2020
It's gonna be a long road gettin' from here to GOTY season, but whatever I play this year will go on this list.
As it is now December I shall now begin reordering the contenders by proper ranking.
List items
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The only game in years I've finished and immediately jumped back into for another full run. And then another. This is 2020's GOTY frontrunner and it's hard to imagine anything else even getting close.
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The stats say 2013 but I'm not sure I care. Episode 5 is a 2020 banger, a whole lot of folks (myself included) are going to be hitting Kentucky Route Zero for the first time in 2020, there's new editions out on consoles in 2020, bingo bango bongo, here it goes on my 2020 list.
It's a cliche, and probably also a list writer's crutch, to describe something like KZ0 as "indescribable" and just leave it at that, perhaps while gesturing towards a feeling or a mood or an aesthetic, without actually saying much of anything. But I also struggle endlessly trying to put into words how this game felt to play, or rather, experience. The "play" part is less important.
Considering the number of decadal retrospective lists KR0 keeps headlining no one should be shocked if this does very well come GOTY season. It definitely will for me. This is one of the most important games of the last ten years, minimum.
Superlatives: Best Tone Piece; Best Anti-Capitalist Work; Best Intermission; Best Ending.
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This is possibly Supergiant's best game since Bastion and that's no small feat even without the Early Access label. Every update during this period has only improved the experience and there appears to be no plateau in sight just yet, either. I'm sure the full 1.0 release will be just as excellent when it finally lands sometime this year.
Superlatives: Best Early Access Journey; Best Rogue-like; Best Dog.
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nationalize Nook Inc. now
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Every bit as fun to play as it is a total fucking mess at the store/launcher backend level. I've rarely jumped through as many technical hoops just to play a damn game as I have for PSO2, and yet I'm enjoying it way too much to stop.
There's a very real chance that when PSO2 finds its way to other PC launchers it may finally knock a certain other freebie MMO off the top of my Steam hours played list. I lost a ton of time to the original PSO on the Dreamcast, so that feels right. A Phantasy Star game deserves to represent the full circle of my time with MMOs. With luck, anyway. I'm really not sure I want to start another one.
Superlatives: Most Anime Per Pixel; Best MMO Mouthfeel; Worst Launch.
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I've always been pretty bad at brawlers and I was never a Streets of Rage person in the old days despite absolutely being a Sega Genesis person, but Streets of Rage 2 (or its soundtrack, really) somehow got me anyway in one of the many recent Genesis collections, so here I am, jumping into SoR4 at launch. A weird road.
This same team's Wonder Boy remake, Sonic Mania, M2's fantastic relaunch of the Sega Ages remaster line on the Switch, and now Streets of Rage 4, have put Sega and their partner studios at the forefront of super high quality legacy releases, be they new ports or remasters or full-fledged sequels. I can't wait to see what's next.
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Encore. Encore! Tokyo Mirage Sessions is by leaps and bounds the most bubblegum-ass anime-pop (pop-anime?) thing I've seen from either Shin Megami Tensei or Fire Emblem, and on paper that should be a huge turn-off, and yet... nope! TMS owns. I'm really glad it was rescued from the WiiU and just as glad I gave it shot, despite appearances.
Superlatives: Best Port/Remaster; Best Tharja Appearance; Worst Lead Character.
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Sure, the timer runs out in 400 days, which puts any real conclusion to The Longing well outside 2020 contention, but that doesn't actually matter. Journey, destination, etc. Maybe the real sleeping cave king was the pieces of coal we collected along the way.
I haven't played The Longing since April. May? I managed to fully expand and decorate Shade's little cave house, boosting the timer speed up to 3x or so, and sat him in his comfy recliner, then, uhh... logged off and forgot about the whole thing. For months. I probably missed his birthday. For all I know, the king is ready to wake up already.
Honestly? I feel pretty bad about it. I'm almost too ashamed of my negligent Tamagotchi parentage to log back on. My God, Bones, what have I done.
Superlatives: Weirdest 70s/80s European Animation Vibe; Best Temporal Mechanics; Most Harpsichords.
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What if we took that terrible basic cable show about dirty jobs and catapulted it a couple centuries into the future. Turns out shipbreaking at least makes a far better game than it does a career.
Superlatives: Emergent Genre Special Award; Most Relaxing Game That Shouldn't Be Relaxing At All; Best Physics.
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An interesting remake to play right on the heels of FF7R, obviously a different tack was taken with Trials, but the effort is nevertheless worthwhile. Shame about some of the localization.
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I wasn't expecting this at all. A pleasant surprise in a year that really, really needed more of them.
Smaller, more streamlined, laser-focused, and surprising experimental compared to its big brother XCOMs, Chimera Squad isn't quite Into The Breach in its deceptive simplicity, but it maybe comes a little closer than anyone really expected. A lot of the new ideas Chimera Squad is tooling around with would be more than welcome in XCOM 3 someday, assuming the pieces fit, and they have time to apply a little bit of that numbered sequel polish.
What doesn't work is largely a matter of some very specific UI jank, at times feeling a bit like what you'd expect from something originally designed for tablets, and, more pointedly, how much of the SWAT police theming you feel like putting up with in this day and age. Chimera Squad was very lucky to launch in April 2020 and not just a couple months later.
By chance, while Chimera Squad is quite good, Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children makes it only the second-best XCOM game of 2020. A little unfortunate for Firaxis, maybe - I doubt the overlap was really enough to hurt their bottom line that much - and a nice problem to have for the rest of us.
Superlatives: Best Surprise Drop; "Do I Really Wanna Be Doing This?" Award for Uncomfortable Themes.
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At its best, Coffee Talk is mellow, relaxed, chill, exactly what you'd expect from a tiny mostly-empty coffee shop in the middle of the night. The light gameplay pieces don't get in the way of the character work and story pacing. The balance feels good.
At its worst, fair chunks of the writing aren't quite 100% where I'd like them to be. There's a little schlocky and ham-handed worldbuilding up top and just a tad too much of a vague "film school" feeling that's hard to put my finger on, but it's there, like an early Kevin Smith flick, countless webcomics from the 2000s, or the movie Bright, without the Max Landis stank.
But there's enough to like in Coffee Talk despite those weaker moments. The characters who work tend to work really well throughout. There's worse ways to spend a few hours if they hook you and the lo-fi midnight vibe is what you're looking for.
Superlatives: Chillest Soundtrack; Worst Opening Montage.
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Impeccable timing.
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