The 2020 Video Game Retrospective

In a year as historic and unprecedented as 2020, a year where I spent fully 10 months working from home, it’s safe to say I found plenty of time for coping mechanisms. Among other things, I found comfort in video games. I didn’t spend a lot of time writing about them, but I certainly spent a lot of time playing them. As a result, I finished more games in 2020 as a 32-year-old man than I ever have in my life. Whether or not that’s an accomplishment of any particular note is debatable, but it’s definitely going to give me plenty to write about, assuming I can manage to get through the gargantuan document this is likely to be.

Finished on January 1st, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

In the early days of 2020, well before I understood what this year would become, I continued a trend I’d started in 2019 by trying out more shooters, starting by finishing off the Wolfenstein reboot’s standalone DLC, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, which takes place in an alternate-history 1946 directly prior to the prologue of that reboot. What I appreciate about the Wolfenstein series as a whole is that it focuses a lot on narrative. There’s always this emphasis on realism in terms of the setting but it’s married with fantastic (and sometimes ridiculous) science-fiction elements. The Old Blood is definitely more gameplay-centric than the base game, but at a tidy six hours or so, it was a very satisfying playthrough. The game’s second half reminded me a lot of Uncharted 2 in a way.

Finished on January 5th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

At that point, I knew I was going to keep playing Wolfenstein and Doom games, but I still had the itch to play a shooter and didn’t have access to very many of them. I settled on Titanfall 2, since giant robots are amazing and I’d heard that it had a great single-player campaign. This turned out to be very true! The gunplay itself is very solid and feels satisfying, and a lot can be said for the joy of crunching around in the mechs themselves, which all feel very functionally different from each other. The real draw is that campaign, though, which is so tightly designed, paced, and executed. I would play through dozens of campaigns like this if they existed. The narrative itself is interesting, but the gameplay, including excellent first-person platforming, is what really sold the game for me. It’s not the kind of game I’d ever play multiplayer for, though, so even though I’m sure Apex Legends from the same developer is great, it would never scratch that same itch for me.

Finished on January 14th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

My thirst for shooters temporarily sated, I decided to move on to something entirely different. You know, now that I think about it, it’s a crime I never spent a lot of time talking about Romancing SaGa 2 when I played through it in 2018, because it is this wonderful, bizarre Japanese RPG that for whatever reason I’d never played. I loved it enough that when Square-Enix decided to put out an official localization of Romancing SaGa 3, I jumped at the opportunity to play it as well. Although these games have a shiny veneer applied to them, it’s clear from the pixel art graphical style that they hail from the days of the SNES. There are some important differences between the two games, but it really boils down to assembling a team of characters you have to jump through some hoops and do quests to recruit. Each of these characters belongs to a general character class and could be human, could be a mermaid, could be some kind of elephant-man martial artist (seriously), and has their own set of strengths and weaknesses. What really makes the games so addictive to me is that so much about how your game will go is a mystery. Most of the battle system boils down to casting magic from various elemental schools and using abilities linked to different weapon types. Every time you use an ability, you have a chance to “spark” a different ability, at which point it is learned and you can use it going forward. You never know when this is going to happen, and the strength of the enemy you’re fighting directly correlates to how likely it will be that it does happen. Sometimes you might end up sparking a really powerful ability in the middle of a tough boss fight, securing your victory. On the other hand, you might spark that rare ability and still lose the fight, meaning you may never see it pop up again. It’s this mystery and tension that really makes the combat system work for me.

Finished on January 29th on PlayStation 4.

SaGa: Scarlet Grace was localized officially at the same time as Romancing SaGa 3 so of course I picked it up as well. It’s clear that a lot changed in the span of time between the two games (and I’ve never played any of the intervening titles (yet)) but a lot about the core gameplay is similar. Sparking as a mechanic is still intact, much to my joy, but the difficulty is dialed way up. Even routine combat encounters can result in a total party wipe. Conquering enemies is frequently much more about your strategy than your level, although the abilities you’ve learned are important as well. Some of the mystery surrounding mechanics is gone since the game shows you a rough list of how many abilities you have yet to learn, although it doesn’t name them until you’ve actually discovered them. The most important difference in the combat system comes in how turn order works, which is difficult to explain in only a few words. Suffice to say, defeating enemies in certain orders based on the projected turn order at the bottom of the screen makes encounters much more manageable and very addictive too.

