Game of the Year: 2020

So, coming off my best of the decade list I’ve decided to bring it back and do my best games of 2020. I’m not sure if this will become a yearly thing or not, especially given that I can be late to the party on a lot of games, but at least this year I played a lot of the major releases of the year, so I figured I’d talk about them and figure out which reigns supreme.

Quick note: At least for this list, I’m splitting “Didn’t Like” and “Didn’t Finish.” Frankly, probably should have done that earlier, I didn’t have a game that I really didn’t like every year, so it felt worth grouping them up until now. This year, however, I have two big ones to get off my chest. So without further ado:

Didn’t Play:

• Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2
• Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
• Maneater
• Exit the Gungeon
• Battletoads
• Gears Tactics
• Final Fantasy VII Remake
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Resident Evil 3 Remake
• Surgeon Simulator 2
• Carrion
• Fallguys: Ultimate Knockout
• Nioh 2
• Destroy All Humans!
• Streets of Rage 4
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
• Valorant
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon
• Bugsnax
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
• Marvel’s Avengers
• Spiritfarer
• Half Life: Alyx
• Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time
• Empire of Sin
• Spelunky 2

The main ones here I want to get to at some point are Curse of the Moon 2 and Miles Morales. With potential for Gears Tactics, Kakarot, FF7 Remake, Age of Calamity, Spiritfarer, and Exit the Gungeon.

Didn’t Finish:

Cyberpunk 2077 – Hoo boy was this a botched launch. I could have justified putting this in the “Didn’t Like” category since I didn’t like what I played, but I played so little of it that I figure I should give it a fair shot once CDPR fixes everything. For those out of the loop, Cyberpunk 2077 was a hotly anticipated open world RPG from renowned developer CD Projekt Red (of Witcher fame). It’s been in development for the better part of a decade, people were expecting it to look really nice, people expected it to have all the bells and whistles that come with a CDPR game, and it had Keanu Reeves in it! Who I honestly don’t care that much about. Anyways, the game released and the last gen versions barely worked. They were filled with game breaking bugs, a horrendous frame rate, terrible texture pop-in, and it crashed a lot. Even PCs weren’t handling it especially well, and only the highest end PCs experienced an experience mostly free of issues. Though even from what I played I didn’t care too much for the gameplay. But we’ll see what happens once they finally fix it to the point of playability. Honestly, since I plan to get a PS5 at some point and the PS4 version of Cyberpunk includes a free upgrade to the PS5 version, I might just wait for that version. Provided, of course, that it actually works.

Didn’t Like:

Paper Mario: The Origami King – Ugh. This one. Look, I’ve made no secret of my love for Mario RPGs, and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is one of my all-time favorite games period. So when a new Paper Mario comes out, I have a pretty high bar for it to meet. I’ve missed a few of the more recent ones, but I saw trailers for Origami King and had hopes that they were returning to the roots of the franchise with badges, companions, great settings, unique paper-crafted worlds, and an interesting new ring-based system. Unfortunately, this game is a failure on nearly every level. The story is boring, for a start. The villains sucked (the evil and creepy Origami Peach from the trailers that I thought would play a big role in the game didn’t, only really showing up at the very beginning and very end of the game) and in general, they played the story very safe. Save princess by getting (or, in this case, destroying) 5 mcGuffins. While early Mario RPGs followed this formula, they always found a way to mix things up and make the individual arcs interesting. Origami King fails in that regard and basically every individual arc in this game is completely forgettable, filled with enemies that leave no lasting impact (almost all enemies are either origami versions of old mario foes, or literal goddamn office supplies. Seriously). The return of the “badge” system falls flat on its face. There is no strategy to using these badges. You just equip the strongest ones all the time (in fact, the RPG elements are hugely downplayed in this game). The companions are a joke. There are only FOUR of them in the entire game, they’re locked to use only in certain chapters (with several chapters having none at all), they barely help in combat (with no special attacks and in fact can’t be controlled at all, only occasionally attacking enemies if you didn’t kill them all in one round), and only ONE of them has an ability that can be used outside of combat at all. Also, they don’t have much of a personality, aren’t fun, they’re not funny, and what few character arcs they attempt fall flat on their faces (I won’t spoil anything, but the first companion attempts to tug at your heart strings by ripping a giant plot hole in the Paper Mario canon, and then later the game basically makes a complete mockery of what was supposed to be a somber moment). Combat, meanwhile, is a complete mess. The ring system effectively turns this game from an RPG into a puzzle game and a rather bad one at that. It’s basically the same puzzle over and over again. And when you get it right it basically just skips the entire battle. I didn’t even get hit by an enemy until I was like 3 hours into the game. The boss battles mix things up a bit, but each boss battle plays out very similar to all the others. So you really only have two kinds of battles: normal fights, and boss fights. Oh, and some token overworld combat which is all right but nothing to write home about. The game just is completely lacking in any kind of gameplay variety or any kind of tactical combat, which makes it EXTREMELY boring and tedious. And the puzzles are also bad. Most of them just some variation of “find a thing and bring it here” or, worse, something like a sliding block puzzle. A puzzle the devs were so confident was a good idea that they gave you the option to pay some coins to skip it entirely. Also, there’s a point later in the game where you literally just have to make a random guess or get a game over. This game makes me sick, especially knowing that Paper Mario is in the hands of a group of howler monkeys now.

