So I'm sitting here drinking some whiskey, pondering what is making me feel so restless during a snow-ice-other storm, understanding that it's all the stuff this year is. Apple News, and CNN, truthfully both, are telling me I might see $600 in my bank account before midnight. I bet I won't. I entered this year wanting to play more games than I had last year, buried in a grind of MLB The Show's Diamond Dynasty (forgiving time just spent lingering on the menu, my sister made a point to send me an image of my 794 hours with MLB 20, 640 hours with 19 and 918 hours with 18 once she got a PS5 and had access to information even I didn't have) and stoked on a bevy of non-Giant Bomb podcasts to indulge, from Triple Click to Waypoint Radio to How Did This Get Played to The Besties...but, yea, I spent over 800 hours at this point with MLB The Show anyway. I uninstalled it early this month to make hard drive space...and the re-installed it when I realized re-installing Destiny 2 wasn't the answer.

I did not buy Beyond Light, but Destiny 2 is still Weirdly Good.

I also spent plenty of times on these forums talking about these specific games, some of them as recently as last night, so this is not the most novel blog ever committed to Giant Bomb hard drive space, but it is my blog for me to remember what resonated with me this year, and so...probably without many images of gimmicks, allow me to Rank Some Games.

#10: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2

The original Tony Hawk disc is one of two games I still physically own, or at least an aware of physically owning. The other? Donkey Kong Country for the SNES. Why these two games? Mostly for the same reason I'm not sure they're the only two games I still physically own - sometimes I move boxes around my apartment, and sometimes I dig through them before I do. That being said, I fucking loved these games and have a vivid memory of a key-lime green Playstation 1 memory card that contained two separate THPS1 save-states because there was a time in my life where I both only had THPS1 to play and needed motivation to continue playing it so Just played it again, Tony.

As I alluded to before, I was hoping to wean myself off the exceptionally passive (and rewarding) loop of MLB The Show as well as provide a salve to my withering early-30s, working-in-service-during-COVID morale this year and THPS felt like, well, the one. And once I'd installed it and started picking away at it, I certainly felt like that was going to be the case. These guys are asking me to grind for, what, 10,000 hours for a minuscule drop of reward points I can exchange for a mediocre board graphic and/or t-shirt? Sure! And I loved Bob Burnquisting through the primary campaign of the original game, debating with myself whether I realized as a kid how painful Downhill Jam is as a level or if I could ever remember how to get my skater to grind those overhead lights in the Chicago tournament park.

But, man...the game's initial decision to deny any other skater the basic progression through each level's tasks, as well as offering every skater the ability to swap and exchange special moves at will (barring a few specific, obscure ground-skate moves, it seemed) really sapped the replay-value out of this game for me. They solved that first problem eventually, and I love that, but by then I'd also realized I couldn't have any fun online because there would always be one guy who had never stopped playing Pro Skater games in the lobby, and that a lot of the game's objective modes were more inspired by Devil May Cry type min/max gameplay than, you know, casually skating around to Goldfinger and A Tribe Called Quest. In other words, THPS1+2 is exceptionally satisfying on a green hit, but as the bowl burns and burns (and the grab tricks multiply and multiply) I had to reconcile my hopes for this package with the reality that I'm not 13 anymore and I just don't have the patience.

One Truly Awesome Thing About It: Best control scheme of 2020. And 2015, and 1997.

#9: Spiritfarer

This game is going to make the last mainly because, y'know, I failed to play a ton of games in 2020 like I'd planned. I have so many complaints, primarily that I had to consult online guides multiple times to figure out where I should be going for certain materials or general progression demands. I played probably 35 hours of this game despite fully enjoying maybe 10, and a lot of that was due to treating it like a farming simulator when it was always best as a grief vehicle.

Or... was it? While the game's loop hits some strong emotional beats early on, it's late game passengers are uniformly demanding and picky in a way that, I suppose if you're a naturally reclusive person, causes you to resent them fairly quickly. I spent much of those first hours attempting to suss out favorite dishes, hugging and caring for all my passengers like an idealized aunty...only to find that impulse wither over the months to the point I was sprinting past everyone, aware they wouldn't die or come to resent me for doing so. I hustled spirits off their semi-immortal plane in haste and often found myself annoyed how many long, contemplative moments were dragging their goodbyes out from 30 seconds to over 3 minutes.

