Golly bob howdy, that 2020 sure was a year, huh?....
Look, enough has been said about the crap year this was by enough people that I don't need to comment too much more on it. Also, normally after talking about what a crap year this was, the person in question uses that as a jumping off point to say "but thankfully, we had plenty of great games to get us through it!" But the fact of the matter is that 2020 really wasn't all that great for gaming. Don't get me wrong, the best games of this year are phenomenal, but overall, most of the titles that came out this year were "good," not "great." It's a good problem to have, but it did mean that a lot of spots on the GOTY list needed my somewhat empirical placing process (which will be discussed when the time comes) to be determined. But enough about that. As you may have noticed, the title of this article is back to normal when compared to the title of the GOTY article from last year. Due to time constraints, in 2019 I had to take out all the lists and just do one or two categories and then GOTY, so it was pretty much just "Top 10 games" not "Best of." Well, this year I also don't really have the time or patience to do the upwards of 200 pages of writing I used to do for my end of the year lists, but this time, I've found a happy medium. It occurred to me that other than to give you a sense of which games earned points towards GOTY from which categories, there really isn't a reason to spell out and write a blurb for every spot winner on every list. Taking "Best Protagonist" as an example, there are always 10 total winners obviously ranging from #10 to Protagonist of the Year. In previous years, I'd list every place winner and write a blurb about why it got on the list plus why it earned the particular spot it did. This year, however, I've decided just to list and write about the overall winner of most categories. I'll still be doing the full list for categories like "Best Moment" or "Best Soundtrack Piece," but they'll be the exception. That'll save some time and let this article have a bit more substance than last year's. Like in last year's article, for each spot on the GOTY list, I'll also spell out which categories the title in question placed in, so you'll still be able to see the context of "oh, this won spot #5 in Best Protagonist" in the end (plus another brief rundown of all the categories the game in question actually won, so the info is all there). Hopefully when the end of 2021 rolls around I'll have planned ahead enough to do the massive articles I used to do, but for now, this was the compromise I came up with. A couple notes before we begin:
1): As always, only games that I both played and reviewed will be eligible for placement on any of these lists. Assuming you aren't reading this like a year or so after it goes out, if you don't see the title of a game in the navbar, it won't be placing on any of these lists. It could possibly be true that Hades, for instance, is the second coming of Christ. I've never been less interested in a popular mainstream game, however, so I didn't play it and it's getting jack diddly squat. It's possible that Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is even better than Odyssey was, but I simply didn't have the patience in me for yet another 100 hour Ubisoft grindfest, even if it would've been fun to do. It may also be true that Half-Life: Alyx is the way of the future, but HELLO, that's over $1000 for one game! No thanks! Also Animal Crossing has never been my jam so I'll likely never play it or any future installments and the chances of me playing a Call of Duty title aren't much better. Ultimately it all boils down to, again, if the name isn't in the navbar, it isn't on here.
2): I'm not going to do the sniveling "this is my opinion and if you don't agree with me, that's fine" thing. Obviously it's my opinion. You wouldn't be here if you wanted a stupid community poll or something. However, I'll say that though this is based largely on my subjective opinion, I do always try to have some objectivity in there. Most years I explain why every spot winner on every list got the spot it did from both perspectives, but this year, as I've said, it'll only be the overall winner, and there won't be any blurbs detailing why something won 2nd place instead of first in the "Best Atmosphere" category or whatever.
3): You should assume that there will be spoilers in these lists, so if you see that a winner is something you haven't played and want to avoid plot details for, skip to the next entry. I'll be keeping the "headlines" of these lists as vague as I can, but the same can't be said for the blurbs. You've been warned.
4): If you EVER do an ad for AFK Arena, you're the scum of the Earth and I hate you.
5): Neil Druckmann abuses his workers, Ubisoft executives sexually harass women, CD Projekt Red is just another lying scumbag corporation, and Donald Trump lost the election fair and square.
Now, let's get started.
THIS!!!!
IS!!!!!!
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The Technical Awards
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Best Realistic Graphics: Ghost of Tsushima
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Best Artistic Graphics: Final Fantasy VII Remake
Is it perhaps a bit cheap and/or predictable to hand out this award to a game with Square Enix money behind it instead of an indie game with less budget but perhaps more genuine artistic vision? Yes. Is that going to stop me? No. Final Fantasy VII Remake is absolutely stunning in every way. Literally every character is beautiful, even the sewer levels are rendered impressively, and the sheer overindulgence in particle effects when you land an attack is astounding. The graphics sections are always a little hard to write about, because it kinda always boils down to "Just LOOK at it." And well...with Final Fantasy VII Remake...just LOOK at it!
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Best Performing Game: Doom Eternal
Just in case there's a very confused Rock Band/Guitar Hero fan or sales figure enthusiast on here excited for this category and shocked that it went to Doom Eternal, this is the award that celebrates games that perform well (i.e. have stable framerates and consistent textures, etc) under pressure. No game fits that description better than Doom Eternal in 2020. Given how fast everything moves, how many projectiles are moving at any given moment, and just how many independently-moving demons there are on screen in every arena, one might expect a framerate drop or texture pop-in here and there. However, there are none to be found. ID Software obviously worked overtime (figuratively, not in the Neil Druckmann's/CD Projekt Red's employees sense) to make sure that this game could handle the insane amount of on screen chaos.
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Best Sound Design: The Last of Us: Part II
I suppose I'll avoid making the obvious point that the sound design is so excellent in The Last of Us: Part II because Neil Druckmann worked his employees to the bone and also the sound designers had to listen to people die from stab wounds so they could recreate it digitally...oh wait, guess I already did. But I'll legitimately stop with that now. After all, I rolled my eyes at Jim Sterling whining about industry practices too much in his GOTY video for 2020, so far be it for me to make myself a hypocrite. Obviously I hated The Last of Us: Part II. Obviously I take umbrage with how Neil Druckmann had the game made. But in all things, I give credit where it's due. The sound design in this game is some of the best I've ever experienced. Don't believe me? Just walk up to a workbench, go through the modification options, and listen to the gun assembly noises. It's absolute auditory pornography. Beyond that, there are also touches like rain sounding different as you approach a car that it's falling on, the on-point whistles of arrows as they fly by you, etc. The people who worked on the sounds for this game should absolutely be proud of their work!
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Best Soundtrack: Ghost of Tsushima (Ilan Eshkeri & Shigeru Umebayashi)
It's been a long time since I've heard a soundtrack that carries the overall tone of its game quite as excellently as Ghost of Tsushima's does. Obviously the use of traditional Japanese instruments sets the stage pretty well for this bit of historical fiction, but that's not all that I mean. There's a tension in the beauty, a melancholy scattered throughout the ambiance, an unusual sincerity in the more obviously Lord of the Rings-inspired tracks. That might sound like a bunch of pretentious nonsense (because it kind of is), but if you sit down and listen to the soundtrack in one sitting like I did as I was putting the skeleton of this article together, you'll see the truth in my words. A key example I'd like to point to is in the track "The Way of the Ghost." The song opens on an understated note with vocals and light orchestration and transitions into a brief spoken bit. It's the couple of seconds after that spoken bit that I'd like to highlight. Immediately following the words, there are two (for lack of a better way of describing them) "buuuuuuuum.....bum buuuuuuum"s. From the first note of this section you can accurately guess the general direction that the melody is going to go, but it doesn't turn out quite that simple. For the first triple bum bonanza, on the final buuuum, the composers throw in just the slightest amount of dissonance to keep the chord sounding good, but make it really unsettling at the same time (I legitimately got goosebumps the first time they did this in the game). Then, for the second iteration, they take the dissonance out, but make it so that basically only the instruments playing the melody actually change notes on the final buuum so that it's unsettling in a slightly different way. After that, the track transitions into a swelling vocal segment, the tone of which alternates between heartbreak and determination. This is just a couple seconds of one track that I've laid out, but I hope it paints a picture. This is a game that juxtaposes the incomprehensible beauty of the island of Tsushima against the horrors the Mongol Empire visited upon the people of Japan during their first invasion, and the soundtrack captures the mood of that perfectly.
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Best Soundtrack Pieces:
Right, this is one of the lists that I'm actually doing the full lineup for, so here are the top 5 best pieces from game soundtracks this year. Changes made to blogger this year ensure that I can't just put a youtube video in like I used to, so clicking on the title of each place winner will take you to the track.
The second Vanaheim theme is pretty much the only track on the BPM soundtrack that stands out from the others, but what really earns it a spot on this list is that bass section. OOMF!
#4): BM (Cyberpunk 2077)
One of the actually impressive bits of worldbuilding work that CD Projekt Red did for Cyberpunk 2077 is hiring existing musicians to write and record songs for this futuristic world. The tracks are about as seedy as you'd expect from a dirty punk world like this one, but whenever this track came on in the car, I'd find myself bobbing my head as I drove to my next destination.
While not quite as much of a headbanging masterpiece as "Rip and Tear" from 2016's Doom, "Meathook" still slays! And the inclusion of what composer Mick Gordon calls the "metal choir" in the middle just makes it better.
Short and sweet, the various tracks used to score the mountains of Genshin Impact's China-inspired Liyue region are all breathtaking and do an excellent job of highlighting the beauty of these mountain ranges.
Soundtrack Piece of the Year: Way of the Ghost (Ghost of Tsushima)
Remember all that pretentious crap I talked about in Ghost of Tsushima's "Best Soundtrack" blurb? Well now you get to listen for it all! I think this may well be the Soundtrack Piece of the Year winner that I listened to most out of all the winners I've had over the years.
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Best Level Design: Doom Eternal
Good grief the level design in Doom Eternal is good. Doom 2016's level design was great too, but in altering the overall aesthetic to be more "game-y," Id Software was able to really ramp up the kinds of combat arenas they could make for this sequel. No two combat arenas are the same (even when a level has you fight in the exact same area more than once, something changes), and every single one is filled to the brim with little things to keep combat moving as fast as possible. Sometimes they litter the arena with monkey bars so that you can take on the hordes of demons almost exclusively in the air if you want, sometimes they have strategically spawned-in flying/floating demons so that you can easily get from one side of the arena to the other with a well-timed grappling hook attack. The name of the game in modern Doom titles has always been freedom of mobility, and the levels in Doom Eternal are designed in such a way that the mobility has never been freer!
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Best Atmosphere: Final Fantasy VII Remake
Best Atmosphere is usually an award won by virtue of winning several technical awards. After all, to put together a compelling atmosphere, a game needs to have decent graphics, excellent technical performance, a fitting soundtrack, expertly crafted sound samples, and things like good level design can also contribute. However, as you can plainly see, 2020 might not have been the strongest year for games, but it was a pretty strong year for technically polished ones. So, the technical awards have been pretty varied this year, but overall, I'd say Final Fantasy VII Remake had the strongest atmosphere, and it's largely due to its sheer graphical quality alongside stellar lighting effects when it matters most. Not the most in-depth explanation, I know, but I don't think anyone who played Final Fantasy VII Remake will object.
