Poll Mid-Year Check-Up: Your Game of the Year So far? (590 votes)
Hey, what's been your favorite game of the year so far? I haven't played any from this year so selfishly, it'd be cool to know what ppl are really liking/liked.
Hey, what's been your favorite game of the year so far? I haven't played any from this year so selfishly, it'd be cool to know what ppl are really liking/liked.
Doom Eternal.
I mean, the only other 2020 games I've played are a little bit of Ori and the Will O The Wisps and Valorant, both of which are also great (from what I played). But holy hell, Doom Eternal's intense combat was incredible to experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of it, too. The story wound up being better than expected. It wasn't great, and it was downright cringeworthy at times, but whatever. Still loved everything about the game and couldn't believe the mixed reception it got when I checked forums and such after playing it.
I like Streets of Rage 4 a lot, but my favorite is definitely Hades. Technically still in development, but it'll release this year. It felt like a complete game when it arrived on Steam, but each update has added a significant amount. I love every aspect: the gameplay, the art, the music, the characters and story. Phenomenal from top to bottom.
@diamond_lime: I just decided to add it cuz I put stuff like Persona 5 Royal and Kentucky Route Zero Ep5 so the line was already blurry.
Nioh 2, sort of by default. It's a good game, but it isn't that much better than the original. However, I've found this to be a super disappointing year for the big releases.
Given how few 2020 games I've played this year, I think the default answer is probably something like Monster Train or Nioh 2. Doom Eternal is like 80% amazing and 20% frustrating, while RE3 is great but doesn't quite measure up to RE2.
I'll definitely play FF VIIR at some point though. That game seems like it might end up being "my jam"
There hasn't been a truly great game this year, but looking forward to Ghosts of Tsushima, Cyberpunk, Halo, and a few others.
Current top 5:
They're all games that come with caveats though. I'm also still working my way through Murder By Numbers, that will probably end up on my list somewhere once I finish with it.
1. The Last of Us Part II: I've said enough about what I like and dislike about this game on these forums by now, especially as most of those threads are still on the front page of the forums. But to me this is clearly the game of the year in a not so dissimilar way to PUBG was for the Giant Bomb staff a few years ago. It is now all I want to talk or read about, and it was the one game this year that felt like I was playing a game aware of what the world kind of feels like in 2020, just with runners and clickers taking the place of MAGA culture. It wasn't just a fantastic game - in fact, it took some risks by at times intentionally being kind of bad - it just felt now.
2. MLB The Show 2020: They made a major mistake by emphasizing minor league baseball players to such an extreme degree this year - it's super cool that they now have all those real likenesses and names, but this is also a sport where The Onion can write a headline like "Report: 87% of Americans Unaware They Were Chosen in Later Rounds of MLB Draft" and it's more true than funny. That said, the game itself plays better than ever and the content drip has been absolutely perfect for cramming down podcasts, bad action movies and Giant Bomb streams during quarantine. I always let this game linger in the bottom five of my top ten every year or at least get an honorable mention, but this one may stay right here all year this time around.
3. Final Fantasy VII Remake: The weird graphical aesthetic of PS2 meets PS3 meets PS4 might have been enough. The ability to charm me with what I generally find awkwardly translated Japanese cuteness to the stilted American interpretation of that, perhaps because of the aforementioned graphical goofiness. That combat, which honestly only got better and better right up to the very end. The insanely faithful ways they recreated so much of that Midgar portion of the game and yet were completely unafraid to get weird and stupid when possible was fascinating. If The Last of Us Part II is struggling to leave my mind because of the questions it asks of what it means to like characters in a game or franchises regardless of medium generally, FFVIIR asks similar questions about nostalgia and fan service that still linger with me. Plus, that combat.
4. DOOM Eternal: This year's front-runner for last year's inaugural Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Award for Game That Should've Been My Shit But I Hated It. If you loved this game, I get it and that's great. I bounced off Sekiro for reasons I think I could get past with a newer television (or even just switching to a monitor) because I really loved it until certain bosses had timing windows that sucked ass, but DOOM made me disappointed that I'd spent money on it within hours, not days. I can't really think of another time in my gaming life when I so quickly felt like I wished I could get a refund.