The Last of Us Part 2 – This is going to poke some people the wrong way, but I really hated this one. Okay, okay. Maybe “hate” is a strong word. But it was a very poor follow-up to the original. Without spoiling much, it does very little to build off the ending of the original, old characters have their personalities radically changed for the worse, new characters are boring, the gameplay is almost a direct copy-paste of the first game’s (though the AI does seem improved, which I appreciate). There’s also this random 5 hour epilogue tacked on to the end of the game that seems hilariously unnecessary. You could have easily reworked the end of the game proper and saved players having to slog through this really dumb chunk of the game. Another thing that really strikes me as a problem with this game: the reduced scale. One of the big problems Dragon Age 2 had coming off of Origins is that it went from this huge, continent-spanning epic down to a small story set in a single city, which makes for a very flat follow up. The same is true here. The first Last of Us was a country-crossing epic that takes us to tons of different locals with further diversity since the game took place over the course of a year, meaning you got to see all four different seasons pass throughout the game. Which led to varied encounters, visuals, and enemies. Here we get most of the game taking place in a single city in a single season, which is an incredible let down from what we had in the previous game. I also found the boss battles and set pieces a lot less interesting, the new characters aren’t nearly as likeable or memorable, the arcs chosen for the returning characters are just baffling, and the whole story just boils down to a by the numbers revenge story with little to offer aside from the beaten to death moral of “Revenge is bad, mmkay?” One other thing worth noting: the pacing. The game’s pacing is just all over the place, which is really what takes the plot from mediocre to an absolute train wreck. There’s this plot twist thing in the middle of the game that had the potential to be cool, but NaughtyDog just did everything in their power to fuck it up. Basically, right when you think you’re getting to the climax of the game, the story resets to a few days earlier and forces you to slog through another 10-15 hours of gameplay before you actually get to see how the climax resolves. It kills the pace of the game, and while the plot from the second half on is somewhat better than the first half, (mainly just because the first half is that bad, and at least the second half has a chance to kind of do its own thing, leading me to believe that this game probably should have had nothing to do with the first game and just covered different survivors in a different part of the world entirely) it feels like it should really enhance the ending, when in reality it just doesn’t. As I touched on when I talked about the epilogue, the ending sucks. Everything gets resolved in a really unsatisfying way and makes me hope that there isn’t a Part 3 to this nightmare. It just seems like almost everything is a step down compared to the first game. I definitely had moments where I had fun in the game (such as an experimental part where the game had a very open-ended level where you could explore a larger area at your leisure. Unfortunately it’s the ONLY time in the entire game that you can do this), and the core gameplay is definitely solid (since it was ripped straight from the first game), but overall it was just a huge, huge let down.

John Wick Hex – So I watched John Wick for the first time this year, and decided to also try his new game. And… it really didn’t do much for me. I love turn-based games, but this one is just annoying. It has very limited mechanics and decided that infinitely respawning enemies was a good idea. Worst of all, there aren’t many opportunities to really feel like a badass action hero in this game. Frequently I didn’t feel like John Wick, I felt like some schmuck who was in over his head.

The Good:

XCOM: Chimera Squad – This one really came out of nowhere. Firaxis stealth-dropped a new XCOM game, and I immediately thought I had a GotY contender like the other XCOMs. Unfortunately not. While the game is decent, it really plays more like XCOM Junior in almost every way. Smaller encounters, a smaller campaign and upgrade trees, no way to customize your soldiers, much easier overall, and a much simpler story than I wanted. Granted, they smartly didn’t try to sell this as a big XCOM game. It’s a smaller (and appropriately much cheaper game at only $20, or $10 if you bought it in the first couple of weeks) experience, and the devs are upfront with that. I do wish that they had built more of a story around your squad. I mean, if they weren’t planning on doing that, then what was the point of taking away our ability to customize soldiers and rename them? Well, either way, Chimera Squad is a decent bite-sized XCOM experience, but not in the running for the number one spot this year.

Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics – I know that it seems like a bit of a joke to add this, but this really was a fun collection of games. It’s great for parties and I had a lot of fun playing it with friends during quarantine. There’s a lot of variety and while some games seem like they were added just because they were easy to program, the sheer number of games means that you’ll definitely find some stuff you’ll like. It has decent tutorials and instructions, options to play alone, and a few bonus games thrown in like a piano for some reason. It’s no masterpiece, but still a fun little game collection.

Murder by Numbers – This was a game that I thought was going to check a lot of boxes for me and scratch several itches of mine. Picross (which I’ve recently become addicted to) mixed with Phoenix Wright? How can it go wrong? Well, while the game is definitely entertaining, it falls well short of what I hoped for. While the nonograms are fun to solve, they pale in comparison to the court sessions of Phoenix Wright, which were both interesting brain teasers and linked directly to the story. In Murder by Numbers, once you solve the Nonograms, the mystery just kind of… solves itself. Plus, the overarching story is fine, but nothing particularly interesting. I think it missed the opportunity to go REALLY over the top like Phoenix Wright. It’s still funny and decently well written, but misses the mark by a bit for me. A sequel was teased though, so hopefully we’ll get some more interesting mysteries and over the top plot in the next one.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – I had a lot of hype for this game and played it a LOT in quarantine. And I liked it! Though I didn’t get quite as far into it as I imagined. Nintendo decided to build this AC game in a different direction and start the game small before expanding it over the next year with small updates. Adding the art exhibit to the museum, old characters make a return, adding the events, and while that’s not a bad idea on paper (and especially stops players from abusing Time Travel to see everything in the first week), it did make the base game feel fairly bare bones, missing tons of features that were present in New Leaf from day one. Though I imagine that eventually this will be the most feature complete and most customizable Animal Crossing of all, its slow start makes me hesitate to put it among the best this year.

SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE – I liked the original SUPERHOT’s concept, but felt that it fell short in two major fields: its length relative to its price, and the fact that the story was pretty far up its own ass. MCD fixes pretty much all of those problems. For one, this game was free to anyone who already owned SUPERHOT, and even if you have to buy it separately, it has much more content than the original, since it’s basically a roguelike. The story is also much more subdued and it has a much better sense of humor than the original. Like I said, the game now plays like a roguelike where you run through bundles of levels while getting various bonuses along the way. While the environments do repeat themselves a fair bit, they’re now littered with tools to use, making the combat much more hectic and fun. You’re almost always in arms reach of a weapon, and that makes all the difference.

Deep Rock Galactic – It’s basically Left 4 Dead in space with dwarves. And if that concept hasn’t already sold you then I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you. I’ve been slacking on playing games with friends in the last couple years, and DRG really got me back into that groove. It’s a procedurally generated game which presents its own problems, but also leads to quite varied maps that feel different and tactical in their own ways. And there’s a lot of different enemy types, mission types, several regions, classes, unlockable gear, cosmetics, a really cool hub area with lots of fun activities including tons of different kinds of beer to brew… this is just a great example of Early Access done right, and it led to a fantastic finished product.

The Best:

Ghost of Tsushima – This is the Japanese Assassin’s Creed game that Ubisoft has been too chicken to make. Except it’s not an Assassin’s Creed game. Which thank fuck for, because it means that Ubisoft hasn’t filled it to the brim with Microtransactions. Sucker Punch Productions (of Infamous and Sly Cooper fame) did a wonderful job bringing Japan to life in this game. Beautiful vistas as far as the eye can see, period accurate world and character design, and thankfully even got a full asian cast to voice the English track. But despite that, Ghost of Tsushima also knows where to end realism for the sake of gameplay. Does it make sense that your horse is immortal and can be summoned instantly anywhere? No, but it does make sense mechanically (something that games like Red Dead Redemption 2 don’t understand). But on to the meat of the game, there’s a lot of variety here. Climbing, sneaking, combat, story, pretty much everything works spot on. Not only that, but the game smartly not only lets you pick if you want to tackle battles head-on or stealthy, and doesn’t lock you into either. If you want to challenge one camp head on, and silently assassinate the next, the game is perfectly okay with you taking that approach. It’s constantly rewarding you throughout with character upgrades, new gear, weapon upgrades, and lots of different clothing options (as well as lots of color palettes for your gear, including your sword, bows, and horse saddles). There’s really not much to complain about with this package, except that it can get a little tedious towards the end. Even so, the story is surprisingly strong and keeps you going throughout the entire adventure. Just a rock solid title and feather in the hat of Playstation’s exclusives lineup.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps – This is the last game I finished up prior to releasing this list. Didn’t seem appropriate to do this without fully experiencing this game, given how much praise I have showered the original with. And does this live up to the original? Yes! And… also kind of no? It’s definitely a great game, otherwise it wouldn’t be this high up. In particular, the visuals (which were already one of the greatest strengths of the original) have been kicked up to the next level. Each area is so visually distinct from one another and the watercolor beauty of this world is just on another level. I truly believe this is one of the best looking games ever made, despite being made in Unity (art style and design count far more than realism when it comes to graphics). And the music is still top notch. While it still keeps the main theme of the original, it manages to take a few new spins on it, as well as add its own style. The gameplay is just as flowing and fun as it ever was, making this sound like a slam dunk for Game of the Year. But here we are. So what’s holding it back? A few things. The game tries a somewhat non-linear style that could have worked, but I think ultimately holds it back and makes the difficulty curve really weird, as well as making some mechanics one-offs when they could have been featured more in the game. Additionally, the game gives you SO MANY new tools that you get a little flustered and confused. You have like four primary movement tools with half mapped to one bumper and half mapped to the other, turning the gameplay into something of a Simon-Says memory game, trying to remember which button to press for which hazard. There are plenty of times when you mean to lash on to a grapple point and instead yeet yourself into the void with a Dash. The story also feels a bit lighter than the original, and while I really hoped that the new character Ku would have more of a prominent role in the story (and gameplay!), she unfortunately does not. Also, the new villain Shriek is very similar to the last villain, Kuro and while there’s definitely an attempt to make this villain interesting, Kuro just ends up being far scarier with her simpler design, and far more memorable. Though some good news is that the game has a very strong ending (whereas Blind Forest had a somewhat poor ending). There’s a lot more, but I’ll just keep it to that. The point is that while it falters at times, the core formula is still solid, the game is somehow more gorgeous than ever before, and it’s still damn fun.

Doom Eternal – I had high hopes for this one, and it didn’t disappoint. Mostly. Doom is back and more brutal than ever. Just like the first game, in a matter of moments after starting up, you’re thrown right into the action, and the game loves to constantly raise the stakes. The game is faster, has more weapons, more mobility, more secrets, more homages to the original, and it’s just a hell of a good time. One issue it does has is that bafflingly it focuses on story a lot more, which seems in stark contrast to the original game where the Doom Slayer just couldn’t be bothered to give a single fuck about anything that wasn’t directly related to murdering demons. But now there are huge swaths of the game where everything is ground to a halt so we can get some seriously unneeded story. But the parts that are cool are still cool as hell. And Doom Slayer still has a very… straightforward method of problem solving that I can’t help but appreciate the hell out of. On top of that, you can unlock the first two DOOM games within Eternal, and there’s a really excellent home base that’s fun to explore and fill with all sorts of bonus collectibles like figurines and soundtracks of old ID Software games. There’s really not much else to say except: Rip and Tear!

Monster Train – 2020’s Slay the Spire. I put a LOT of hours into this one and plan to put a lot more in. The developers are also very invested in continuing to support the game with balance changes and expansions, and so far the game has already evolved a lot even with no paid DLC (though one of those dropped a little before I published this article and I have yet to play it). It’s a different take on the DBG Roguelike formula and actually has something of a tower defense aspect to it. By building all three of your train’s levels into the ultimate meat grinder, you hope to whittle down and kill the waves of enemies before they can get to your Pyre Shard and destroy it or maybe instead turn one room into the ultimate doorstop to brick wall any angel that has the misfortune to enter. The story is minimal, but in a roguelike that’s perfectly acceptable (and pretty par for the course). What’s really great here is the sheer amount of customization. Five different factions to pick from, and each run has you picking a primary and secondary clan (you’ll get to pick cards from both, but you get the primary clan’s champion as well, which is an incredibly powerful and critical unit). Tons of artifacts, random events, enemies, bosses, and upgrades to pick from. Best of all, since release there have already been a bunch of free updates released, which has added exiled clans (alternative champions and starter cards for each clan), mod support, new bosses, mutators, and more. And the team has been great at interacting with the community, getting feedback from them and incorporating them into balance changes and bug fixes. Plus daily challenges, a multiplayer mode, 25 covenant ranks to play through, expert challenges, and more. The past few years has shown an explosive growth in the DBG genre, and Monster Train might just be my favorite yet. Which logically might mean this game takes my game of the year. And for a while, I thought it had that title locked down. That is, until I played a certain other roguelike…