Finished on February 4th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I’d had my eye on Thumper for a long time because I’m just a big rhythm game fan in general, but didn’t pull the trigger until early 2020. Despite reading a lot about the game, it ended up not being quite what I expected. I was initially quite turned off by its cold, otherworldly percussion. Because of the way the game is structured and its sheer speed, I felt like my twitch reflexes were being tested rather than my ability to keep a rhythm. The more I played it, though, the more I became addicted to it. I started hearing the clangs and clonks of the speedy beetle you piloted along the track in my sleep. As the later levels added in complexity, I felt myself anticipating what was going to come next instead of reacting to it. This helped me to understand what the game was about much more and ultimately really enjoy it. I was very impressed with myself that I managed to finish it because it was quite difficult, particularly in the last set of levels.

Finished on February 4th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

FutureGrind is a bite-sized indie game that didn’t leave a huge impression on me now that I’m thinking about it at the end of the year. It feels like a marriage of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Trials, which is a fun concept, but not necessarily my preferred genre of game. The game adds variety by providing you with a series of different bikes that function differently based on the sizes of the wheels and the color of the tracks you grind. I had some fun spinning around through the air trying not to fall to my death or get shocked, but only finished it because of how short the campaign was.

Finished on February 7th, 2020 on Xbox One.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus ended my shooter hiatus and returned me to BJ Blazkowicz in a game that focuses just as much (if not more) on narrative as The New Order did, to great effect. The gameplay is as solid as ever, rooted as it is in old-school first-person shooter mechanics, but I primarily found myself being invested in BJ’s story, particularly when it came to his origins as a child of a Jewish mother and abusive non-Jewish father. There are some great scenes concerning his childhood and how he comes to terms with that, but this is also a Wolfenstein game, so we have to have some robots, and some decapitated heads grafted onto robot bodies too. It’s always good to strike a balance.

Finished on Feburary 7th, 8th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 16th,
April 3rd, and June 19th sequentially on PlayStation 4.

It feels like I play through a whole pile of Mega Man games just about every other year, and 2020 definitely didn’t fail to deliver on that front. To be fair, I’d been meaning to play through the Mega Man X games I’d missed for many years, but had never gotten around to it because of the horror stories I’d heard from basically everyone. Well, 2020 seemed to be the right year to finally give that a shot. I started by replaying Mega Man X, which is essentially just a perfect action game. I made sure to play it to completion this time, including acquiring the mysterious Hadoken ability that I used approximately one time. I also wrote a 100-word review of this game and all of the MMX titles following, which I’ll link to as we go. 

I had less clear memories of Mega Man X2, even though I definitely played through it as a kid. It was the first in the X series to add an air-dash and many of its combat abilities centered around traversal as well, but it wasn’t as memorable for me as the first game, as I mentioned in my brief review.

Mega Man X3 is noticeably tougher than the first two games and I found I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I claimed to as a kid, even though it’s still really solid. I didn’t love fighting forced mid-stage mini-bosses that hop around to different stages and had a tough time with the final boss. Review here.

Finished on February 11th, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

I took a brief break from my Mega Man X marathon to play through Sayonara Wild Hearts twice in a single day. It’s one of those exceedingly rare games that I wanted to play again from the very beginning as soon as the credits rolled. It’s a very simple game but is executed perfectly from the very beginning. The gameplay essentially just boils down to “auto-running with rhythm elements.” It’s definitely not a full-blown rhythm game, but the music is integral to the experience. It feels like you’re playing through a catchy pop album while running, jumping, flying through the air, having sword fights, and hurtling through space. I absolutely loved it.

Mega Man X4 is the first game of the series on PlayStation and also the game I’d played most recently prior to replaying it on the Legacy Collection. When I last played it, I committed the cardinal sin of only playing through the game as X, so I made up for that by also playing Zero during my replay. I quite enjoyed it, although something about it just feels more sluggish in comparison to the classic SNES games, and as a big fan of Mega Man Zero, I feel like Zero feels more fluid to play there on the Game Boy Advance. Review here.

