THE TOP 6 GAMES OF 2020
This has been the worst year of my life. And I’m sure that isn’t an uncommon sentiment for anyone else who might be reading this. It’s been a year of loss, and sacrifice, and pure unadulterated terror the likes of which we likely won’t see again for another generation. Hopefully.
One side effect to being stuck inside for an entire year is that you get to spend a lot of time with games. Playing them, thinking about them, having your college graduation ceremony within them. And thankfully, this year had a lot of good games. Cutting the list down to just this small handful was really hard, but I think that these games are the ones which have affected me the most, and helped me stay sane in a year which could have all but destroyed me. And it almost did in a few ways.
These aren’t all the best games of the year, but they’re the ones that were the most important to me in 2020. Which, in a way, means that they were the best. Objectively.
Also, it should be noted that these games aren’t in any particular order other than for dramatic purposes, I suppose. Just know it’s going to get real later on.
So without any further preamble…
KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO
There isn’t much to say for the moment-to-moment gameplay of Kentucky Route Zero, and interestingly enough on a list of the best games of the year, that’s not even why I included it. Rather, I think that Kentucky Route Zero is significant for being a game which aims to tackle the kind of storytelling and abstract imagery that one might only find in novels or experimental film. That’s not to say there isn’t a coherent narrative at play in ‘KRZ,’ but it’s one of the first games I’ve ever played which is genuinely interested in exploring a specific topic through the means of symbolism which is meant to not just be decoded but really interpreted. Much like Night In The Woods which released in 2017, Kentucky Route Zero analyzes the essence of life in post-recession rural America. Where the last drops of industrialism have all but evaporated and left behind crumbling infrastructure, and a population which has nothing left to cling to but its tradition and iconography. And while ‘Night In The Woods’ does contain surreal elements, it exists within a realm of familiar storytelling for games, and that’s not a bad thing, but it’s where we see Kentucky Route Zero shine in comparison. It’s a game that begins at a gas station with a lost truck driver, and becomes a story of inter-dimensional travel and a work-force of drug addicted glowing skeletons subservient to the invisible but unshakeable hands of capitalism. But all of that is surface level.
The greatest achievement of Kentucky Route Zero is that through its imagery, which I hesitate to spoil even small parts of, the game is able to convey its message purely through mood and feeling alone. Anyone who is familiar with the themes or places being represented in this game, what it’s trying to say about life in rural America will be instantly clear. This is because it’s the first game I’ve seen earnestly attempt to tackle magical realism in a meaningful way.
It’s like a ghost story told around a campfire by somebody who’s too old or seen too much since then to get all the detail right. Every piece of dialogue is cryptic and filled with mysticism; but it’s usually just a diatribe on house boats or power bills. It’s a game about standing on the edge of the woods just after midnight and peering in. You can make out shapes and figures, and movement that probably isn’t there. It’s about the few times that you actually did find something out there; and all you did was ask it for directions.
Kentucky Route Zero is a masterpiece of storytelling within the medium. I wish I could say more about it in a concrete fashion but I think that would require a more in-depth and specific analysis of the game’s powerfully moving imagery. And that’s the reason why I cannot wait to think about it for a very long time.
UMURANGI GENERATION
In 2020 the people who were supposed to be there for us failed at every turn. As a younger adult who had the distinct privilege of graduating from college in the middle of a global pandemic, I feel that sentiment succinctly. At a time where my peers and I are meant to forge our own paths, the world we’re inheriting doesn’t exactly leave us feeling optimistic. We’re meant to start careers and families at a time where something as simple as inviting somebody over to my house could mean that we die. While Umurangi Generation was actually made in reference to the Australian brush fires and the effects that climate change is to have on future generations, I can’t help but draw parallels between that scenario and our collective global trauma over the “current situation.”