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The Character Awards
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Best Character Development: Final Fantasy VII Remake
Because the characters in Final Fantasy VII Remake are all basically anime characters, it would've been the easiest thing in the world to have them be just that. It would've been simple to just have Cloud be a typical shonen hero, for Tifa to constantly blush and beat Cloud up, for Aerith to be the nice girl with low self-esteem, and for Barrett to say "hey man you got a f***ing problem?" really really wimpily. But every important character in this remake is given a level of depth typically unheard of in JRPGs, and I simply can't wait to see how much further this development goes as more chapters of the story get released in the future!
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Best Voice Actress: Ashely Johnson as Ellie (The Last of Us: Part II)
Viewer discretion is advised both because the example video that link leads to contains major spoilers and because it's pretty upsetting, but I could think of no better way to explain how excellent Ashely Johnson's performance as Ellie is than to simply show you. Keeping in mind that this performance is a combination of both voice acting and extensive motion capture, I've simply never had a performance haunt me like this one did. Johnson's portrayal of Ellie in the original The Last of Us was excellent, but in The Last of Us: Part II, it's one of the best voice acting jobs I've ever heard.
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Best Voice Actor: Kazuhiro Nakaya as Ichiban Kasuga (Yakuza: Like a Dragon)
This year was...not great for voice actors. I had to really go digging in order to even get 5 spot earners, and the fact that the winner is the voice actor for the Japanese version of Yakuza: Like a Dragon (meaning I actually couldn't understand him without subtitles) should speak volumes about this year's offerings. But that shouldn't serve to diminish Nakaya's performance as Ichiban! The Yakuza saga has always had stellar voice acting that has always stood out even though it's in Japanese, and Like a Dragon is no exception. Nakaya does an excellent job of playing this imminently lovable idiot.
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Lamest Character: Yara (The Last of Us: Part II)
How anyone can possibly think The Last of Us: Part II has a good story when one of the key players is a character as piss poor as Yara is is beyond me. Utterly devoid of personality (and mistakenly of the belief that Abby is a good person, but that's beside the point), Yara exists solely to waste the player's time. Yara is a member of the Seraphite cult that Abby's military faction has been warring with, but because her younger brother is transgender, they're now on the run from their former religious community. When Abby meets these siblings, Yara's arm has been smashed with a hammer as punishment for her apostasy, and this leads Abby and the aforementioned brother, Lev, on a basically 6-8 hour long fetch quest to find medical supplies to make the amputation of the arm go smoothly. Then approximately 2 seconds after this fetch quest comes to an end and the amputation is executed successfully, she gets shot dead. What the literal hell? Ultimately it's supposed to serve as the vehicle by which Abby and Lev's bond gets started, but could Naughty Dog really not think of any other way to make that happen than an indefensibly boring character and an associated fetch quest rendered pointless right after it concludes?
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Best Love Interest: Aerith Gainsborough (Final Fantasy VII Remake)
In prior years when I did full lists for each category, I'd always start off the overview blurb for "Best Love Interest" by clarifying that it isn't a "hottest girls" list. I've never had the category be accused of being that...but this year, you could be forgiven for thinking that's what it is, given the winner. In his somewhat controversial review of this game, infamous Youtuber (and holder of the world record on the famous Mario Maker level, "Bowser's Big Bean Burrito") videogamedunkey called Aeith "the pushy, fun one." That's an incredibly accurate way to describe her, but it kinda goes beyond that. She's the kindest soul you'll ever meet, volunteering her time to help the orphans in her town and growing healing herbs for the local doctors. She's a first-class flirt/tease, telling her mom "you wanna know what I offered him if he got me home safely?" in front of Cloud just to make him squirm. And in spite of being a ridiculously "too good for this world" kind of character, she isn't above threatening to rip a man's balls off if he steps out of line. But perhaps most importantly, she serves as a perfect character foil to the stoic, stick-in-the-mud Cloud. On top of all that, add the fact that she's also just really, really beautiful, and you've got an easy winner.
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Best Supporting Character: Barrett Wallace (Final Fantasy VII Remake)
Take a good long look at Barrett. What's the first descriptor that comes to mind (besides "black"...I know you thought it...)? Now, tell me....was the descriptor "adorable?" No? Didn't think so. It's always great when developers craft characters in such a way that your initial perceptions might be misleading. At first glance, Barrett seems to be the persona he crafts for himself in front of his Avalanche troops. An impassioned environmentalist, Barrett comes off as a strong leader, and he has the ability to instill anti-corporate sentiments in anyone he can get to listen. His imposing presence coupled with this clear charisma also gives off the impression that he's some kind of unstoppable badass. All of this is true. However, that aforementioned descriptor that you likely didn't think of comes into play when his daughter, Marlene, is involved. Seeing this man go from intimidating eco-terrorist to Maes Hughes calibre doting father is wonderful, and it's basically impossible to watch without a big smile on your face. While this year was unfortunately kind of dry in terms of supporting characters, it would've taken quite a good year to knock Barrett from this spot!
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Best Antagonist: Abby (The Last of Us: Part II)
I deliberated on this one for a while. After all, Neil Druckmann didn't intend for Abby to truly end up as the antagonist. He wanted us to feel bad for her and view her as a good person...but he failed miserably in that goal because he didn't craft a good person, he crafted an irredeemable psycho who takes immense pleasure in committing acts of torture on her faction's enemies and revels in the thought of killing pregnant women. I dunno, maybe I can't see Druckmann's point of view because I also can't see myself crunching my workers. But I digress. I defy you to name a game villain more universally despised than Abby. Go ahead, try, but I don't think you'll come up with anything. When was the last time you saw a villain who people hated with such immense vitriol that they pelted the voice actress (who did a fantastic job as the character, by the way) with horrifying death threats because of what "she" did...like a bunch of mentally unstable weirdos? Part of the reason why I loathe The Last of Us: Part II as much as I do is because I, too, despise Abby as a character...and I don't like feeling such intrusively negative emotions about a meaningless digital entertainment product, much less about a person who doesn't actually exist. At the end of the day, what makes an antagonist good is typically this: either you want to absolutely murder them, or you know you have to, but it hurts to do so. After Abby brutally murdered Joel within the first hour of the game, kicking off the entire plot, I didn't want to play anymore because the whole scene made me feel sick to my stomach. But I soldiered on through the whole terrible plot and the gameplay that had overstayed its welcome by the halfway point for one reason only: I wanted to f**k her up for what she did (a choice of words that turned out...perhaps a bit more literally prophetic than I intended). That desire kept me going for the whole 25ish hours, so sweet was the possibility of that reward in the end. It might not have been Neil Druckmann's intention, but there's simply no denying that Abby is the best antagonist of this year, and possibly one of the best antagonists of all time.
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Best Protagonist: Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII Remake)
Now this is kind of an unusual situation. When I was putting this list together, I knew that Cloud belonged in spot #1, but I was scratching my head as to why I felt that. I eventually came to the conclusion that it's because he's the perfect protagonist for the Final Fantasy VII context. He's the protagonist that this story needed, I suppose is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, it's kind of a short and vague blurb to end the character awards on, but c'est la vie.
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The Aspect Awards
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Best Writing: Cyberpunk 2077
I suppose CD Projekt Red should feel lucky that writing is the one thing that technical problems can't impact. I've noticed that in games of this genre where everyone has three hair colors and at least 25% of their head shaved, the writing typically consists of exclusively bitterness and profanity. There's plenty of that to be found in the world of Cyberpunk, but this game actually came in second place on my "Best Character Development" list, and it did so for a reason. Even the minor characters in this game are written so excellently that if I ran into them once, I'd immediately recognize them and remember their names the next time I ran into them. That may not sound that impressive, but compare that to, say, Rage 2, and the difference good writing makes should be clear.
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Best Cutscene Direction: Final Fantasy VII Remake
It was a seriously tough decision between this and Ghost of Tsushima. But in the end, I chose this game because while Ghost's cutscenes are excellently directed, they are based heavily on research into Akira Kurosawa's films, whereas the cutscenes in this game are just the slightest bit more original. Final Fantasy VII Remake has everything from sword duels on speeding motorcycles to heartfelt conversations on playground equipment in its cutscenes, and both of those extremes and everything inbetween are handled excellently. In the high-speed action segments, it's like watching a laughably good anime. In those quieter moments, the camera seems to know exactly when to focus on the night sky versus when to focus on character faces, etc. There was clear creative vision in how this remake's story moments were set to play out, and as a result, even some of the dumber story moments are still directed well.
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Best Enemies: Demons (Doom Eternal)
Aggressive and intelligent, the denizens of Hell make combat in Doom Eternal a blast! On their own, many of the demon variants pose a challenge (and are also just plain fun to fight), but they're rarely on their own. Most of the combat encounters in this game feature several members of several demon variants at the same time, and again, when acting on their own, they can pose a challenge (and are also just plain fun to fight), but they're rarely acting alone. Being the army of "The Dark Lord," the demons regularly work together to try and kill you, and because most of the heavier demons have specific ways that they ought to be killed, gameplay tends to become a sort of breakneck-speed puzzle where you have to anticipate certain demons' moves and act accordingly. If the demons in Doom Eternal weren't so smart, they still would have won this category from the sheer fun factor that comes with their aggression, but adding that level of strategy on top just solidifies their win even further.
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Best Boss: The Icon of Sin (Doom Eternal)
In a lesser game, I could see the fight against the Icon of Sin being either frustrating or just lame. A final boss being a towering beast with slow attacks who also happens to be surrounded by hordes upon hordes of the game's most powerful enemies? I would've suggested workshopping that particular idea, but in Doom Eternal, it really works. The Icon of Sin is a two-phase fight in which your goal for each phase is to destroy 8 pieces of the beast's body (head is 1, left breast is 1, right breast is 1, etc). As I said, the boss is massive, so accomplishing this involves actively moving around the level to get in position to shoot certain body parts, all while the boss throws punches, shakes the very foundation of the level, shoots demonic lasers, and summons absolute hordes of the game's hardest demons. So what this looks like in practice is nonstop chaos where you cannot stay still for even a moment lest you get killed. It's the already balls to the wall hectic gameplay taken to n+1, and the result is a glorious and legendary-feeling battle!
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Best Weapon: The Super Shotgun (Doom Eternal)
It's a double-barrel shotgun that comes with a flaming grappling hook that lets you pull yourself towards enemies to get the most use out of the gun. I mean, what on earth about this needs explaining?!
