever is animating nefarious is clearly having a grand time and my special compliments to everyone involved in the creation of newcomers rivet and kit because darn these two are lovable if the next game in the series happens to star these two i will not complain but speaking of startling levels of polish that brings me to kana bridge of spirits this particular style of 3d animation which usually gets labeled the pixar or disney style for better or worse might be everywhere in western animated films but it's not one we see very often in games and for good reason it can be really time consuming to do it this well granted you're not going to see quite the same level of technical polish from kana as you would see in ratchet and clank especially on the gameplay side of things but still this is an impressive looking game and the animation on these little rock creatures is almost painfully cute i do wish that kana herself had a bit more personality her performance tends to feel pretty one note a lot of the time but even so it is hard to cling to that sort of nitpick when the game makes room for stuff like this i know that all games are going out of their way to let you pet the dog lately but letting you park and play with your little pick minions like this in a variety of ways is really raising the bar how can you not love this kana bridge of spirits is a heck of an opening statement from ember lab and their co-developers at sparks and i'm very excited to see what else they might have in them but as wonderful as this sort of stylish and highly polished animation can be it isn't right for every game and this brings me to the last game i want to talk about today say no more say no more is a short little comedy romp about learning to stand up for yourself and i am not joking when i tell you that of all of the incredible animation i've shown you today this might be my 2021 favorite now is the animation dead simple absolutely many would probably even call it bad animation but i am here to tell you that if this animation looked more detailed or polished more traditionally quote good i have a strong suspicion that the game's comedy would not land nearly as well which means the animation in this game is actually perfect and make no mistake this simple animation is more precisely crafted than it probably looks the snappy comic posing the way every character walks around with this stiff strut the attention to comedic timing it's genuinely some of the funniest game animation i think i've ever seen just go and play this game for yourself and see what i mean it's short and delightful and i think after making it through 2021 you deserve it there there's all the games and i still probably missed some and you know what i know i did even after all this effort i'm still somehow going to discover another 2021 game with amazing animation within minutes of uploading this video so if you know of any post them down below so i can just start kicking myself now i hope you have a lovely day and that this year is better than the last low bar to clear i realize but still now if you'll excuse me i've got a final fantasy animation video to get back to i will have that and many many more ready for you soon so until then bye [Music] you

Channel: New Frame Plus

Views: 173,264

Keywords: 2021, retrospective, favorite, best, list, Monster Hunter Rise, Dodgeball Academia, TOHU, Chicory, Mighty Goose, Eastward, Webbed, Steel Assault, The Artful Escape, Deathloop, Destruction AllStars, Life is Strange, Resident Evil Village, RE8, Metroid Dread, Ruined King, Psychonauts 2, Ratchet & Clank, Rift Apart, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Say No More, animation, breakdown, New Frame +, Animation, Game Animation, Animator, Daniel Floyd, Dan, Extra Frames, Extra Credits, Extra History

Id: wH1MqyC5JR0

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/carnaxcce]

New Frame Plus makes consistently excellent content. His ongoing series on the animation of final fantasy is way more interesting than I expected it to be

[u/deusfaux]

wow, rare top notch video on video game content not catering to lowest common denominators or composed of bad rants. thanks for posting

[u/JMTolan]

If you like this, don't forget to check out Playframe, where Dan and his friends do Lets Plays! They're definitely intended to be entertainment, but he definitely does some analysis as part of his play, and he's also just gotten pretty good at knowing how to be entertaining while playing, and also knowing how to edit to minimize downtime and maximize enjoyment. It's a really great channel.

[u/booshorama]

I just checked his channel yesterday wondering if he'd uploaded anything! Seems he's bitten off a lot with this video and also the FF series. I'm getting Sufjan Stevens vibes from the FF series where I honestly doubt he'll finish it. It's just sooooo much work over a long time that he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Regardless, love his analysis and truly hope he does finish the FF series.

[u/TheTallestDwarf]

How didn't I know about that indie game at the end, Say No! More? It looks hilarious! I agree that sometimes simple doesn't means easier or worse, and some games benefit from not having the insane levels of detail that some AAA go for.