Mega Man X5 was my first foray into uncharted territory. I highly suspected I wasn’t going to like the game, but I wanted to play it (and the following titles) just so I could have had the experience of doing so. I’ll admit the core gameplay is solid, but the level design is atrocious and some of the mechanics introduced in this title are totally unnecessary and annoying. I never wanted to play another auto-scrolling level again after this game, but more were coming… Review here.

Mega Man X6 is pretty much just more of the same from the previous game, with more auto-scrolling nonsense, more of the terrible virus mechanic, more annoying reploids to rescue, and okay, some of the weapons are better. There’s also a weird time limit inherent to the level structure that makes things confusing and irritating. Review here.

Finished on February 22nd, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I think I really started thinking about the pandemic as an opportunity for me to clear out the Gaming Closet while stuck at home. Even as of this writing, there are a lot of classics I still haven’t played, but quite a bit less of them now than at the start of the year. One example is Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, which I primarily played because it was included in a double-pack with Symphony of the Night, which I’ll discuss a little later. Rondo took me a bit off guard with how difficult it is. I was curious about this game as a precursor to more contemporary games like Dark Souls, and I could see how there is some element of being conscious of how Richter gets locked into animations built into the game’s combat. It does really feel sluggish and dated by today’s standards, though, even though I really appreciate the aesthetic and especially the music. Also, Maria is a lot more fun to play and can’t say enough about tossing birds as a means of attack. I wouldn’t have considered the game complete unless I defeated Dracula with Richter though, so I did just that--after completing with Maria, of course.

Finished on February 25h, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Truthfully, I have no idea what made me decide to revisit Prey, other than in some obligation toward my backlog of unfinished games. It could have been because I’d read something about it at the time, but it’s hard to say. I’m glad I did, though, because although the latter half of the game is extremely frustrating, a lot of it is very interesting and spooky. If not for the insanely unbalanced breakout of aliens in the final stages of the game, I think I would have really enjoyed it the whole way through. 

Finished on February 26th, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

Speaking of classics, I bought Collection of Mana for the sole intent of playing an official localization of Seiken Densetsu 3 (which is now called Trials of Mana) that I have completed two or three times already. More on how that went later, but I started right from the beginning by playing through Final Fantasy Adventure, the very first Mana game. It’s obviously extremely dated by today’s standards, but it mostly holds up for me because of the good variety of weapons you can hack away at enemies with, even if most boss fights are primarily just mashing buttons. What really soured the experience for me was a game-breaking bug (or oversight?) I encountered about halfway through where you can permanently lock yourself into a room with no means of escape. I hadn’t read up on it beforehand so I had no idea it was coming and fell right into the game’s unintentional trap as I ran out of keys at a crucial time. The second time through, I aggressively bought keys at every opportunity.

Finished on March 3rd, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is really the game I’d always wanted to play because it’s such an important and influential game to a whole genre that followed after it. (Sidenote: I still haven’t played Super Metroid; maybe I’ll fix that in 2021.) I’m happy to report that it mostly lived up to the hype. There was much less friction in playing it compared to Rondo of Blood and I found that I really enjoyed the fighting game style special moves to cast Alucard’s spells. The exploration, opening of shortcuts, and collection of items is all just as good in dozens of games influenced by this title. I’m glad I got to play one of the originals.

Finished on March 11th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Control was another game I’d put off playing for awhile (like Prey) because I’d watched a lot of it being played already and wasn’t ready to jump in right after having done so. I really dug the creepy atmosphere, art direction,and ambiguous plot of the game, but I have to admit it didn’t stick with me as much as some other games I played in the year. I will say flying around and hurling objects at enemies telekinetically is always really satisfying.

Finished on March 18th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I half expect that I was putting off finishing my Mega Man X marathon during this time because just about every game during this period is a game I’d been previously putting off playing. Super Robot Wars V is another such example because I know I’d owned it for a few months at that point. I love the ridiculously over-the-top animations and strategy gameplay of these games, but unlike Moon Dwellers, which I’d played most recently, SRW V was extremely easy. I too often felt like I was mostly just going through the motions, so the novelty of tactical giant robot combat really fell off. From what I’ve heard, main series games tend to be pretty easy and Banpresto saves the difficulty for games featuring only original characters. Disappointing but understandable, I guess.