From there my year's been defined mostly by replaying the first 2/3 of Bloodborne and rededicating myself to getting past Micolash and finishing the game for myself (another great podcast game that doubles as another great pandemic game), replaying Uncharted 4 in the lead up to my #1 until it hit the Madagascar sequence and I'd had my (belatedly satisfied) fill, playing The Banner Saga 2 in an attempt to finally follow up on that franchise after really enjoying the first only to find the second is just...exhausting at a certain point...let me end this run on sentence. Then start another! Red Dead Online is such a tease I can't really put into words how much I want to like it and how little it gives back to me. Turns out, playing Yakuza Kiwami before Yakuza Zero might actually make the latter appear unnecessarily daunting. Death Stranding would've probably given me the opposite response DOOM did if I'd bought it upon release - turns out, that game's story was stupid as hell but as a video game, it was quite interesting! Fuck BTs, though. Dead Cells remains cool in a pinch.
And that's 2020 for me, so far! Plus a random 5 hour session with Civilization IV from time to time as is this owner of a 2008 iMac that randomly still functions totally great's wont.
The only games from this year that I've played are TLOU2 and In Other Waters.
While IOW was really cool, i cant really say it's better than TLOU2.
Super Mega Baseball 3. An excellent refinement on 2 with the same amazing gameplay, it's by far the best current sports game franchise. And that's in spite of the fact that I find the new franchise mode to be an unappealing feature - in theory, tanking and developing a murderer's row of a team sounds fun, but in standard mode you can't sim games and losing that many games just sound utterly miserable.
I fell off of Animal Crossing much, much earlier than the majority of people, and although I really liked what I played of Ori and the Will o' the Wisps, I didn't go back to it after hitting my first really tough section about two hours in. I will get round to Doom Eternal before the end of the year, and I've only played a little bit of Monster Train but I don't think it's quite as good as many others seem to think. I have zero interest in playing TLOU2 right now given the negativity surrounding the game (i.e. Naughty Dog crunch, the leaks, and the miserable grittiness).
The most fun I've had with a game this year, regardless of year of original release, was with No Man's Sky. I still haven't played Outer Worlds, and haven't even bought Outer Wilds.
2. MLB The Show 2020
The Show '19 was my first The Show game and I really enjoyed it, but it's hard for me to justify playing the same game again considering there were so many features in The Show '19 that I barely explored - I mostly played two long Road to the Show games, one as a pitcher and one as a hitter. Are there tangible gameplay improvements this time round? Or have they fleshed out some of the features in RTTS mode to make it more interesting?
I know baseball is kind of toxic right now, but obviously SMB3 is my current #1 and I could see myself playing more of The Show.
My game of the year is still and always Solomon's Key.
Very on-brand of you.
Final Fantasy VII Remake / Persona 5 Royal / The Last of Us Part II. Haven’t sat down and rated them, but those are my top 3 at the moment.
@bisonhero: I couldn't resist the joke. Solomon's Key is my favorite game of all time but if I were to go by time played this year it would have to be the various Battletech expansions.
@nodima said:
2. MLB The Show 2020
The Show '19 was my first The Show game and I really enjoyed it, but it's hard for me to justify playing the same game again considering there were so many features in The Show '19 that I barely explored - I mostly played two long Road to the Show games, one as a pitcher and one as a hitter. Are there tangible gameplay improvements this time round? Or have they fleshed out some of the features in RTTS mode to make it more interesting?
I know baseball is kind of toxic right now, but obviously SMB3 is my current #1 and I could see myself playing more of The Show.
I'll be honest, I've never been interested in the RPG-esque modes of sports games. Road to the Show is the best of the ones I've played but I've never finished a full season, or even a month usually. I spend most of my time in the Diamond Dynasty mode playing Conquest games and the occasional Battle Royale. It appeals to the part of me that really liked collecting cards as a kid, the randomness of what your lineup looks like for months on end (unless you play the game like a monster or spend money on currency) is fascinating to me year after year and in a pinch I really like seeing a couple strangers' jersey designs can sometimes get me through a full 9 inning ranked game if I really like them and the pitching strategy is interesting.
The game doesn't really change year over year, I just like the deck-building aspect and, again, it is incredibly easy to accomplish tasks in this game while leaving a controller set down for minutes at a time so it's just a go-to low engagement activity to pass the days. You're probably doing great with just checking in every couple years, most of the gameplay adjustments year over year tend to be fairly subtle and, uh, inside baseball.
The only games from this year that I've played are TLOU2 and In Other Waters.
