2020:
Showing 1-10 of 11 items
Number 10 That first season of True Detective is an extremely good show. It turns out it translates pretty alright to a video game. While copious technical problems prevent me from making a firmer recommendation, I can't say I didn't enjoy spending more time with Agent Francis York Morgan. SWERY's writing and cutscene direction are always enjoyable, and the mystery of Le Carre is a compelling one, if highly derivative of the aforementioned True Detective.
Number 9 After getting me to get way too into a sports game with 2017's Pyre, Supergiant successfully tricked me into playing a rogue-like, another genre I care extremely little about. Turns out the secret is providing a frankly ludicrous amount of writing, great character interactions, and an incredibly compelling story to drive me through the repetitive nature of roguelikes. Who knew. Also the requisite incredible soundtrack and gorgeous visuals of it being a Supergiant game don't hurt, either.
Number 8 Sucker Punch's open world games since inFamous have been a delight to roam. They combine fun traversal mechanics with interesting combat and polish it to a mirror sheen, and Ghost of Tsushima is no different. The island of Tsushima is a beautiful and varied land, filled with just the right amount of side content and diversions to be enjoyably dense. The aforementioned combat is meaningfully brutal and quick, with the stance system providing interesting variety to how you dispatch enemies. Finally, while the story isn't all that original, it provides a solid base for the rest of the game to expand on.
Number 7 Insomniac doesn't reinvent the wheel too much from their past 2018 outing with Spider-Man in this smaller-scale follow-up, but given that the only wheel that needed reinventing was "Maybe don't put a guy whose only power is his head is super hard as the main villain of the DLC", it's hard to complain. Miles's unique powerset sets him and his combat style apart from Peter Parker's, adding new wrinkles to the quick, counter-based combat of the original. It also serves as a decent launch showcase for the Playstation 5, offering outstanding raytraced visuals and decent Dualsense shenanigans to show what the new hardware can do.
Number 6 If there's one thing nine game of the year lists should tell you by now, it's that I love detective games, and Paradise Killer is no exception. It quite literally drops you into their weird world and allows you to do as much digging as you deem necessary to uncover as much information as you want about the bizarre and imaginative world of Island 24. While the open world feels like more of an afterthought than anything else, the areas themselves are packed full of interesting detail, compelling characters, and fascinating conspiracies to unravel.
Number 5 I'm the type of person, like I assume many people are, whose favorite parts of these top-down, party based RPGs are the beginning. Designing a few player characters, being introduced to the world, some early levelling and power acquisition, and then I tend to fall off as the midgame approaches. I stuck with Wasteland the whole way through and enjoyed basically every second of it. A large part of that can be attributed to its style, a thing often overlooked by this genre. When the final major battle of the tutorial started off playing a mournful cover of "Are You Washed in the Blood?" I was sold. What's more impressive is that the game kept up that sense of style throughout, sprinkling in askew covers of songs, interesting factions and their troubles, and a compelling world to investigate and explore.
Number 4 Truth be told, I didn't really grow up playing Tony Hawk games outside of at demo kiosks. I came to enjoy the series much later, well after it's "death" at the hands of awkward plastic controllers. However, there's something seemingly timeless about the grungy, 90s-soaked nostalgia of good skateboarding games that's just universal. It's like a cultural touchstone for people born between the late 70s and early 90s. Focusing in on perfecting lines through each level, keeping speed to get that much more air or that much farther on a grind, and maintaining your balance through it all to maximize the score are just plain fun to do. Plus, everything's punched up to the nines, looking fantastic with some fantastic soundtrack additions, and the controls are tight, responsive, and makes skating around extremely fun to do.
Number 3 *With a shoutout and probably replacement if I played more of Immortals: Fenyx Rising which I have yet to play more than a handful of hours of because I played 100 hours of Assassin's Creed Valhalla ending a few days before I started Immortals, which was a mistake. What a difference six years makes. After a year with three marquee Ubisoft open world games with the division of "One good, two very bad" (Sorry, I will forever be a Watch_Dogs apologist), we hit a year of three marquee Ubisoft open world games with a division of "Two great, one alright." While "play as anyone" ended up being more of an interesting gimmick than any world-shaking advance, the near-future dystopic London wove an intricate web of conspiracy and mystery that I enjoyed unraveling from start to finish. Each aspect of the conspiracy stood apart fantastic on their own, but the interweaving and overlaying of each aspect is where the game shines. The combat remains fun, and with the addition of futuristic gadgetry and new types of enemy hacks, Watch Dogs: Legion was a game I found myself returning to long after I had already finished it. ...Twice.
Number 2 Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a weird, bold game. Moving to turn-based, JRPG combat after fifteen years of beat-em-up action is a weird choice. Moving away from series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu is a bold one. But every choice that RGG studio made to step away from the past decade and a half of series concepts elevates this game into standing shoulder to shoulder with the best of the series. Kasuga Ichiban and company's dogged earnestness and belief in people make for an interesting counterbalance to the game's villains, and the addition of a faux-social link system allows for more interesting, in-depth looks into everyone's lives outside of the underworld. Combat is both fun and narratively interesting, with the fact that they bothered to come up with an in-universe explanation for why Ichiban fights in a turn-based manner legitimately one of my favorite parts. Plus, with the requisite Yakuza fun diversions and wild sub-stories to discover, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a worthy successor and addition to the venerable series.
Number 1A Look, I'll level with you. This is my favorite video game of all time. Growing up in a rural town I can point out every single character as people that I knew in high school. The way they captured that, even being based in a culture half a world away, is incredible. Did this technically come out this year? I mean, I would generally consider no, just another version of this 2012 game released on Steam, finally free from the shackles of the Vita. Do I care? Absolutely not. That's why it's here, at the top of the list, but I'm not gonna say it's my "2020 game of the year." That's just cheating.