This year was absolutely insane for me, even beyond all the normal craziness of 2020. It all blended together a little bit as I scrambled to reassemble my life (My house burned down, fun right?), but at least there were a lot of good games and plenty of time to play them!
Beyond that, I started over here with the lovely MonsterVine, as well as starting with a physical publishing company, Premium Edition Games, and I am thankful for both of those. Putting this list together was tough, I tend to have a hard time actually ordering things I like instead of essentially cosigning to the fact they shift around a lot. But hey, here’s to hoping you enjoy my top 10 games of the worst year ever, 2020!
10. Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise
If there was a single game on this list that I would put as “Not for everyone”, it would be this. I absolutely adore the crazy mind of SWERY and what he puts out for everyone because it’s so unapologetically him. Very much influenced by Twin Peaks, this game weaves a memorable story filled with characters you wouldn’t want to forget, even if just because of the weirdness.
The game is more survival horror and open world, but honestly, the magic is in the characters, setting, and interactions between them. Plus, don’t you want to skateboard around Louisiana with York, listening to bad movie references and obscure facts? There is certainly a certain… jankiness to this, but it almost feels like a love letter to the early days of the PS3 and Xbox 360 in how it handles. It feels much more palatable than the first entry in the series, which can be a little hard to stomach for even the most hardcore. Overall, I had an absolute blast with this game, and the ending sequence is really memorable with a ton of huge reveals.
Best Moment: The FPS fix patch. No, but really, the ending segment had my jaw dropped the whole time.
9. Maneater
A perfectly sized, cheesy open-world shark game. It’s the first game I ever platinumed, and it just felt like a perfect bite-sized chunk. I have a tendency to get bored with the open-world formula, but the core gameplay loop was so enjoyable that combined with the very reasonable amount of collectibles, I found myself happily swimming from corner to corner of the map, completing everything I could and figuring out how to get the collectibles I was missing!
I really enjoyed the RPG mechanics as well, as I leveled up and spent a few different resources to evolve some awesome abilities and continue to improve them. Electric shark anyone? The storytelling is framed like a discovery channel show, and the gameplay is fun and frantic.
Channel your inner Jaws, evolve yourself some hard bone Carapace, and give Maneater a try!
Best Moment: Becoming full-sized, and fully evolved. A force of nature.
8. Cyberpunk 2077
I know, I know. The release was a train wreck, it barely works on base consoles from last consoles. It crashes. It glitches. But somehow, this game has still gripped me for 50 hours, as I find myself falling deeper and deeper into the neon-lit rabbit hole of this game.
I love the number of ways I can approach a situation, I love how the side quests feel as bombastic as the main quest, I love seeing things I did before referenced and I love how the gameplay evolves as you build your character into various specs. Playing at night, sometimes you just hit this perfect note of immersion, flying down neon-lit roads while the music pumps and it is just… exactly what I wanted. But then someone T-poses into the road and the game crashes, but they can’t take that moment away from me!
Best Moment: Reaching true cyber ninja levels of stealth and hacking, taking out whole gangs within five seconds with no noise.
7. Trials of Mana
It’s interesting to see two beloved RPG’s get remakes this year, and totally different styles. Trials of Mana takes Seiken Densetsu 3 and breathes new life into this game that only recently got an American, translated release.
A from the ground up remake, this translates it all to 3D while adding features and honestly just doing a fantastic job not losing that Super Nintendo JRPG feeling that that era is so known for. Having the option to use the new soundtrack or the old one is always appreciated with stuff like this, and the new soundtrack is an absolute BANGER honestly. This game has 9 characters, and you pick 3 of them for your team, and the replayability is insane for this.
Different party compositions, certain combinations giving more story, different jobs, and an entire end-game segment that wasn’t in the original version give this remake hours and hours of content and I just had the best time with it!