It’s a photography simulator, with a scoring system that’s most reminiscent of something like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (which also saw an excellent revival this year) or Pokémon Snap. Swapping lenses, focal lengths, aperture, and shutter speed are all the name of the game here. Thankfully Umurangi Generation is able to convey these technical aspects of photography, along with other concepts such as the rule of thirds, with relative ease. Even for players who’ve never picked up a DSLR in their life all thanks to a collection of fun and interesting challenges which are specific to each level. For example, “take a picture of 5 birds using a telephoto lens.” And the smart thing that’s done with these challenges is that they’re relatively left up to interpretation. Meaning that your “five birds” could be three live animals, and two posters of birds on the wall. Or a neon sign shaped like one. Allowing for organic experimentation with the art of photography, all the while existing within a deliberately constructed set piece.
What makes exploring these levels so interesting however is the world which is being depicted here. A dystopic future where the powers at be obliviously destroy the world in pursuit of control and profit, all the while expecting younger generations to be excited about the prospect of defending and inheriting the rubble. While each level is gorgeous and filled with opportunity for evocative imagery, there’s a malaise of defeatism and the acceptance of an inevitable collapse that permeates every inch of the game’s setting. A feeling that begins to take center stage as the game progresses, and you see firsthand just how worthless the world at stake here really is in this future, to terrifying and shocking results.
If there was a ever game that most accurately describes the mindset of young people today, it’s this one. Umurangi Generation is all about creating and trying to find some meager semblance of solace in the face of certain disaster. Because it wasn’t our fault, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
HALF-LIFE: ALYX
Speaking of exploring dystopic futures. I’ve never been more delighted to throw myself head-first into one than I was in the time I spent with Half-Life: Alyx back in March when we all still thought this was just a Tiger King binge away from being over.
I’ve always been the VR guy among my friends, and also a huge proponent of the technology. It really works, but unfortunately there are still a few hurdles that we’ve yet to tackle. Movement is still a problem, there’s giant unwieldy cables, it requires a high-end PC, on top of the headset also being exorbitantly expensive. Worst of all, I can’t really say there are any experiences which have been worth more than a few hours of your attention. That was until Valve came out of retirement and actually made a new Half-Life game.
Half-Life: Alyx is the VR game that people have been waiting for. It is also the Half-Life game that people have been waiting for. I’ve spent a lot of time in VR and this game was hands-down the most immersive and best designed game I’ve played with the technology. Every inch of that world is meticulously detailed and everything within it feels like it belongs. Each item has a realistic weight to it that just can’t be found in other VR titles, and anything you expect to happen when interacting with the environment actually works. The tactile nature of everything in the game from the trash on the ground to the weapons you carry lend the player a real sense of presence that I’ve never seen before. The absolute terror of dropping your last magazine as a headcrab leaps at you from the dark corners of an abandoned sewer will never leave your mind. Or, running out of ammo completely and resorting to smashing the headcrab with the nearest brick you can find. That worked too.
Outside of the unscripted moments of interaction that players have with the world, Valve also flexed their design muscles here on each encounter and level. One “boss fight” in particular being one of the most horrifying and inventive stealth sequences I’ve ever experienced in a video game. And more importantly to some, it’s all set within the Half-Life universe, and it hints at a future and possibly even a conclusion of a story that’s now infamous to the medium itself.
I think if I spend anymore time talking about Half-Life: Alyx, it would just devolve into me recounting any of the hundred stories I have like the one about the brick. It’s a transcendent experience that can really only be done justice through experiencing it with a headset. And unfortunately, I know that isn’t realistic for most people who play games, especially right now when money can be spent on far more important things. But, if you ever get the chance, just know that everything good you’ve heard about Half-Life: Alyx is not hyperbole.
ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS
I feel like even though not many are playing or talking about it these days, it can’t be understated just how important Animal Crossing: New Horizons was to a lot of people this year. It meant a lot to me, that’s for sure. It was my most anticipated game going into 2020, and I certainly could have never expected just how much I was going to need it when it finally did come out.
The reasons I have for it being on list aren’t even necessarily because I think it’s the best Animal Crossing. While I do think the vastly superior options for customization in clothing and furniture and island layout are huge improvements, I feel like the core experience of the franchise has suffered a bit with this entry. For me, the fun of Animal Crossing was always seeing what my villagers were up to on any given day, and laughing at their strange bits dialogue, or going to birthday parties, organizing hang outs. A lot of that charm is missing here. The villagers all seems mostly same-y. I swear most of them are jocks, and either way none of the personality types are all that interesting here to being with. I got more fun out of this game from its town-building aspects, and the ability which I was able to express myself through customization. Which is all great, it just isn’t necessarily Animal Crossing, which is why I deliberated for so long about putting it on this list at all. Until remembered exactly why it was I spent hundreds hours with the game.
