Hades - It feels unnatural for me to be part of what looks to be a budding consensus, and almost makes me want to second-guess myself. But I’ve been shouting the praises of roguelikes and their modern diaspora for ages now (including votes for Into the Breach and Shiren the Wanderer as my top picks in previous Quarterlies), so there’s no bandwagon I’d be happier to be a part of. Everyone has covered all the reasons Hades is so good, from the kinetic combat, to the varied builds to experiment with, to the perfectly pitched difficulty curve, to the story and aesthetics that really add an extra layer of sauce to the gameplay foundation.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps - One of the most enjoyable sets of movement mechanics in a platformer. So much fun to fling yourself all over the screen through these absolutely gorgeous environments.
Streets of Rage 4 - Updates the classic formula with a judicious bit of rewarding extra nuance in the controls and movesets, and puts them to use in a set of levels that look and sound great.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales - As with Ori a couple slots up, fast, acrobatic traversal and combat always put a smile on my face. Add to that a theme park of an open world and a surprisingly effective story that didn’t outstay its welcome, and it made for an experience that was more than the sum of its parts.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons - I struggle with where to rank this. Easily my number-one in terms of hours, but that’s mostly due to being along for the ride as my kids and wife got fully obsessed with it. Repetitive chores, obnoxiously clunky interface/multiplayer, and shallow sandbox keep me from loving it as a game, but it definitely came along at the perfect moment when its soothing escape was most needed, and its sheer omnipresence within my home and bringing so much happiness to my family mean it deserves representation.
Honorable Mentions:
Demon’s Souls - I probably had more fun playing this than some of the games on my actual list… but it was already my personal GotY in 2009, and I can’t quite bring myself to give it a vote just on the basis of the (admittedly excellent) visual upgrade.
Astro’s Playroom - Just a delightful little appetizer.
Death Stranding - Equal parts sublime, banal, and WTF. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, but I keep coming back nonetheless.
Immortals: Fenyx Rising and Ghost of Tsushima - I could see either of these rising much higher, but I’m less than 10 hours in on both.
Nowhere Prophet, Monster Train, One Step From Eden, Spelunky 2, Crown Trick, and Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate - Did I mention I love roguelikes?
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim I thought this was all anime nonsense, and yet my critiques of the story’s events or gimme’s were addressed by the end. I really appreciated that consistency and attention to detail. Playing battles on the stepped-up difficulty was helpful to force me to vary things in a couple tough spots. Many abilities found new use over time, though my powerful favorites remained satisfyingly strong. Having to play story missions to unlock further battles actually got me interested in the story. By the end, my story progress was getting stuck on going back to do battles, and I had all 13 different characters separate in my mind.
Hades Huh, played you twice, you little varmit. Even so, I need to avoid everything early access. It just gets better at release.
Thirsty Sword Lesbians Table-top RPG who’s rules released as part of its Kickstarter, though it hasn’t officially fulfilled yet. It’s warm, adventurous, and focused on the emotional journey of delivering justice while searching for one’s identity.
Fae Tactics Squad tactics where turns without attacks still perform beneficial actions and level-up points can be respent for free. I restart a lot of battles because I want better multipliers, which kills the pacing. I haven’t finished it yet, which should be read as indicative of the gap from the top of the list to here.
Helltaker Dumb fun elevated by its music.
Most of 2020 went to seeing how great games from 2018 and 2019 were. God of War, Disco Elysium, and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey would have topped the list, and Heaven’s Vault or Bloodstained would have been crying at their near miss at glory. I finally got into the Yakuza games. I’m tempted by the technicality to add at least 0 on the list, since 0-2 were given XBO releases this year, but I didn’t play them on that platform. Also, does Call of Duty’s free Warzone feature qualify? That was excellent.
Wasteland 3 Nice blend of playing it straight and embracing the silliness of Wasteland.
Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children I don’t know if this would have been rated as highly if it wasn’t a pandemic year. Individual missions are slightly too long but in a year when I have more gaming time that isn’t a big problem. I’m not sure I will ever finish the game though.
Phoenix Point I should love this game but the beginning doesn’t quite click. Every time I try to play I get stuck around my second or third base because I’m starting to get to serious choices that I don’t want to mess up because I don’t want to have to replay the beginning again. So I go play Troubleshooter.
