Best of 2020: Bryan's Picks
Let's get this out of the way: There are not a lot of good things to say about the year 2020. It was a year where every time you saw a news headline you could almost guarantee it was going to be some fresh hell being thrust upon the world. That being said, when there were happy occurrences in 2020 they stood out in even brighter contrast to the general turmoil of the year. And though sometimes it felt like it was going in slow motion, time did not stop and games kept coming out! Good games. Great games, even! While it may have put a strain on many, working from home does *work* in some situations and the intrepid developers of the games below (those which came out in 2020 at least) found ways to succeed despite a global pandemic. As always, note that these are chosen from the games I have played this year, not necessarily games released this year (platform I played in parentheses).
10) Tony Hawk 1+2 (PS4) - While it's billed as an HD remaster, the genius of THPS1+2 is that it brings forward the best aspects of the later games while omitting the chaff (for example keeping reverts, and doing away with caveman). It also includes the addition of social and online features, but unobtrusively presents them and allows the player to experience them on their own terms. One of the undersold aspects for me was the player customization which is a constant throughline and keeps you engaged as a mid-term goal as you conquer the levels you haven’t posted a high score on since middle school. My one complaint is that the menu UI is pretty bad, however, it doesn’t ruin the experience. A highlight of the Tony Hawk games has always been the music for me, and I found this game’s soundtrack to be a pretty excellent marriage of old and new, but they really should have had the game open with Superman by Goldfinger no matter what.
9) Spiritfarer (PC) - When Josh mentioned he had recently played this and wanted to do a podcast on it, I jumped at the opportunity. It had been on my radar since its release and I was more than happy to take him up on an excuse to leapfrog it to the front of my gaming queue. A game that bills itself as being ‘about death’ can easily become morose, but the experience of playing Spiritfarer was more consistently uplifting to me than depressing. It's a reminder of how precious life is in all of its unpredictability and messiness. It's a reminder to take time to be grateful for those you've known, loved, and lost over time. One of my favorite things about Spiritfarer is the fact that while there was a fast travel system, I almost never used it. There was so much to be done on the way to where I was going. It's an apt metaphor for life: don’t rush to try and get where you’re going. Enjoy the voyage, long though it may be, in all of its bittersweet glory.
8) Genshin Impact (PC) - For those unaware, Genshin Impact is a combination of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and a gachapon game. This would not be a true GOTY list without some flagrant recency bias, and I am not sure how much this game will stand the test of the time with me, but it is an incredible achievement for a free (to play) game. The art style is anime as hell and insanely colorful. The writing is relentlessly cheerful and filled with enthusiastic calls to action. Honestly, it's the balm I needed during the doldrums of our 6th thru 8th months of social distanced life. While the gacha mechanics do beckon the player to open their wallet, it's very possible to play this game and get a complete experience without spending a dime. Aside from that, Genshin is a technical marvel with seamless crossplay between mobile, PC and consoles. And that soundtrack! Which was performed by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra (remember, this is a free game), has so many great tracks. It's a bit concerning that Zelda mixed with a casino is one of my top 10, but here we are.
This was my research area for my Factorio factory. I’m obviously very proud. To someone who hasn’t played this game its, this is completely meaningless, but take my word for it that it was a pretty cool thing to get working in game.
7) Factorio (PC) - Factorio is a game that is surprisingly easy to pick up. And that is very surprising indeed given the way it presents its crunchy factory builder core mechanic and the complexity that is possible within its playspace. This game is the definition of Atari's Nolan Bushnell’s Law: “All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master. They should reward the first quarter and the hundredth '' but quarter in this case is an ‘hour’ or so. If you do decide to commit to those subsequent several dozen hours you’ll find a rabbit hole of new mechanics, and even more novel ways that those mechanics interact with each other. It's definitely a rabbit hole worth going down in my opinion, and if you give this game that first hour, you’ll probably end up going down it for a few hours yourself.
The chinchilla raid was certainly an interesting early game saga for me, but the real arc of my colony hinged upon the drug addled stray I took in who became my chief scientist.
6) Rimworld (PC) - Rimworld is a type of game game that I didn’t realize I still loved: the strategy/survival sim/resource management game. It's complicated and unforgiving, yet possesses such a rich series of interlocking systems that success is not measured as it might be in a traditional management sim, but more by the quality of the stories that are told by the game engine. I have not had a game so effortlessly devour my hours of free time in a loooong time. It's rare for a game to cause me to daydream about how to reduce foot traffic in my colony’s kitchen so I could keep it clean and prevent my colonists from getting food poisoning.
5) Return of the Obra Dinn (PC) - I don’t know that I’ve ever played a game that made me feel smarter than Return of the Obra Dinn. It rewards the player's attention to detail, forces them to make leaps of logic, and encourages them to take on a posture of deductive reasoning . The spooky supernatural ship aesthetic with paranormal happenings occurring in the flashbacks ratchets up the pressure and foreboding adding to an atmosphere of being on a mission in a hostile place. The cascade of solved fates you get once a character or death clocks into place is addicting and begs the player to continue onward and crack the case. There is nothing else out there like this game right now and I want more immediately.