Best Moment: Realizing I can actually revert class changes in this one, so I could experiment all I want without a million save files
6. Phasmophobia
Sometimes a game sticks out to you not quite because it’s a perfectly put together game, but because of the sandbox it gives you with your friends to enjoy it. Phasmophobia needs more content, and some touches, but I will not deny some of the absolute most fun I’ve had this year with a game is Phasmophobia with the MonsterVine boys.
This is a game about investigating ghosts, not hunting. You won’t be whipping out a proton pack and a ghost trap in this one, but you will be setting up equipment, taking readings, and more in order to research a haunting, and determine what kind of ghost it is. Of course, a lot of the fun comes from when the ghost decides to hunt you and your friends, leading to many very tense moments and lots of scares that occur naturally within the sandbox presented without being a heavily scripted jump scare or something.
You and your friends communicate with in-game proximity chat, while also using that to talk to the ghost and encourage it to do things. I truly hope this game reaches its potential before bigger developer co-ops the gameplay style and eclipses it, but Phasmophobia is an amazingly fun experience with friends.
Best Moment: Me and my 3 friends cowering in a kitchen while a ghost slowly floated down the stairs across from us, all of us making our mics mess up because of the genuine fear in that moment.
5. Hades
It’s hard to pick something to say about this game because it has all been said before. As a huge fan of roguelikes in general, and for a long time, I can’t stress how much this game does right. From having by and far the strongest storytelling within the genre archetype to the varied and deep combat, to somehow turning the entire pantheon of Greek gods into lovable thirst traps, Hades made a giant splash and it did for all the right reasons, as it’s well deserved.
Every run is full of meaningful, pivotal moments that will change the way the rest of your run goes, there are options to continue to diversify your build and build it the way you like to play. This is a game that everyone should give a go, even if you’re unfamiliar with the genre.
Best Moment: Any singular moment Dusa is on screen, my god she is adorable.
4. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition
I have loved Xeno since Xenogears blew my young mind, and continued to stay in my top 3 games of all time. I loved Xenosaga, even through the dark days of Xenosaga Episode 2. For some reason, I just never got around to playing Xenoblade 1 for the good ‘ole Wii. It just didn’t feel like the games they shared a prefix with to me at the time, and nothing ever made me go WAIT I NEED THIS. I went on to actually really enjoy Xenoblade 2 (The second time I tried to play it, it’s a slow starter beware), and when this was announced, I was all cylinders firing excited about it and I did not end up disappointed.
Featuring a massive, open-world filled with monsters strong and weak, which has become a hallmark of the blade series, a story that has its scope just continue to widen and involve, and an easy to learn hard to master battle system Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition does a fantastic job elevating the original experience to new levels. Featuring completely new graphics and art style, as well as countless tweaks to the core experience, I easily lost myself for 100 hours in this game’s world and story.
This is a great one for any RPG fan, and having this on the switch lets you sneak in gameplay whenever you can find the time!
Best Moment: The ending bit of the game when I was able to put this up there with the other Xeno games for how grand the scale of the conflict gets.
3. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
I have played A LOT of Musou/Dynasty Warriors-style games, and I also really enjoyed the first Hyrule Warriors. Age of Calamity completely outdoes the original and provides one of the most robust, feature-filled musou experiences I’ve ever had. Characters feel fresh, having a ton of personality and unique mechanics to their gameplay. The map that serves as your mission select screen is great, you gradually unlock more levels, as well as icons on the map that you use items to unlock that do everything from unlocking shops, powering up characters, unlocking more characters and other unique things. I loved filling out this entire map, hunting down every item I could in order to unlock more of this game that I fell in love with.
This serves as a prequel-ish kind of thing to Breath of The Wild, with the implications being some serious spoiler territory by the end of it, but I love how much they took from the DNA of Breath of the Wild and injected it into this. From flying around with your glider, using the Sheikah Slate to find treasure (and beating down tons of enemies with them, 90% of the characters have unique ways to use each function!) and a cooking function, this FEELS adjacent to Breath of the Wild while still being a Musou game through and through.
Even if you aren’t big into the “beat up thousands of soldiers as one dude” genre, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is an excellent entry in the genre that most anyone can find some fun in.