CKIII Another game that I should love. CK1 and CKII were big hits with me but this games didn’t click.
Resident Evil 2 (Remake) -finished. IT was such a good paced game. Loved it, never played the original.
God of War (the PS2 original, on PS now) -finished, I owned it since PS2 days. Finally had the patience for it.
Doom (2016) -finished, best intro to a game ever. EVER.
Bloodborne - stupid spiders
Inside - finished for the 1st time this year, I am waiting for their new game. Best ending ever. EVER. I wished Doom had such a great idea for the finish line. How this games builds up to the final act, so amazing.
I am sorry, for some reason nothing of 2020 made me spent 50-60 dollars for a new game. Waiting for Hades to come to other console than Switch (my LITE screen is too small for it).
I am too early in Doom Eternal to count it, I bet I will like it to the end. I still need to find some time for Planet Apocalypse, but I am collecting expansions already.
Hey woah, this game came out? I think I remember you telling us about it in the “Games you’re looking forward to in 2019” thread or something. And it ended up being one of your favorites this year? Why not create a thread for it and tell us more about it?
It’s got a sweet farming music, but disgusting sounds when they spend 3 hours each evening talking with their mouths full of rice, like nobody would have in the mythological times.
I may edit this before the deadline, but I wanted to post rather than just ruminate about my post. Spots 1 and 2 are definite, though. There’s a gap between 2 and 3 and an even larger gap between 3 and 4.
Special shoutouts to Children of Morta which was truly the best game I played this year, and the Xbox version of Two Point Hospital which is a textbook example of how to port a strategy game to a console.
Hades
The rare “perfect” game to me. Every mechanic, art choice, story bit, and player challenge work together to create a harmony of combat and progression. I hit the credits around hour 40 and there’s still so much more I could be doing. Wonderful game from Supergiant at the top of their craft.
Immortals Fenyx Rising
Ubisoft gave us Watchdogs Legion and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla this year, both games that were just okay to me, so I didn’t hold much hope for Immortals. I’m only ten hours into it, and it’s already grabbed me in a way that neither of the other two games even came close to. Yes, it’s totally Ubisoft cribbing from Breath of the Wild, but BotW was Nintendo stealing from Ubisoft, so the circle is now complete.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
It’s Animal Crossing. It’s nothing revolutionary, and in another year this wouldn’t even be in the top 50 for my picks, but 2020 was awful and AC:NH was the salve I needed. It’s so good that my wife finally buckled and asked for her own Switch and copy of the game to play.
Doom Eternal
More dance party demon killing, now with jumping puzzles that don’t suck.
Spiritfarer
It’s another entry that in a normal year probably would not have made the cut, but 2020 needed this gentle meditative piece on the afterlife and friendship.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 - Holy shit, you can explore the whole world? The whole WORLD people! The entire planet.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps - So beautiful, and so fun. It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago I didn’t even like 2D platformers. The recent renaissance of this genre has just been amazing, and this is the peak this year.
Wasteland 3 - Wow, this game is so much fun. Seriously Fallout fans, go play this one. I got turned off the Wasteland series after reading the Wasteland 2 thread. It sounded like it did a few things right and few things wrong. I’m not sure what I would have thought of Wasteland 1 and 2. But Wasteland 3 is just the right amount of meaty turn-based combat, taking quests, making choices and living with consequences, experiencing a post-apocalypse as glimpsed during the 80s. It’s so good!
Doom 64 - It was a choice between this and Doom Eternal. I got them together at launch in March, and I haven’t made much progress in Doom Eternal, but I made lots of progress in Doom 64. It’s very interesting game design. Yes, it’s mostly very claustrophobic design. You don’t get the kind of room to move around that you got in the original Doom and Doom II. But it’s still very fun nonetheless. I recommend people check it out for fans of the first two games. This is the real Doom III I never knew we actually got, but it was on the N64 at the time. The conversion to modern systems has been very faithful. It looks authentic and yet better, and plays authentic, and yet better, with a modern controller or mouse and keyboard.
Tetris Effect: Connected - It’s Tetris! And music! At the same time. And multiplayer. It’s really, really good.
I need to check out Aegis Rim, clearly. It’s been on my long list for a while as it ticks a bunch of boxes in what I think of as the “Persona-like” genre, which I kind of play indiscriminately, but hearing it’s actually good bumps it up for sure.
