by dijag
Need to play more:
AC Valhalla, Cyberpunk 2077, Nioh 2
Best Assassin's Creed Skin: Ghost of Tsushima
Ghost is a solid, polished game that got a lot of love and attention considering it's really just Assassin's Creed with a samurai skin. I enjoyed it because I also still enjoy AC games, but the level of praise for this was a little surprising.
Best Partial Remake: Final Fantasy 7 Remake
I never played the original, yet somehow still got the feeling that FF7 Remake was just a small part of a full video game with a lot of filler content. That is a long game for just being the first chapter of a remake. I guess I'll look forward to playing the next part...in like 2025?
Best Sequel That Didn't Improve On The First One: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
I adored the first Ori and did have a good time with Wisps. It just felt like the original was a much tighter experience. Opening things up more wasn't a great choice for this style of game and the sequel really didn't add much that stood out over the first game.
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I am a sucker for good first person high speed parkour in games, and Ghostrunner does that as well as, if not better than any game before it. It also gives you a katana to slice dudes in half, a bullet time dodge move, a grappling hook, and several other really cool and well implemented abilities. The cyberpunk world looks incredible, the soundtrack is great, and it doesn't overstay it's welcome. Ghostrunner is the best cyberpunk game, the best game with 'ghost' in the title, it's just the best game of 2020.
The change from beat'em up style combat to turn based for the Yakuza series was a bit clunky, to put it nicely. Like A Dragon definitely is missing some of the energy and creativity that the free flowing combat provided the previous games. Thankfully the new protagonist, Ichiban, is a fantastic character, and the series continues to nail that perfect mix of melodrama and ridiculousness in storytelling and side activities.
Super Mega Baseball has become one of my favorite video game franchises ever. This third installment does not mess with the formula, but it does make meaningful improvements and additions, like the franchise mode. At it's core though, it is still an unbeatable arcade style baseball game.
SOR4 is a fantastic 2D beat 'em up released in 2020, decades after the genre supposedly died. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, it just does everything that made those games fun, really well. Great controls, art, music, bosses, and character variety made this one of the real pleasant surprises of the year.
This is Naughty Dog doing what Naughty Dog does. Super polished, graphically impressive and engaging games are their thing. The story in this one is a bit hit or miss, but I can appreciate them trying something different knowing the inevitable backlash they would receive. The combat is dramatically improved over the prequel, which is what makes this a better game.
It's not Resident Evil 2 Remake, obviously, but RE3 is still one of the better survival horror games I've played. That RE Engine continues to churn out great looking games and the updated controls feel incredibly modern for a remake of a 20 year old game. Hopefully Capcom keeps doing these remakes, I could definitely go for a Code Veronica or RE4 in the next couple years. Why not both?
The Assassin's Creed Odyssey people basically made a more cartoony and goofy one of those. The combat and ability upgrades are ridiculous in a really fun way and it doesn't require 100+ hours to finish like the recent AC games.
The problem with rogue-lites is they get boring real fast playing the same sequences over and over. Hades tries to remedy that by telling an interesting story that evolves with each run. It's pretty well done, but I still found myself struggling to keep playing much after that first victory. It still makes this list because of great gameplay and a killer soundtrack.
If this list was objective best game of the year, Doom Eternal would probably be number 1. It is clearly one of the best first person action shooters ever made. The game is just so damn demanding and mentally exhausting, it ended up taking me the better part of a year to get through the campaign. I guess I could have turned down the difficulty, but playing Doom on lower than ultra violence just seems...wrong.
