There were a lot of good games out this year and all of that was overshadowed by the fact that we were in the grips of a worldwide pandemic and a, frankly, incredibly bizarre American election that was incredibly stupid even by our stupid standards. To quote poet Fred Durst, everything is fucked. Everybody sucks.

Let’s talk about video games.

10. Or Best Game That Came Out Last Year That I Only Just Got Around To: Control

Control is spooky, weird, and very SCP Project, which should make it extremely my shit. How did I miss it? I dunno! Shit comes up, man! But I finally got around to playing it in the waning days of 2020 and it’s real good, man. It’s spooky and weird and the combat is fun without being ridiculous. Sure, sometimes the boss fights are predictable and you mow down a lot of goons but this is the kind of game that wouldn’t have been made without combat (when it would be amazing without combat). Also it ripped off Kingdom Hearts’ “enemies drop little orb thingies of health” so you just kill some more dudes when you get low on health. That owns.

Imagine, a game where reading the collectibles and lore is actually a good idea. Insane, isn’t it? And that part can actually be more terrifying than the game. This one is all about atmosphere. A boring building is pretty spooky in half-lighting with bodies floating in the air, lights flickering, and weird hissing in the background. Is that a monster? Ha ha, no, it’s just the janitor. WAIT THAT MIGHT BE WORSE OH SHIT!

Anyway, play Control if you want to spend an entire game going “What the fucccck? What the fucccck?”.

Best Moment: Look at me. I’m the Director now.

9. Fall Guys

For about a month, everyone was playing Fall Guys and then everyone stopped. It’s my Titanfall Memorial “Hey You Assholes Were All About This Game What Happened?!” Award Winner for 2020.

But for that month, Fall Guys was ridiculously fun. It was intuitive: Run forward, jump, try not to screw up. It was infuriating: Other people would screw up for you, sometimes there were bugs, Japanese gameshows are torture simulators in candy colors. It takes a certain alchemy to get “this game is easy and fun, but it’s also hard and infuriating” and balance it just right, but Fall Guys manages it. All you have to do is get to the finish line and literally everyone and everything is trying to stop you. JUST LIKE REAL LIFE. But you can also wear a ridiculous costume. JUST LIKE REAL LIFE.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you could set up on the finish line and block OTHER people from winning before going on to win yourself. The rage this caused was outstanding and why Fall Guys had the best multiplayer of the year.

Best Moment: Literally anytime you could stop someone else from winning even if it meant you would lose.

8. Victory and Glory: The American Civil War

Everyone loves a video game that’s actually a port of one of those complicated board games that has 100 sheets of counters to punch out and a bunch of cards to draw and look can we just play Ticket to Ride instead, everyone knows how to play that. Combine it with the not-at-all-controversial American Civil War and you have a game that’s fun for the whole family.

But seriously if all that sounds exciting–and I know it does–this is a really fun take on the Civil War with interesting combat that’s surprisingly simple to learn, but takes some generalship to win. The game handles all the complicated stuff–math! Ew!–leaving you to plot your own march through the south. You’ve got terrain, generals, unit strength and quality, location, expanding RAILWAY CAPACITY, all the things the kids like in their video games.

The real secret is: it’s all about logistics. You never have quite enough stuff to do everything you want to do, so it becomes a head game of trying to guess what the other guy wants to do so you can stop him, then throw a wrench in his plans. Nothing like two guys with enormous beards staring each other down across an intricately detailed map of Richmond Virginia to get the blood pumping!

Best Moment: Me taking you on an educational family vacation. WE GON’ LEARN TODAY.

7. XCOM: Chimera Squad

XCOM is a great series, but it can be a little overwhelming. Chimaera Squad takes the solid turn-based action and squad building and makes it a little easier to deal with. Not as a replacement, but as another avenue to explore when you don’t have time for a 200 hour grind through The Long War. It’s hard to take out the complexity of a system and have the guts and fun still there, but they managed it.

