Games in 2020 that you felt were underrated?

Last year, I started a thread asking the GB community what games they felt went under the radar and didn't get as much attention as they should have. This year I'm doing that topic again but as you can obviously tell, this is centered on 2020's gaming catalog. Go ahead and post which 2020 games that you liked/loved didn't quite get that much attention from the gaming community or media. I got a few games to list myself:

Cook, Serve, Delicious 3?!: This game originally released as an Early Access game available on Steam on January 29, 2020. Its the third installment of the CSD franchise which tests you reflexes by cooking a bunch of food to many hungry customers in a quick and exact manner, as in make sure all the ingredients in the order are exactly how the customers wants them. CSD3 however changes up the formula where now you are cooking inside a food truck and the game takes more of a level based approach. You and your team of Android ladies (Whisk and Cleaver) travel across a war torn America to serve many Americans a quick meal in levels where they are organized by completing a set number of stops while also travelling to a Food Truck Competition to prove your the best Food Truck chef out there. Not to mention you have a greater control of what to put on your menu as levels do have themes to them such as one for Breakfast food or one for Italian/French food. But you can choose which ever food you want to put on the menu whether its food you gotten good at making or if you want to challenge yourself by doing a food you haven't really made before. Not to mention this is perhaps the most accessible CSD game since it has a chill mode where customers have infinite patience and has other accessibility options such as tools to assist those who are color blind. Also this game has an incredible OST by series composer Jonathon Geer that is very much worth checking out. Oh and if it weren't for this game, I'd never know about food from around the world from Ayam Goreng (Malaysian Fried Chicken) to Khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread).

Them's Fightin' Herds: Hey remember that ungulate fighting game Ben was practicing for EVO before the event got cancelled? Well, after it got cancelled and after I saw this game on a Steam sale, I picked up the game myself. Honestly thought when I picked it up I felt like I'd like it but have my fill after completing its tutorial, its solo chapter in Story Mode and playing a few matches online. BOY WAS I WRONG! Firstly, this game might have the greatest tutorial in a fighting game as it explains techniques in fighting games incredibly well to someone like me who is typically a casual fighting game player. It even gets into series breakdowns on stuff like hit boxes and frame data to explain how this game is played/designed. Secondly, the Story Mode isn't done but its an amazing start for what its going for as you play as Arizona the Cow (one of the characters) and you explore the map in a 16 bit RPG layout and you have enemy-filled dungeons traditional fighting game manner. Plus when you do fight another playable fighter, they actually have unique attack phases where they are treated as proper boss fights (one of them is a reindeer who for her final phase formed a blizzard she hid in and she threw icicles at me to keep me away). Finally, this game has the smoothest online I've played in a fighting game (or in any game period). It uses a form of Rollback Netcode called GGPO which hides network latency and for 90% of the time, I have found no lag and the fights ran like butter! There's also another mode called the Salt Mines where you collect salt while fending off predatory animals that get more difficult the longer you stay alive. Whoever collects the most salt becomes a bear that's also an armored grappler and aims to destroy any remaining ungulates.

Murder By Numbers: This game seemed to have gotten completely forgotten in March since it came out two week before Animal Crossing and Doom Eternal. But this is one of the coolest mashups of genres I played despite not really being into Visual Novels or Picross. Murder by Numbers is as I said before, a visual novel and picross hybrid where you play the role as Honor Mizhari, a former actress who played a detective in a 90's TV show but then becomes the real thing once she discovers a floating Robot named S.C.O.U.T. With S.C.O.U.T., it can analyze pieces of evidence by treating them like picross puzzles and once the evidence is found, you can present those pieces of evidence to other characters to get more info on the case. The game also has a nice art direction where its clearly in an anime style yet has a very mid 90's flavor to the characters' designs (which as you can tell, this game takes place in 1996 Hollywood). Not to mention the puzzles themselves were enjoyable speaking as a Picross Novice myself and whenever you do a puzzle, keep an eye on S.C.O.U.T. on the left because when he smiles, it means you filled in a column correctly.