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Best Setting: AR-Y26 (Journey to the Savage Planet)
Alien planets are an absolute goldmine for potential unique ideas, but so often we just see slightly science-fictionalized versions of what we're familiar with. Enter the titular savage planet, which is perhaps the most uniquely-designed alien planet I've seen in a game in recent memory. It's a planet made up of floating islands booming with unique flora and fauna that likes of which we haven't seen in science fiction before. What's more, in spite of the fact that this setting is completely a new thing, all of that aforementioned flora and fauna looks like it belongs in this setting. Beyond the aesthetics of AR-Y26, in terms of gameplay, the planet is also filled to the brim with secrets to find, so there's active incentive to go exploring and for example, try to see if you can reach that small floating island in the distance. Journey to the Savage Planet actually won second place in the "Best Level Design" category, and that exceptional practical design plus the aesthetic uniqueness and consistency makes AR-Y26 a fitting winner for this category.
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Biggest Disappointment: Cyberpunk 2077's technical state
I never thought that Cyberpunk 2077 was going to be the world-changing phenomenon that CD Projekt Red and the game's pre-release fanboys said it was going to be, but I did expect it to be at least pretty good. But on December 10th, the gaming world woke to the unfortunate news that the game had been sold to us in a literally unplayable state and that CD Projekt Red had intentionally lied about the game's performance and manipulated the review process to ensure that the truth would be buried and they'd make as many day 1 sales as possible. Something like 5 patches (I haven't played with the most recent one yet), 4 budding lawsuits from investors, an investigation by Poland's consumer protection agency, one lie-riddled "apology" video, and the complete decomposition of a once untouchable developer's reputation later, and Cyberpunk 2077 is only barely functional still, with the biggest quality of life change being a more stable framerate while walking...not during combat when it matter most, but while walking. I never thought I'd see a disaster worse than Fallout 76 in my lifetime, but CD Projekt Red has unfortunately produced the biggest dumpster fire of a product since E.T. for the Atari, in my estimation. In a year in which the ending to The Last of Us: Part II happened, you'd have to do something really wrong to win the "Biggest Disappointment" category, but CDPR has done it. I hope that this teaches CDPR that they can't skate by on good will alone, and I hope that this teaches certain gamers that corporations aren't their friend.
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Best Moments:
As always, the Best Moments list is my favorite list to do because I get to talk a lot about my favorite parts of certain games with reckless abandon! Like I said in the introduction to this article, I'll be doing the full list for this category, so strap in!
#10): The Final Battle (The Last of Us: Part II)
After tracking Abby down to California after their brief scuffle in Seattle, Ellie finds Abby having been captured by a slaver group, tied to a pole, and left to starve to death. Ellie cuts Abby down, and after Abby cuts Lev down from his pole, the three walk to the nearby ocean where two boats await, seemingly prepared to go their separate ways. However, Ellie changes her mind at the last moment and decides that she needs to end things decisively. So, after a brief exchange, the battle begins...and it's filthy. This fight happens in the shallow end of the ocean while the sky is blackened by rainclouds, and the animators spared no expense in making the hatred ooze out of the combat. Were it not for how things end up turning out, I would've called this battle fan service. As the battle begins, you (as Ellie) are armed with a switchblade while Abby only has her fists. Every hit that you land on her is accompanied by a new scar, a scream of pain, and a recoiling animation. So not only are you getting to start killing this psycho, but you're getting to make it painful. Earlier I called the whole ordeal "filthy." Another term to use would be "nasty," and the best way I can think to explain that would be to bring up the part of the fight where you sink your knife into Abby's shoulder and start twisting it around or the part where Abby bites off two of Ellie's fingers, which both come with the requisite amount of screaming. These two young women are trying to f***ing murder each other, and that sheer hatred comes through in every grunt and swing. It's the kind of thing that, if you're like me, you've been waiting the whole game to see, but it's also the kind of thing that kinda makes you have to inhale through your teeth a bit, you know? Anyway, all that happens, Ellie loses her knife, the fight devolves into fists only, Ellie loses two fingers, and eventually Ellie overpowers her foe and holds her under the water. The screams of pain turn to struggling muffled grunts of desperation and fear as Ellie continues to drown the object of her vengeance. It was at this point that I leapt from the couch and yelled "YES!" at the screen. I was ready to forgive the whole game, because if a revenge moment this satisfying was what everything was leading up to, it was all worth it. Now, if you haven't played the game or don't know how it ends, you might be wondering why this is only spot #10. Well...shortly after Ellie holds Abby under the water, she has another change of heart, releases her, and lets her get away, making literally the entire game pointless. But the fight itself was satisfying, so it earns a low spot, at least.
#9): Arrival (Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity)
This being a prequel of sorts to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it comes with story implications. As I laughed at Daruk's jolly lines and smiled at Mipha's really sweet crush on Link, I would also find myself thinking, "wait...you all die before Breath of the Wild...this is going to end with all of you being killed by Calamity Gannon's pawns." So, the story ended up having this bittersweet tone. Well, fastforward to the mission where Calamity Gannon returns and starts to take over the Divine Beasts, and I knew it was time. The camera cut to Mipha, Daruk, Urbosa, and Revali looking into the camera tragically as their killers readied their final blows, and the screen faded to white...only for the attacks to be interrupted by portals opening up in front of each character. And from these portals, each character's stand-in from Breath of the Wild appeared (like Mipha's younger brother, Sidon), having been brought in from the future by the same power that brought the mini-guardian Terrako in to start the plot. These 4 sets of duos then team up with Link to kill Gannon's spawn and change fate as we know it. Yeah, it's beyond stupid, but I still found myself happy laughing at it.
#8): Revenge (Maneater)
The whole plot of Maneater revolves around a young bull shark and her quest to kill the infamous shark hunter, Scaley Pete, who killed her mother. As she terrorizes the port town that Pete calls home, the shark drives him to further and further depths of madness, and it all culminates in a final battle where our oceanic protagonist gets to bite both of Pete's legs off before they both die in an explosion. Not exactly the deepest moment or the moment most in need of a large blurb to explain it, but it's still a better revenge story than The Last of Us: Part II.
#7): Into Urdak (Doom Eternal)
In the weeks leading up to the release of Doom Eternal, the developers made it a point to talk about how you'd get to traverse both hell and heaven. In a game about killing demons, naturally you're gonna spend a fair amount of time in the land of more than one but less than three hockey sticks, but the question on my mind was what heaven (referred to as "Urdak" in the game) was going to be like in this universe. I knew from marketing materials that the main villain of the story was the Khan Maykr, an evil archangel, but as I played through the campaign and reached the point of no return, I realized that I hadn't gotten to heaven yet. What role was it going to play in the remaining hours, I wondered. As I entered the deepest levels of hell, more lore started to come forward about an alliance between heaven and hell to torture human souls to keep the lights on in both realms, but there was no sense of why such an alliance existed. Then, I ended up at the portal to Urdak, and from the moment the loading screen for the area came up, I could tell something was horribly wrong. I'd recommend you listen to the soundtrack piece, "Voices of Urdak" to know what I'm talking about, because it gave me goosebumps that set the scene excellently. In any case, once I spawned into the area and started making my way to the objective marker, I noticed that this sci-fi rendition of heaven was empty. There were no demons, and while there were certainly angels somewhere, I could see none. Then more lore started to flood in about an omniscient alien power called "The Father," who presided over Urdak until he was stolen away from the realm by a turncoat angel. Left without the leader they served to guide them, the angels (or "Maykrs" as they're called, but I don't think that's as fun) started to lose their minds, falling utterly away from their traditions and forming a desperate alliance with the Dark Lord in order to survive. And suddenly, this giant former paradise felt absolutely horrifying. In my review of Doom Eternal, I likened the experience to stepping into Rapture in Bioshock for the first time. It was a giant, eerily beautiful area in which I was alone for the time being, but turn down a wrong corner, and a desperate, deranged individual could be waiting. In a game that's all about killing demons and nothing else, putting this much effort into the mise en scene of one walking segment didn't need to happen, but they did it so well that I have to commend Id Software for it.
#6): End of Act II (Ghost of Tsushima)
After defying orders and poisoning the Mongol forces squatting in Castle Shimura, Jin is imprisoned by his uncle (Lord Shimura) both for the disobedience and for killing the Mongols in such a nakedly dishonorable way. But knowing that Lord Shimura's strict adherence to tradition will lead Tsushima to defeat against Khotun Khan, Jin works together with his allies to break out and makes his way to the stables quietly to fetch his horse (Nobu) and be on his way. After mounting Nobu, however, he's spotted by archers, and his escape comes at the cost of several arrows into Nobu's back. From there, pretty much every player knew what was going to happen. Nobu carries Jin all the way to the frozen northern region of the island before starting to falter under the weight of his injuries. As the fiercely loyal steed finally collapses, a softer, far more haunting rendition of "The Way of the Ghost" plays. Jin then gives this old friend a last bit of comfort and apologizes for not being able to protect him before the title card for Act III appears. Abandoned by his only living family, down a loyal animal friend, sporting only a small handful of allies, locked into a path of dishonor, and now trapped in the horrifically war-torn, frozen wasteland that serves as the northern tip of Tsushima, the tone of Jin's quest loses all its cinematic beauty as the words "Act III: Kill the Khan" fade into a screen of pure white. This was the moment where the stakes of this story truly set in for me.
Now we jump from the beginning of the third act to the beginning of the first one. I'm something of a sucker for stories that start off with utter failure that forces the protagonist to retreat and work towards victory from basically nothing (Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 3 are some of my favorite games of all time, after all). Having been bested in combat and left for dead by Khotun Khan in his attempt to free his uncle from the Khan's clutches, Jin and his only ally, Yuma, flee to separate ends of Tsushima in order to find allies to take their home back. All of the story before this point was tutorial, so it's here where the game begins in earnest. I don't normally like to cheap out and just point to a video for this section, but in the case of this particular moment, it needs to be viewed on as big a screen as you can manage. I simply defy you to name an example of a title drop more expertly handled or one that gets you as psyched to play its game.
