It’s been a crazy year in gaming. Well, it’s been a crazy year, full stop, but you get what I mean. 2020 has proved to be a challenge in many ways.
This year, I’ve spent a good amount of time playing games as a way to keep my sanity, especially after April and my quitting my job (still one of my best decisions of 2020). Since it’s the end of the year, I wanted to do a quick wrap up, including the final few games I’ve been playing, and what I consider my favorite games of 2020.
Just looking back on my list of games I’ve completed this year, I’ve kinda run the gambit. I played some AAA games (including finally playing Final Fantasy XV and giving Persona 5 Royal some love, I’ll get back to that later), some really good indies (Concrete Genie is spectacular, AER was a great replay, and I have a quiet love for Red Bow), and a lot of vaporware. A LOT of vaporware. I didn’t realize just how much until I typed it all out last night.
I also played like eighteen Lego games. So, yeah.
The last two months have been dedicated to restarting Animal Crossing: New Horizons and dragging myself through Marvel’s Avengers, plus a few other quick titles. Let me break it down.
I restarted Animal Crossing simply because I was just too frustrated with how I’d set up my island back in March, and I felt like it would take weeks to fix it. Now I’m about a month into this restart, and I have a small amount of regret, only because I think I could have make my original island work. Though I do love that I called my new island “AllAndMore”, because it’s not like I’m obsessed with The Old Guard or something.
As for Marvel’s Avengers… I went into this knowing that I was just planning on playing the story and that’s it. And the story was… fine. Nothing legendary, nothing worthy of awards, but just fine. I liked Kamala Khan, I liked the inclusion of chosen characters, but it really felt rushed. Honestly, there was just a lot missing (including the Barton-sized hole in the story). I haven’t played through the new Kate Bishop DLC, but I’ll probably give it a quick playthrough. I’m not going to be aiming for the Platinum on this one, simply because I’m not putting 100+ hours into this game. It’s not worth it.
There’s a little indie game called AER: Memories of Old that came out a few years ago. It’s one of those games where you can figure out most everything because of the symbolism, but it’s still a quick three hour game. I played it in 2018, and again last night. I just needed something simple to break the hold Avengers had over me.
The last “game” on my list is an FMV interactive film video game called Erica. It’s a choose your own adventure type story that had the makings of a pretty good story, but I feel like somewhere someone made a mistake in the coding. Several of the clips directly following the player making a choice feel disjointed, as if the wrong clip was being played. I actually enjoyed the story up until the midpoint, where things just stopped making logical sense. This is a game that takes six full playthroughs that are about two hours long each, but feel much longer, as you can’t skip scenes you’ve already seen. That is an unfortunate choice by the developers, as most FMV games let you skip those scenes, making the games a bit more… user friendly. It’s really not worth the playthrough.
As for my favorite games of 2020…
Since several of the games I played this year aren’t actually from 2020, I’m not going to make a ranking. Just run through some of my favorites. It really wouldn’t be fair. That’s what I get for not playing the newest games out, especially since they aren’t games I really want to play…
One of the main games on my list for this year is Pokémon Sword. I didn’t really talk about it all that much, but I really enjoyed this new Pokémon game. It actually got me back into the franchise, which I didn’t think would be possible. I’ve played through the Isle of Armor DLC and thought that the story there dragged a little, but not terribly. The character customization was probably one of my favorite things about this one. I sunk about 50 hours into this, and I really want to get back to it in the new year.
I restarted my Persona 5 playthrough (which was unintentionally ruined by my little cousin late last year) with Persona 5 Royal, and wow am I more in with love with this game then I was last year. I haven’t even reached the new content yet, and I’m already in love with all the little changes. And yes, I do love Kasumi. My goal for 2021 is to complete the story for this, as it’s criminal that I haven’t finished it just yet.
A game that outright surprised me is Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions. It’s just a puzzle game, but I really enjoyed the challenge of this one. All the puzzles are stained glass, and absolutely beautiful. I really want to play this one again. Maybe if I can ever get my Twitch channel back up an running (all the issues are on my end, I swear), I’ll give this one another playthrough, as well as the first game.
There should be no surprise that a Lego game lands on my favorite games list. In this case, that would be Lego Dimensions. I have my issues with it, but I can finally say that it is a good game, one that has me wanting to return to it, oh, maybe three more times (PS3, Ps4 and Xbox 360 versions). If I ignore the Story Packs, it’s solid. And fun. And I can’t wait to finish the year playing through the PS4 version to reach 100% all over again.
The last game on this list is one that I normally wouldn’t have included… but it kept me from losing my sanity during the beginning of my time in lockdown. Disneyland Adventures is not the best game. The story is passable at best. The collectables were annoying to collect. The rides were annoying to even play through. But you know what? It gave me the Disney feels I really needed this year, with everything being a nightmare.
So. Gaming in 2020 was weird. For the most past, I actually avoided playing most of the new releases that came out this year. If anyone is curious, I’m really picky about what games I play, and most of the big releases were just not on my want list. I will say, there were a bunch of games that I more enjoyed watching than playing. But I’m a weird person.
As for the rest of the year, my plan is to replay Lego Dimensions on the PS4, so that I can get to 100% (though this may move to January 2021). I also want to play Bugsnax, which I went ahead and picked up for PS4, because it’s damn fun looking. I also want to finish up Erica, so that I can pretend this game never existed. And finally, I kinda want to play through Disneyland Adventures again, just because. No real reason. Of course, it all depends on what I get on Christmas.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed!
Until next time!
