My Favorite Games of 2020
I played fewer games than expected during a year marked by global stay-at-home orders. The grass is always greener, I suppose, when you can’t even go out to look at some grass. Digital stuff just doesn’t hit right if it’s all you can get. When I needed to detach from reality and affect some sort of impact on a fantastical alternate worlds, Steins;Gate is there for me. But I am really no closer to the end than I was last year, so I don’t think it belongs on the list. I bought 13 Sentinels for myself and my wife wrapped it, so it still sits untouched beneath our tree. Probably a contender for 2021, if I remember it be next December. At one point during a sale I downloaded Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but still haven’t started it for want of something flashy when I rustle up a PS5. Poor, sad original PS4, you’re time in the sun has passed.
I knew my top four games from the moment I played them. But number five was a challenge. Sunday crosswords? Peak-a-boo with my brand-new daughter? Attempting the read through the entire Wheel of Time before she was born? These are all pretty fun. But not quite list-them-online fun.
Checking my notes, it seems like my fifth place choice was something I played way back in February. Is early February still considered part of 2020? Feels like a dozen years ago. Ah well, it beat Genshin Impact by virtue of not trying to pick my pocket through microtransactions. Though that Paimon, she’s pretty good.
Anyway, onto the list!
5. phantasy star iv
Very 2020 vibes
Phantasy Star IV was number four last year. Having finally played through the whole thing, I can definitively state that the Zio fight where Dave A. & I got stuck in 1995 was the hardest battle of the game by a large margin. I love the aesthetics of Phantasy Star and am really excited for the coming early-90’s anime fashion trend that is surely just around the corner. It’s basically current athleisure with feathered hair and some armor plating tacked on.
Other notable moments of Phantasy Star was how proud of myself I was for not jumping to dungeon walkthroughs, ever. It says more about the game’s accessibility than it does about me, but still, navigating the dialogue options of the Anger Tower Alys fight without knowing it was coming or that I could avoid battling that guy was a pretty neat experience. Find combo attacks near the end of the game really reminded me of the hyper rare desperation attacks of FF6. I love when stuff is buried so deep into a game that most people won’t see it; I never had a problem moving past the Sword of Kings in Earthbound, skipping the pink tail in FF4, or just plain missing the Zodiac Spear in FF12. But with a large enough playerbase, somebody found this stuff and definitely wasn’t believed on the playground. Good for them! I’ll miss playing Phantasy Star IV, but check back in 2045 and it might be back on the list.
4. Crosscode
I wrote an awful lot about CrossCode earlier this year; I felt like it was a criminally unrecognized action RPG in the vein of Secret of Mana, and someone should tell people to go play it. The puzzles alone was super fun, and the combat was just tricky enough to feel fulfilling. But I have a little confession—I haven’t yet finished it! Much like my wedding took me away from Octopath Traveler, rushing off to the hospital for the birth of my daughter took precedence over my “pregnant wife fell asleep on the couch at 7:30pm” times to play CrossCode. Coming back a few months later was tough; the game is hard, and I am right before the a boss that just keeps stepping on me. It’s been a challenge to get my skills back up to snuff, especially with the limited play time that comes with being a parent. It might end up in the unfinished pile, but because I loved all the time I spent with it it easily earns its spot as my fourth-favorite game of 2020.
Really thought I was in the final stretch, here.
3. Animal Crossing: new horizons
Would I have played as much AC without my wife whiling away her pandemic+pregnancy months fiddling with our island? Maybe not.
Why yes, I did recreate a casting call and made myself the PA because I miss working with talent in film production. Why do you ask?
Would I trade our mutual love of Coco and Skye for anything? Absolutely not.
Trying to chase Yuka off the island made me laugh every day for the two months she refused to leave.
The prayers to the RNG gods that we somehow find pears constantly made me smile.
Watch out for that fox, Pikkles!
Animal Crossing is a game that has written about extensively; it has the casual ease of small-town idyllist poetry and offers the chance to be outside with people (animals?) that won’t cough doom spores in your face. And it sold over 20 million copies months ago, so there are a lot of people are playing it.
early days of egg hunts, which others hated but I thought were pretty neat!
Just a normal summertime convo
And while sales numbers don’t make a game good, the networked aspect of seeing how other islands are set up, comparing mysterious other villagers to those that live on your island, and borrowing fashion designed by twitter diehards requires a robust community. Animal Crossing had that, and more! If stories of virtual graduation ceremonies can’t warm your heart, you definitely need some more Animal Crossing in your life. Plus the recognition that an interest-free loan from Tom Nook is not the same as indentured servitude just warms my heart. Get outta here with your hot takes, internet!
2. hades
Hades was probably the biggest darling of the year. Even people I know who don’t play a ton of games asked me about it, and it was an easy recommendation across the board.
It is my fourth Supergiant game—Transistor is still the only Playstation game I have ever "Platinumed”—and I’ve always enjoyed what comes out of this studio. Plus, all signs point to their management treating them well, and it feels good to support good working conditions while playing fun games!
If you haven’t picked it up yet, do so. It is like a direct-control Diablo with a rogue-lite gameplay loop that is diegetic to a well-executed Greek Myth mystery storyline.
Dusa is such a sweetheart that I will never complain about the Flying Medusa Heads in Castlevania ever again.