In the end, Spiritfarer fucked me up in the other way than it did other people singing its praises, in that I realized I may work in bars/restaurants/hospitality and derive a lot of self-worth out of those interactions, but I emphatically do not want to cater to people's very specific needs in my downtime. But more specifically, the mechanical aspect of this game made each passing feel less and less earned; artificial. I wanted to love this more, but it did feel like a specific moment in 2020 such that it deserves mention here. If only I could have done a kickflip when I finished collecting every type of item and material in the game.

#8: Cyberpunk 2077, or, Where I Start Using Some Games Just to Hit Ten

I'm all over these forums about this game, so it feels stupid to just go ahead and say more about it, but here it is:

I played on PS4. It sucked on PS4. I loved how much it sucked. One of my favorite things about FFVII Remake was that certain locations looked like they contained the PS2, PS3 and PS4 in a single play space. Cyberpunk, similarly, imagined a world in which very little had advanced in open world technology since Grand Theft Auto III other than being able to present a first-person perspective. It crashes all the time. It looks like an amateur oil painting imitating a professional watercolor painting hinting at a hobbyist's pointillism trials. The male V's voice acting is garish; the in-game advertising might be the first time in my life I've truly understood "advertising is gross" mentalities.

I'm continuing to drink whiskey as I write, because...

This game, before I uninstalled it and asked for a refund from Sony (that I still haven't received any update on, nearly a week later...) was fuckin' fun, choom. I liked Fallout 3 enough based on some Blockbuster rentals (because you could do that kind of thing when that game came out) but otherwise have never played a Bethesda game unless you want to count Obsidian's Outer Worlds. But that game ran perfectly fine and, despite ultimately small stakes and withering mission design, just got what it was in a way I understand Bethesda and/or "Eurojank" games to not. In other words, how bad this game was as an experience was novel to me, kind of like watching Wonder Woman '84 in a hungover stupor around eight in the morning the day after Christmas and thinking to myself, "that was objectively bad - primarily because Diana and Steve actively raped that man many times over - but I kind of enjoyed that wreckage?"

Cyberpunk wants to be of this moment, but it is just a reminder of how much work we have to do as players, as creatives, as consumers, as economists, as investors, as exploited underclassmen and exploiting single-digit percenters that...it kind of did it's job, even if it accomplished its success in the dirtiest, most unfortunate ways possible.

Plus some of the guns and melee weapons with random status effects break the game in such a way that it at least feels good to press a button and experience a result.

#7 Genshin Impact

I just spent way more time than I expected to describing my "end-game" thoughts on this game over in the comments of @mento's blog covering it, so I'll restrain myself here. My main hits: I didn't play Breath of the Wild, so the gameplay is pretty new to me. I haven't spent any money on the game other than a hat-tip to the battle pass when it was first introduced, and yet my Wish rolls have been pretty fucking killer on the character side. Lastly, while I was initially happy for the game to give me reasons not to play it all day long when I first started approaching progression spikes...I feel like the game ultimately emphasizes its repetitive and mind-numbing activities over what made the game appealing in the first place.

I mean...other than all the characters, plot devices and incidental dialogue which is some of the worst I've ever encountered in a video game. I switched the dialogue to Chinese (after attempting Japanese, and French...) mostly so I could completely ignore it, but when I do take the time to read what these characters are talking about I just imagine a cluster of French-Canadians in a basement somewhere struggling to convert metaphors into standard sentences and giving up halfway through. In that way, being walled off from more story is actually kind of preferable, though the story missions offer the most direct access to progress, so...

This game is very good. It sucks. I'll keep talking about it, and dipping in and out of it, as long as the internet discourse deems it entertaining.

#6: Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition

I feel like a lot of critics are having their cake and eating it too my throwing this into year end lists after doing so in 2013, 2014 or 2016 as well...but I kind of get where they're coming from. More importantly, I think this game's interminable-til-now development schedule works a bit in its favor. To wit: I've only finished Act IV (and the interwoven interludes) on this year's PS4 release, but did so in a single day, and kind of hated it yet really want to talk to everyone I know about it. Spoiler alert: nobody I know plays video games other than my sister, who will never play this game, so you, dear reader, get to be my Everyone I Know.

Remember Virginia? That game wanted to be an interactive Twin Peaks episode and sucked for it. I've never seen Twin Peaks, but I'm assured it sucks by a Twin Peaks superfan who played/viewed the game alongside me (I may not know game players, but I know how to sucker people into watching me play games). If you don't, KRZ reminds me a lot of Virginia. It also reminds me of Flashback, of Grim Fandango, of Full Throttle (weirdly enough!) and of Spiritfarer. At one point, you're literally on a large boat, seeming to ferry lost souls to their Great Beyond.