Finished on March 22nd, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Speaking of finishing things I’d been putting off, the next game I finished was Resident Evil, specifically the remaster of the original title. Forced perspective camera angles aside, I found I really enjoyed it! The combat is incredibly basic, but even with dated visuals, the game manages to create a suitably creepy atmosphere and features some great environments and puzzles, all primarily within one mansion. I was determined to continue through the series from here, but it would take me quite some time before I did.

Finished on March 29th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Patapon Remastered is a bit of a wildcard in my list because I just happened to see it on sale and wanted to play it--actually, you know what, it’s not even that much of a wildcard because I wanted to play it because I never finished the PSP original, despite really enjoying it. I used to be much less motivated to finish games, so I came back in and rectified that. It didn’t strike me as particularly different from the original, but I found that I was so much more patient with the level of grinding required to progress against some of the tougher bosses. Additionally, I just love the idea of a rhythm-driven real-time strategy game and I feel Patapon tackles the concept really well. I may finally get back into Patapon 2 one of these days.

Finished on March 30th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

The final (for now) game on my Backlog Tour was Undertale, which I think I may have subconsciously avoided due to the tremendous hype surrounding it. I shouldn’t have though, because it’s fantastic. The humor and writing are sharp and the music is alarmingly good, consistently. I thought it might be boring going the Pacifist route, but it ultimately felt like the right way to play the game and there was never a point where the game didn’t make that fun, since every enemy is a puzzle. It reminded me a lot of the demon negotiations in the earlier Shin Megami Tensei games, which I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn were an influence.

Finished on April 1st, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

A lot of folks felt Doom Eternal fell short of greatness, but I found I really enjoyed it despite the difficulty being more brutal than Doom (2016). I will admit I found myself in many more frustrating combat scenarios, but the gameplay is just as much of a blast as ever and the heavy metal soundtrack goes harder than just about any other game you could name. I forgot to mention that the same musician also worked on the Wolfenstein games, but he really put his mark on Doom, despite some recording drama I won’t go into here.

Finally, long after having finished Mega Man X6 and a lot of stalling, I finished Mega Man X7. I’ve gotta tell you, there’re a lot of great reasons why I put it off for as long as I did, but it mostly just boils down to Mega Man X7 being a truly awful game that I had to force myself to finish. If I weren’t such a stickler about committing to finishing games as often as possible, I certainly wouldn’t have soldiered on. I could write multiple paragraphs about why this game is bad, but it doesn’t deserve the attention. Feel free to read my 100-word review here, though.

Finished on April 7th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I spent a decent amount of time with the PlayStation Vita, but I was kind of a late adopter, so I missed out on some of its best titles, including, oddly enough, Danganronpa: Trigger-Happy Havoc. It’s interesting because it’s the type of game that’s exactly up my alley, especially as a huge Ace Attorney fan. It ended up not being quite what I expected and I was initially put off by its hamfisted writing and archetypical characters, but the more I committed to it, the more I started to think of the whole thing as a bit. I started looking forward to every ridiculous twist and felt more and more invested in figuring out the mystery behind everything. What I didn’t love, though, was almost any of the minigames you play during class trials. Man, those are just awful.

Finished on April 11th, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

It occurs to me that I have now played and finished three different versions of Secret of Mana in my life, and I may have played through at least one of them twice. I played through the original SNES version (and wrote about it in 2014), the totally unnecessary and inadequate PS4 remake in 2018, and then the 2D version again on Switch in 2020. I still really like this game, despite its limitations. The music is wonderful, the graphics are lovely to look at, and although the combat has problems, I’m still into it, especially since you can unlock different unique charge attacks for each weapon. I also still really like how they can be used for different types of platforming.

Finished on April 13th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I wasn’t expecting much from The Surge since it seemed pretty clear it was a sci-fi Dark Souls knockoff, which, to be honest, isn’t entirely untrue. On the other hand, it feels pretty great to play and has enough mechanics to feel distinct. Tearing the limbs off robotic enemies and using those parts to create your own gear is a really neat idea and works great in practice. It adds a layer of customization to the game because the gear you create is one of the principle ways you create a build for your character. Each type of gear has its own strengths and weaknesses and may or may not synergize with certain weapons. You can also slot in different implants that boost stats or serve as refillable consumable items.

