The Best Switch Games of 2021

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – January 2, 2022

Which Nintendo Switch games impressed professional reviewers the most during the past year? We rank the best-reviewed Switch games released between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021 by Metascore. Games must have at least 7 reviews from professional critics to be eligible for inclusion. (All scores listed here are from January 1, 2022.)

5 of 14 photo by Nintendo

88 Metroid Dread

(#9) It may not be the long-awaited Metroid Prime 4 (which is likely still years away), but Metroid Dread is the first console game in Nintendo's 35-year-old Metroid franchise in over a decade (and the first new Metroid game of any kind since 2017's Metroid: Samus Returns). And Samus returns yet again in Dread, an action-filled 2D (actually, 2.5D) side-scroller that is meant as a direct sequel to 2002's excellent Metroid Fusion and which tasks you with evading a group of deadly Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier (or "EMMI") robots.

“A decades-in-the-making celebration of 2D Metroid that’s unafraid to take risks by stretching into horror, Metroid Dread lives up to both halves of its name and serves as a satisfying cap to a story started in 1986.” —NME

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