2020 Games of the Year
2020 has been a YEAR y’all. I still played some standout games though so I want to talk about them before the year ends. These were some bright spots in otherwise tough year. These aren’t necessarily in a ranked order, but the last one is my absolute favorite. I’m going to be silly and give these all titles.
THE INEVITABILITY:
This has been on almost everyone’s GOTY list and it has won a few awards and while I try to not be predictable this game is FUCKING GOOD.
I know technically Hades has been in Early Access for a while but I was skittish about playing it on my PC (I know I could’ve used a controller, but I am extremely low key and that is effort), however this year was when the “official” release of the game happened. I bought it the minute it came out on Switch. I don’t normally play rogue-likes because I am not very good at that style of game, but I trust Supergiant to not steer me wrong. I mean Pyre was put forward as an almost sport like game and that made the last GOTY list I made…
This game does not just play off of the brand name. The gameplay is as sharp as any other Supergiant game and definitely put the rogue-like genre into a format I enjoyed a lot. Additionally, the soundtrack and storytelling was top notch as usual.
I think one of my biggest connections to this game was how it helped me recontextualize my relationship to my own mortality. Death has always been one of my biggest fears. Between the nature of the genre (dying constantly), and the themes of…inevitability (I’m glad I can tie shit together) of death, and one of the games main vocal pieces, “Good Riddance” I found myself thinking differently about death this year than I have in the past 25. In a year in which we’ve lost so many people to COVID and in a year where I lost my grandfather, that’s been quite a comfort.
IN WHICH I’M LATE TO THE PARTY:
YES, technically this came out in 2019, but…
I heard people talking about this game late last year and it showed up on a lot of my friend’s GOTY lists in 2019. I think my initial hesitation to play it had to do with the two main characters being cops which is always a giant question mark. However, I saw enough people that I trusted playing it that I decided to look into it and realized it was EXTREMELY my jam. So I bought it, played it, and it was EXTREMELY my jam. Like oh my goodness there’s very few games (they’re all on this list) that could be MORE my jam.
I won’t lie, this game starts rough. It plays just fine, don’t get me wrong, but the world is extremely coarse when you first get started and while it doesn’t improve a great deal in that respect, you definitely get more accustomed to it. It is also there that you start finding some of the sweetness and sincerity that the game has to offer. When you’re faced with a world where almost everything is against you, the little victories you do find are all the more satisfying and the emotional moments more poignant. The game is also so honest, well thought out, and charming. Plus, we need more murder mystery games. Not games where you can solve a mystery as a sidequest, I need more games where I solve ALL THE MYSTERIES. Even the one’s that weren’t really there at first but that I pushed into being. Deeply excited to revisit this game next year when Final Cut comes out.
Also in this house, we stan Kim Kitsuragi. No further questions.
SPEAKING OF JAM…
I forget exactly when this year I played Paradise Killer, though I am now looking and realizing it came out in September, so. Anyway, my point was that the soundtrack for Paradise Killer has been stuck in my head since the MINUTE I turned the game on. I am listening to it now. I pre-ordered the vinyl. The music is a part of me.
This really was a good year for murder mystery games and frankly I lived for it. Everything about Paradise Killer pops (the character design, the story, the world, and the music!) and playing it honestly is like going on an island vacation only to have it interrupted by a mass murder that you have to solve (is this anyone’s dream but mine…should I move to the world of “Murder She Wrote?). Truthfully, I was glad this game ended up being shorter overall because once I started unraveling the mystery I could not put it down.
Paradise Killer is truly a gem in this year. It makes me SO sad that it didn’t get as much awards attention because it truly is a standout game in so many ways, but I am glad that it has received a lot of love. I hope more and more people take a trip to Paradise in the coming year. We could all use a little getaway. I’m also so excited for anything Kaizen Game Works comes up with in the future.
MY ABSOLUTE GAME OF THE YEAR:
This game is not only my game of the year, it easily worked itself into my top five of all time.
I played the first three Acts of this game around when they first came out but kind of got distracted from playing any further. When I saw that the complete version was out on consoles this year, I figured it was high time to get back into it.
Before anything else about this game, I feel like it is really important for me to say…just the fact alone that this game is set in Kentucky is EXTREMELY important to me. I’ve lived in Kentucky the vast majority of my life and you never see games, movies, ANYTHING set here. When Kentucky does come up in media, it is as the butt of some joke about rednecks, inbreeding, or how backwards we all are. It was truly a empowering and liberating feeling to see a game set in my home state that didn’t capitalize on all that and sought to depict what life in Appalachia and Kentucky is truly like.
Even without that personal connection, this game is extraordinary. I am sucker for magical realism anyway and this game delivers on that genre in a way that I don’t feel like I’ve ever seen. The soundtrack and sound design are both extremely well executed and some of the musical choices feel appropriately ironic in a way that engages with the themes of the game very well.
The story feels plain but beautiful and hits you like a bag of bricks when you least expect it. I cried a good 3–4 times while playing this game. Obviously there’s plenty of NOT plain stuff, but at the heart of it the game is very human. Plus, we have no choice but to stan a game that depicts how capitalism has brutalized this part of our country and the country at large. Kentucky Route Zero does not pull any punches in depicting the ravages of capitalism and the human price we pay for our constant desire to consume.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Five feels like the right number for a GOTY post, but I couldn’t really land on a game that fit in the fifth slot of this year…however I did land on a lot of games that felt like they came close.
Pokemon Shield: I bought this game to play during the week of the Presidential Election. I knew it was going to be a rough week and I wanted something relatively mindless to play. To my surprise, I found myself enjoying a Pokemon game in a way I hadn’t in many, many years. I even completed the Dex for the first time! This technically came out last year, though the final DLC was released late 2020 and I didn’t play it till around then.
COMFORT GAMES: This year has been notably awful and we all found ourselves in need of a little extra care. It was definitely nice to be able to take it easy this year with games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. The nostalgia of Mineral Town was so appreciated and honestly I will never get tired of stopping by my island to say hello to my BFFs Stitches and Dom.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered: Did this game have one of the absolute worst launches in regards to multiplayer? Yes. Was it basically a frame by frame remake of a Gamecube game without any real though given to mechanical improvements? Also yes. Did I fucking love it anyway? OF COURSE.
Crystal Chronicles was one of the most visited games in my childhood and I’m sorry even through some of the shortcomings it was still a pleasure to revisit it.
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Extremely excited for what 2021 brings us in terms of games. I’m sure with a new console generation we’ve got a lot of cool stuff to look forward to! I hope everyone reading this has a great end of the year. Fingers crossed that 2021 is just…a little less.