#4): Dance-off (Final Fantasy VII Remake)
In order to rescue Tifa from the potentially predatory clutches of Don Corneo, Cloud and Aerith find themselves in need of invitations to his mansion to take part in his "who will I choose to be my wife this week?" competition. There's just one hitch. While Cloud is a pretty boy, nobody not employed by Corneo gets into the mansion if they're male, so nobody with the power to grant an invitation would waste their time by giving him one. However, just when it seems like Cloud is going to have to let Aerith handle the mission by herself, one of the few people who can supply an invitation steps in and volunteers to...rectify the situation. This individual is none other than Andrea Rhodea, the somehow simultaneously uber-masculine and utterly fabulous (in a glittery jazz hands kind of way) owner of the Honey Bee Inn. Andrea tells Cloud that he can get him into the mansion. The catch? In order to earn this favor, Cloud must hold his own against Andrea in a dance-off. At first, there's no way Cloud is having any of that. Several attempts to get off the dance floor in the center of the Honey Bee are thwarted by Andrea's bee costume-clad employees, and after noticing Aerith semi-teasingly and semi-sincerely cheering him on from the seating area, Cloud resigns himself to his fate. Andrea almost flirtatiously cocks his head and rhythmically points to the spotlight next to him, at which point Cloud goes where he's told and absolutely throws down in one of the most utterly entertaining quicktime event minigames I've ever experienced. Having now decided that this is what he has to do to rescue Tifa, this stiff, no-nonsense soldier boy slays the dance floor to the roaring applause of all in attendance. Provided you succeed in this very simply minigame, Cloud successfully earns Andrea's help, and he's placed in makeup and a dress (which Aerith seems just the slightest bit too excited to see) that suddenly makes him the town heartthrob in spite of the fact that it's not even all that convincing a disguise and he still totally looks like himself. It's just such an excellent comedy moment that had me grinning from ear to ear the whole time!
#3): Tell me what you see (Ghost of Tsushima)
"Geez Louise, why don't you just make a 'Best Moments in Ghost of Tsushima list?'" you might be inclined to say. And yeah, I had that thought too, especially given that I cut a few other Ghost moments from this list to make room for moments from other games, but it's not my fault that there's so much good stuff in this game. But I digress. When Jin returns to his home village to retrieve his deceased father's armor, he runs across his childhood caretaker, Yuriko. Now an old woman, Yuriko is thrilled to see Jin again, and Jin sees an opportunity to utilize her herbal knowledge to brew poisons for the fight against the Mongols. Yuriko reluctantly agrees, and her role in the main plot is over. But from there, a series of side quests specific to her begin, and if you go down that route, you end up at the moment in question. Over the course of these side quests, Jin learns all about what his father, Kazumasa, was like, and what the whole family dynamic was like (those are things you likely don't really know about or remember from early childhood, after all). Yuriko tells him how much he reminds her of his father, how they have the same voice, etc. And over the course of this time, Jin also notices Yuriko's health and mental state slowly deteriorating. At first it's small things like the odd cough, but soon enough it becomes serious fatigue and referring to him as "Kazumasa." This all culminates in one last quest that had me on the verge of tears almost the whole runtime. Yuriko asks Jin to take her someplace, and she guides him there, waffling back and forth between his name and his father's name frequently along the way. When they finally arrive at the spot she wanted them to visit, it's a hot spring, and Jin seems noticeably (and understandably) confused. Yuriko then once again mistakenly calls Jin "Kazumasa," in a way that shows that now she actually is seeing him as his father....and the dialogue that comes afterwards gives off the undoubtedly unsettling implication that she and Kazumasa had an affair after Jin's mother passed away. That wasn't what started me on the verge of tears, but it did put a pit in my stomach that made me think "this is gonna be really sad." After this exchange, Yuriko suddenly feels faint, and admits she hasn't eaten in a while. So Jin rushes off to hunt a boar, and when he returns, Yuriko is nowhere to be found, but he notices her horse's tracks on the ground and sets off after her. When he reaches her, she has collapsed and is now back to calling Jin by his name, but she's clearly not in a good place. She starts desperately talking about seeing the ghost of her mother leading her to their nearby family gravesite, and even more desperately talking about how she needs to go and make an offering. It's the kind of thing that will likely be familiar to anyone who has had an elderly relative who wasn't all there towards the end. Jin and Yuriko go to the site in question, which happens to sit atop a cliff overlooking the region. Yuriko sits down in front of the view, and now, with more serious a tone of voice than ever before (and actress Yuri Tabata, who won spot #2 on the Best Voice Actress list, absolutely kills it), says, "Kazumasa," then starts talking about the night that Jin ran away from home and got sick after his mother passed. The violins start to swell, and Jin turns away with a face that says everything it needs to. Sensing this, Yuriko turns to him and shakily asks, "Kazumasa? Are you listening?" After a brief pause, Jin responds, "I'm listening." Yuriko talks to him about how much she enjoyed the time that "they" spent together before saying "It's dark, Kazumasa, tell me what you see." At this point, control is once again granted to the player. Jin looks at all the key areas in the distance and points them out to Yuriko, where she then comments on that area in a way that deals with Kazumasa's history. The last area Jin points out is the Pagoda, where the exchange is:
Yuriko: I go there every year to pray for you and little Jin
Jin: Jin is lucky you take such good care of him.
The whole time this was going on, I just felt myself getting sadder and sadder, and it came to a head after the game once again returned to cutscene mode. Jin tells Yuriko that now it's her turn to tell him what she sees, but gets no answer. As he turns her way, he realizes she has finally passed away, happier than she was in years and content in the belief that she was in the presence of the man she could only ever love from afar. At that point I decided it was time to call it a day, so I put the controller down and did some deep breathing to try and keep the waterworks from winning. The game I had played prior to Ghost of Tsushima was The Last of Us: Part II, so I wasn't prepared to actually feel something while playing a game again, much less something so unbelievably sad. But this moment stuck with me throughout the rest of the year as one of the best executed tragic deaths in recent memory.
#2): Everything's Ok (If Found...)
In my review of If Found... I made an incredibly pretentious statement that I nonetheless think is accurate: It isn't a game about heroes and villains, it's a game about human beings trying for each other. Normally in these small creative indie games about social issues, the story is definitely a hero and villain affair, so when this critically acclaimed indie title about a transgender woman and her Catholic mother in 1993 Ireland came out, I had no reason to think it would be any different. But the key word in my pretentious statement that I want to highlight is "trying." It's a story of two people from very different worlds trying to love and accept each other in the face of misunderstandings and sometimes poor communication. That theme is present when protagonist Kasio goes home for Christmas despite knowing conflict could arise. It's also present when her mother sends her a letter telling her she doesn't care if she turned out homosexual (quote: "if that's what this is," because her heart is in the right place, but she simply doesn't understand the situation). It's people trying and sometimes failing, but always taking steps after failure. At the end of the game, after a particularly bad falling out instigated by her asshole brother, Kasio has completely isolated herself in an abandoned building, rejecting all well-meaning knocks on the door and getting sicker and sicker by the day. During this time, we see her mental state unraveling bit by bit, until it all devolves into the words "Everything's Ok," appearing on the screen over and over again. At first, given the tone of the artwork surrounding the words, this seems like Kasio suppressing her emotions repeatedly, but as the sequence progresses, things start to lighten up. Finally, the full picture starts to appear, and "everything's ok" is shown not as something Kasio is saying to herself. Instead, the picture shows her mother holding her and saying those words repeatedly. Against all odds, her mother has tracked her down. At this point, the soundtrack starts to swell, and I found myself with one of those "sweet" smiles on my face. But then the final stroke of the eraser on the page reveals the last bit of dialogue from the mother: "I've got you, Kasio." And that hit me. It hit me hard. I'm not transgender, I've used my birth name all my life, and therefore I have absolutely no connection whatsoever with the experience of having a loved one use a preferred name for the first time after a transition. So as I sat there, watching Kasio's mother use the name she chose for herself for the first time and finding myself choking up, I kept asking myself "what the hell, man?" Was it that I actually have more empathy than I think? That couldn't have been it, it wouldn't have explained the extremeness of my reaction. What I eventually landed on was the fact that love and understanding never wins in stories like these. The "antagonists" of these stories remain antagonists and are sometimes outright villains who never improve. The protagonists of these stories either end up in horrifically depressing places or they take the Neil Druckmann "bigot sandwiches" kind of route. I guess I'd never really thought about it and just came to the conclusion that that's all these stories can ever be. So, I guess I never knew how wonderful a happy ending to this kind of story, a happy ending achieved through hard work and the power of human connections, could be, or how much I wanted to see one. Still, there was one moment this year that took the cake for me.
Moment of the Year: The "Bad" Ending (Ghost of Tsushima)
Why this is called the "bad" ending, I don't know. It seems to me that both endings of Ghost of Tsushima make sense for Jin's character, so calling one good and one bad seems off. But anyway. As I already stated, I don't normally like to resort to putting a video link up instead of delving deep into a full discussion of the moment in question, but in Ghost of Tsushima, so much of its draw is its presentation, and a lot of moments from it lose something if they aren't seen. So the title of this moment contains a link to a video of the bad ending. Watch starting from 6:30 to 11:47, then skip to 13:35 and watch to about 15:47 to get the full picture. For context, in the final battle against Khotun Khan, Jin reaches out to his uncle and establishes an uneasy alliance built exclusively on the goal of defeating the Khan once and for all. With the Kahn now dead and Tsushima seemingly safe for now, Jin's uncle reaches out to him and asks to meet. The two talk for a while and then make a short trip to Jin's family's gravesite. From there, the events I've laid out in the timestamps happen.
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The Big Picture Awards
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Most Unique Game: The Pathless
Whereas most games from developer Giant Squid tend to be mainly walking/swimming/just moving around an area, with The Pathless, they actually made movement into a neat gameplay mechanic. You keep your sprint meter full and keep your momentum going by shooting targets in the open world with your bow and arrow, making movement something that you're actively engaged with rather than just the usual tilt of the left thumbstick. This style of gameplay carries over into the boss fights, ensuring that transitions from movement to combat to movement again are consistently smooth. This isn't exactly the most ambiguous award, it goes to the game that I felt was the most unique, and I've literally never seen anything like The Pathless. It definitely would've been better if I'd gotten the intended experience by playing on next-gen consoles, but even in an inferior technical state I can't deny that Giant Squid have made something truly special here.
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Best Developer: Id Software (Doom Eternal)
The team that worked on Doom 2016 probably could've gotten away with making the sequel more of the same, but instead, Id Software decided to improve on everything my 2016 GOTY did right and fix what I didn't necessarily like. I didn't think it was possible to improve on the 2016 formula, but combat in Doom Eternal is faster, more aggressive, and more intense. If you watch lead director Hugo Martin's ongoing developer playthrough of Eternal, you'll get to hear about all of the fun-centric design philosophies the team adopted for this sequel, and that effort really shines through. But beyond just putting out an even better product this year, Id Software also decided to pack their game with rewards for the simple act of playing it. Beating the game once unlocks a fully playable version of the original Doom game from the 90's. Using an easily researchable password on the same computer that the original Doom unlocks on gives you the ability to play all of Doom II as well. The sheer act of purchasing Doom Eternal also comes with a free copy of Doom 64. Just by completing levels and playing the game over and over again, you unlock tons of free skins, icons, "titles," etc, and the lineup of what exactly is available is constantly changing so that you'll almost always have some new reward waiting for you if you decide to pick the game up again. A lesser studio would've monetized the hell out of this system, but Id Software just wants you to keep on having fun with their game, so all of that value I've just listed comes free of charge and with a gentle kiss on the forehead. I don't believe a developer should win this award just because they do the bare minimum of not offering microtransactions, but what Id Software is doing here is so far beyond the bare minimum that they were the obvious winner.
