The Arbitraries (Create Your Own Year-End Award) 2020

That makes sense. I do remember The Made Up Awards!

I think my original inspiration for these threads was @tomchick himself, I seem to remember him doing something similar for some site at some point under the banner of Chicklets (though maybe it was someone else)

Best Title Drop: Ghost of Tsushima Think there were maybe a few good ones this year, but for me its GoT. After the opening segment and a brief cutscene that transitions to gameplay the title drops as you have control and ride your horse over the field of flowers really setting the mood.

Best Easter Egg: Huntdown Sho’Nuff single frame in boss attack. Huntdown has a lot of cool Easter eggs, some buried in the background and some more extravagant as secret areas, no one crosses the duke, but the best has to be a single frame of the final boss’ sword attack which is Sho’nuff’s face from the movie The Last Dragon.

The COD Cold War (Can Old Dude play with his kids without totally embarrassing himself especially on multiplayer mode) award goes to me. Been playing and actually able to kill at least one person on the other team per round (sometimes three!!).

Arby’s should sponsor Tom.

Sometimes I spend wayyyyy too much time working on lists. In order to cut myself a little slack this time around, I won’t be writing out all my awards in one post. I’ll reply to this thread every time I’m in the mood to share more.

The Game That Proves Men Don’t Have a Monopoly on Fart Humor:

  • Wolfenstein: Youngblood (Xbox GamePass, Played Feb 2020):
    People hate them, but I found the Wolfenstein sisters fun and confident. And they’re pretty good at massacres, too. Even though Wolf: Youngblood came out a full year later, at the game’s release I think more words were written about how horrible it is to see these chicks having fun during elevator loading screens than all other words had been written about an existing-but-then-future sensation, Among Us. People really hated Zofia and Jess.

The Brutality of Rural Life Award goes to Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. Midway through the game, the little baby character finds a pack of ducks that you keep in a pen and release each morning. They waddle adorably to your rice paddy and eat all the weeds. Late in the season, you’re given an option to keep them, at which point the eat some of your rice crop, or you can turn them into dinner. Coldest of all, the game doesn’t penalize you for murdering your happy ducks – the baby finds new ones each season, and the vicious cycle begins again.

The Revengeance Award for the Most Satisfying Parry of the Year goes to Nioh 2. The Brute burst counter animation temporarily turns you into a demon to backhand bitch slap enemies out of their incoming attack. It’s not the most effective counter in the game, but it’s definitely hilarious.

The Best Intermediate Difficulty of 2020 goes to Crimzon Clover: World Explosion. The new Arrange mode fits perfectly between Novice difficulty, which is too easy, and Arcade difficulty, which is way too hard. It’s not often you get an addon to a game that adds an intermediate difficulty level. (This game also reinforced how much I like playing shmups casually on a couch – it’s too bad there are so few premier shoot 'em ups on Switch.)

Yeah it would be brutal to lose your crops. And to miss out on that delicious duck.

Best Harem Game Released in 2020 goes to Final Fantasy VII Remake. Seriously, in the first few hours of the game, there are more hot girls hitting on Cloud than enemies hitting him. Jessie in particular is relentless. It’s silly and kind of awesome, I suppose. ;)

Best Use of Body Horror: The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories. This totally surprised me, as I was expecting some throwaway shlock, but instead got one of the best horror games I’ve played: not from a “is it scary” perspective, but from a “using horror to illustrate some element of society or personal psychology” perspective. The story it’s in service of is also a surprisingly well handled LGBT storyline. It’s knows how long to be, and (for me) just barely rides the frustrating / fun line. One of those games where I wouldn’t recommend it to everybody, but for people interested in either LGBT or horror themes, I think it’s a must-play.

Most Improved Re-Release Award: Catherine: Full Body. I played the original Catherine on PS3, and liked the idea of it way more than the execution. There is a fundamental disconnect between narrative and gameplay, but also the falling block puzzle parts were just way too punishingly hard. Full Body completely re-worked the lives system for the block puzzles, and made it actually achievable. It isn’t without its problems still, but it elevated it from a curiosity to something I could actually play.

The GOTY (Before-Times Edition): Slay The Spire. The beginning of the year always feels far away, but looking over my list of games I played this year, I found Slay The Spire which I had played the shit out of in Jan-Feb, mostly during my daily commute, but completely forgotten about in the meantime.

The Genre of the Year (Pandemic Edition): Roguelites, in a surprise upset from “Grinding a JRPG for 1000 hours to beat the optional post-game bosses”. Want something you can play in 20 minutes between Zoom calls? Try a roguelite. Want something you can stress-play for 18 hours straight while stuck in the house but you don’t have the mental energy to process like, plot, or narrative? Try a roguelite. In another year, I probably wouldn’t have even played Hades.

The Least Surprising Post in This Thread Award goes to

BrianRubin

19h

The Game That Took Over my Heart And Soul and Game That People are Sick About Me Talking About Awards go to Star Fleet II !
The Most Surprising Game and Quickest Purchase Awards go to Bloody Rally Show !

:)

The Best Frakking Good Time Award Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. An utterly fantastic game with a lot of enjoyable strategic choices. If you like WEGO tactics and sci fi, this is an absolute lock.

