The 20 Best Games I Played in 2020

I have played more video games in 2020 than any year in my life: more than 70 as of the time of this writing, which is frankly baffling to look back and scrutinize. In that time, I have run the gamut of genres, clearing out the cobwebs of my backlog in order to make room for newer games that I inevitably missed due to time constraints. And after completing more than one game a week throughout the entire year, I feel like it’s time to take a breather and reflect on the experiences that impacted me the most while I played them for the first time this year.

There are two things to note before we begin this dive into my top 20 games of 2020: (1) though I played these games for the first time this year, not all of these games are 2020 releases, and (2) the games that appear in this article are listed in the chronological order in which I played them.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I remember my good friend Preston describing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as his favorite game of all time. When I first began streaming in the early summer of 2018, it was one of the first games he got me to play. I played maybe five hours of it, half-heartedly paying attention to the dialogue as I interacted with chat, mindlessly running from waypoint to waypoint. I got through the opening griffin battle with Vesemir and thought nothing of it. I shelved the game and moved onto something cuter and more vibrant. Fast forward to 2020 and I found myself bingeing through the entirety of the Witcher series. I love all three games immensely and in different ways, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the game that choked me up when the credits rolled. I didn’t want this magical world to be finished and done with. I couldn’t bear to part from Geralt and his makeshift hanza. But after the copious DLC, it was time for a rest. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the greatest games I have ever played, this year or otherwise. 

Mutazione

Following my massive deep dive into the Witcher series lasting hundreds of hours, I wanted something small and intimate. Mutazione promised to be exactly what I needed. I wrote about my experience with this game in more depth earlier this year because Mutazione has some of the best art of any game in recent memory. I fell in love with the musical atmosphere and gardening mini game that helps progress the narrative. Most importantly, I was swept up by some of the most compelling writing and colorful characters I’ve ever encountered in an indie game. Mutazione is magic, food for the soul, and I wish it was a game that was on more peoples’ radar. 

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Let’s get this out of the way early: I have never completed the original Final Fantasy VII and I don’t expect that I ever will make another attempt at a playthrough. But you’d be dead wrong if my resistance to the original game is in any way connected to my enamored relationship with the remake that released this spring. Final Fantasy VII Remake is one of three big budget titles that I played on launch day this year, and is the only one that left me feeling truly satisfied. I have recently been craving a replay of the game, even considering hard mode just to mix things up. Something about that evocative world pulls me back in constantly. (Is it legal for me to finish this paragraph without some swooning remark for Tifa? I thought not.)

Abzu

Despite having a deep love for Journey, which is often compared with Abzu, I never got around to playing this game. It sat in my library, floating around, waiting to be downloaded. I had a stressful week where I needed something that was atmospheric and relaxing, so I picked Abzu. Diving in, I started kicking myself for sleeping on this game for so long. It’s absolutely breathtaking and gorgeous the whole way through. If you’re looking for a game to scratch the itch that Journey left you with all those years ago, Abzu will do the trick. (Side note: it’s also the only video game I’ve ever decided to get my mother to play.)

Persona 5: The Royal

At the risk of being one of those annoying Persona fans on Twitter who claims that every Shibuya location is a rip-off of Persona 5 – or at least something like that – I feel like Persona 5: The Royal is the definitive JRPG experience for the PS4 console generation. The 100+ hour journey that the game promises is daunting at first. In my 160 hour experience, however, that time completely flew by. One of the game’s greatest strengths is the day/night cycle which hooked me like an addiction, telling myself that I’d just do one more day – until that extra day became a week in-game. I only have one real critique of the game: its problematic LGBT+ depictions (and lack thereof). Otherwise, the game transcended this year to cement itself as one of my all-time favorite games. 

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is my favorite Uncharted game, period. It’s short and punchy, has great banter between two outstanding protagonists, and features the most beautiful locations in any of Naughty Dog’s games. I wrote about how I hope that Naughty Dog will make more games like this in the future, even though it is a self-referential love letter to the main series. Chloe and Nadine are a fascinating duo that I’d love to spend more time with in future games.

Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs was a sleeper hit for me this year when I was looking around for something that would satisfy my craving for a new Grand Theft Auto game. I had heard this game described as “Chinese GTA” by some friends, which piqued my interest. Then I watched my friend Illogicoma stream the game, which birthed the internal meme, “You like you could use a pork bun!” (Bless that pork bun salesman.) When I saw the game drop to pocket change in price, it was an easy gamble that could hit or miss. Buggy and janky as Sleeping Dogs is, I absolutely loved every minute of it. We truly need a sequel.