Finished on April 27th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

As so often is the case for my gaming habits, when I play a game that makes an impression on me, I go down a rabbit hole of playing games that it influenced (or in this, was influenced by). For that reason, the next game I finished was Dark Souls Remastered, and it was for the first time. I’d played Dark Souls on PC many years ago but never made it much farther than the first boss. If we want to be totally accurate here, Bloodborne is really responsible for igniting my interest in Soulslikes, but it took me awhile to get to a point where I was playing more of them. There’s not much I can say about Dark Souls that hasn’t already been said, but man, it’s great. I loved it in ways that I wasn’t expecting. It felt a lot different from Bloodborne primarily because of how effective shields are and how effective magic can be. For that reason, it felt quite a bit easier, while still not at all lacking in bite.

Finished on April 30th, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

Afterward, I decided to play something completely different and unrelated, which was Grandia, a classic Japanese RPG favorite. My original plan was to follow up with Grandia II, which I’d also received as part of a bundle, but I ran out of steam. Grandia was a great, comforting game to return to, even if some of the dungeon-crawling was more tedious than I remembered. The charming characters, dialogue, and music all really took me back to my childhood.

Finished on May 4th, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

My original plan when I’d purchased Collection of Mana was to play all three games before the Trials of Mana remake came out, but, well, it came out shortly after I finished Secret of Mana, so I thought it made more sense to just play the remake since I’ve played Seiken Densetsu 3 multiple times already. I’m happy to report that Trials of Mana works tremendously better than the similar Secret of Mana remake. It’s very loyal to the original while adding new elements to flesh out the combat system, which is just about exactly what I was looking for but didn’t get in Secret of Mana. It evidently sold really well, so I’m looking forward to similar remakes for other Mana games going forward.

Finished on May 10th, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

I’d had my eye on Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap for some time because it has a gorgeous art style and I like playing updated versions of classic games. I played through the majority of the game over the course of a few days and found I quite enjoyed morphing into different animal creatures and to conquer different enemies. I didn’t like as much the sections of the game where I was stuck in a specific animal form for long periods of time. It seems to me like the game would have benefited from being able to freely switch much earlier on, because it felt much more satisfying once that became an option.

Finished on May 14th, 2020 on Xbox One.

I was lucky that The Surge 2 popped up on Xbox Gamepass because I was interested in playing it but probably wouldn’t have purchased it otherwise. I would have been missing out, too, because it’s a great Soulslike game in the vein of the original but with a lot of quality-of-life improvements. There’s a ton of variety in the combat and builds, even though the game is pretty lacking in boss variety. 

Finished on May 27th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Back to clearing out the backlog, I revisited a game that had been stuck there for several years, 2010’s Limbo, a creepy monochromatic puzzle platformer. You know, it’s not really my genre, which is probably why It took me so long to finish, but it felt pretty satisfying to finish and I still really dig the art direction and the puzzles themselves are well-designed.

Finished on May 28th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

The real reason I wanted to revisit Limbo is because I wanted to do so before playing Inside, which was a total mystery to me, but seems to receive near-constant praise. After having finished it (in about three hours), I can definitely see why. I’m hesitant to spoil the surprise myself, even after a few years after its release, but one thing I can say about it compared to Limbo is that it has this forward thrust that made me feel motivated to keep playing the entire time, whereas it was pretty easy for me to lose interest after a few minutes with Limbo.

Finished on May 29th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I have to say, I felt pretty proud of myself when I finished Nioh because, at the time, I felt pretty confident in saying it was the hardest game I’d ever played. It’s possible a different game deserves that title now, but more on that later. I purchased Nioh on release after reading a lot about it prior to launch and thinking it just looked incredible. This was in 2017, well before I’d played any really difficult games. This was even before I’d played Hollow Knight, which really deserves the credit for making me better at tough action games. So, when I first played it, I really bounced off of it because I could barely make it through the very first level of the game. Seriously, I beat the first boss, the one that barely counts as a boss, and gave up in disgust on that first island. I found that when I jumped into it this time, I breezed through that introductory level and found I was having a much easier time with it. Sure, I hit many brick walls, but I buckled down, studied boss patterns, did research, and I got better--and I made it through. It’s a fantastic game too, only let down by some repetitiveness in the later portions of the game.

