By far my most played and enjoyed game this year was Riot Games's Teamfight Tactics, which seems to have reached a new peak of the auto-battler genre with its new mechanics introduced in Set 6. However, I am a purist and will not include a 2019 game on this Top 10. You're welcome.
The sheer variety of actually fun and cool stuff in this game is astonishing. Being designed so well for co-op first (and only) makes that co-op experience feel better than any other I've played. Its vibrant visuals and absolutely ridiculous plot and characters with a decent emotional core make it even more memorable.
This game offers probably my favorite roguelike and card video game experience, and then adds to and subtracts from that formula in bold ways to serve its offbeat story. Oh yeah and sometimes it's also a cool escape room puzzle and does some other weird stuff too. I don't like every part equally as much, but the overall effect is an extremely fun and unique game.
This latest Resident Evil marries the best of all the series' different sides into one big awesome package, resulting in one of the series's best titles overall. I loved the boss fights and locations, especially the Castle and Factory levels. I think it is not perfectly even in its quality all the way through, but each segment has its own character and fun gameplay that make this extremely fun overall.
Probably my favorite story in a game this year, considering the crazy varied places it goes and how well the character arcs pay off—not to mention its great humor throughout. I loved how frantic combat becomes when dashing around and ordering around your fellow Guardians, which with all their great party banter made it really feel like your party mattered.
I think this is the most fun Arkane game, with some really cool levels, great main characters, and a nice sense of progression making repeat levels feel valuable. While I have my complaints about it, I think it's the best current-gen exclusive game to date.
This game offered one of my favorite turn-based battle systems ever, with interesting timing-based challenges and buff/debuff systems leading to tons of interesting decisions to make both in and out of battle. A pretty good story featuring League of Legends characters, and some fun dungeons made this a really fun package.
I spent a good chunk of the later part of the year with family, where we had a lot of fun regularly playing this game, to a point where it ended up being one of my most-played titles of the year. This game does a great job bringing back memories of older Mario Party titles in a way that modernizes them without messing with the formula too much.
Another addictive take on the structure of Outer Wilds, this game compelled me to finish all of its endings in one day with how well it sets up mysteries and curiosities in its world. While I don't think its actual story and writing end up being amazing, the experience of uncovering it all is great fun itself.