Chimaera Squad also raises an interesting question and one I’d like to explore more: what happens after the rebellion when everyone has to live with each other? This is the story of the various alien races and hybrids and humanity all learning to live with each other. As a result, your squad isn’t just enforcing the law, putting down rebellions, or dealing with renegade factions. You also represent the hopes of everyone on Earth to settle down and live together after the bloody and all-consuming war.

What happens when humans want to go see sexy snake lady strippers instead of get into firefights with them? What if we kissed at the sexy snake lady strip club? Ha ha. Just kidding…unless…

We ride together. We die together. Bad aliens for life.

Best Moment: Anytime your plan works perfectly merits a fist pump.

6. Total Tank Simulator

Is this a fanatically detailed simulator where you have to go to bootcamp and read a manual just to drive a tank? Despite the name, it is not. Instead, it’s a surprisingly simple but very detailed little RTS where you line up two opposing forces and then jump in and help the good guys. Perhaps you’ve stared at your tanks and wished you could just go drive one and show the goddamn computer what to blow up.

Well, friend, your time is now.

Total Tank Simulator takes that pretty simple RTS and lets you take command of an individual dude, tank, artillery piece, anti-aircraft gun, or airplane and potentially swing the battle with your skills. Or just get owned because you charged a tank and the AI clowned you. The point is, finally, you can lead your troops to victory from the frontlines and show them how it’s done. Or not. They’re pretty good! And I am not.

Best Moment: Taking command of a tank squad and hollering “AFTER ME, MY LEGIONS!” and scaring the bejesus out of my poor cats.

5. The Rise and Fall of Cyberpunk 2077

From “most anticipated game of the year” to “Where should I set up my salt mining operation? Oh I’ll just put it right over here” in the course of a few hours. I was there, Gandalf. I watched the tears begin at their source. And teardrops became a gush, which became a spring, which became a river, which flooded the world in memes and angry rants and that “What do I even have to live for now?” Reddit post that was floating around. I bottled enough tears and put them down in my tear cave to provide for many generations of shitbirds like me. My children will drink deeply of the tears of nerds and their children will as well.

The real irony is: I like cyberpunk both as a genre and when it was a tabletop role-playing game called Cyberpunk 2020 and I should be the primary audience for it. Call me a hipster douchebag–and rest assured I am–but it felt like it was getting a little too popular and a little too hyped during the buildup to launch. And the only thing I like more than neon and a robust dildo collection is a good meltdown. And boy, there has been a crop this time around. I’ve been unbearable in the Monstervine chat because I’m trying to post them all.

Truthfully, it fascinates me when things go wrong and that’s much more interesting than “the game we thought was good actually was good.” Watching CD Projekt take one of the most-anticipated games of the year, if not of all time, and trip over their own dick and just clown themselves over and over again has been MY Story of the Year.

When I’m writing this today, Cyberpunk 2077 has been pulled from digital storefronts and retailers are offering refunds. This thing is like a bus full of clowns being hit by a train: Tragic in its own way but also incredibly hilarious. Best drama of the year by far. What’s coming next? WHO KNOWS?

Best Moment: There were far too many dildoes. Amazing.

4. Hades

This is Tommy Ravenpunk 2077’s Game I Slept On Because Everyone Was Talking About It And I Am A Hipster That Hates Popular Things. Hades is getting a ton of hype and seemed like one of those games like Undertale that is terrible but everyone likes because it’s cute or the dude is hot or whatever. I dunno, fuck Undertale.

Unlike Undertale, Hades is actually good, with a frankly brilliant combat system that’s easy to learn and damn hard to master (but is also fun), a structure that makes you want to play it a billion times, and just enough randomization to make things interesting. Roguelikes live and die based on how much fun it is to do the same thing over and over again. You can figure out the combat in a couple battles, but there are always different upgrades to try and different builds, strategies, and weapons to explore. It feels good to land a combo or pull off a sick hit that wins a battle. Losing actually is educational and, importantly, it never feels cheap. You feel yourself getting better as you play it.

Also, you can pet Cerberus.

Play Hades.

Best Moment: Literally every time I pet Cerberus.