Finished on June 5th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

After the brutal difficulty of Nioh, I felt ready to play something much more relaxing, so I finished Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, which had come in a combo pack with the first game. I’m not sure I necessarily resonated with the characters in this one as much, but the wackiness, twists, and mystery of the game still kept me invested. There are definitely some problematic cultural elements in both of these games, but I can mostly overlook them if I focus on the mysteries, and because I didn’t mention it in the blurb on the first game, some killer music.

After that, I finally finished Mega Man X8, which is not a criticism of the quality of that game, exactly, but more a commentary on just how much I hated Mega Man X7. I just wasn’t ready to play more Mega Man after that, so I really put off playing X8. It’s actually not bad, though. Capcom must have really took criticism of X7 to heart and made a solid 2.5D action platformer, but it still doesn’t quite reach the quality of the earlier games. My review of this one can be found here.

Finished on June 19th, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

Although I’ve really followed the Pokemon series since the very beginning, I’ve lost interest somewhat since Sun and Moon, which didn’t totally grab me. Even so, I knew I’d eventually want to try out the new game, which I did with Pokemon Shield. It has its problems, none of which really have anything to do with not featuring the full roster of Pokemon, but I found I enjoyed just playing through the base game just fine. I also really dug the music a lot. I do miss all the old mechanics that they seem to just throw away every generation. I’d appreciate nods to Mega-Evolution, Z-moves, and that kind of thing.

Finished on July 16th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I fully intended to play Divinity: Original Sin 2 Enhanced Edition directly after replaying the first game on PS4, but after spending 70 hours on that game back in 2019, I was feeling pretty burned out. I finally returned to it in a year that is apparently designed specifically to return to backlogged games and quite enjoyed it! At the end of the day, it didn’t wow me as much as I was led to believe it would. Although the battle system is very clever, it’s glacially-paced. Even routine combat encounters take a long time, and the writing for the characters and story is good, but not great like in Pillars of Eternity. I don’t totally buy the comparisons saying Divinity is vastly superior. It’s different and also extremely good, but I enjoy them both differently.

Finished on July 23rd, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Because I wasn’t already exhausted enough by that gargantuan game, I then played The Last of Us Part II, because yes, I just wanted to be privy to the discourse at the time. I’m part of the problem. It’s one of the best looking games I’ve ever played and has extremely well-designed and sympathetic characters that… make really awful decisions that don’t reflect their characters whatsoever. I also don’t love the gameplay and felt pretty bogged down by the constant gratuitous violence (like, do I need to see Ellie’s throat ripped out every time I make a bad decision?). It’s a shame because there’s a lot about the game that I really love, but I just greatly dislike the entire narrative thrust of the game.

Finished on July 25th, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

I’d put off playing Xenoblade Chronicles mostly just because it was really difficult to get a copy of it for either Wii or 3DS for the longest time, so when the definitive edition came out, it seemed like the perfect time to pick it up. It wasn’t the essential Nintendo RPG I had been led to believe it would be, but I did have a lot of fun with it. I can’t imagine spending hundreds of hours on all those inane side quests like some have, but the battle system is amusing enough, the graphics are solid, and the music is pretty great. I also will have “Riki likes fighting easy monsters” stuck in my head for the rest of my life.

Finished on August 3rd, 2020 on Nintendo Switch.

I skipped several games in the Paper Mario series after not finishing Super Paper Mario on the Wii mostly because I’d heard they weren’t great, but I wanted to give Paper Mario: The Origami King a try because dang it, I want to believe in that series again. It ended up being a mixed bag. I really didn’t dig the battle system at all, at least as far as normal combat encounters go. Boss encounters aren’t bad, but I can pretty comfortably dismiss the gameplay as below average overall. However, the story is really charming, and so are the characters. On top of that, the music is absolutely wonderful so I didn’t mind playing through it at all.

Finished on August 16th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Ghost of Tsushima strikes me as an Assassin’s Creed game set in Feudal Japan, except it’s not developed by Ubisoft. In this case, the developer is Sucker Punch, known primarily for the Infamous series on PS3. Those games were honestly great and so is Ghost of Tsushima, even if it doesn’t necessarily stand out among other open-world games. The setting is picture-perfect, the characters sympathetic, and the gameplay is solid. It’s just hard to think of anything about it, in particular, that’s remarkable. If you’re looking for an open-world game set in feudal Japan, this is exactly that, and it’s exactly what you’d expect.

