Hello. Here are the best videogames from 2020
MOON
Love-de-Lic, Onion Games
Moon’s commentary on the nature of its hero, expressed not only through its narrative but also its entire suite of mechanics, is its toolbox for deconstructing the template of the JRPG. Learning it’s a long-lost game from 1997, operating with the inescapable sentimentality and eccentricity of the modern indie scene, underscores how long it took the rest of the world to reach places Moon had already been. Even with its anachronisms, Moon is a surprising novelty. My review.
KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO
Cardboard Computer
Kentucky Route Zero is lost in the illusive premise of the American Dream but found in the elusive dream logic of its weird, wild, and wonderful prose. Along the journey are characters who conceal pain and loss with whimsical musings of hope and escape, and locations engulfed in a meditative haze where brutal reality is indistinguishable from isolated reverie. At the end lies a paradox that suggests a circuitous path was the shortest course to an inevitable destination, and the assurance that Kentucky Route Zero’s winding seven-year voyage knew its direction all along. My review. More articulate and thoughtful takes include those by Austin Walker, Laura Hudson, and Noah Caldwell-Gervais.
13 SENTINELS: AEGIS RIM
Vanillaware
I’ve always connected with Vanillaware’s presentation but rarely its insistence on crafting action games from its art. Odin Sphere, Muramasa, and Dragon’s Crown are beautiful (if not miserably lurid) but not especially well suited to their lightning-paced combat. 13 Sentinels sidesteps this issue by (1) not attempting to be an action game and (2) neatly dividing its story and its tower defense systems between two disparate modes. The product is one of the most gorgeous collections of 2D light and color ever presented in a videogame and a challenging, if not indulgent, collection of real time strategy systems. 13 Sentinels’ labyrinthine narrative may be too convoluted and distressed for its own good, but I could live inside of its environments forever. Ben Sheene’s review.
PARADISE KILLER
Kaizen Game Works
The material and ethereal world of Paradise Killer imagines vaporwave as an all-consuming aesthetic. An adherence to garish neon is excised, but ambling around a tropical paradise and interrogating outrageously eccentric characters while listening to jazzy saxophone-obsessed electronica is, somehow, a perfect venue for solving a supernatural murder mystery. Paradise Killer’s myriad collectibles encourage voracious exploration, its PDA interface is adept at sorting out evidence and testimony, and the climax—taking everything you’ve learned and absorbed for fifteen hours to accuse the guilty—is ultimately the product of your investment. Why aren’t there more games with this level of freedom and agency? Nathan Stevens’ review.
LITHIUM CITY
Nico Tuason
Lithium City’s neon violence is a fountain of ideas that expands until it explodes. Its objective may be to clear tricky bad guys out of hostile rooms, but its justification is to force creative and spontaneous solutions out of an evolving set of kinetic problems. What’s left on Lithium City’s table is a full meal served in a medley of exquisite morsels. My review.
FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE
Square-Enix Business Division 1
Remake removes Final Fantasy VII from its agonizing stasis and animates its objectives with modern sophistication. In spite of its curtailed debut, Remake creates characters out of archetypes, finds class struggle amid its surging environmentalism, and generates dynamic fiction from a familiar narrative. By honoring moments held sacred and defying what may be expected, Remake stays true to the radical and dangerous ambition that defined Final Fantasy VII. My review.
STREETS OF RAGE 4
Dotemu, Lizardcube, Guard Crush Games
At ten minutes into Streets of Rage 4, I didn’t know if I could stomach a game so slavishly faithful to its 16-bit ancestors. I gave it some more time (and I switched from Axel to Cherry) and had a wonderful afternoon using my fists as weapons of justice. Streets of Rage 4 adds its own shine to the aesthetic and operation of its predecessors without falling victim to overly complex progression systems or other boondoggles of retro-revival movement. You play its systems for what they are, and you get better at the game. You can also beat the shit out of the police, an idyllic vision shared by anyone seeking fantasy justice from 2020. Steven McGehee’s review.
HADES
Supergiant Games
An exemplary roguelike incentives and broadens its intrinsic repetition. An ideal narrative adventure paces its characters and their conflicts across a finite timeline. Hades creates a vantage point engineered to view a singular setting of both perspectives. Whichever side you ultimately settle on, Hades is a capable ascent from the dregs of genre stagnation. My review.
UMURANGI GENERATION
Origame Digital
Umurangi Generation’s vibrant ambience validates the rebellion of its doomed youth culture. It also renders the player a transient witness to a surging tragedy. Umurangi Generation’s key is its camera, as it allows its protagonist and its player the agency to access and capture a world beyond their control. It creates a vantage point untended since Jet Set Radio, and Umurangi Generation didn’t even need skates or spray paint to get there. My review of Umurangi Generation and my review of Umurangi Generation Macro, which, among other pleasant surprises, added skates and spray paint.
RISK OF RAIN 2
Hopoo Games
I am alive. I have weapons. Things come to kill me. Dangerous. I shoot them. Numbers fall out. Pleasing. I find neat toys. Good. Time passes. Things get harder. Bonuses add flavor. I get better. The game gets harder. I get better. The game gets harder. I get better. I am enraptured by this cycle.
Risk of Rain 2 satisfies the dueling obligations of Finding Cool Loot and Destroying Monsters, but tempers the sinister loop alongside a novel progression system, attractive procedural upgrades, and a willingness to make the player as good as their avatar. It’s not my favorite game of 2020, but if you put a gun to my head and told me I could only play one of these for the rest of my life, I would pick Risk of Rain 2.