A Hat in Time

My love for 3D platformers traces back to Jak and Daxter, one of the first games I purchased for my PS2 – the first console in my household growing up. I had a feeling that I’d enjoy A Hat in Time, but I didn’t expect it to have me laughing with joy, going out of my way to collect optional things throughout its expansive worlds. Immediately, I started to speak like the Mafia characters with their broken grammar. I also found the G-Men inspired crow detectives to be a source of hilarity. A Hat in Time is so brilliant that I purchased the DLC, which is the one thing I would perhaps caution against. The DLC is fun to play but bland because the charm of the core story is lacking, so I’d recommend simply enjoying the base game on its own.

Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle

This is perhaps the most peculiar game to make the top 20 games of my 2020 experience because it was intended to be a bit of a throwaway purchase and playthrough. I adore the first season of the Attack on Titan anime and read several issues ahead after its third season aired, but it had been a few years since I rewatched the anime. When I saw that there was an Attack on Titan game, and that Final Battle basically brought you up to date with the show, it was an easy enough reason to dive in. I was first playing this game with a Dualshock 4 that had some drift issues (I spilled a beer on it, my bad), so the aerial combat was maddening. Once those issues resolved and I swapped controllers, however, I grew to find the combat mechanics deeply engaging and representative of the feelings of exhilaration that the show repeatedly left me with.

Until Dawn

I hate horror games – or, at least, I hate being scared. This would have been in the “nope” or “never” category for me but for the critical discussion surrounding Until Dawn. People often throw Until Dawn in the same conversations as Beyond: Two Souls and Telltale’s The Walking Dead, games I love dearly, so I somehow overcame my resistance to the horror genre and purchased this game on a sale. Several months later, I mustered the courage with the help of two of my friends and fellow Epilogue staff members. Until Dawn quickly became one of my favorite games of all time, an experience that I genuinely had a blast with despite the horror. 

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

I never grew up with a Nintendo console, so I have no nostalgia for the Mario franchise. Thus I’m always apologetic when I express my opinion that I typically find Mario games to be boring – even if they are always polished and well made. I started streaming Thousand Year Door a week or two before the newest installment in the Paper Mario series, Origami King, released. The timing of this felt opportune to explore the game when people would be talking about it the most, which worked out really well in terms of meeting new people and receiving cool hints about secrets. Besides, this game is mostly fantastic, especially the combat mechanics. One day I plan to explore in writing why I loved the characters in this game so much, notably Vivian, Ms. Mowz, and Bobbery. Suffice it to say that this quirky game has a ton of heart.

Death Stranding

Death Stranding is one of those games that I cherish. It might not be my favorite game of all time, nor is it a perfect creation, but I adore it in a way that feels fundamentally different from the way I appreciate most other games. Choosing to share this game with my Twitch stream during my second (PC) playthrough this year completely changed how I thought about this game when I played it by myself at launch in 2019. That feeling of specialness was always there, but sharing it made all the difference. Death Stranding is probably the most important open world game, from an interactivity perspective, that I have experienced.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Fall Guys took the world by storm overnight and disappeared almost as quickly. While it has been routinely argued that Fall Guys fell under the weight of its own success, with an explosive launch quickly skyrocketing it to become the most downloaded Playstation Plus game of all time, I have found myself returning to Fall Guys more than any other game this year. It’s the perfect game for me to pick up for short bursts in between activities, as well as an excellent game to play while hopping in a voice call with a group of friends. There is a sort of “automaticity” to this game that leads me to a zen-like state that very few games ever accomplish, which is why Fall Guys appears as the only multiplayer game in this article. I sincerely hope that the developers are able to update the game with new content in a manner that keeps players returning for years to come, because there are very few games that put a smile on my face in the way that Fall Guys‘ first three seasons have so far.

Tell Me Why

In what became my most popular article of the year, I wrote about how Tell Me Why was the first step towards me coming out as trans. I was lucky enough to have a friend gift me this game in advance (did he know?) on Steam, but I elected to wait until all three episodes had released before I started Tyler’s adventure. There is a certain comfort to DontNod games, even when I dislike them, for they evoke a nostalgia for the original Life is Strange that I have never been able to recapture. Tell Me Why is an excellent game in its own right, and at the length of three episodes, the pacing is basically perfect. 

Catherine Classic

I remember a horny teenage version of myself coyly eyeing the titillating box art of Catherine in my local GameStop a few times throughout the years. I always had my eye on the anime cleavage stamped with the rated “M” for mature logo, daydreaming of the forbidden wonders that the game possessed. Years later, Catherine Classic dropped in a monthly Humble Bundle in 2020 and I suddenly had a copy of the game in my library. At this point, I had seen some GDQ speedruns and casual footage to know that I wasn’t jumping into a hentai game, but that was all I knew – which was probably for the best. I ended up becoming deeply invested in the narrative and choices involved with navigating Vincent’s fraught love life. More importantly, Catherine is the only puzzle game in recent memory where I felt competent at, enabling me to uncharacteristically enjoy the puzzles. 