...But I guess I don't know if that's actually the point. You see, what starts (or started) as a very barebones adventure game in which a generic old white guy maybe-dad wanders around an environment reacting to the things the Hand of God asks him to react to eventually meanders into a thing in which perspective shifts from minute to minute - entire scenes are played out from the perspective of characters you never meet, while others cleverly play with player choice - and art-piece interludes primarily meant to sate Kickstarter and Patreon backers but are now integral to the experience can wander along forever...shit, I just played this game today, got to where I am in seven hours or so and I am beat.

Late in the game voice acting is added to certain esoteric bits and it made me realize something I probably already knew - my alcohol, marijuana and podcast-added brain is so beyond (or beneath) reading books that I'm missing something purely by not hearing these people speak these things. I think the playwright aspects of this game's storytelling are super interesting, but as much as I love Glengarry Glen Ross or Fences I'm not reading their scripts when I'm bored. And this game ain't them, anyway. The language is beautiful most of the time and the way these guys toy with perspective in certain expansive scenes is certainly a cool use of cinematography in games, but there is just this thing that maybe Act V and the interludes sandwiching it (if you've played this game, that was funny) can not do thanks to its largely text-based approach and long run time, which is make me truly care.

On the other hand, you can tell these developers cared more about this more than anyone other than perhaps, let's trope, Toru Iwatani developing Pac-Man. Games sure have come a long way.

#5: DOOM ETERNAL

No, I'm kidding. I hated this. I played DOOM 2016 to the halfway point in anticipation, then played it to completion (and a decent amount of DOOM II on the Doom Slayer's personal computer) to cleanse my palate afterward. But I get some people loved this one.

#5: Vampyr

So I'll take this time to acknowledge a game I was late to and yet want so much more of. Initially, this game sucks. The combat is a true definition of awful without upgrades and the Good Weapons. There are multiple moments in which you really just want to get past one bit to find out what the next is, and much like Spiritfarer there's a mid-game revelation that you don't need to mind Vampyr's systems nearly as much as it lets on. The main character's sister is the game's most compelling character and villain yet barely rates in its 40 hour runtime.

...And yet, the charm never stops coming. Sure, this game came out in 2018 and was properly regarded as a messy attempt at all that it is, but in 2020 this game just hit different. A lot of writers and publications have searched for the game from 2020 that perfectly encapsulated this year, but Dontnod nailed it two years ago. This video game ultimately ends in the way video games do, and that bit is a stinker, but the journey along the way felt so eerily of our time I couldn't look away, put the controller down or even get bored by all the random doors that led to Bloodborne-at-launch level load times. This game is wicked good, and wicked average, and I want more of it.

#4: Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

I'll hold my breath here. I juggled Spider-Man between No. 3 and No. 1 through the end of 2018, and I can't exactly recall where I let it land, but this game is just more of that with an equally awesome hero. I reject that it's a more focused adventure - all the same side content is there, and nearly as much of it - the story is just a little less fleshed out, a little less lived in, a little less breathable. And yet! Spider-Man is still the proper expansion of Batman's videogame fight style, Nadji Jeter is wonderfully charming as Miles and I suppose there's no forced stealth sections (which were not bad, just slow) to contend with. It attempts to do some Naughty Dog stuff and proves how hard that is to pull off while also offering a villain that Jeff Gerstmann felt sucked awesomely while I felt he sucked generically. All that to say - they made a worse version, IMO, of a game I already loved almost unconditionally, and so I mostly love this version unconditionally as well.

The next game better let players choose between both Spider-Men throughout the story.

#3: Final Fantasy VII Remake

I just realized I was booking myself into a hole with this pick, until I suddenly realized I had a way out of it...so! My third favorite game of this year is this one! I personally hated the house fight, and there's been so much ink- and audio-spilled over how dull many of the sidequests are...but there's also that drag dance, an oddly compelling fitness mini-game (or two), the most memorable summon provider of the year, some weird cowboy whose purpose I barely remember but whose visage I still can conjure at will and all those neatly indescribable scenes in which NPCs looked like Final Fantasy XII characters while the background looked like a Final Fantasy X pre-render down-rendered and the player character(s) looked like Playstation 5 test cases...this game was cool.