While IOW was really cool, i cant really say it's better than TLOU2.
Not going to lie, I read "In Other Waters" and genuinely thought it was just a typo for Outer Wilds or Outer Worlds and I thought that I was losing my mind.
For me, it is Doom Eternal followed closely by Ori, then P5: Royal (because it's a remake), all of which I think are exceptional games. I am still about a quarter of the way through TLOU2, and while I'm enjoying the story and production values, I can tell it's going to be a slog for me, gameplay-wise.
Other than that, a lot of my time has been sucked up by the Trails games (which came after the massive time sink of P5: Royal), so I haven't had the chance to play some other games that I own, like FFVII Remake.
Hades. It's like Supergiant read my secret list of Chief Beefs I Have With Rougelites and fixed damn near all of them. It focuses on action instead of stumbling (and backtracking) through the environment, it's got some pretty wild builds, runs don't wear out their welcome, and most importantly, the combat is legible (looking at you, Dead Cells).
Hunt: Showdown. I know it'd been in early access for ages, and came out on Xbox and PC last august, but since it only hit PS4 this year and that's where I'm playing it, it gets my vote. It's maybe my favourite multiplayer shooter of all time, as frustrating as it can be sometimes.
After that, I guess Doom Eternal as the runner up. It's mechanically one of the best shooters ever made, even if the writing and story stuff were a step backwards.
Looking at this list, I'm wondering if 2020 will join 2006, 2014, and arguably 2016* as exceptions to the "years ending in 0, 1, 4, 6, and 7 are always legendary in terms of series/genre/industry defining game releases" rule.
*I think 2016 still makes the cut, but only by a hair.
Not that there aren't plenty of very good, even great games in 2020. But all of those other years have been real tough acts to follow.
Edit: Although 2020 might still make it in on the merit that a new Animal Crossing actually came out, a new Half-Life game actually came out, and (the first part of) the FF7 Remake actually came out, all in the same year.
Warzone has struck a perfect balance between high mobility and chewy, weird meta that has trapped a whole other set of my friends who were rebuffed by PUBG and Apex. If you felt burned by Blackout, the level of developer support and experimentation is a class above that.
I can chalk up the cartoonish icon driven play to my recoiling at Doom: Eternal, which has the feel of a Six Flags dark ride. In retrospect, the comparisons to a Saturday morning cartoon Hugo Martin made before launch were a warning that the reboot was lightning in a bottle.
Desperados 3 definitely has my top spot, it is a stealth masterpiece, I loved it. Been replaying a bunch of the missions and trying to complete some of the harder optional challenges. More people should check it out.
My number 2 is probably Murder by Numbers, honestly. What a good murder mystery visual novel Picross game with way better writing than you would expect!
I also played a lot of other excellent games, but they didn't come out in 2020. For example, I am kicking myself for putting off playing Yakuza 5 for so long (I blame the fact that it was a digital-only PS3 release originally), it is probably my fav in the series now, tied with Yakuza 0.
There's still a pile of games I need to finish, but if I had to choose right now it'd be Animal Crossing. Not because AC is some amazing achievement or accomplishment, it just wins by attrition. Nothing else has captured my attention and made me want to praise its name in the streets.
I'm hoping something comes along and wins me over but this year is looking mighty shallow.
Monster Train for me. I’m loving the “Slay The Spire by way of Magic: The Gathering” feel of it, and it’s certainly the game I’ve thought about most between runs of it.
I also love Deep Rock Galactic but multiplayer time is tough to come by with a baby in the house. At least it has a single player option. Nothing else I’ve played (XCOM Chimera Squad, Doom Eternal, PSO2, KR0, others) has really done it for me like those two games have.
I haven't finished TLOU2 yet (although really enjoying it) so out of that list Ori 2 baby. What a delightful game. On the flip side, Doom Eternal was the game I had huge expectations for that ended up not being the thing I was looking forward to. To be absolutely fair it's by no means a bad game, it's just not the Doom I wanted it to be.
@deathstriker: agreed. I really hope Ghost and Cyberpunk are as cool as they look
Definitely Monster Train though it gets kinda frustrating at high covenants (I'm at 18 now) since it feels like you get railroaded into clan combinations and card combos that actually work at that level. Might have played Hades even more than that. Can't wait to see how the latter one ends once 1.0 is released.
@peezmachine: wasn’t hades in early access before this year?
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