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Best Story: Ghost of Tsushima
Given how many spots Ghost of Tsushima won in the "Best Moments" list (and given the fact that I had to cut more than one moment out of the list to make room for moments from other games), it probably isn't a surprise that it wins the top spot in the "Best Story" list. Ghost of Tsushima follows Jin Sakai, a samurai in the service of his uncle, Lord Shimura, the Jito of Tsushima island. Jin is one of many samurai gathered on Komoda beach to face the Mongol empire during their first invasion of Japan, but the Mongol leader, Khotun Khan, is a force to be reckoned with. Having studied Japanese culture and learned the samurai code of honor, the Khan and his forces have the ability to fight the samurai in ways that their code will not allow them to counter. With his uncle held hostage and the rest of the samurai killed on the beach, Jin realizes that the path of honor can't defeat a foe like this, and so he delves into deeper and deeper pits of dishonor as he continues to take his home back from the Mongols. It's an excellent story of a man sacrificing everything he believes in for the sake of his people, and more than that, it's an excellent story told excellently. Sucker Punch did their research with this game and framed much of the narrative like an old samurai movie, and that combined with a flawlessly utilized soundtrack grants each story beat the maximum possible impact.
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Best Gameplay: Doom Eternal
The phrase I always come back to when I talk about gameplay in the modern Doom games is "freedom of mobility," and no game does it better than Doom Eternal. Every combat arena is littered with all sorts of tools to keep you in control of your motion. The game is a series of playgrounds that give you the opportunity to get around creatively, and with added features like the dash ability and the grappling hook, Eternal provides perhaps the tightest movement system ever implemented in a game to date. But the motion is only the foundation upon which this house is built. The rest is white-knuckle, breakneck-paced action, and again, no game does it better than Doom Eternal. Almost every battle in this game eventually made me think "That's impossible!" when I looked at the kinds of demon hordes that had spawned, with some of the fights in the final level making me need a break to unclench my hands afterwards. But you always have the tools you need to overcome the odds at any given moment, this game being as intelligently crafted as it is. At its core, Doom games are a power fantasy, and the approach in Eternal is to put the player up against seemingly impossible odds, ignorant of the aforementioned fact that they have everything they need. Then, by virtue of the fact that they're basically the frog in the increasingly hot water that is the game's challenge level, they end up overcoming those odds and feeling oh-so-proud of themselves before the cycle continues in the next room. Victory in games has never been as sweet for me as it was in Doom Eternal, and this is due to a more straightforward player empowerment model than games such as Dark Souls use. In my review of this game I break down the moment-to-moment look of gameplay in depth, but I think this blurb has done the job of explaining why I think it's the best of the best gameplay offerings in 2020.
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Honorable Mentions
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And with that, we come to the Honorable Mentions! If you're unfamiliar with this blog, my Honorable Mentions aren't the same as they are in other award settings. Rather than a space for items that didn't make the cut, this is actually kind of a space for lists that didn't quite make the cut. That is to say, there are certain categories that in any given year likely can't produce the minimum 5 spot holders, so those categories end up here as a special hoorah right before the final GOTY list. So, let's get right to it!
Samus Aran award for Strongest Female Character
One of the original Honorable Mentions I came up with back in the day, the Samus Aran award for Strongest Female Character celebrates...the female character that I thought was the strongest. This is by far the most self-explanatory Honorable Mention that I have, so without further ado, the winner of this first Honorable Mention is...
The Shark (Maneater)
Jim Sterling famously did a video concerning strong female characters, with the twist at the end being that the strongest female character in video game history was some evil female dinosaur in some obscure game from the 90's because she was not only exceedingly powerful and ambitious, but was also not conventionally attractive by virtue of the fact that she was a dinosaur. I couldn't help but feel a similar line of reasoning formulating in my head as I put down the protagonist of Maneater on the list of nominees for this award. I also couldn't help but laugh and think about writing "I mean, it's right there in the name of the game! She dismantles the patriarchy man-by-man!" But as tongue-in-cheek as this victory for the shark already is, I didn't want it to just be a joke. So setting aside the obvious witticisms, Maneater literally properly begins like five seconds after this shark is forcibly ripped out of her mother's womb, and from that instant, she begins her quest to kill the shark hunter who did it. The shark was strong, independent, and driven by her goals literally from before birth, and I defy you to name a clearer definition of strength than that!
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Lost Planet Award for Best Controls
In the first year that I did Honorable Mentions, I wondered what game I ought to use as the namesake for the award for best controls. The first thing that came to mind was Lost Planet, a game that cleverly mapped reloading to a click of the right thumbstick. The Lost Planet award for Best Controls is an award won for different reasons depending on the year. Sometimes it's because a game has a unique control scheme that does wonders for immersion. Sometimes it's because a game simply has the best possible control scheme for the scope of its gameplay. In 2020, the winner of the Lost Planet award for Best Controls is...
Usually my reasoning for giving a game this Honorable Mention is simple, and this year is no exception. There's a lot of different gameplay facets in Doom Eternal, so the only way it could possibly work is if the controls were put together in such a way that switching between the game's many weapons, switching between weapon mods, switching between super weapons, switching between grenade types, using the chainsaw, using the flame belch, dashing and jumping, and everything else flowed smoothly, seamlessly, and intuitively. Anyone who has played Doom Eternal will know that it absolutely succeeds in this endeavor, so I can think of no better winner for this award.
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Gears of War Award for Most Raw Fun
Named for the first virtually story-less game I ever really loved, the Gears of War award for Most Raw Fun might seem a little redundant, but it isn't necessarily the same thing as "Best Gameplay." A lot of times there's overlap, but what this award essentially boils down to is what game was the most enjoyable moment-to-moment experience, regardless of objective quality or lack thereof. In 2018, for example, the winner of this Honorable Mention was To the Top, a VR parkour game, and in 2015, it was Just Cause 3, which was an absolute mess of a game. This year, however, the winner is a game that also happens to be objectively excellent. The winner of the Gears of War Award for Most Raw Fun is...
I've already talked a lot about the gameplay in Doom Eternal and freedom of mobility and blah blah blah, but what gets it on this list is just the sheer white knuckle excitement that I briefly alluded to in the "Best Gameplay" blurb. The speed and challenge of the combat alongside the heavy metal soundtrack is simply the kind of exciting experience that gaming has seemed to have forgotten in the open world and battle royale crazed recent years. Look, there's only so many ways I can say that a game is fun, but what I hope can be gleaned from this particular win is that even if Doom Eternal weren't an almost perfectly-crafted experience, it would still be the best moment-to-moment gameplay experience.
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Undertale Award for Biggest Surprise
When Undertale came out, I immediately wrote it off as another bleep bloop indie game made for neckbeards...but when I played it, I liked it so much that I gave it GOTY in 2015. Therefore, the criteria for winning this award is simple: which game surprised me the most? A lot of the time, the game that wins this is something on the final GOTY list, a game that shocked me enough with its quality that it earned a high spot. However, it isn't a necessity. Last year, for example, the winner was Days Gone, which I fully expected to be awful, but actually ended up enjoying! It all comes down to level of surprise, regardless of where that surprise puts it when all is said and done. The 2020 winner of the Undertale Award for Biggest Surprise is...
When Journey to the Savage Planet was first announced at the 2019 Game Awards, my impression was the same impression I have of literally every other thing that has ever been announced at the Game Awards: meh. It seemed like another Outer Worlds style colorful "lol capitalism" kind of game, but when I picked it up...I mean, I wasn't wrong about that, but it was actually a good game. It was such a good game, in fact, that I played through it more than once and put in the work to 100% it. The things that were announced at the 2020 Game Awards were as awful looking as they always are, but I suppose I should let my experience with Journey to the Savage Planet open my heart a bit.
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Spec Ops: The Line Award for Most Important Game
Conceived in a year where I wanted to give a shoutout to the excellent Depression Quest, which I knew had no shot of making it onto the GOTY list, the Spec Ops: The Line Award for Most Important Game celebrates games that have something special going for them. Whether it's an interesting delivery of important social commentary, an excellent and pro-consumer business model that the likes of EA and Activision Blizzard ought to look at, or a gameplay model that more developers need to take notes from, the winner of this Honorable Mention needs to be important in some way. This year, the reasoning is pretty simple. The winner of the Spec Ops: The Line Award for Most Important Game is...
This is largely a repeat of what I said in the blurb for the spot If Found... won in the "Best Moments" list, but when it comes to games whose stories focus on LGBTQ+ people, it's never positive. The people who don't understand never do understand and never improve, and the LGBTQ+ people the stories focus on are miserable and dejected right through the credits. That dejection and misunderstanding do play a role in the plot of If Found..., but love and the power of human bonds are what wins in the end. It's a largely unpleasant ride to get there, but it does get there. That's why, in my estimation, If Found... is the most important game of 2020: it shows just how powerful stories like these can be when the power of the human spirit prevails.
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Kingdoms of Amalur Award for Worst Writing
And now we come to the first of our Dishonorable Mentions! Though winning this award is definitely a negative thing, bad writing doesn't necessarily a bad game make. The namesake for this award, Kingdoms of Amalur, was an absolutely groundbreaking RPG, after all. Likewise, Dishonored 2 won this award in its day, and I enjoyed that one quite a bit. Most of the time, though, this award does go to bad games, because while bad writing doesn't necessarily make a game bad, it usually does. And this year is no exception, as it's perhaps the worst example of writing I've seen in games since the namesake! The Kingdoms of Amalur Award for Worst Writing goes to...
The Last of Us: Part II comes off like an amateur soap opera if some teenaged edgelord or a Netflix show producer got their hands on it. Where do I even start? Ellie's "bigot sandwiches" line? Mel mentioning the fact that she's pregnant approximately five billion times within the first five minutes of Abby's half of the game so that we feel really really sad when she gets a knife to the throat? The sudden switch in tone from Ellie finally revealing to Dina that she's immune to the virus to Dina admitting she's also pregnant to Ellie being unreasonably pissed off about it? The passionate sex scene between Abby and Owen as a direct result of them talking about torturing people? The part where Abby and Lev get in a battle with Lev's former Seraphite comrades and the Seraphites spend the whole battle saying "LILY you never should've come back here LILY this isn't the LILY place for LILY people like you, LILY, who are named LILY, have we deadnamed this character enough for you to know what's going on, player?" The many, many last-minute saves and plot armor invocations, the quantity of which makes the last Hobbit movie look like a Shakespearean masterpiece? I think I'll just leave you with those hypothetical starting places. This is simply the worst-written story I've experienced in a game in a long time.