Finished on September 6th, 2020 on Xbox One.

I didn’t play a ton of Xbox Gamepass games this year, but a lot of them were sequels to games I’d already played on other platforms. One exception is Double Kick Heroes, a super charming indie rhythm game in which you kill a bunch of zombies from the back of a truck using guns powered by a double kick drum. The concept is hilarious and not only am I a sucker for rhythm games, but I love heavy metal as well, so this game was right up my alley. It got surprisingly challenging near the end, too.

Finished on September 29th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Much has been said about Marvel’s Avengers and just how disappointing a game it became. It’s definitely a game that was a victim of pre-release hype but also of a crisis of identity. It initially feels like a single-player narrative game in the vein of Spider-Man, but soon enough, that content dries up and you’re left with a bland looter-RPG in the vein of Destiny, but with less content. It’s a shame, too, because the narrative part of the game is actually really good. Kamala Khan is a fantastic protagonist. I would definitely consider returning to the game if more legitimate story content was added.

Finished on October 6th, 2020 on Xbox One.

I decided maybe a little too late into October that it was going to be a Spooky Month in which I played Spooky Games. Of course, I was already invested in one game on which I spent a lot of time during the month that I’ll talk about it in a minute, but the first game I completed in October was definitely on-brand and that was The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan. Surprisingly, this was the first game I’d played from Supermassive and although I was skeptical of it at first, I came to really enjoy it. I miss narrative games in the style of Telltale and I love the pulpy horror movie vibe of this game, even if the tension of having to replay content if I make a mistake (and get a character killed) is always there. But I guess that’s part of the point.

Finished on October 18th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

The next game I finished in October, once over half the month was over was Yakuza Kiwami 2, a game in a series I really adore that I had a hard time getting into at first. I had to really come to terms with the fact that in various ways, Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami were really updated to take advantage of modern technology and advances from later in the series. Even though Kiwami 2 features a lot of quality-of-life updates as well, it doesn’t initially feel quite as smooth during combat. This is for a series that I don’t consider to have stellar combat in the first place, so it was definitely a hurdle I had to deal with. Gripes aside, I love the melodramatic plots of these games and wandering around Kamurocho talking to people, playing minigames, and getting into hijinks. I’ll definitely play the whole series, bells-and-whistles or not.

Finished on October 22nd, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I got back on track for Spooky Month with Resident Evil 2, the remake for PS4. Like most horror/survival games, I had never played this or the original in my life. I found that I really loved it. Obviously, it was significantly more polished and modern than the first game that I’d played much earlier in the year, but I felt pretty connected to the two characters as well, although Claire gets the edge there. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and resource management of RE2, so I wonder how I’ll feel about other entries in the series that really dial that aspect back.

Finished on October 23rd, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Since I’d played Man of Medan and enjoyed it, I decided I’d work backward and also play Until Dawn, which I’d owned on PlayStation Plus for some time. Man of Medan was pretty good, but it’s clear Supermassive was working with a larger budget on this game, with its larger cast of characters and relatively well-known actors. It was a huge pleasure to see my man Bret Dalton (Grant Ward, of Agents of Shield) playing one of the principal characters. I also felt a bit more connected to the characters in general, even though I didn’t feel that way initially. It follows the classic horror movie trope of populating an area with tremendously unlikeable teens, but after spending some time with them, I felt I got to know them pretty well. Okay, maybe not Jessica and Matthew.

Finished on October 31st, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

The final game I completed at the very end of October was The Evil Within, a brutally tough action/survival horror game created by who I read is the original director of Resident Evil. Reception online seemed to be pretty mixed to this one, but I enjoyed it for the most part. Some of the levels were really frustrating to the point of being unfun, but the atmosphere and creepiness of the enemies in the game was definitely on-point.

Finished on November 16th, 2020 on PlayStation 5.

The very first PS5 game I finished was, of course, Astro’s Playroom, a glorified tech demo that has no business being as good as it is. It really does its job at showing off the features of the new PS5 controller and feels incredible to play just in general. It also has some killer music that still occasionally gets stuck in my head. I would love to see a full-fledged Astro game at some point in the future.