I think the only one I know went totally under the radar is Death Come True - an FMV game by the creator of Danganronpa. It's on the short side (which I think is good for FMV games) and has some weird twists as you'd expect, but I definitely recommend it, especially since it's only 15 bucks. The actual story and interaction of it would probably dip into spoiler territory pretty quickly but I had a fun afternoon playing it.

Gears Tactics seems to be very underrated. Although it lacks some of the long term variety of XCOM (although that gets repetitive too) the game itself is so damn fun, runs and looks great, and has cool unique ideas. If you like tactical games you gotta give it a shot, and Game Pass makes that cheap as hell.

Not exactly a little indie game but its what comes to mind for me.

I feel like FUSER got a quick pop of hype, then fell back below the radar days later (at least at the sites I frequent). Shame, as it's some of the most fun I've had with a game in the back half of the year.

And while it needs a lot of post-launch work, Necronator: Dead Wrong seems to have gotten lost in the shadow of Monster Train (another excellent game) as far as roguelite CCGs go this year, but it's a ton of fun and deserves more recognition.

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension is just cool as hell, and really deserves more love. The level that pays homage to old LucasArts adventure games is easily in my top five moments of the year.

@shagge: Yeah, I agree that Fuser got underrated in the general sense that there’s no way streamers are going to risk playing it on Twitch due to increased DMCA scrutiny, and I saw no traditional marketing for that game anywhere, so I have no idea how they expect gamers anywhere to know about it. But the concept is executed really well.

oh damn this looks VERY up my alley. The RTS/Tower Defense looking elements are intriguing to me.

Looks perfect for Switch though.

It's odd, I streamed FUSER a few days ago, and my VOD is still fine. I know the samples are altered, and altered even further through gameplay, but I'm shocked that it didn't get muted anyway given that having a snippet of music playing quietly from the far background can sometimes be enough to catch the bot's attention. I'm sure Harmonix did a lot of work to make it Twitch-friendly, but damned if I can suss out how.

@shagge: Perhaps they’re working out some kind of blanket exception from Twitch where anything in the Fuser category doesn’t get flagged, but even if that’s the case I’d imagine most people using streaming as a major source of income would still be too rattled to risk streaming Fuser. Though I guess some people are increasingly just disabling all VODs and clips as a safety measure against getting flagged.

@bisonhero: That's a good point, I don't monetize my streams or try to draw attention (they're basically just for a couple of friends), I wonder if that makes any difference. I wouldn't be surprised if big streamers would have more trouble.

Art of Rally y’all. Everyone needs to play it.

I know this is ultimately stupid so I'm not going to make a big huff about it, but I really do think The Last of Us Part II got a short shaft with all the "more of the same" comments I heard from the Giant Bomb staff and across wide swaths of the internet. Especially on a second playthrough unburdened by hype (or unwarranted inventory worries) it's a really interesting, grounded take on the MGSV in-and-out stealth system and I really hope Naughty Dog follows through on a multiplayer spin-off.

Otherwise, I tend to use Polygon's Top 50 as a sort of de facto "most underrated" list since they skew a bit indie for things to catch up on later. It seems like some early frontrunners should be Paradise Killer, Half-Life: Alyx and 13 Sentinels, all due in large part to platform exclusivity and in small part to different levels of presentation (graphic novel, virtual reality, The Japan of It All) that make their niche audiences even more siphoned off from the mainstream conversation.

At least, those are three games I've heard very effusive praise for that in the case of the former two I have no way of playing and the latter, well, The Japan of It All scares me off until a good enough sale.

@snaketelegraph: I missed that.

Thanks for the heads up, as I'm a big fan of danganronpa 😇

I wish that Kentucky Route Zero was being talked about more now around awards time.

@lost_forester: I expect Alex to talk about KRZ at GotY time. But yeah, rest of the staff really sleeping on it. I don't think anyone else talked about playing the final release of all of it.

@zoofame: Well again, to be clear, I'm specifically talking about the combat and leaving all the stuff you typically talk about The Last of Us for out of it. I was a little taken aback by just how many people walked away from that game saying it was "more Last of Us" because to me, as somebody who'd played the first game four different times on different difficulties, including once just chaperoning a non-gamer through it, The Last of Us Part II felt like a very different experience. I think the length of the game discouraged many people from fully playing around with Ellie's squirminess or Abby's brawniness because they dreaded spending 5 minutes replenishing their stock afterward, but there are just so many options in that game.