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Borderlands Award for Most Yawn-Inducing Game
Unlike the previous Dishonorable Mention, the Borderlands Award for Most Yawn-Inducing Game typically does go exclusively to bad games. I mean, if you're yawning while playing, that's a pretty clear sign you aren't having fun, after all. This year is no exception, and as I write this opening blurb I'm finding that I want to get through this award as fast as possible so I can start talking about meatier things that didn't bore me to tears, so without further ado, the Borderlands Award for Most Yawn-Inducing Game goes to...
In 2017, Yakuza 0 won my Game of the Year (though it would've gone to Persona 5 if I had finished it in time). In 2018, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life didn't quite make it that high, but it was still on the list. In 2020, I picked up Yakuza: Like a Dragon for a modest amount of time and found myself so bored that I put it down indefinitely and put together a quick impressions article just so I had my thoughts out there. For some reason, the developers thought the way to improve on the somewhat stagnating Yakuza formula was to make it less fun and give the story less ridiculous plot twists. I didn't even give Like a Dragon a score in the end because it bored me so much that I couldn't get far enough to give a score with my conscience intact. So there you go. Stop trying to innovate with this saga, Sega, it isn't welcome.
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Brink Award for Worst Game of the Year
In a good year, there's only one nominee for this Dishonorable Mention. In a great year, there's only one nominee and it isn't even that bad, but objectively speaking it's the worst game I played. This year was neither good nor great, so there were three nominees, and I found myself in a bit of a pickle. Nominee #1 was, objectively speaking, the best of the three (winning and placing on a couple lists), but it held an especially large pit of hatred in my heart. Nominee #2 was, objectively speaking, the worst of the three, but a decently fun core was at the heart of it, and it also won and placed on a couple lists. Nominee #3 was one that I hated with the passion of a million suns while I played it, but I then forgot about it, and the only list it even placed on was the "Biggest Disappointment" list. How exactly does one choose which of those three totally different nominees is the winner? Well, I came up with a compromise of sorts that you'll see soon enough. The Brink Award for Worst Game of the Year goes to...
Ghostrunner was nominee #3. When it came down to it, a game that I hated, then forgot, and then found that nothing about it was good enough to land even the bottom spot on anything except for Biggest Disappointment seemed like the best choice for this award. I seem to be the only person in the world who hates this game, as everyone else seems to either like the core fantasy of being a cyborg ninja enough to ignore everything wrong with it or is the kind of "hardcore gamer" that ends up having their wisdom read aloud on Jim Sterling's "Commentocracy". Ghostrunner is a parkour game where the physics and enemy AI are inconsistent, and every combat encounter and platforming challenge has the gall to demand absolute perfection in the face of those inconsistencies. When I was playing this game, I would end up nearly crushing my controller between my hands because I was getting so unreasonably angry at it, and every play session would end in shame as I saw my beet red face in the mirror and remembered how many prolonged expletives I'd yelled at the screen in reaction to a digital entertainment product. Seriously, not even as a child did I ever get angry at a video game the way that I got angry at Ghostrunner. It's just friggin' awful. Don't buy it, and don't believe the weeaboos who like it.
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Bioshock: Infinite Award for Most Hated Game of the Year
Yeah so this is the compromise I came up with: making a distinction between the worst game of the year and the game that I hated the most in spite of whatever objective quality it might have. It's named after my least favorite game of 2013, and unlike the creative director responsible for the game I'm giving this award to, I don't think you're a stupid idiot, dear reader, so I'm not going to play coy and waste your time when you already know what lies ahead. That's right, the first ever Bioshock: Infinite Award for Most Hated Game of the Year is, of course, none other than...
Before any wise guys or paid-off game journalists decide to mouth off at me, no, it's not because Joel died and it's not because of how he died either. Admittedly the way that was executed did accomplish the exact goal Neil Druckmann had in mind, and some of the sweeter moments later in the plot wouldn't have hit as hard as they did if it had been handled differently. I'll get to the other lazy excuses people use to deflect criticism of this game later on, but for now, let's just get to the blurb. It would've been one thing if The Last of Us: Part II was just a bad game. It would've been one thing if the primary gameplay loop had just overstayed its welcome at the halfway point. It would've been one thing if it just told a bad story. It would've been one thing if it was just emotionally manipulative. It would've been one thing if it was just unjustifiably preachy in a manner entirely reliant on false equivalence. It would've been one thing if it was just the most miserable experience I've ever had in a game. It clearly would've been one thing if it was just developed via abusive workplace conditions, seeing as I never complain about that type of thing as much as I have in this context. But The Last of Us: Part II is all of those things and so much more.* See that asterisk there? I wrote not one, but two blurbs starting from where that asterisk is placed, and I ended up going with neither of them because no matter how hard I tried, things just kept on ending up really, really mean. Everything from hyperbolically accusing Neil Druckmann of being the kind of man who sobbed his eyes out when Osama bin Laden died because Osama bin Laden was a human being who had people who loved him to calling every game journalist who gave the game a 10/10 paste-eating pond scum. As I've made a point of stating in this article, I don't like getting that worked up about games. They're video games, a hobby that I like to write about and arguably the least important things in the world, it's childish to get so ridiculously mean because of them. But The Last of Us: Part II is such a toxic experience through and through that all of those things I listed at the start of this blurb come together, and no matter how hard I try, the more I talk about this game, the angrier I get. I think at the end of the day it comes down to this: when the credits rolled on The Last of Us: Part II, I felt like I'd been had. Like through every emotionally manipulative turn it took, through every time it denied me any kind of satisfaction, it was pointing and laughing at me for daring to try and be engaged. It took a long time to determine that this was at the heart of it all, and Neil Druckmann sitting in his ivory tower dismissing any and all criticism of his torture porn snuff narrative as being rooted in homophobia, transphobia, and phobias of muscular women didn't help with my feelings. The Last of Us: Part II is a despicable, toxic, manipulative, miserable experience that preaches the value of human life while simultaneously bearing a significant human cost in how it was made (lest we forget, these poor crunched employees were nearly killed by a falling beam from a neighboring construction site that had begun construction at the time because it was so late at night that nobody would think people would be at work). And now I'm starting to get angry again, so let's just leave it at this.
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Top 10 Games
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Boy oh boy, here we go! It's the list that you actually came here for! As I've already stated, 2020 wasn't an excellent year for games, but there were still at least 10 that I felt deserved the honor of being on the best of the best list! Now, at the end of last year I enacted a small change to how I do things, so allow me to break down my process for determining placements. After I publish a review, if the game in question scored at a 7.0 (a "good" on my scale) or above, I put it in the list of eligible games for GOTY. From there, I track a number of other factors: compulsion to research other games from the developer, how much the game surprised me (ranging from 0-10), where I might put it on the GOTY list if I was just going with my gut, how many times I replayed it (granting 10 additional points for each time I replay, 5 points if I try replaying but don't quite get through it, this gets updated throughout the year as needed), How many times I 100%-ed it (same additional points as replayability), and the value for money proposition. I add all the additional points from those factors on top of the score I gave the game in my review, and that constitutes the "raw" score. Sorting by the raw score determines the initial layout of the final list, and for all except the very bottom spots, it pretty decisively determines which 10 games are on the list, period. Then, once I've decided what the spot winners on each of my categories (Best Protagonist, etc) are, I add (or subtract) points based on the highest spot a game won on any particular category. So for the winner of a category with 10 places, the game in question would get 10 points, the second place winner would get 9, and so on. Similarly, for categories with 5 places, the winner would get 5, the second place winner would get 4, you get the drill. And again, a game only earns points for its highest score in each category, so Ghost of Tsushima only got 10 points from the "Best Moment" category in spite of the many spots it won on that list. The Honorable Mentions don't count for anything, they're just a fun side thing that I do. Ultimately I have final say over the end results if things turn out horribly wrong (Mass Effect: Andromeda earned 2nd place on the GOTY list for its year because of how many times I ended up playing it, and I did not think it deserved that, for instance), but most of the time this process serves as an excellent way to weigh my subjective opinions and the objective quality of a game in a way that results in the most accurate list, in my opinion. So without further ado, let's get started with the top 10 games of 2020!
#10):
>5th place:
8th - Soundtrack
8th - Gameplay
4th place:
Sound Design
2nd place:
Unique
A saying I've always lived by when it comes to trying new things is "I know what I like." I've never really felt the need to expand my horizons, but sometimes when the fancy does strike me, the results are great. Enter BPM: Bullets per Minute, which is a member of the "Roguelike" genre, a genre that I despise the very idea of (for those who were wondering why I was adamant about not giving Hades a chance). The thought of doing nothing but procedurally generated (read: the laziest development route possible) dungeons with entirely random equipment and mandatory permadeath simply doesn't sound like a good time to me. And after playing through BPM, it turns out I was right! I still don't like Roguelikes and everything that I didn't like about BPM was a direct result of it being a Roguelike. But the primary gameplay loop of BPM is simply that good. For those unaware, BPM is a rhythm-based first person shooter where you can only play to the beat of the track in the level. You walk perfectly in sync with it. You can only fire on the beat and halfway to the next beat depending on your weapon. Enemies move, attack, and make noises on the beat as well. And what this essentially means is that gameplay is an accessory to the music. You'll have a metal piece playing in the background, and the rhythm will be peppered with the clicks of manually loaded bullets, the booms of your gun, and the swooshes of your dodging, all as a sort of de-facto percussion. Over the course of 2020, I found myself constantly going back for just one more run of BPM in spite of its many genre-specific flaws, and that's the type of thing that has simply never happened to me. If only every game had a primary gameplay loop as incessantly satisfying as BPM's, what a wonderful world that would be. But alas, it was still held back by those genre-specific flaws I've been referring to, so there were still 9 games this year that were even better.