Past top ten lists: 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019
Other 2020 games I greatly enjoyed:
Persona 5 Royal – The stellar pace and production of Persona 5 did not require adjustments and additions to its one hundred hour run time. And yet here is Persona 5 Royal, presenting that package with integral new characters as it remodels the structure, combat, and whimsical ephemera that binds them all together. Persona 5 Royal is the most articulate and realized expression of Persona’s ethos, provided one has the time (and patience) to see it through. My review.
Paper Beast – Paper Beast allows players to lose themselves inside pastel daydreams of soft shapes and delicate zoology. They could also lose patience with some tedious mechanics and suspicious tests of logic. Paper Beast is full of gratifying ingenuity, beautiful optimism, and elegant communication. And maybe an overabundance of zealous whimsy. My review.
Resident Evil 3 – Instead of modernizing 1999’s Resident Evil 3, Capcom has remodeled 2019’s remake of Resident Evil 2. Dazzling production and clever level design are still effective fuel for the survival horror engine, but this reliance on familiar techniques dissolves any expectation of novelty and ambition. In Resident Evil 3, Jill is less the subject of a despairing escape and more the product of a regulated, orderly departure. My review.
Tales from Off-Peak City Vol. 1 – Volume One of Tales From Off-Peak City is an escalating procession of existential crises staged through instances of gentrification, corporatism, and pizza delivery. It’s a kitschy nightmare laundered through eccentric characters and their bizarre conditions and the product is a surreal but eloquent presentation on preventable social decay. A single city block and a couple of hours is all Tales From Off-Peak City needs to tell a grotesque, distinctive story. My review.
Carrion – Carrion excels at creating realistic tentacle locomotion in the shape of a bloodthirsty nightmare. It falls behind when it requests precision from a monster only capable of blunt violence. As mad science grants sentience to raw brutality, articulation must be sacrificed for overwhelming power. It leaves Carrion as a mesmerizing concept overcommitted to its code. My review.
Post Void – Post Void is a barrage of garish visual information parading through the interface of a first-person shooter. As either an act of mercy or a concession to humanity, modest roguelite trappings force all of Post Void’s noise and fury into manageable dosages. This leaves Post Void as a wonderful party drug, provided you can sustain the party and handle the drugs. My review.
It’s a 2019 Game But I Don’t Care: Ringfit Adventue – I bought Ringfit Aventure in the pre-covid world of January with the intention to use it as a supplement to the cardio overload I put myself through five days a week. I didn’t really think about how long I would keep up with its demands, but here I am, nearly a year later, and I have played a level of its campaign (and just as many custom workouts) every day, except a week where I was out of town, in 2020. This is the longest relationship I have had with a game since the Counter-Strike 1.6 Obsession of 2004. Ringfit is just something I do now.
Objective Game of the Year 2020: Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The latest Animal Crossing entry arrived just as Covid-19 enveloped the United States in a year of isolation and misery. There was no better time for a game centered around community, and ripe for sharing on social media, to provide relief from a frightening and rapidly deteriorating world. New Horizon’s boundless optimism and sense of joyous fulfillment (Death Standing, for example, also reveled in the pleasure of completing simple tasks) were unparalleled by any of its contemporaries in 2020. Even if New Horizon’s release timing and inherent repetition were pure happenstance, it consumed hundreds of hours of millions of lives from every imaginable demographic. It was an essential piece of community and culture in a doomed existence. Nothing else from 2020, and few other games in history, have been so perfect for its time and place.
Thick Turd 2020: The Last of Us Part II – Can you imagine paying Naughty Dog one hundred million dollars and giving them half a decade to annihilate Los Angeles’ local game development labor force and produce a twenty-five hour rumination on violence and nihilism—the same two themes that run through every conflict-focused videogame—without the slightest interest in subtlety? Pressing X to kill woman is functionally no different from pressing F to pay respects. Did anyone need this? Artists trying to conquer the uncanny valley have birthed a class of games that look very pretty and are objectively well acted. They proudly showcase their budget inside every moment of their presentation, but they also leave the player staring at phantasmal slime from the ghosts of games past. Grit and carnage are passed off as maturity and we’re left with a product as puerile and id-driven as Duke Nukem. The Last of Us Part II, with all of its exquisitely rendered leaves and totally pragmatic Shotgun-Blasts-To-Stomach viscera, doesn’t do much for the medium beyond relating an expensive version of Oh wow, that was fucked up and an eccentric and protracted interpretation of that ancient Spider-Man meme. It is hard to conceive of a more egregious waste of time and money, all to the detriment of the Naughty Dog personnel crunched into oblivion The fleeting open world section early in Seattle was neat, though. Ben Sheene’s diametrically opposite review.
Wish I had time for: Yakuza: Like A Dragon, Demon’s Souls, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Nioh 2, Dreams, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, SnowRunner, Genshin Impact, Star Wars: Squadrons, Ghostrunner, Spelunky 2, Bugsnax, Cloudpunk, Necrobarista, Spiritfarer, Trials of Mana, Telling Lies, The Wonderful 101 Remastered, CrossCode, Deadly Premonition 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Maneater, Haven, Teardown , The Pathless, Hylics 2, PixelJunk Eden 2, Fuser, Blaseball, Sakura Wars, Call of the Sea, and the haunted PS1 demo disc.
Looking forward to in 2021: Resident Evil Village, Solar Ash, Balan Wonderworld, Psychonauts 2, Shin Megami Tensei V, Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, Retrowave, Cotton Reboot, Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139, Humanity, Axiom Verge 2, Elden Ring, Returnal, R-Type Final 2, Jett: The Far Shore, Ghostwire Tokyo, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Persona 5 Strikers, Oddworld: Soulstorm, UFO 50, Dead Static Drive, NEO: The World Ends With You, and The Good Life.