One of my favorites, in fact, has to do with the total lack of combat - if you know the arenas well enough, 9/10 times you can move from start to finish without engaging a single enemy and get a contextual exit related to the fact you made it through undetected. The first time I did that I realized just how wide open the combat was - and then I went and watched Youtube accounts like this guy GunFuArts and realized, man, this is kind of a John Wick game, isn't it?

Now I keep it installed the same as I used to MGS V just to open some of the more interesting scenarios (Hillcrest primarily, but also Santa Barbara, The Park, The Flooded City, The Forest and The Descent) and goof off in them.

I too am hoping to hear Alex talk about Kentucky Route Zero at GOTY time. It's such a great game.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I'm currently playing through Röki and I have heard next to nobody say anything about it so far. I think it's a really great adventure game with a great story, great setting and characters and great music. Unless they totally whiff the ending, this one will be on my list.

It's Dreams.

Fury: Unleased is the best Contra/Metal Slug roguelike out there, with a dose of Comix Zone thrown in for good measure. I loved it and you all should play it.

Nioh 2 hands down.

There has not been sufficient praise of Bugsnax's characterizations and writing. The moment to moment gameplay is not the best, but it's easily one of my favorite games of the year on the strength of the writing alone.

Need to see more Paradise Killer talk on the timeline

Lies Beneath

Came out right as the pandemic began. Best horror VR game out there, may even beat out Half Life: Alyx for me as best VR game out there. Quest exclusive, though.

Wasteland 3 is probably going to be pretty high on my top 10 this year and I’ve only heard it very occasionally mentioned, mostly by people brushing it off for being too daunting. It’s unfortunate because there is so much there to dig into and this is coming from someone who has never played a Wasteland game before.

@banefirelord: good point. I hear people talking about how whacky it all is without talking about the genuinely great characters in the game. Some incredibly touching moments in there.

There's a semi-automatic battler/RTS called "Fantasy of Expedition" that has received almost zero coverage anywhere. But it's one of the most fun games I've played all year.

@lost_forester: "Waiting until it's done" with Kentucky Route Zero is the worst editorial decision related to game selection GB, (at least the remaining staff,) has made. Imagine if they'd not covered Mass Effect at all, other than a vague "I hear it's good", until after ME3 was out.

Hell yeah Cook, Serve, Delicious 3! Still surprised it's able to feel fresh and new after all these years.

Post Void and the Star Fetchers pilot are my picks. Not so much underrated but just not covered.

One Step From Eden, though it is received positively it has not gotten much attention in the larger scheme of things. Also Haven. It's on game pass people should check it out its pretty good and I haven't really heard anyone talking about it.

@zoofame: @nodima:

ha, i first clicked on this thread expecting to open with '...i hate to be that guy, but have we considered TLOU2 as underrated?' but it's reassuring to see a least a couple folks feel vaguely the same way.

for the record- i don't think TLOU2 is underrated writ large- you don't have to look very far to see people writing nice things about it (all questions of legitimacy aside, it just cleaned up at the keighleys). but i do think its discussion on this site specifically was a little superficial- though that might be more a symptom of the year 2020 and the way games are presently covered on this site (wasn't a fan of the spoilercast...not because the opinions contained therein, but rather it felt a little disorganized and hard to follow). but that's absolutely ok- not everything will resonate with everyone, and the game's subject matter/tone is polarizing.

as @nodima mentioned- the ugly stealth/combat of that game is exhilarating. having just completed Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for the first time less than two weeks ago, i honestly prefer the beautiful chaos that is often TLOU2.

the lengthy hillcrest section is some of the most compelling gameplay i've ever experienced.

I'd definitely like to cast my vote for Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin.

Came out in mid November, got some pretty positive buzz, but otherwise I think it's been flying under the radar. It's certainly an odd mix of genres on paper: side-scrolling combat combined with RPG elements plus a deep rice farming simulation, but somehow it meshes quite well!