In any other year, I wouldn’t have had the experience that I did with this game. But in 2020, Animal Crossing: New Horizons became the only place outside of Zoom where my friends and I could enjoy each other’s company to put it plainly. In this game I’ve celebrated multiple birthdays, every holiday with friends, and even my own college graduation (pictured above). In a year where days blend into weeks, into months, and there’s nothing left but the monotony of our new quarantine routines, New Horizons gave us something to talk about. Telling stories about the fish you’re chasing, or the remodel you just did on the northwestern corner of your island. Creating outfits sharing with each other, sending that one piece of furniture that your friend needed. Then, there was that one month everyone got really into the turnip market and ruined the fun for a little bit when we all got filthy rich. While we won’t be able to tell stories right now about something funny somebody did when we all went out earlier this year, we created memories in this space. And when times like are fleeting, they mean a whole more.
While it isn’t a game that changed the industry or even made particularly positive strides within its own franchise, in a way Animal Crossing: New Horizons was unintentionally the perfect game for this year. At a time when it feels impossible to find connection, this game facilitates the perfect place to get away with friends, and pretend like nothing is wrong. Even if only for a little bit.
HADES
While most everything else before this is on the list for largely experiential reasons, Hades, is on here because it’s a really fuckin’ good game. I’d venture so far as to say that it’s the best game that came out in 2020.
See. I told you this list wasn’t in order. We’ve still got one more to go after this. Anyways…
Hades takes a genre which has been done death by almost every indie game in the past few years, the rogue-like, and in typical fashion for developer Supergiant Games, perfects it. Each attempt to escape the underworld in Hades feels like progress. That isn’t just because Zagreus, the son of the titular god, grows stronger with each run, although that is certainly the case. It’s because Supergiant has taken their flare for excellent storytelling and delivered an unprecedented amount of contextual narrative content for each run. Every time you die, it doesn’t feel like failure because there’s always something new waiting for the player when they get back to The House of Hades. Every time you encounter a boss, they’ll mock you about how they bested you on your last run, or lament the fact that you’ve gotten stronger they are when you win. Miraculously enough, the story is the main reason why most will find motivation to clear Hades multiple times, as it’s the only way to see the true ending of the story. As a result of this structure, there’s hundreds of hours of hidden content that can only be unearthed if you continue to run the game again and again. Thankfully, it’s fun as hell to do so.
The moment-to-moment in Hades is some of the best and most satisfying action combat I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in a video game to date. Each of the six weapons at the player’s disposal feels unique and are all equally fun to use, upgrade, and master. My personal favorite are the fists and the shield, but my first successful run came from a time where I doubled back to using the sword on a whim. The enemy types are varied and each level provides new and exciting challenges for players, especially when it’s your first time making to a new floor on your journey to the surface.
This isn’t just a game that gets easier as you progress either, it’s also one that you naturally get better at as time goes on. And it feels really good to do so. I initially picked up Hades on the PC when it first dropped in early access last year, but I waited until it hit 1.0 and released on the Switch to give it another go, and this is where I got my first few wins. However, I found that when I switched back to PC, where I had none of my upgrades progress, I was able to knock out a handful of wins each day with little to no issue, even though I was ostensibly weaker. It’s the true mark of a great combat system when it’s possible to for players to master it without feeling like they’ve had to grind or train. All I did was keep playing the game because it was fun, and I wanted to see what the next turn in the story was after each victory.
If you skip Hades you are doing yourself a disservice. Even if you don’t like this kind of game, I promise you, it’s better than any others that have come before it. And even then, I implore you to tough it out and see this game’s story through to the end. It’s masterfully designed, beautifully written, and it’s going to set the bar for a long time to come.
