I don't have a conventional 2020 list this year. Sure, I played a few games actually released in 2020, but for the most part I played older games.

I went in and cleaned up the first two games in The Bard's Tale Trilogy, and got started on the Thief of Fate, a game I originally played in my early teens. Somehow I have 70+ hours with most of BT3 left to play through. This 'remastered' trilogy of games is a great way to both relive the 80's CRPG dungeon crawl, or if you never played one, discover them for the first time.

I played more Slay the Spire, a game I adore the design of, and also love watching other people playing. Late this year Kevin "Purge" Godec got in to it, so I've been watching that on the youtube.

Speaking of... my record of playing zero hours of DOTA2 continues, but I've watched probably a hundred hours, mostly of Purge, but also Ted "Pyrion Flax" Forsyth. Get back on it, Brad!

I played a bit of Baldur's Gate 3 in early access. I never had any real intention of going deep in the game, I want to save most of it (even the first chapter) for the real thing, and knowing how Larian patches their games I should probably hold of for the "definitive" edition in 2023.

Desperados III is a pure 2020 release. I liked it well enough, but after a few missions I sort of fell off. There are some design decisions I just don't agree with and couldn't get over. Posted some of that in the OT.

I'm pretty sure I own a PS4 copy of Horizon Zero Dawn that I never played since the PS4 has been put away after going unused for a year, but the PC version was a great positive surprise. After some initial talk of performance issues, I picked the game up in the current sale, and it runs real well even on my 2015 PC build (i7-6700K/1080TI/64GB). It's good. Unlike Jeff I'm enjoying mixing up the combat, and unlike Brad I'm playing on a PC and don't really understand his camera complaints. I'm about 20 hours plus change in, and I will finish it.

Finally...

I don't know how many times I restarted Pillars of Eternity II after getting several hours into it, but probably three or four times. I played it day one, but it really needed patches, and so here we are in 2020 and the game is fully patched up and all DLC is out and it's fucking fantastic. I'd go so far and say it's probably the best Baldur's Gate-like we've seen yet. I could go on and on about how I love most everything about this game to the point that I don't really want to finish it, which last happened with Planescape: Torment.

That is why Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is my game of the year.