#9):
>5th place:
9th - Supporting Character (The Old Prisoner)
10th - Soundtrack
10th - Setting (The world of Mortal Shell)
10th - Story
5th place:
Realistic Graphics
Level Design
Gameplay
3rd place:
Voice Actor (Mike Drew as The Old Prisoner)
Boss (Tarsus: The First Martyr)
2nd place:
Atmosphere
In my review of Mortal Shell, I called it "a love letter to Dark Souls," but clarified that the handwriting in the letter is messy because the developers were nervous and they also used the wrong version of "your," but it's so sincere that Dark Souls might very well accept it. Many soulslikes have some sort of pretense, whether it be "futuristic Dark Souls," or "anime vampire Dark Souls." Mortal Shell has none. It's simply an attempt by this first time developer to make something that captures the essence of Dark Souls, and it's hard to argue with their results. The world of Mortal Shell is incredibly bleak and full of seemingly looney characters who wax poetic about crap that you have no idea about, and it boasts the kind of skill-over-stats gameplay that the soulslike genre is known for, but in spite of everything I've said, the game does bring something entirely new to the table. Rather than give the player a choice of classes, the player hops in and out of various "shells" that have different stats and abilities, so the player is free to hop between shells, determine what stat set suits their playstyle the best, and level up their shell of choice from there. In addition, Mortal Shell replaces the concept of blocking with a "hardening" system. No matter what you're doing, you can turn your whole body to stone by holding a button down, staggering most enemy attacks that land on you in the process. As you play, you learn that if you harden during, say, the backswing of an attack you're trying to launch, when you exit the hardening, the attack finishes. So gameplay boils down to strategically turning to stone in ways that ensure you repel attacks and land your own, and admittedly once you have that nailed down the game kind of becomes trivial, but it's still an interesting concept I haven't seen done before, and the fact that it comes in a debut effort by this developer is incredible. There are a couple technical problems, a couple design flaws (such as the "familiarity" system), and the final boss is pretty lame, but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what Cold Symmetry does next!
#8):
>5th place:
6th - Soundtrack
7th - Atmosphere
5th place:
Unique
Story
4th place:
Performance
Developer (Dreamfeel)
3rd place:
Character Development
2nd place:
Protagonist (Kasio)
Most of what I have to say about If Found..., I've said already. This isn't a game with much in terms of gameplay, so all that's left is the story, which I've talked about at length in previous segments. What I can tell you is that this game tells a great story with compelling characters, the act of playing it lets you look at beautiful artwork and listen to equally beautiful music, and at the very end you get to hear a stunning gaelic vocal piece. So, not exactly spot #1 material, but a good time with some important things to say, nonetheless.
#7):
>5th place:
6th - Gameplay
7th - Supporting Character (Terrako)
5th place:
Cutscene Direction
4th place:
Artistic Graphics
Boss (Calamity Gannon)
Imagine if The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild didn't have its weapon durability problems, didn't have its rain problems, didn't have survival elements, and featured far more engaging gameplay with infinitely more variety. That experience, dear reader, is what we got with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. A prequel/alternate universe to BotW, Age of Calamity takes the standard Dynasty Warriors 1 vs 1000 gameplay model and applies it to all the characters we came to love in the parent game. Each of the many characters you can play as have entirely different attack and ability styles, and every combat map is a playground to try and juggle as many enemies with each of these styles as possible. Like really, what's fighting a camp of 3 or 4 bokoblins in BotW against shield surfing into a crowd of thousands of bokoblins, creating a giant wave of flying bokoblins all gurgling and flailing around in Age of Calamity? In all seriousness, I've actually been replaying BotW as I write this article, and Age of Calamity does lose something by not being an open world, and the lack of that sense of discovery when you come across a new sight contributes to that as well. However, Age of Calamity is all the art style, the characters, and the basic gameplay premises of the parent game wrapped up in a more straightforwardly fun and significantly less frustrating package, and it was just what I needed to get into the kind of mindset where I could replay Breath of the Wild, so in addition to the fun I had playing this game, it actively contributed to the fun I'm currently having!
#6):
>5th place:
6th - Story
7th - Soundtrack
7th - Gameplay
8th - Supporting Character (Hephaestus)
8th - Antagonist (Typhon)
9th - Protagonist (Fenyx)
10th - Supporting Character (Prometheus and Zeus)
5th place:
Voice Actress (Louiza Patikas as Aphrodite)
Writing
3rd place:
Artistic Graphics
2nd place:
Setting (The Golden Isle)
The first game I ever 100%-ed was Far Cry 3. Seems like an odd way to start off this blurb, perhaps, but the point is that at its core, the Ubisoft formula is something that I really enjoy (despite it being created by abusive rapists...if I'm gonna grill Druckmann as much as I have, I gotta be consistent). However, over the years Ubisoft has taken that formula and stretched it out to exhausting lengths. It seems like everything they put out now is a 100+ hour experience with thousands of meaningless collectibles scattered across a vast, empty, pointless open world. It's part of why I didn't give Assassin's Creed: Valhalla a second thought this year. I'm a bitter old man of getting close to thirty, I don't have that kind of time anymore! With that in mind, something like Immortals: Fenyx Rising was like a breath of fresh air. The map is rather small, but filled with actual stuff to do and collectibles that you use to improve your stats. The Breath of the Wild-inspired art is actually beautiful on its own, and the designs of each of the zones of the map are distinct and filled with plenty of unique sights all having to do with the Ancient Greek God/Goddess that calls that zone their home. It's an example of the Ubisoft formula done with some actual passion behind it, even if it doesn't really innovate that much. It likely would've been enough if all I've already said was it, but Immortals does more than just go back to a better adaptation of Ubisoft's standard open world formula. The gameplay in Immortals is responsive, and paired together with excellent attack audio, the feel of simply playing this game is immensely satisfying. Beyond that, the game puts a unique twist on the notoriously flawed deities of Ancient Greece that I like to describe as "if the Gods went to therapy." There's this overarching narrative theme that our flaws are part of who we are, so ignoring them entirely does us a disservice...and I just thought it was an interesting lens through which to explore characters like Aphrodite and Ares.
And with that, we come to the top 5! These are the games that I liked more than all the others. I always make a point of saying that every game on this list gets my seal of approval and a recommendation, but the top 5 are the special ones that I felt truly were the best of the best this last year. For 2020, I've noticed that a lot of top 10 lists start to look the same the closer you get to spot #1, and I believe I'm probably no exception...but I would literally bet money on the assertion that you've seen not even one "best" list that has the winner of spot #5 on it.
#5):
>5th place:
6th - Antagonist (Scaley Pete)
9th - Atmosphere
9th - Boss (Scaley Pete)
9th - Story
9th - Gameplay
5th place:
Protagonist (The Shark)
Enemies (Other Sharks)
Setting (Port Clovis)
Disappointment (Technical problems)
4th place:
Level Design
Voice Actor (Chris Parnell as the Narrator)
Writing
3rd place:
Unique
2nd place:
Weapon (Mutated Teeth)
You know how Cyberpunk 2077 was the buggiest, most technically unpolished game of 2020? Well, Maneater was easily second place. So, what gives? Well, Maneater came around just in time for literally the worst week of my life. I'd gone in to the emergency vet to see what the cause of some bleeding in my paraplegic dog, Lola, might be, only to be told it was late stage, fast-acting cancer severe enough that the vet I saw was practically demanding I have her put down within 24 hours. This was thankfully a heinous ultrasound misjudgment that I may never forgive, but at the time I didn't know that, and so I was going to have to make a bunch of trips to out-of-town vets to see what my options were. Then, as if that weren't bad enough, the company I worked for ended up stabbing me in the back exactly a week later, ultimately shutting my income off right as medical expenses were going to be exploding (and also during a global pandemic, because of course). Throughout all of that, I would turn on Maneater to desperately try to calm myself down. And you know what? It worked sufficiently well. There was something therapeutic about just swimming through the ocean as a vicious, man-eating shark eating everything in sight. Sometimes I'd be doing it while just barely beating back the thought that the worst was yet to come. Sometime I'd be doing it to go on the most violent killing sprees possible to vent my frustrations. But no matter the circumstance, Maneater was there for me in the darkest depths of 2020. I have nothing else to say about it, because that's really what it boils down to. I played and 100%-ed Maneater twice over the course of the time it took to emerge from the bubble, so I clearly also enjoyed it regardless of how it helped me cope with the world.
#4):
>5th place:
6th - Supporting Character (Eko)
7th - Boss (FloopSnoot Queen)
4th place:
Enemies (Minibosses)
Unique
Gameplay
3rd place:
Sound Design
Atmosphere
Writing
Developer (Typhoon Studios)
2nd place:
Artistic Graphics
Level Design
Wins:
Setting of the Year (AR-Y26)
One of these days I'm gonna need to put together a list of my favorite games of all time, but lacking that at the moment, I'd like to go on record and say that Metroid Prime is within the top 3 window. The exploration-based science fiction genre has been sorely lacking in a post-Metroid Prime world, and thus I've had nothing to satisfy that itch (especially since Nintendo won't go ahead and port the trilogy to the Switch, for crying out loud). But then Journey to the Savage Planet launched at the start of 2020, and though much goofier in tone, it was the first time in years that I got to really *IGN voice* feel like an explorer on a distant planet. I got to catalogue alien flora and fauna, find ways to use the flora against the fauna in some instances, use newly-discovered materials I found to upgrade my suit to better survive the elements, grapple around on naturally-forming sky rails, and discover secrets hidden around every corner, utilizing all my knowledge and discoveries to reach some of the harder-to-find secrets. I had so much fun trying out the various science experiments that forced me to think of out-of-the-box ways to use the tools at my disposal, and in the hours leading up to beating the game for the first time, I would try out combinations of tools to see how far I could push the game's systems! I haven't felt inclined to do that so much since I was a teenager playing Half-Life 2! But by far the best way to summarize my thoughts and my experience would be to reiterate something that I said in my review. I played the game twice because I wanted to get the trophy for leaving the planet once I got enough fuel and foregoing the story altogether. Eventually I got the fuel and was continuing to play the game as I did the first time, going around and getting all the secrets again, cataloguing all the alien life again, and I was still having a complete blast! But then I remembered that the point of this playthrough was to end the game early, and you know what? Instead of feeling sad about it, I was matter-of-fact about it. See, this is a game that is always satisfying no matter how long you play it. Even though I would've liked to keep playing (and eventually I did come back for the DLC), I was satisfied with what I'd done. I simply can't believe how much Journey to the Savage Planet got snubbed in people's end of the year lists in 2020, as it's obviously one of the games I loved most. However, there are still three games that scored higher!