3. DOOM Eternal

I wouldn’t say Doom Eternal is perfect. It’s a little too obviously influenced by modern shooters and I am old as balls and don’t want anything to change ever.

(Please imagine my very best Stephen A. Smith voice) BUT!

When it hits, it hits, and it captures the feeling of running around like a maniac and beating the shit out of the hordes of hell absolutely perfectly. Ripping a demon’s head off never stops being satisfying. Cutting right through them with a chainsaw? Oh hell yeah. So yeah I wish the multiplayer had some classic 90s shooter modes and it feels a little too much like HALO but I don’t give a damn when I’m chainsawing the hordes of hell in half.

I respect a game that knows what it’s about and Doom Eternal’s opening is outstanding. Against a slowly-building heavy metal guitar riff, we hear about Earth in peril. Terrible monsters from Hell itself. Who can save us? NO ONE CAN SAVE US! OH SHIT IT’S DOOM GUY! And then the guitars are roaring and my neighbors are pounding on the wall and the cats are scared because I’ve torn off my shirt and started headbanging and my speakers are exploding. Birds are falling out of the sky, scared to death. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.

Great opening.

And then you’re thrown into Hell on Earth and all the devils are here. And then you get to tear their goddamned heads off. YEAHHHHHHHHHH BOYYYYYYYYYYYY.

I’m less of a fan of some of the movement gimmicks. Doom shouldn’t be about platforms and weird grappling and swinging and climbing shit. Doom should be about shoving your boot up the asses of Hell’s minions. When it sticks to that, it rules.

Best Moment: The first time you chainsaw a demon and figure out hell yeah, that’s how it’s gonna be.

2. Microsoft Flight Simulator

I am old as hell and one of the very first games I had on my 286 was Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.1. THAT’S RIGHT. THIS IS ALL WE HAD BACK IN MY DAY. YOU TOOK YER 12 POLYGONS AND YOU LIKED EM! AND YOU USED TO HAVE TO CONFIGURE DRIVERS BY YOURSELF! IF YOU GOT THE IRQ WRONG, YOU COULD FUCK UP EVERYTHING FOR DAYS!

I have a history with the series, you could say, and it was incredible to buy and download a game where I could, quite literally, take off from the small airport by my home, fly over the city I live in and navigate entirely by landmarks I recognize, buzz my office building which looked exactly like the buildings I work in, then land my plane right in front of a building that looked pretty close to the one I live in. That was, in itself, amazing. And then there were the weird monoliths and wormholes and other cosmic horrors to interrupt your mundane lift of flying the redeye 727 from Buffalo to Dubuque.

Best Moment: I’m a simple man. I like to fly over my house and say “Hey, that looks like my house.” And it really does. Congratulations, Microsoft Flight Simulator. You did it.

1. Crusader Kings 3

I have followed Paradox since they sent me a burned CD-RW (ask your parents, kids) of a beta build of Europa Universalis back in 2000 (I’M OLD AS BALLS). I like Paradox even when their games are buggy as shit or outright broken because they try really hard. They do interesting things even when they don’t work.

While Crusader Kings 3 is complex, it’s very easy to learn as Paradox games go. The tutorial is actually useful(!), which is a rare thing in a Paradox game. There are only a few screens to explore and not that many menus(!). You can easily see how your realm is doing at a glance. And you usually have an idea when and why you screwed up. It’s not one of those Paradox games where you have to play a backwater country following a vague Wiki tutorial 10 times just to figure out how to run your economy. You can actually play and have fun your first time through! Astounding!

Crusader Kings 3 feels like Paradox’s masterpiece: It’s what they have been building to for their entire existence, just an excellent and amazing strategy game that’s fun to play, but it’s also fun to not play. I legitimately had a lot of fun just assassinating a few babies and then seeing what happened in my corner of the world. Sometimes I built an empire. Sometimes I get steamrolled. Even picking the same country in the same time period at the same place, I never knew what was going to happen. Except for one constant: Some children were going to die.

Best Moment: Unifying Ireland under my benevolent rule.