I'd definitely recommend checking it out!

@mrhaydel: I can't wait to try this! Will definitely pick it up on Steam the next time there's a sale.

I didn't play all that many 2020 releases this year. I was going to bring up the very enjoyable Neo Cab, which has a futuristic future that feels uncomfortably realistic, but it was released in 2019. But give it a look!

Tlou2's writing is a lot stronger than I feel people give it credit for. It juggles several themes quite well, and I especially enjoyed the melancholy museum tours of what humans have achieved, what they have lost and about the world we are destroying.

My biggest issue with it is the lenght and pacing, where I thought a lot of the traversal through the city was less interesting than the museums even with the added gameplay. And even if I enjoyed the irony of Ellie having the same 'normal girl problems' she made fun off in the first game the interpersonal conflicts on her side felt a little forced and were probably added to make her mirror Abby even more.

Anyway, I brought tlou2 up because it had the biggest divide between my own experiences and the public discourse. Even its defenders seemed very keen on blasting the story or characters for various reasons, and I honestly was quite confused about it. Main characters should be allowed to make bad decision! Of course it helps that the cutscene direction and facial animations are head and shoulder above the competition. A lot of reviewers and streamers disappointed me with how they decided the game was bad because of a (very well executed) certain scene, and obviously stopped engaging with the game afterwards and just looked for excuses to tear it down. It has several weak parts but so many people just crossed their arms and went GAME BAD

It wasn't my GOTY but I adored several parts and it actually made me pick up the guitar again. And that is a major achievement for a video game.

Would RIsk of Rain 2 count as underrated? It got some good talk around it, and I have super enjoyed it.

@toughshed: Second on Gears Tactics. It got compared unfavorably to XCOM games, while turn-based Diablo-like is the more fitting description.

It is really weird to see a game that just won Game of the Year at The Game Awards and has a 93 on Metacritic be called "underrated." I agree that a lot of the discourse around TLOU2 was bad for a lot of reasons and that it received a lot of unfair criticism (even though I personally did not love the game and think that it had both really bad pacing and a lot of story problems) but given that it's the highest rated game of the year by conventional standards I would definitely not call it "underrated."

In terms of my entry, Bug Fables: The Everlasting Spring came out in 2019 on PC so arguably doesn't apply here, but it was a 2020 console release and it deserved more attention. It's a Paper Mario-like only with insects instead of Marios and by a tiny team and it's good. It's not a perfect game by any means but it is impressively big and polished for an indie title and managed to give Paper Mario fans what they wanted in a game.

Speaking of Paper MArio, I think Paper Mario: The Origami King is kind of underrated. It's not the best game ever but it had terrific writing, really good environments, and just a massive amount of content. It also looks really really ridiculously good for a Switch game. It did okay with critics and it sold well, but in terms of the discourse it really came and went.

Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) with patch 1.0.4. It is the best game of 2020, for my list, despite all of the negative criticism.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps just kind of came and went without many people talking about it and it's probably the best "one of those" and the only "one of those" in "a while." It launched with some performance issues which I think might have turned some people off - worked perfectly fine on my One X at the time - but since it now has all those cool new graphic and performance features on the Series X it's a perfect time for people to check back on it.

Huntdown seems like it should have gotten more attention. A bit surprised GB didn't even really cover it since it's such a well executed 16bit throwback. Also has some of the best Easter eggs I've seen in a long time.

@forgeforsaken: with no steam reviews and the fact its another retro styled game i'm not surprised, FWIW it does look like a very well executed one of those but there just so many at this point. What we need are more PS1 low poly style games, that market is very undertapped.

@humanity: I really loved this game. Definitely feel like it should have gotten more love. I played it on PC right when it came out and had no problems with it, but I guess that wasn't everyone's experience.

@slyr114 There are no Steam reviews as it was Epic Store only on PC, still is at the moment far as I know. It's really top notch for the genre.

I'm gonna be the guy that runs in here and instead claims that Origami King is actually kind of overrated.

I think I'm just broken, because there's a category of Nintendo games that I know are well made, but I just can't enjoy because the gameplay is too dull. Originally a category primarily occupied by "the vast majority of recent Kirby games", recent inductees now include "all the Luigi's Mansion games except the 1st one" and "all of the Paper Mario games after the first 3."