Best Replay in the History of Video Games Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. A game so good it deserves two awards. And, seriously, they did something with the replay feature that I haven’t seen executed so well. Plus they show a solid understanding of filming techniques and how to show the most interesting parts of any battle. It nearly perfectly captures the style and cadence of the shows space battles with the auto director, and the sound design matches. Normally I skip watching replays, but here I watched almost every single major battle.

The I Don’t Know What I Expected Award Me, for buying my wife Animal Crossing New Horizons. I got a Switch for Christmas. I am really excited and have enjoyed my time with it! I also have had a hard time with getting time, because I bought my wife Animal Crossing. She isn’t a huge gamer, but she did enjoy The Sims, so I thought it would be fun for her and my 7 year old to play together. Turns out I was more correct than I could possibly know. She has more time on the Switch than I do currently.

To that I simply say, amen and amen.

Only played thru Broken Alliance so far, which is part of the 1st season, and this is my GOTY for 2020.

Best 2020 game I started playing on the very last day of 2020 goes to Ghost of Tsushima. That title drop really is something else. And it looks amazing.

Most Baffling Good Time So I Wrote 3,500 Words to Explain It goes to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. I ended up having a great time with it, despite things I couldn’t rationalize. That’s the only time I’ve written anything more than a few paragraphs about a game. Even so, what might be my clearest question, “Why push all the best parts so far into the game?”, only formed after I was done.

I Really Shouldn’t Be Playing This Game While On Voice Calls goes to Picross for a Cause. No words or big concepts to keep in mind. I wouldn’t play it if I could just care more…but I can’t.

Sliding in the final days of the year, Hardiest Backlog Survivor goes to Dishonored. I played it for 20 minutes in Feb 2013. I hazily recollect hearing good stealth things about it and expected it to have smarter guards and different systems. After almost 8 years untouched to lower expectations, it is done. What stood out most this time were the overly-strong god rays. I could see shadows in the air from even the closest of things. Next most, the absence of birds presumably so the game could be consistent in the use of the Possess ability.

Best Game To Play in One Sitting and Read All the Words Aloud With Friends goes to Space Bear.

The 2020’s 2019 Game of the Year Award goes to Judgment. I just adore this world and these characters so much, I had a hard time bringing myself to head into the endgame and wrap it up. If it had had a more engrossing set of minigames than the VR dice thing and drone racing, I might have even stretched this one further into 2021.

My 2021’s Presumed 2020 Game of the Year Awardwill almost certainly go to Yakuza: Like a Dragon. There is nothing I’ve heard about this that makes me think I won’t love it. Can’t wait to jump in.

The Hey Guys? I Think Something Might Be Wrong–I’m Actually Enjoying This! Award goes to Death Stranding. I’ve played pretty much every Kojima game, and ended up coming away irritated and regretting my time. And this one seemed to double down on the weirdness I’ve found so off-putting. But… I had fun? And I felt compelled to play more? I’m still not sure that’s right. Maybe I should make an appointment with the neurologist.

It’s my third place for GotY 2020. Second place for me is Immortals Fenyx Rising. And first place is…

…Death Stranding. This is Kojima at his best, truly. I love this game.

Best Loot Item Found in the Early Game:

  • Divnity Original Sin 2: Gloves of Teleporation

Okay, so I’ve been chipping away at this game for years, and every time I set the game down I end up restarting from scratch. This year was no different, and this time I played long enough to advance further than ever before through the main story line.

It never mattered how long it had been since I played the game, or what my party composition was in these runs, the one and only item in the first chapter that felt consistently awesome and rewarding were the Gloves of Teleportation, located at the beach near a couple barrels of oil and gigantic aggressive lizards.

I’m an explorer and treasure hunter at heart, so when I play RPGs I’m always most interested in utility items that help me reach places I normally wouldn’t be able to get to, or locate treasures I wouldn’t normally be able to find. And these gloves do just that for me. Teleporting is even better than inverting the entropy of an object through time.

Best games about living in 2020

Disco Elysium and A Short Hike. Yes, I know, they came out in 2019, but I didn’t play them until 2020. These were perfect games for the year - but unlike things like Animal Crossing or my personal method of forgetting 2020 existed, No Man’s Sky, these games weren’t about escapism. Disco Elysium is about the difficult but necessary process of confronting problems and A Short Hike is a short, sweet reminder that life is much more than just your own problems.

Game I could brag about not playing before not playing it was cool

Cyberpunk 2077. Seeing the out-of-control scope of the game a long way off and remembering The Witcher 1’s release, I decided to wait on the reviews for this one long before it came out. Um, and also I don’t currently own anything it would run properly on.

Best 2020 game I forgot to play until 2021

Fort Triumph. It was one of those Early Access games I bought but said, “I won’t play it until it’s officially done and released” … and then completely forgot I had purchased. For a year.

It’s a charming little fantasy strategy title that didn’t get the attention it deserved. Probably because it made the mistake of marketing itself as “fantasy XCOM” which it assuredly is not. Instead it’s Heroes of Might and Magic, but with tactical battles that are like a lightweight version of Divinity: Original Sin’s turn-based combat, where you use the environment to bombard your enemies with mushroom and barrels, set them on fire, etc.

Best pre-2020 game that I only played properly in 2020 goes to Anno 1800. I finally managed settings that had the game running and looking well without making my GPU run hot, which got me playing the game properly, and oh my, what a fantastic game. I find myself avoiding playing it now because if I start I won’t play anything else for a few weeks at least. ;) That said, I hope I’ll play it a lot more this year.