The Best and Worst of 2020

2021 >>

What a year 2020 has been to look back on. Amid it all, I graduated from university a month after going homeless, taken in by soon-to-become friends. A big physical game collection at my disposal, and with a rough PC setup, I spent a lot of time playing and replaying various old and new console games. Here's a brief summary of the best and worst games I played in the not-too-distant hell year. I'll write more in depth on some later, like Outer Wilds and Depression Quest.

The Best

I did short reviews / recommendations of all the games I liked throughout the year on Twitter (unrolled here), but with a broadly tiered rating system there's still room for a (more) conclusive top 10 list:

1. Outer Wilds (PS4)
   A mysterious, beautiful and awesome world, with incredible variety and quality in things to explore, as well as freedom with which to do so. Twice near the end it breaks established rules to railroad the player into poor gameplay sequences, which sucks. Read my full review!
2. Strange Keyworld (Web)
   Genius little game. Despite so many novelties and surprises throughout, I still got completely blindsided by the final one. Never gets too obscure with the puzzly platforming, a bit slow at times but the finale makes me look back only fondly.
3. Song of Bloom (iOS)
   A supreme secret box. Zip Zap’s delightful interactions combined with incredible pace and variety. It does slow down a bit after the strong start, and the clues are at times too obscure for me to get them (while the hints give away too much).
4. The Last of Us (PS4, survival)
   Great storytelling execution, solid atmosphere and environmental storytelling, and a fantastic ending. The overall pacing is marred by tedious traversal, and the gameplay (experientially and systemically) is very mixed, some high points but a lot of issues. Turning up the difficulty reveals a lot of fundamental flaws and also makes feedback and UX worse in pursuit of immersion. Read my full review!
5. Xevious (MAME)
   Simple, but with a brilliant concept at its core. Like Ikaruga it has two fundamentally distinct enemy types for a constant dance of priorities and offense at two different levels, with plenty of pressure to perform and take risks while fighting for survival. 
6. Beeswing (Web)
   There's little in the game that isn't charming and interesting - my favorites were the television song and Vladimir but it's the entirety of the chaotic yet cohesive setting that really sells it, and lets the themes of grief and longing hit home.
   
7. Bloodborne (PS4, replay)
   Small changes make for a pretty different experience, without much room for deviation. Strong neutral game and offensive depth, but side systems like healing and customisation are lacking. The content is consistent but not much stands out as great. 
8. Journey (PS4)
   Stunning audiovisuals and smooth game feel are nice as a witness, while genuine, playful interactions and cooperation make the journey personal.
9. Sokobond (PC)
   Fantastic sticky puzzler with a lot of potential that is realized towards the end. Sadly it's slow to get there: the first ~100 puzzles are mostly training for the last ~10, and a lot of those early levels are large + hard to read, harming the pacing further.
   
10. Demon's Souls (PS3, replay)
    It feels ancient, for good and bad. Dragons, lizards, dogs, tendency, fall physics, upgrade system, red knights, tunnels, etc. are annoying but also charming in their own rough, convoluted, obscure, unfair ways. The atmosphere and exploration become the focus, but it still has a strong neutral game to carry technically weaker content.

The Worst

Not quite the worst as I stop playing those too early to be able to say much. These are games I find interesting and have some thoughts on, but wouldn't fully recommend.

1. Axiom Verge (PC)
   A hollow imitation of Metroid. The combat and bosses are shallow and cheesy, the powerups are shallow and boring, the world design is haphazard with no direction, and the exploration is barely even there with the most irrelevant rewards. Nice music and a few pretty vistas, as well as some more functional mechanics later on, can't save this. It is impressive how bad the combat is, when 2D action platforming is such a fundamental genre.
2. Battle Chasers: Nightwar (PS4)
   Braindead easy, nothing going on in terms of exploration or structure so it’s just the jrpg combat. There’s three characters and several skills/options right off the bat, but unclear structure, random enemy targeting (so defend actions may do nothing, despite a great transparent turn system), and mostly homogonous skills mean that even with higher difficulty it wouldn’t achieve much. The visuals and music are nice but stylistically extremely generic.
3. Depression Quest (PC)
   It's relatable, but not resonant. Descriptive and expository, rather than demonstrative. The interaction is neat, but ultimately says little and doesn't emulate depression (even this specific experience of depression) 1:1 in the player. I like the way it sometimes more subtly hints at the character's wish to be normal, when it's not too on the nose.
4. That Dragon, Cancer (PC)
   If I didn't know what it was going for (documenting a child dying of cancer and how it affected the parents, yeah...), it would seem more like a horror game with its disconnected voices, faceless babies, moving environments and magical realism. I think the latter is cool, shifting perspectives seamlessly from witness to baby to mother to father, but the rest of it is so lacking in fluidity that it doesn't benefit that much from it.
   For the most part, it's a movie that's constantly pausing and you have to click to continue watching. You never get to exist in the space, even as an outsider, every path is linear and known. The cuts between different scenes can also be awkward because of the interaction, while in a movie they could handcraft each one to be more natural. There's a lot of interactive jank like the duck feeding and cart racing that heightens the surreal feeling.
5. Fall Guys (PS4)
   Some boring or annoying minigames, some nice ones, and then an amazing one that can take hours to get just once. The sole reason I wanted to play it to begin with, and in my first day of playing I don’t come across Hex-a-Gone once. I hate legs breaking randomly from landing on a platform of the same height you’re able to jump, but otherwise the physics are nice and loose. While it's not bad on average, the fact that its good parts are so easily separable but it still forces so much blandness on me makes it simply frustrating to play.