For those of you that don’t know Yendor is just Rodney backwards, a Roguelike game is a dungeon-crawler. Rogue, the progenitor, was created to allow replayability for the designer so he could be surprised by the events that happen when he was playing a game he programmed himself. The genre was then popularized by Nethack, which took the two major genre markers of a “Roguelike”: death that removes your character completely so you start again from the beginning, completely fresh; and ever-changing dungeons, items, and monsters. Instead of running through the same troubles again, everything is put together randomly by the computer differently each time. Winning can be impossible, or slightly-less-than impossible if you get a bunch of really good items that work well together.
Hades follows the Rogue-lite modifications that incorporate permanent character growth into the cycle of death and rebirth—while each time through the dungeon will be different, you are also accumulating bits and bobs that make your character stronger the next time you play. You’re “fresh,” but not really: perhaps you can take a few more hits than the first time you ever played, or do slightly more damage to the monsters. It lightens the sting of losing during an attempt through the dungeon where you found really strong mythril armor or something, since even though that is gone forever, you’re making it a little easier for next time.
But the loop in Hades takes story into account: Zagreus is offered boons from the assorted Greek gods—beautifully realized depictions of well known characters, replete with unique personalities that translate so well in both their flavor text and their aspects of power granted to you—rather than a longsword+2 or mysterious red potion. And because Zag is the Prince of the Underworld, when you die you head back down to Hades, stripped of your Olympian boons, and are able to try climbing out yet again. This time, you’ll run into different gods, receive different powers, and hopefully make it a little bit further. Finding a way to make the Rogue-lite framework make sense is just a taste of the level of care pumped into this game.
As far as actually playing goes, it is just fun. I am a complete masochist, so I went Hellmode without quite understanding what that meant. It makes the whole things quite hard; 67 attempts it took me to break out of Hell, and I so far I’ve only done it again once. I heard from twitter the average is like, 20 tries. Whatever.
Baby’s first escape.
More and better things have been written about Hades, but if you’ve made it through my list without trying it (I am looking directly at you, UADarkwing), you owe it to yourself to give it a whirl.
paradise killer
Paradise Killer does everything I like, exactly how I like it.
Nope, a good feeling. About this game. Paradise Killer, top of 2020!
(1) Inexplicable setting.
(2) Game mechanics that remain inscrutable for hours.
(3) Story without a failstate.
(4) Emphasis on exploration.
(5) Unbelievable soundtrack.
(6) Wild PSOne-era hypercard 3D graphics.
Is she doing to do it?
She did it.
Tech and games are much more ubiquitous now than when I used to spend the afternoon at my friend’s house watching them play The 7th Guest. Games your friends owned were extra-magical, because you didn’t have the option to learn them well or to explore at your own pace. Because you were pigging-backing on their familiarity, you could see things in them you were not prepared to completely understand on your own merits. Paradise Killer has that vibe: I don’t always know what is going on, but I know I like it. I skipped paying for the footbath fountains dozens of times so as to keep my blood crystal stores up: big mistake. But how could I possibly know? Finally trying one, it was a great moment.
This looks amazing to me.
If you need more convincing than a list of bullet points of what makes this game amazing, I will run through a quick structural explainer: You are an investigator, brought back from exile to uncover the locked-room mystery of who killed a bunch of people. Actually, Lady Love Dies is the investigator—she is a real character, not a voiceless cipher—but you seem to have decent sway over her responses. And because the game system construction leans into its uniqueness hard enough, the mechanics never surface completely. The world remains obscure enough to hold the desire to min/max responses and get a “best” ending in abeyance.
Example: one of the suspects was a real dick, and so I was a real dick back to him. Maybe—because I didn’t give him the responses he “wanted”—I missed out on some evidence or a clue, and that lack of event-flag-trigger cascaded into the game ending on a slightly less-than-perfect path. Lots of games do stuff like that, where “mistakes” feel like they lock you out of content rather than push you down your own created story. But seriously, that guy sucked. And Lady Love Dies would never kiss his ass, uh-uh, no way. So, also, maybe I got more clues from him because I ruffled his feathers. Maybe I got the same clues I would have gotten either way, but the path was slightly more fulfilling to me, the player. Because of the general weirdness of Paradise Killer, I cannot know for sure. I got what I got, the story seemed to reflect that, and I like it that way. When the in-game responses to my dialogue choices aren’t vague enough that they could also work for having selected the other options presented, the game is doing something right.
There are no meters to fill, no +5 friendship points to accrue, nothing to cap out to make sure you get to see everything the game offers. There is only the story that you make. The ending that you get. The sense of completeness, even if a few things went pear-shaped. The certainly did for me. The gameplay supports the story, the writing supports the story, graphics support the story. It all works together to create the best game of the year. Oh, and that soundtrack. No praise could be superfluous. It really is just that good.
My Love Dies was committed to her work (of worshiping dying gods that want to rule the world and drown it in a sea of war and blood).
This is one of the very few media experiences where I can sincerely say to someone else, “You’re so lucky you can still experience this for the first time.” Paradise Killer is the best game I have played this year. Might be my favorite game since 2011’s Dark Souls.
Everywhere you look and everything you do feels just weird enough to be amazing.