Best Moment: My excitement in realizing all the characters have different gimmicks to their gameplay, instead of different kinds of light light light heavy attacks like you expect from Musou like games.
2. Final Fantasy 7 Remake
If it’s not immediately clear, I really love RPG’s. I love Final Fantasy, and I think FF7 was an absolutely awesome game that for me falls on the higher side of the middle of the series. FF7R for me really bought one of the most beloved segments in gaming, the Midgar arc in FF7, to this whole new level of quality.
Aside from being breathtaking graphically, the gameplay was absolutely fantastic, one of the best action RPG systems I’ve EVER encountered. Every encounter felt like a puzzle, as I experimented with the best way to fight them and the quickest way to finish the encounter. The weapon and materia system was refined and a ton of fun, letting you really use the weapon that was the best for the style of play you enjoy and keeping it up to snuff with newer weapons you find power-wise.
It was nice to really see some of these characters you just met briefly in the original FF7 get a lot more development and personality, and even the main cast got fantastic new depth. I actually like Aerith for one, she always felt very flat and uninteresting in the original, but in the remake, she was a ton of fun with lots of characterization!
I 100% get some people’s qualms with some of the story decisions and pacing of the overall big picture looking forward to more parts of this project, but I had one of the most engaging experiences of the year with it and found a new love for Final Fantasy 7 because of it. I absolutely cannot wait to see what is coming next in this, and I highly recommend you checking it out too!
Best Moment: Wall Market, straight up. That entire area just blew me away, it was one of my favorite areas in the original and this did it more than justice.
1. Yakuza: Like A Dragon
Oh man, here we are, at the big one. Good ole’ Number 1, the best of the best. Somehow, I’m still convinced Will and Spencer planned out springing this game on us at the end of the year, just in time for Game of the Year stuff and they knew exactly what would happen. I have always been watching the Yakuza series from afar, I’ve always heard about it, seen it, and knew a bit about it. But I’ve only recently started playing it recently, the past year or two and I’ve had a great time with it. Brawlers are fun, the fights are cinematic and the worlds are robust and full of things to do, it’s a series I wish I actually played way earlier because of how much I am enjoying it now.
Now how are you going to tell me, that alongside being a super solid series in general, that the Yakuza Series pulls off the most flawless genre shift I’ve ever seen, let alone as nearly the 10th game in the series!? I was absolutely CHARMED by this game, its protagonist, its gameplay, and just honestly everything about it. From loving every single member of the party and the deeper stories into their life you unlock to being head over heels with the super fun combat and over the top presentation, Yakuza: Like a Dragon came flying at me out of nowhere and rose through my ranks of games for this year every single time I picked it up.
The protagonist, Ichiban is an awesome change-up from the generally serious Kiryu. I fell in love with this dude, from his initial clean-cut yakuza appearance to a hobo with a blown-out haircut and a heart of gold. This dude aspires to be a Hero, yes that capitalized because I’m referring to the class of the main character in Dragon Quest, which does get name-dropped CONSTANTLY and he just wants to solve people’s problems and make them happy. This attitude gets him into lots of trouble and situations as you switch from serious Japanese crime drama vibes to wacky Yakuza side quest stuff like fighting giant Roombas, or distributing spicy kimchi to people around town. Seriously, the whole cast in this game was great, and making that even better is an awesome Job system like you would expect from a JRPG, except instead of things like Knights, Mages, and Thieves, you have things like Homeless guy, Break Dancer, or an Idol to fill in those needs.
I can go on and on, but this isn’t a review! Don’t be afraid to start with this game if you are new to the series, as it’s a decent entry point. Mine was Yakuza Zero, and I was very happy to be familiar with the characters in that for a couple of reveals, but the experience won’t be lost on you as a first-timer. A great battle system, great characters, and a story that is up there with the best of them, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is my personal Game of the Year!
Best Moment: When I realized this game’s dragon was going to be a piece of construction equipment that I had to fight.