I really wanted to like Origami King, because at least conceptually it was a pretty clean break from the expectations of the original couple Paper Mario games. And for sure, the writing, environments, general cheerful tone with Olivia, etc. are all solid. But if they really wanted to make a Mario sliding puzzle game, I'm all for it, but go full The Witness on it. Teach kids some wacky sliding puzzle shit that they didn't know their brains could do. Instead, ramming sliding puzzles onto a JRPG Paper Mario gameplay structure was just weird. It's weird both in how the puzzle mechanics don't really evolve at all for the entire game (only a small number of enemies throw any kind of wrench in the routine), and it's weird that after you've locked in your sliding puzzle the RPG combat phase is painfully simple while it frustratingly obfuscates any preview of the damage range you do or what the enemy HP is.

But again, I think Paper Mario has been deliberately moved at some point into the slate of Nintendo releases that aren't really "fun for all ages", but more "fun for 6-12 year olds that don't want to think too hard about gameplay" like Kirby and Luigi's Mansion, so I'm gradually going to let that series go.

I should really play Bug Fables.

Amnesia: Rebirth. I thought it was a great horror game with an interesting story. Not the scariest game I ever played, but I'm typically more interested in the world created in horror games than the actual scares.

I'd also agree with Murder by Numbers and Gears Tactics.

@mellotronrules: @zoofame: @nodima:

I you want a more nuanced and critical discussion of TLOUS2, Waypoint Radio (Podcast that Patrick Klepek and Austin Walker are a part of) does a spoilercast. They dig really deep into why it succeeds and/or fails, and their explanations are very clearly their own critical views. The podcast is pretty long (2 parts I think) and is very largely negative, but shallow their opinions are not.

I don't personally agree with all of their criticisms, as I personally enjoyed the game, but they are certainly fair to their experiences/views. Giant Bomb has never been much for "following the trend", even if their spoilercast wasn't as cohesive as it could have been. I think more preparation ahead of time would have helped organize their thoughts to properly explain their problems, as opposed to mostly spitballing as they tried to remember how they felt playing it.

@bisonhero: I'm not really going to defend The Origami King's combat, which is certainly its weakest aspect, but it does at least do some interesting things with its boss fights. Why it didn't try to throw some of those concepts into its main combat encounters I don't know.

However I think that one of the reasons the game is underrated is that everyone seems fixated on the combat (which is kind of boring but far from the worst ever) in a game that is about a lot more than combat in a genre where combat is often kind of boring, especially outside boss encounters.

Origami King has some of the best writing, visual and world design, and and environments of the year. The combat was definitely weak, but could sometimes be satisfying when a puzzle just clicked, and was super easy just not to engage with very much if you didn't want to. I think Origami King gets a lot of flack from old school Paper Mario fans who are mad that they took away the prior system, which they liked more, and keep replacing it with other stuff that doesn't work as well and that probably nobody likes as much as the older, more straightforward stuff. That's fair enough but it doesn't detract from all the things that the game does very, very, well.

Minecraft Dungeons. In release it didn't have the DLC, but now that it has a couple it'll be much more rewarding to play. Has good support with updates. More missions, loot, enemies, and bosses. Features difficulty levels so not just a kid's game.

The world is charming to explore. You can create some cool builds- like pet focused, tanky, or archery.

Big thing is if you invest in the DLC or Season Pass, the game will be much longer, more stuff to do. Good things for a Diabloesque action rpg.

I will probably check Huntdown out once it hits Steam. Murder By Numbers is on my list as well. My laptop is not great so I've been playing a lot of indie PC games lately.

Dreams.

I have zero desire to look at any of the creation tools but I get a constant feed of new experiences to play where I get to see how people are striving to execute their game design ambitions. It's very endearing and sometimes genuinely surprising.

CSD 3 is great, and just a massive amount of content. I wish it got a little more love when it came out.

Honestly, I liked DBZ: Kakarot probably more than I should have. I know it had a lukewarm reception, but I liked it damn it!