But more than those novelties, it found a way to make a five hour section of a 60-hour game its own 60 hour experience - and an enjoyable one! - with relative ease while translating what was exhilarating about turn-based combat in the '90s when most other alternatives were beat 'em up or shoot 'em up in nature into an active system that both made a fool of sister series Kingdom Hearts while also offering an olive branch to the future of its parent franchise.

And then there's that ending. Personally, I thought it was stupid. Like, profoundly so. And yet. If this is going to be a 19-part series, drawn out over the rest of our nostalgia-addled lives, what better way to leave Midgar than (let me dance around it...) Will She or Won't She? Square-Enix turned the fate of She Who Shall Not Be Named into a Rachel + Ross situation (that's NBC Universal's Friends property, kids) and avoided making an absolute joke out of it, no small feat in an experiment attempting to turn video games' Darth Vader Reveal into an utter unknown. That alone is enough for inclusion in a blog struggling (and, look above, failing!) to name 10 games of 2020 as the best of that year, but that it is done so confidently, brazenly and, well, interestingly is enough to make a game that presents itself as a nostalgia commodity one of the truly great games from this year or any other.

#2: Ghost of Tsushima

I apologize, I intimated the stakes were high previously, but halfway through realized I had exactly two games left to mention. This was the one I forgot; perhaps appropriate for a game about "ghosts"! I would've never expected to find this game here, even if it satisfies a lot of things I've mostly ignored in this generation: I admit that big maps with lots of icons on it is something I've experienced through The Witcher 3, and then kind of through Grand Theft Autos, Mass Effect Andromeda, Watch_Dogses and so on, but when I took a dip in the specifically Ubisoft version of this pool I often found a distaste for it pretty quickly (I beat the former two, I hated the latter series both approaches). Tsushima felt right.

That's not to say it's activity feed is not oppressive. I came to resent the birds and foxes that littered its game world. So too did I realize (prior to Lethal Mode) that I was clearing camps primarily due to a desire to clear fog on the map as much as save my people. And I'm pretty adamant that the politics of this game are misguided - I wanted Jin to fully reject his social status in favor of collaborators like Yuna or Ryuzo, let alone the true side characters that went unnamed or at least un-Wiki mentionable. It's a game that often rejects colonialism explicitly and yet is so tethered to feudalism those goals are nearly rendered moot.

...Yet still, Lethal mode came out and it was wild good. The multiplayer mode dropped and I dropped off of it fairly quickly, but it was also wild good. In so many ways this was a generic game on paper and yet again and again it made sure to write on paper of impeccable stock. Sucker Punch found a way to translate inFamous' various combat styles into an Arkham Asylum context that was both a bit rote and many times over exciting in a way that kept rewarding players for hours and hours. It approached cosmetics in a tastefully useless yet useful way that kept me bouncing around uniforms depending on my needs at the time (yea, we who played probably all spent too much time in the ones that made side activities more obvious) without making the core game more tedious because I forgot which robe I was wearing.

Fans coalesced around this game in a weird and dare I say it unhealthy way, but damn if it didn't mostly, weirdly deserve that.

#1: The Last of Us Part II

The game we'll see on less critics' lists and more users' lists than perhaps any other game in the history of game of the year blogs.

The game that proved video games have a long way to go in narrative storytelling on the heels of the game the proved videogames were here to stay as a storytelling medium.

The game that completely rejected what players have come to expect from direct sequels in favor of...kind of totally giving players that game, just 15 hours into it and concerning characters completely unconcerned with the previous game that had set player expectations.

I could, or could have, spent the entirety of this blog espousing how many ways I think this game is brilliant as a game, or how it challenges reader expectations as a story, or how it fails in many ways at both things. But I don't want to do that.

Instead, I just want to say that I didn't need to run from COVID in 2020, I needed to confront it. And I didn't need to avoid my angriest impulses toward certain reactions to this pandemic in the Americas, I needed to confront them. And I didn't want to forget how fun Metal Gear Solid V was prior to its always-online updates, I wanted a reminder of how adaptable sandbox level design can be when given time to stew.

Most importantly, I just needed to bask in the totality of a Naughty Dog game (again, and again) this year, and I'm willing to overlook all the narrative question marks, questionable character motivations and somewhat goofy drifts into Capital V Videogames during both campaigns (eh, spoiler?) that undermine the thematic heights of those drifts...that I don't care how much of a problem this game was for some people.

I want to talk about it until I die.