After a year of (waves arms in air) all of that, I'm thankful I had the time to play more games throughout 2020. It was a year of some truly prodigious titles! Some made me laugh, some made me cry. Some made my PS4 Pro's power supply call it quits (lookin' at you, Marvel's Avengers!). But, in the end, they gave me many well-spent hours in some pretty awesome virtual worlds.

10. Astro's Playroom

Astro genuinely gave me the kind of joy I used to get playing Mario games. It was short, sweet, and delightful from cover to cover. Feeling the little pitter-patters from your tiny robot through the controller? It was the cutest experience! The feeling of celebration for the new console was a warm welcome and a solid showcase for the new tech in the controller. It was nice to play something that didn’t try to fill up 60 hours of gameplay or have a sprawling open world, too.

I’ll also admit I jumped over to this after attempting Demon’s Souls because I needed happy thoughts and I was not having it in Boletaria.

9. Immortals: Fenyx Rising

Breath Of fresh air! In The Wild, no doubt! It’s been nice to have something to play that feels familiar without being too familiar (think of the Impact that would have). Fenyx came out right at the perfect time where I really wanted to kick back, solve some puzzles, beat up some bad guys, and do the occasional boss fight. I’m glad to have a game to start at the end of the year that’s lighthearted, bright, and colorful. Also, props to them for making Zeus sound like that middle-aged guy trying to relive his frat days slamming Natty Lights and smoking the electric lettuce.

8. Destiny 2: Beyond Light

If I’m honest with myself, this is probably on my list year over year. I tend to jump back in for a little while when new seasons open up (though I’ve admittedly missed a few). It’s made me happy that they’ve been bringing in aspects of Destiny 1 bit by bit. Showing back up into the Cosmodrome has been kind of comforting and exciting, even if it only means I’m doing the same patrol and public event cycles I used to do. After starting a new Guardian from scratch it was a shock at first to see how much of the character’s origin story has changed over time but it makes much more sense now for how they’ve built up story lines over several seasons.

7. Resident Evil 3 Remake

2020 really didn’t lack in sequels and remakes, did it? I think the thing I appreciate the most from this one is how they really didn’t downplay some of the sillier aspects of RE3 at all. You still get chased down by a really big, uh, guy? In a fedora and trench coat? When I got to the final encounter, I absolutely let out a hearty chuckle and said “This is ridiculous and I love it.”

I’m glad this one felt more like an action movie instead of trying to lean too much into horror like the more recent games in the franchise have. Mostly because I can actually finish it instead of standing outside of the first dark doorframe saying “no I am absolutely not going in there” for 30 minutes like how I did with RE7. What? I scare easily.

6. Control – The Foundation & AWE

Hell YES do I get to talk more about Control this year. It was my game of the year by a country mile in 2019 and I was thrilled that I got to play more of it. I was ready to go back to the Oldest House and explore new, mysterious floors and get weird. I get that these are two expansions and not a full title but this is my top 10 and I’ll do whatever I want.

One of the things I love most about Control is their ability to add music into it that absolutely rips. Swift Platform was a huge highlight for me and the track lives rent free in my head at all hours of the day. Though I haven’t gotten a chance to play through Alan Wake yet, I sure did appreciate the vibes from AWE and it makes me want to go back and play through that.

Anyways, feel free to add more floors whenever you want Remedy. Really. Whenever. Soon? Soon. Please.

5. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

New Horizons was the warm hug I needed this year. It’s incredible that the game arrived at the perfect moment when the year was just starting to devolve into utter chaos. It gave daily routines during a time when it was challenging to keep up regular schedules since there was no commute to sit though, no office to work in, and no clear delineation between “work” and “home”. I got to expand a house, get furniture, decorate, redecorate, and completely change an island with the other residents virtually while I had to stay in the same four walls for months separated by friends and close ones.

4. Final Fantasy 7 Remake

I was wary to give the remake a go because of how invested I was in the original – more so when I wanted to relive the “entire” game instead of the amount that the remake covers. The nostalgia that it gave is almost indescribable – the level of care that was given to still give those fuzzy feelings while vastly modernizing the entire experience felt so great. The way encounters were reinvented was the most pleasant surprise out of the entire game. The combat felt so gratifying and required little or no grinding like what it was in the original. It opened up the remake to focus much more on the story (making it way easier to understand just what in the hell was going on).

Still though, I hate that stupid Hell House and its stupid house face.

3. Ghost Of Tsushima

Look let’s go ahead and get this out of the way now, it’s the prettiest damn game any of us have ever played. I went into this completely blind and, boy, this whole experience was an absolute joy. I wandered the island the minute it opened up for me to explore. The visuals, sounds, oh and the cinematic moments! It felt so rewarding to incrementally become the legendary Ghost – from someone who had struggled fighting a bear to easily taking down an entire group of goons. By the end of the game I was ready to start over all again and relive it all.

Plus, like, samurai butts.

2. Hades

Hell of a game. I’m still dumbfounded by the sheer depth in Hades after all of the runs I’ve made through it. It’s amazing how a roguelike kept me interested for so long, and for far more things that had practically nothing to do with the mechanics. I reunited people! I attempted to romance! I got, like, entirely too invested into storylines! And that’s what I love the most about this game – it didn’t matter if I made it out or not, I kept going because I wanted to connect more with the others around me.

That reminds me, I need to start this up again and see if Meg is free for drinks.

1. The Last Of Us Part II

It’s hard to articulate how much I appreciated something so bleak and gruesome, especially in 2020. The story sat with me several months after I had gotten through it. It’s hard to play through all of the chaos, violence, and thrash and say you’ve enjoyed it (with joy being very sparse in the game) but I can absolutely say I’m thankful for the experience.

Part II really went to town with emotional whiplash for me. Seeing a representation of Seattle, a city I adore, was awesome in a year where I couldn’t visit it. Watching characters make irrational and violent decisions was unsettling. Confrontation after confrontation left me stressed but anxious to see how everything unfolds. Ellie’s final scene with her guitar absolutely gutted me.

On a personal note, this one hit me pretty hard. Having lost a close friend a few months before this and my sibling a year before that, I was working through loss and trauma while characters in the game were doing the same thing. In-game and out, everything felt so damn sad and angry. In an odd way it helped. It felt like, when I landed at my lowest in real life, there was someone else waiting for me there. There was something else out there that understood.

The video player is one of the best examples of an area we really care about on the team; it’s chock-full of interactions, icons, and states that are required to feel simple and approachable. It needs to work with live streams as well as recorded video. People should be able to scrub the timeline, change the volume, and change settings all at varying sizes and placements on the page.

We’re excited about the next iteration of the video player we’ve been working on. The player is transitioning from an ever-present control bar to one that surfaces on hover or tap (just like many of the video players we all use daily on other sites). Similar actions have been grouped together and organized to reduce the number of actions and options you’re bombarded with when you interact with the player.

We’ve also started creating a more unified icon set to make sure everything feels like it belongs together a little more. This is a fairly small detail most folks aren’t too concerned with until something doesn’t make sense, but we want to make sure we make these to help guide people to the right action or setting.

The new player is currently being developed and should be ready in the coming weeks. As always with things made for the internet, there’s a chance things may change slightly between concept and development. It’s going to be updated across all the CBSi Games sites, so you’ll be seeing it updated on GameSpot, Giant Bomb, and ComicVine.

Have feedback, questions, concerns about the new player? Feel free to hit me up on Twitter. I’m @danauer over there.