Best of 2020:

It’s weird, you’d expect 2020 to be a pretty poor year for gaming with the pandemic, but I guess since most of the titles coming out this year were mostly done, they could still come out as scheduled. And that made for a really strong running for the best game of the year. Actually, it was a bit of a dead heat for a while between Monster Train, Doom Eternal, and Ghost of Tsushima (and if I finished Ori earlier, that’d be in the mix as well), with Monster Train pushing a bit ahead of the pack and looked like it would take it. However, despite how many great games came out this year, I recently played one that just blew them all out of the water.

Hades – To be honest, when I saw this game being announced at E3 and being pushed by Nintendo as one of the Nindies, I was pretty neutral towards it. It was made by Supergiant games, who made Bastion, a game I like, and they have a pretty good reputation. Even so, I ignored Hades when it released, only to watch the internet blow up around me with people singing its praises. So I decided to give it a shot, and goddamn, sometimes the masses are just right. Hades is, and I can’t believe I’m about to say this, probably the best Roguelike I’ve ever played in my life. And I just finished a list where I rated FTL as one of my favorite games of the last decade. And I’ve got tons of others that I hold in very high regard: Rogue Legacy, The Binding of Isaac, Dead Cells, Dicey Dungeons, Synthetik… hell, all these Deck Building Games I’ve been singing the praises of are Roguelikes too! And Hades is better than all of them. What sets it apart? In one word: polish. Hades has more polish than maybe any game I’ve ever played, including Triple-A titles. Every single line is voiced, there are countless character interactions and contextual lines for so many little things (such as Hypnos, who has unique dialogue he will say after you die depending on what enemy killed you in the previous run; in fact, I believe he has multiple lines for some, if not all of the enemies). There are six different weapons to use each with four different forms. Around two dozen trinkets, half a dozen active trinkets, difficulty modifiers, unlockable cosmetics, character relationships… it’s just insane the amount of detail that went into this game. And each little detail just adds to the overall package, making it seem that much more authentic and complete. Is it a little excessive? Maybe, but not in the same way as Ubisoft casually dropping a million of the same objectives into one of the sandbox games. It feels like every little thing added in Hades is unique and adds something, no matter how small, to the overall experience. And the actual runs themselves are just great. Lots of enemy variety, lots of different build variety, random events, bosses with different forms to keep them varied, mini-bosses, and even a couple of secret bosses! There are quests, each character you meet has their own backstory that will progress as you talk to them and give them gifts, Zagreus has lots of various quips and inside jokes with characters that evolves over the course of the game (for instance, not to spoil anything, he gives one of the bosses a nickname at one point, after which point the bosses’ health bar will have the nickname over it instead of its real name in all subsequent runs). The writing… oh man the writing. It’s funny, it’s touching, it’s deep, and it’s a damn good modern telling of a classic mythological tale. Doing a modern video game retelling of mythology isn’t anything new, but Hades might just be the best update of them all. And seeing how Supergiant reimagined these classic gods is a fun journey in its own right. The party bro Dionysus, the “Cool Uncle” Poseidon, Aphrodite the flirt, Ares the hardass… each of them was brought to life in a convincing and incredibly fun way, making every single one of the memorable in what should feel like a tightly packed cast. The music is also just excellent. Nothing gets you in the mood to kill hellspawn like the rock and metal tracks that punctuate every moment of Hades’ gameplay. And the visuals are just as striking, if not more so. I’ve said before that art style always beats out technical specs in games visuals, and this is as good of a case for that as I’ve ever seen. The game has a wide color pallet and its visual style is incredibly striking. Each area is very visually distinct from one another, character models and portraits are detailed and match the writing behind the portraits perfectly, and it seems like every little animation or piece of artwork in the game has incredible attention to detail.

I’ll be honest, I can keep gushing about this game for hours. There’s still TONS I haven’t touched on, and despite all of that, I have no trouble calling Hades the best game of 2020 be a healthy margin. Frankly, this game may have broken into my all time Top 10. It really is that good. If you haven’t yet, try out Hades and go to hell in style.