#3):
>5th place:
6th - Boss (Roche)
5th place:
Voice Actor (Matt Jones as Wedge)
Lamest Character (Johnny)
Antagonist (Roche)
Developer (Square Enix)
4th place:
Voice Actress (Briana White as Aerith Gainsborough)
Weapon (Buster Blade)
Disappointment (Time Wasting)
3rd place:
Performance
Setting (Midgar)
Gameplay
2nd place:
Soundtrack
Love Interest (Tifa Lockhart)
Story
Wins:
Artistic Graphics of the Year
Atmosphere of the Year
Character Development of the Year
Love Interest of the Year (Aerith Gainsborough)
Supporting Character of the Year (Barrett Wallace)
Protagonist of the Year (Cloud Strife)
Cutscene Direction of the Year
Because I never played the original Final Fantasy VII, I didn't have a dog in the fight when it came to the remake. I had only played Final Fantasy 15 before this, and I liked it well enough (it actually won this exact same spot on the GOTY list in 2016, fun fact), but I had no nostalgia for this inarguably influential title. There's been some degree of controversy surrounding the changes made in this remake, but as I've already said, I have no prior experience with VII, so it's not controversial to me! Slightly misleading in its name, Final Fantasy VII Remake is actually a remake of the first 5 or so hours of Final Fantasy VII stretched into 30 or 40 hours. Once again I find myself referencing videogamedunkey's controversial review of this game (which is weird, because I don't agree with his overall opinion) to explain the initial thought one might have upon hearing that: "what we have here is a Hobbit situation" (referencing Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy). And...well, he's not exactly wrong on that count. This was simply never going to be GOTY for me because of how proudly the game wastes your time with padding. The worst offender by far is the trainyard segment wherein Cloud and the others are given the runaround by a bunch of child ghosts who lock doors and constantly force the gang to backtrack. This kind of thing is everywhere, and it makes a lot of the game stunningly unpleasant to play. So how on EARTH does a game like that end up in spot #3 on the GOTY list? Well, obviously, it's the strength of everything else. I mean, look how many wins Final Fantasy VII Remake has in this article! The cast of characters and the story they're a part of are are top tier stuff, though from what I understand the narrative becomes a bit convoluted after the Midgar section of the original game. The gameplay is an even more refined blending of traditional turn-based combat and modern RPG mechanics than the gameplay system Square Enix implemented in Final Fantasy 15. The visuals and the way that the best story moments are framed all serve to make both the story and the gameplay even better. Indeed, were it not for the sheer amount of time wasting on display here, I daresay Final Fantasy VII Remake could've landed in spot #2 or maybe even GOTY. But alas, it must settle for #3.
#2):
>5th place:
6th - Atmosphere
8th - Protagonist (Jin Sakai)
5th place:
Boss (The Final Boss)
Weapon (Clan Sakai Katana)
4th place:
Character Development
Setting (The Island of Tsushima)
3rd place:
Level Design
Supporting Character (Lady Masako)
Antagonist (Ryuzo)
Enemies (Mongol Soldiers)
2nd place:
Performance
Sound Design
Voice Actress (Yuri Tabata as Yuriko)
Supporting Character (Yuriko)
Antagonist (Khotun Khan)
Writing
Cutscene Direction
Developer (Sucker Punch)
Gameplay
Wins:
Realistic Graphics of the Year
Soundtrack of the Year
Soundtrack Piece of the Year (Way of the Ghost)
Moment of the Year (The "Bad" Ending)
Story of the Year
I don't think anyone saw the sheer quality of Ghost of Tsushima coming. Having only developed the Infamous series (a series not exactly known for its character development, technical polish, stories, etc), Sucker Punch's samurai game seemed like it would be pretty bog standard, especially after From Software's excellent Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Just as a reminder, Sekiro was my GOTY for 2019, and meanwhile Ghost of Tsushima sits only in second place. But here's a fun fact: Sekiro's total score at the end of my process was about 130. Ghost of Tsushima's is over 30 points higher. That should show just how good Ghost of Tsushima (and by extension, my actual GOTY for 2020) is. I want to emphasize that it is that good on its own merits, but there's also a bit more to it. Similar to how playing Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 gave me a much better appreciation for God of War (so much so that it went on to win GOTY that year), the game I'd played just before this was none other than The Last of Us: Part II. When I booted up Ghost of Tsushima for the first time, I got to transition from a game that relied on deceptive marketing and manipulative framing to make you feel horrible to a game that utilized excellent writing, lovable characters, and cinematic direction to make you feel a wide range of emotions. I got to transition from a game that reveled in the misery and bleakness of its world to a game that reveled in the color and natural beauty of its world. I got to transition from a game entirely centered around hurting literally every person except the one who deserves it to a power fantasy entirely centered around helping the needy and being a beacon of hope for the downtrodden. That last bit isn't something that I ever actively pick up on. Quests in games have you helping people all the time, and it's never something that I particularly ever take notice of. But in Ghost of Tsushima, I'd find myself talking about it and emphasizing the fact that I got to help people, be a good person, and kill the people who deserve death. It's so simple, so straightforward, yet it was an aspect of the game that I appreciated all the more specifically because of the context of its release. But as I've already stated, even without that, Ghost of Tsushima is good enough for this spot. The combat is a goody bag of stances and additional tools that somehow conspire to make a fairly straightforward hack/slash/parry system varied enough to last the full game without getting stale. The stealth is...well, very simple thanks to some truly braindead Mongol AI, but it's still a load of fun! The very act of exploring the island of Tsushima never gets old because of how breathtaking the environments are, and the innovative way in which the game uses nature to guide you to secrets instead of the usual slew of map icons puts these environments even more front and center for your admiration. All this combined with perhaps the best story to come with this kind of open world game in years makes Ghost of Tsushima an easy pick for spot #2. However, there was one game this year that occupied far more of my time and mental space than even this juggernaut of a title, and that game is...
Game of the Year:
>5th place:
6th - Protagonist (The Doom Slayer)
6th - Setting (The ID-Verse)
8th - Story
5th place:
Sound Design
Atmosphere
4th place:
Realistic Graphics
Supporting Character (Vega)
Antagonist (Khan Maykr)
Cutscene Direction
3rd place:
Soundtrack
2nd place:
Boss (Khan Maykr)
Wins:
Best Performing Game of the Year
Level Design of the Year
Enemies of the Year (Demons)
Boss of the Year (The Icon of Sin)
Weapon of the Year (The Super Shotgun)
Developer of the Year (ID Software)
Gameplay of the Year
At the start of 2020, as I looked over the list of things set to release, I noticed what a landmark year it was going to be for this particular list. In addition to the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077, we were also getting sequels to 2 of my past GOTY-winning titles, so what was my 2020 GOTY going to end up being? Would it be the most hyped up game in history? Some other newcomer? Or would it possibly be a fateful battle between those two aforementioned sequels to past Games of the Year: Doom from 2016 and The Last of Us from 2013?......
HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Well....we know how a lot of that turned out!
But anyway, that's two for two for the Id Software team behind the modern Doom titles! No pressure for the next game or anything, but I wonder if they can end up making it three for three! Doom Eternal was pretty much set to be my Game of the Year from the night I picked it up for the first time. If that sounds hyperbolic, it isn't. The game was already a vast improvement on the already Game of the Year winning original reboot from 2016 within the first night that I played it (a total of maybe 3 or 4 hours tops). The gameplay was faster and more aggressive, the thrill of victory was even sweeter, there was more level variety than in the entirety of the 2016 game, the freedom of mobility that I won't shut up about was even more pronounced, and the story was already gripping...and I hadn't even made a scratch in the game yet. From that first night, everything that I said in that previous sentence became even truer, and I ended up finding that the few complaints I had about Doom 2016 were outright fixed. In case that doesn't quite get the point (that I thought this game was fun) across. I 100%-ed this game twice (like I did with Maneater, but there's a lot more work involved in Eternal), and I played through it five times. Except I got that number by pulling up my notes as I wrote that last sentence, and I realized it isn't accurate anymore, as I've gone back to play it more times than that, but I guess I didn't keep writing it down when I got through it another time. Furthermore, I attempted several runs on the permadeath Ultra-Nightmare mode...I mean, I didn't ever get close to succeeding, but I still tried it on that brutally punishing difficulty more times than I normally would (remember how I said I hated the permadeath-centric Roguelike genre?). But just in case even that doesn't get the point across, I also played a couple matches of Eternal's multiplayer. I hate multiplayer! If there are other people leeching the digital oxygen out of and taking up space in my game, then I want no part of it! But after a couple playthroughs of the campaign, I was so in love with Eternal that I went and actually gave the multiplayer a shot. I didn't stick with it for long, because even good multiplayer is still multiplayer, but I did manage to win a match or two, and I felt pretty good about it! It's just so good. This whole game is just so good, and literally the only complaints I had were on the level of "the final super weapon doesn't feel as awesome as the other ones." I mean, this is a game where you have a boss fight against an Archangel, and it isn't even the best boss fight in the game! Come on! And in case you just kinda skimmed through the categories to get to the final list, allow me to retread some old ground here and talk about the sheer value you're getting for your money. When you purchase Doom Eternal, you get a copy of Doom 64 with it. When you beat Eternal for the first time, you unlock the ability to play the original Doom game from the 90's within Doom Eternal itself, and by using an easily-researchable password, you can also unlock Doom II and play that within Eternal as well. Am I being clear enough? When you purchase Doom Eternal, you not only get the single best game of 2020, you also get three other full games 100% for free! In that sense, you're literally rewarded for purchasing this game. But the rewards don't stop there, because the team at Id Software are wonderful people who decided they wanted to actively reward players just for playing the game as well. There's a constant influx of new weapon skins and costumes and titles and little icons for your player badge in multiplayer that you can only unlock by playing the game more. I mean, none of it is of "need to have" quality, but do you mean to tell me that after completing a level of the absolute most exciting gameplay of 2020, you wouldn't be made even more happy to see that you unlocked a new look for your super shotgun? Doom Eternal came out on the same day as Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and the timing of both of these releases was fortuitous. They happened to launch just as the country was beginning to shut down from COVID-19, during a time when everyone was going to be staying home all the time. While other people like to credit Animal Crossing as the game that got them through quarantine (you know...until we all just got used to it...), for me it was Doom Eternal. While other people like to credit a simulation of normal life for getting them through quarantine, I like to credit the feeling of ultimate power and control as I used a wide arsenal of tools to overcome seemingly impossible odds. While other people might've been able to avoid theoretical irresponsible friends asking them to break quarantine by saying "well, I've gotta do some maintenance on my island," I might've been able to deal with this theoretical situation with a resounding "do you want the Hell Priests to win?" All sides of these scenarios are completely valid of course, don't mistake me for a "hardcore gamer TM" on that, but I wanted to give a bit of perspective on what Doom Eternal meant to me in 2020 other than just a really, really good time. If you haven't picked it up yet, you're missing out on the best power fantasy game on the market. Doom Eternal is a borderline perfect game, an objectively massive improvement on an already stellar formula, and The Right Trigger Game of the Year for 2020!
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