Finished on November 27th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Although I’ve definitely played more than enough games this year, if there’s any reason it slowed down a tad in November, it’s because I was playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, which took me something like 150 hours to finish. Falcom wasn’t messing around with this one, making sure to feature just about every character you could imagine from previous games as playable characters at one point or another. I did all the side quests and got a good chunk of the trophies, so that’s probably a big part of why it took me so long, but still, that is a very long video game. I wouldn’t mind if future entries (if they even get localized) cut down on the length a bit, but I can’t imagine that happening. Apparently, the next one has three separate protagonists.

Finished on November 29th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

I’m not 100% sure why I decided to play Mortal Kombat 11, but I imagine it must have occurred in much the same way I played Mortal Kombat X. I like fighting games, but don’t like playing hundreds of random multiplayer matches. Mortal Kombat’s extensive single-player story modes really draw me in, even if I don’t stick around after they’re done. I had a lot of fun with this one, enough that I even played through the Aftermath DLC. It’s all good, ridiculous fun, even if the gratuitous gore and violence are way over the top in a way that stops being fun.

Finished on December 6th, 2020 on PlayStation 5.

Because 2020 for me is the year of Souls and Soulslikes, I also finished Demon’s Souls in the last month of the year! I absolutely loved it, of course, in much the same ways I loved Dark Souls, but the snazzy new graphics and haptic feedback on the controller are really just icing on the cake. Demon’s Souls has everything I’m looking for in these games, including the mystery, the obtuse mechanics, and the satisfying animation-locked combat. A couple of bosses were pretty challenging, but it wasn’t too rough overall. One of these days I’m going to rank the difficulty of these games as I experienced them. Demon’s Souls would be on the lower end of the list, I think.

Finished on December 15th, 2020 on PlayStation 5.

As I sat down to write this list, the final game I had finished this year was Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, which is an absolute joy to play on PlayStation 5. The game looked great on PS4, but it’s gorgeous on this new platform, and with a guaranteed 60 frames per second, it’s never felt as good. Aside from that, it’s just a really fantastic open-world game that never feels like it’s wasting your time. The main story is brisk but even the collectibles and side quests don’t take a long time individually. It always feels like you’re never far away from your next task, which feels great. This is a big part of why I felt motivated to play through all of the game's DLC and unlock every trophy. It helps that the combat is incredibly satisfying and just fun to watch in general. I felt like this was a fantastic way to close out the year.

Until I surprised myself by beating Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice on December the 28th. 

Finished on December 28th, 2020 on PlayStation 4.

Just to give you an idea of how much I struggled with this game, I originally started it in August right after having finished Ghost of Tsushima. I spent probably a month stuck on Lady Butterfly, an early tough boss, until I shelved the game for quite a while. I came back to it in December, knocked out a few mini-bosses, and picked up a lot of steam until I hit Genichiro, where I felt like I had to completely relearn how to play the game. Occasional deflecting was getting me by up to that point but it was this fight that made me learn how to do it consistently. After many, many tries, I made it through, now confident that I had what it took to finish the rest of the game. After that, I hit another wall with Guardian Ape, which forced me to learn how to fight a huge, aggressive Dark Souls-style boss in a game that ultimately doesn’t function all that much like Dark Souls. The rest of the game went smoothly, although I did struggle a tad with True Corrupted Monk in Fountainhead Palace, but the real test came when I hit the final boss, and I realized I was really going to have to put everything I’d learned in practice I’d conquered some bosses by relying on Flame Vent + Projected Force or aggressive Double Ichimonji usage, but this time, I just had to deflect and do it consistently. I tried falling back on some of my tools but ended up settling on a pretty simple heavy-deflect strategy to make it through. And I did. I beat Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the hardest game I have ever finished in my life.

One has to wonder why I’ve played so many difficult, stressful games in a year that’s been plenty stressful enough on its own, and I don’t have a perfect answer to that question. I think I’ve been put in a position where I’m stuck at home, feeling unmoored and disconnected from others, and maybe conquering these really difficult games filled me with a sense of accomplishment and validation that is lacking elsewhere in my life. I’ve used games to cope and relax too, of course, but finishing 57 games in one year is a lot even for someone with more free time than me. It could be argued that I could definitely channel my time into more productive things, but these days, I’ll take my joy where I can get it.