Yakuza 0

At the risk of becoming Epilogue’s broken record, it’s worth noting that I was vocally resistant to the idea of the Yakuza games for years. My entire exposure to the series had been through cult-like enthusiasm via meme GIFs, which completely turned me off. As the cheer pressure rallied for me to give this game a try, so too did my callous reluctance dig its heels in. But then a friend gifted me Yakuza 0 and I felt an obligation to at least give it a try. As of the moment of this writing, I am more than three games ahead of him in the series, so you might say I lapped him. You could also say that I got hooked. I definitely think the Yakuza games are not for everyone, but they are certainly for me. 

If Found…

Building off of the foundation that Tell Me Why helped me lay in coming out to people as trans, If Found… is the reason I finally made the internal commitment to stop pretending to be cis. I am a sucker for basically anything Annapurna Interactive has published, so I knew that I would like If Found… on aesthetic alone – for it’s one of the most visually beautiful games I have ever played. But I was not prepared for how personally affecting and emotional this game would be, even knowing the LGBT+ themes ahead of time. If Found… is my favorite indie game of 2020 by a mile. I will be laser-focused on anything these devs do next.

Bugsnax

I judge books (and games) by their cover. I can tell if I will like something by a simple series of screenshots or gameplay footage. I don’t need a description or a trailer to make that determination. There’s just a certain “vibe.” This feeling of general certainty about my preferences has resulted in the term that many of my friends in the Epilogue community know as “Flora games.” Bugsnax is a Flora game. More than anything, it’s cute. And I was lucky enough to receive a review copy! But that’s not the entire story. With Bugsnax, I was introduced to one of my favorite bands of the year, Kero Kero Bonito. Their song, “Trampoline,” became a metaphor during an extremely difficult period of my life this summer. And when I was in need of a cheerful island pick-me-up, I was able to lean back on their song from the Bugsnax trailer, “It’s Bugsnax,” for emotional support, however cheesy that sounds. This game means a lot to me for a lot of peripheral reasons to the game itself, but luckily the game holds up to scrutiny without all of my emotional baggage hanging onto the experience.

Necrobarista

Necrobarista is a 3D visual novel set in a quiet cafe that serves as a rest stop for souls departing to the afterlife – the catch being that dead guests are limited to spending 24 hours before moving on. The game has incredibly smart worldbuilding given the use of limited physical space and a small cast of characters. The visual design of each character is unique and memorable, and I can’t be the only person who got Atlus vibes from the cozy atmosphere. As otherworldly as this game might be, featuring necromancers amongst other things, the stories that Necrobarista tells are vulnerable and human. My favorite aspect of this game is the camera, which wildly shifts throughout each line of dialogue you move through. I don’t know another game that conveys so much through camera placement alone.

The Pathless

The Pathless was an easy win for me, as my aforementioned love of Abzu made this a sure-fire bet for whether or not I would enjoy the experience authored by Giant Squid, the same developers. The Pathless truly sings in terms of traversal and moment-to-moment mechanics, as your character zips and glides around with the help of her hefty pet eagle. The art direction is superb throughout the experience and Austin Wintory’s soundtrack soars as much as your winged companion. The biggest weakness of The Pathless is ironically part of its conceit: a directionless world without any UI overlay to speak of. In trusting so much of its worldbuilding and exploration to some color coding, I found myself spinning in circles when I wasn’t clear on where to go next. But every time I regained my footing and established my next objective, the gameplay regained its superb sense of flow and dynamism. Whether the story has anything profound to say is almost irrelevant when the core gameplay loop of The Pathless is such a meditative exercise. The game’s final act left me speechless.

Closing Thoughts: Building 2021’s Backlog

In resigning myself to playing games at my own pace, no longer trying to cram everything in before New Year’s, I have slowly accumulated a new backlog of games to try next year. Some of those games include Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Ghost of Tsushima, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Hades, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and Spiritfarer – just to name a few. I look at that list of games, all of which have received critical acclaim, and it makes me laugh at my prior self-expectation to play every single game in order to feel like I could develop an informed Game of the Year opinion. I think about the sacrifices I would have had to make to cram all these games in, all the other games in the backlog that would still be sitting there, collecting dust. This year has been an exercise in learning to relax; 2020’s great games will be there next year.

As if I didn’t already have enough to play, 2021 is looking like an eye-wateringly spectacular year for gaming. I think I am most excited for Kena: Bridge of Spirits, one of the many games that was delayed from this year. Psychonauts 2 is another highly anticipated sequel that I still can’t believe we’re getting over a decade later. I’m also cautiously optimistic about The Lord of the Rings: Gollum and a number of other announced games that we haven’t seen much of yet. Above all, I already get the sense that it’ll be impossible to play everything 2021 has to offer without converting gaming to my full-time job. That being said, it’s a good time to care about video games.

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