THE LAST OF US PART II
This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to write about The Last of Us Part II. In fact, it isn’t even the second, or the third. There are dozens of pages of writing stowed away, never touched again. Because I feel like each time my perspective on things changes. At the end of this year, looking back at where I was in 2019, who I was, it feels like a different universe. Another life that I can only grasp at memories of if I try hard enough. It sounds a bit hyperbolic, I know, but I really feel completely different than I did before this year changed everything. When this game came out, I was emotionally weak as it was. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to handle a game that people were claiming was so harrowing to play. And honestly, there are parts of this game that did illicit that reaction from me. But ultimately that isn’t what hit me the hardest.
Thinking about the best games of this year, I constantly had to remind myself of what I played and what I liked about those games, but not The Last of Us Part II. It stuck with me, and I carried it around in my chest all the time after I finished it. And it wasn’t because of the gameplay. Not the immensely improved stealth mechanics, or the Hotline-Miami-esque combat encounters, or the meticulously crafted set pieces. Much like the first game, it was the story and presentation that stuck with me. The ending of The Last of Us is one of my favorite endings in fiction, period. So I was a little hesitant going into Part II about what it is they felt was so important to say that they’d undercut the beautiful ambiguity that came with the first game’s conclusion. Sure, this game’s story has problems. I think it’s paced a bit strangely, it’s too long for its own good, and the thematic elements about cycles of violence seem a bit trite, but what I took way from it was way more valuable than that.
This is a story about people who have experienced loss. They’ve lost friends, family, loved ones, the entire world they knew before. The Last of Us, like any post-apocalypse story is about picking up the pieces in the aftermath of that loss. In Part II we see how that kind of loss can corrupt and eat away at a person until there’s nothing left if you let it. Unprocessed grief and trauma can fester and rot away from the inside until it manifests itself on the outside like a mold, or a fungus.
A yearly tradition for me was driving to Seattle at the end of each summer and going to PAX with my brother. Which is why it was so surreal for this game to take place here in the Pacific Northwest, and more specifically, Seattle. I’ve never seen a piece of art capture what the wilderness here looks like so vividly. The part that always gets me when I look at The Last of Us Part II is the way that it renders those giant ferns near the ground. A detail I rarely see emulated in art that depicts this region. This vivid depiction is why it was so surreal to explore the ruins of the Washington Convention Center, where PAX is held each year. In fact, the developers thought it would cheeky to put up flags on the streetlights like they do in the summer to advertise a video game convention. In this moment I was brought face-to-face with the loss that I still had yet to begin processing. As somebody with health complications that prevent me from taking even the smallest risks in the pandemic, I was given an almost photo-realistic representation of a space that’s so special and precious to me, but it wasn’t the way I remember it. It took on an outlook that I’ve been holding about the world this year. Dilapidated, failed, and run-down. It was how I felt about life. The life of the guy who went to PAX every year didn’t exist anymore. It still doesn’t. And I had to come to terms with that loss.
Except I didn’t. Not for a long time.
There’s some loss that can’t be fixed. People you’ll never get back, and time you’ll never make up. What The Last of Us Part II posits, is that trying to fix that kind of loss rather than finding ways to move on and live with it only ends with you hurting yourself. Ellie and Abby’s parallel quests for vengeance only end with them losing more of their friends and family, and even their bodies to a certain extent. This game is as long as it is, and as grueling as it is, because it wants to go to every length it can to make you watch as these two people destroy everything around them in the names of wrongs which can never be righted. It’s exhausting to a point. You just want to reach through the television screen and grab these characters by their shoulders and shout, “ENOUGH!”
The final moments of this game haunt me. It isn’t because they’re violent, or because they’re shocking, but it’s because they broke my heart. Finally seeing these characters lift their heads up out of the fog of their anger and their grief. Looking around at who they’ve become and what their journeys cost them. It isn’t a game about how violence begets violence, it’s a game about how loss begets loss if you let it.
It’s a game about being a different person on the other side of that loss. That grief. That process. About how if you let yourself get swallowed up, and if you don’t reach out for help, you’ll lose parts of yourself forever. And I’ve spent a lot of this year, more recently so, walking around like I’d lost an arm or a leg. Because it almost swallowed me.
So goodbye 2020. I may have made it through to the other side. But I’m leaving parts of myself behind.
With you. Forever.
Time to move forward. Before I lose anything else.
