Ari’s 10 best games of 2020

The past year has been an endless dark night with a single glowing star on fire: video games. I mean, can you imagine what 2020 would have been like without video games? I, for my part, cannot. Better yet, it’s not like the annual release schedule was a dry spell either. From tip to tail, the blows kept coming, truly a saving grace. Without further ado, here are my top 10 games of the year, in order from best to least best, but still amazing.

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hell

Everyone knows the story behind hell. A surprise announcement at the 2018 Game Awards, with an Early Access release on the Epic Games Store that same night. Early access on Steam the following year. A version 1.0 full on PC and Switch in September 2020, at which point everyone with a keyboard or a set of Joy-Cons gobbled it up. Game prizes put hell for top honors. Polygon, IGN, Destructoid, USGamerand Stone paper shotgun named it the best game of the year. And now a guy in Kotaku he lists it as his personal number one. Yes, hell it was, hands down, the best game I played in 2020.

hell

hell it is simply irresistible. It is a roguelike, but not like all other roguelikes. In so many games of that nature, failure is failure. Whoops! Next run. hellHowever, he always gives you another bite to usher in your Sisyphean endeavors. The bonds between the characters develop at a natural rate. The story, the handsome prince of the underworld wants to escape from the oppressive kingdom of his father, keep going whether you win or lose. And yes, with each race, you are constantly improving your powers, weapons, and abilities. I am irritated by the idea that games are “addictive” and generally think it is in the gaming press corps to avoid language so harsh that it lacks empathy. But it would be wrong to suggest that hell It’s not a ridiculously compelling game, one that takes advantage of that “Just one more run!” mindset, no matter how late it is.

hell

I’ve long been an acolyte for Supergiant Games, the independent developer behind hell. I have a tattoo of Transistor, the second effort of the study. A poster of the main character from that game, Red, hangs in my living room. Pyre is among my most played multiplayer games, and Bastion it is, in its brilliant brevity, one of those annual replay games. Needless to say, my hopes hell they were through the roof. In all respects, the game passed them by. You can see the DNA of Supergiant’s work in every pixel of hell: the hermetic combat of Bastion; the incessant and branching narrative of Pyre; the silent hum of hope that permeates Transistor; delightful art, clever writing, the music, oh my god the music. For a fan of Supergiant games, hell It is a dream come true.

hell

Annex A:

Annex B:

I could go on, but my colleague Ash Parrish already did:

hell

Raise your hand if you became interested in Greek mythology from an early age, perhaps as a result of reading that children’s book that lived on every shelf in the 20th century. (You know: East.) Many games in 2020 incorporated Greek mythology, including the nice Spiritfarer and the questionable but also nice Immortal Fenyx Rising“But none hit them as deeply, and humanity, as hell. And it wasn’t just a laser focused on the Olympian gods we’ve all heard of a million times. In hell, the mortal legends also get what they deserve. This is a game in which you learn the extent of the unequivocal link between Achilles and Patroclus. You get a faithful epilogue in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Asterius and that idiot with the infamous ship are treated to a plot that was not canon two thousand years ago, but should certainly be taken as writing today. With hell, Supergiant established himself as a worthy steward of the Greek Mythme, a cinematic universe for which he didn’t even know he wanted a sequel series before September. Even better, hell it single-handedly rekindled a childlike sense of wonder and joy and boundless curiosity.

hell

Look: you don’t need to be skilled at playing video games to write about them. If anything, I am an aggressively average player. (See: My tendency to maintain a kill-to-kill ratio of about 1.0 in shooter after shooter after shooter.) That being said, I know for a fact that I’m good at hell– not quite at the level of Vorime or Haelian or any of the others Olympic-level sprinting runnersof course, but clever enough to hold me up. In one race, I even beat the final boss without losing a single hit point. No games in 2020, not even those that label me as literal superheroes, made me feel as powerful as hell did. During a year in which he repeatedly and insistently brought home the opposite feeling, week after week after week, that feeling was a gift.

hell

So many puns!

hell

It’s no secret that there are a lot of big games these days developed below “crunch” terms—Lots of hours and potential work on the weekend, whether mandatory or implicit, in the name of reaching a liberation goal. hell, however, it was developed under seemingly opposite conditions. At Supergiant, emails sent after 5:00 pm on Fridays are frowned upon. Employees must take at least 20 days off each year. But there is also apparent support for bonus projects, where if a staff member has a passion for a role, they are given the space, time, and resources to develop it. In creation hell, Supergiant prioritized the well-being of employees. And yet the game received a raft of praise and sold like hotcakes to begin with. He’s a good example for the industry, if you ask me. Of course, such a model might not work for a multinational mega-developer, but some of those methods could be adapted to improve conditions for workers in an industry. known for burnout and turnover. The undeniable success of hell sends a powerful message to the industry.

hell

hell not a declared creativity game, at least not in the way that, say, Media Molecule’s exclusive PlayStation Dreams is. That doesn’t mean that gamers can’t test the limits of their imagination, coming up with various builds on the fly to complete full races with various parameters. Some players even figured out how to win the game. without pressing any button. (So ​​far my praise for “not losing HP”!) In September, the fastest players in the game aimed to win the entire game in under eight minutes, an astonishing feat that required players. Now the time to win is less than six minutes. The September races were built around a specific weapon and a specific set of blessings. Today near the top of the leaderboard you can see a few different combinations. hell tapped into a well of ingenuity that was so, so fun to witness. Playing hell It was wonderful, but looking from the side was just as attractive.

hell

Thanks, Bouldy, for coming to my TED talk.

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Mandatory “honorable mentions” section

Spider-Man: Miles Morales, The last of us part 2and Final Fantasy VII Remake each presented enough spectacle worthy of the most venerable PS4 tent poles. Yakuza: like a dragon and Paper Mario: The King of Origami are solid role-playing games that didn’t shy away pulling the fibers of the heart. Ori and the will of the Wisps and Ghostrunner satiated any hunger for high rope platforms, while Astro Game Room served a delicious lighter meal. Othercide and Gears Tactics he offered a lot of control, through tactics, in a year that was otherwise lacking. Spiritfarer It may be the best idyllic management sim with sarcastic talking animals ever released (certainly in 2020). Destiny 2: beyond the light made me pass a dark week, and it also reminded me of how damn tight DestinationThe shooting is. And oh yeah Doom Eternal He was also a pretty solid shooter. A triumvirate of Ubisoft’s map games (Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Immortals: Fenyx Risingand Watch Dogs Legion) all reached the sweet spot of the open world, just like Tsushima ghost—Which drew a double function surprise like a killer cooperative game. For all your faults, Cyberpunk 2077 It really is a tour de force, despite one that, like the Acropolis of Athens, remains unfinished.

And then this Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If you tuned in to our coverage of Nintendo’s life simulator, you probably know that, and this puts it in tepid terms, I don’t really like the game. It is true. During the more than 40 hours that I spent with it, I experienced more frustration than fun, and I was generally honest about it. Still, Animal crossing It meant a lot to a lot of people in a hell of a time, and no sarcastic writer on the internet can take that away. If 2021 turns out to be the same kind of relentless charley horse that defined every minute of 2020, I expect a Animal crossing, or something similar, appears. We should all be lucky enough to fall in love ten times with a resounding video game.