4) Paper Mario: The Origami King (Switch) - In my opinion, the Paper Mario series’ biggest strength is that it is the place where Nintendo can let Mario get weird. Featuring scenes that range from hilarious to heartfelt alongside a series of quirky running jokes, Paper Mario: The Origami King brought a lot of new ideas to the table and yet at times felt like it was still holding back. Some of my favorite oddities included: a game show sequence, a Vegas-like desert resort, a discotheque pyramid, Zelda-style elemental temples, hidden cafes populated with pensive goombas, and musical theatre numbers. I’ll remember this game just as much for the time I spent puzzling through the boss fights and then joyfully whaling on them with the ‘1000 Fold Arms’ as I will for the times the story took an unexpected turn into a sad or sincere sequence of events. It's a game that contains multitudes, and gets better as it unfolds. Pun absolutely intended.
3) Final Fantasy 7: Remake (PS4) - Square Enix has been dancing around the question of how to do justice to a Final Fantasy 7 remaster for over a decade, and in 2020 they finally answered that question. Using a state of the art combat system, a faithful re-interpretation of the source material (with some twists!), and a stunning meta-commentary on what it means to re-make a game, Final Fantasy 7: Remake shocked me. The amount of additional context and pathos they were able to bring to the first disc of the original Final Fantasy 7 alone has me eagerly anticipating the continuation of this endeavor. And the best part of that is it’s not because of my expectations for what is to come in the original Final Fantasy 7, but for how those expectations will be subverted.
2) Hades (PC) - There are so many things that Hades gets right with its rogue-lite, run-based gameplay, but the real brilliance came from blending in narrative and mechanical progression with Supergiant’s signature high production value. It's not often you play a roguelike game that makes you care about its story and characters, but that is exactly what Hades managed to pull off. Add in some of the tightest twitch action gameplay and a huge variety of abilities and power ups to experiment with and you have the makings of a truly transcendent game in a very crowded genre. It doesn’t hurt that in a year with an alarming number of stories about crunch, burn-out, and odious labor practices in the games industry it was nice to see that Supergiant also succeeded on that front. Great games lovingly made, the Supergiant way. I can’t wait to see what’s next, but until it gets here I’ll probably play a few more runs of Hades.
1) Persona 5: Royal (PS4) - Persona 5 is an intensely beautiful game. Not only is it one of the most mechanically engaging JRPGs I’ve ever played, but it pulls this off with sublime style, and a streamlined, kinetic battle system. However, the thing that kept me coming back to Persona 5 the most were the characters and the sense of place. The immersion into Persona’s fictionalized Tokyo was much appreciated in a year that precluded any international travel, and growing the bonds of friendship with the game’s characters was a consistently rewarding experience. It's not a substitute for real life interaction, but it did serve as a reminder how important the bonds of friendship are. It was also a great game to relax to, as the game constantly reminds you on its loading screens where ‘take your time’ is the constant mantra. The idea is reinforced by some chill tracks on the game’s stunning OST. As it progresses through its epic runtime the game teaches many valuable lessons: the value of putting others first, the value of believing in yourself and others, the value of societal justice, and above all the value of genuine connections with people in your community. In a dark and dispiriting year Persona 5 Royal provided not only levity, but hope. Phantom Thieves forever.
I played a ton of great games this year so I wanted to expand my list by giving a quick superlative or recognition to some games I found to be cool:
Bryan’s Honorable Mention Superlatives:
Teardown
Best Unrealistic Physics - Teardown (PC)
Runner Up: Noita (PC)
Best Itch.io Justice Bundle Discovery- Long Gone Days (PC)
Runner Up: Signs of the Sojourner (PC)
Best Atmospheric Lighting - Ashen (PC)
Best Traversal Mechanic - The Pathless (PC)
Best Opportunity to Show Compassion - Kind Words (PC)
Most Appalachian Story - Kentucky Route Zero (Switch)
Best Way to Spark Joy - Wilmot’s Warehouse (Switch)
Most Complicated Story - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PS4)
Best Stealth Action - Ghost of Tsushima (PS4)
Cool Mobile Game Corner:
A Monsters Expedition
A Monsters Expedition Through Puzzling Exhibitions (iOS)
Slay the Spire (iOS)
Kings League 2 (iOS)
Best Old Games of 2020:
Star Wars Racer (Switch)
Secret of Mana (Switch)
Super Mario 64 (Switch)
Cool, But Not My Thing:
Umurangi Generation
Umurangi Generation (PC)
Necrobarista (iOS)
Hypnospace Outlaw (PC)
Want to Play in 2021:
Spelunky 2 (PC)
Thronebreaker (iOS)
Crying Suns (iOS)
Baldur’s Gate 3 (PC)
Cyberpunk 2077 (PC)... or maybe 2022.
Take Care and Keep on Gaming (in 2021)!
“There ain't no gettin' offa this train we're on”