My favorite games of 2020

And a few others worth mentioning.

This is probably the part where I should make some deep, sweeping statement about the effect of the pandemic on my psyche in 2020, as told through the lens of my gaming habits.

Ah, perhaps games like Miles Morales and Persona 5 demonstrate my yearning for travel? Perhaps playing through old Pokémon games means that lockdown has taught me the value of going through my backlog? Perhaps Bugsnax means… uh… Bugsnax?

All it means is that this year, like a lot of other people, I played a lot of games.

Before I talk about the games I played, a quick note about the ones I didn’t: For a variety of reasons, I did not play The Last of Us Part II, Cyberpunk 2077, Microsoft Flight Simulator or 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, so don’t expect to see them here.

Game of 2020 that wasn’t released in 2020
Persona 5

I’m not surprised I’ve never played a Persona game before; Pokémon aside, I’m not really into turn-based RPGs. But something about Persona 5’s mix of dungeon crawling while being a high school student in Tokyo really connected with me. Maybe it’s the soundtrack, maybe it’s the insanely stylish presentation, maybe it’s just being able to spend time in a virtual Tokyo; whatever it was, Persona 5 wasn’t just one of my favorites in 2020, it’s one of the best I’ve played in any year.

Game of 2020 that isn’t really a game at all
Pokémon Home

Effectively a paid storage service that allows you to transfer Pokémon between multiple games, Pokémon Home is not by itself compelling. And yet, it drove most of my playtime this year, as I finished four different Pokémon games — HeartGold, Black, Sun and Sword — to collect all 898 Pokémon. And late in the year, I did it: After 22 years, I can finally say that I caught them all.

I really expected more from…
Watch Dogs: Legion

I have always had trouble connecting with the Watch Dogs games; something about them has always felt a little off, a little generic, like drinking store-brand cola instead of Coke. Legion’s mechanic, turning literally any NPC in the city into a playable character, is bold and creative. But by allowing you to be anyone, they’ve made everyone far too similar — and so this most ambitious of games feels even more generic than its predecessors.

Ten
Fall Guys

I don’t normally get sucked into trending games, but Fall Guys is so simple, creative and engaging that it was hard not to get swept up. (It also helps that it was free on PlayStation Plus.) The Japanese game show-like concept works so well that I’m amazed nobody’s tried it before; tying it into the battle royale craze is genius. I’m not going to lie, I stopped playing this months ago and I probably won’t ever play it again. But those few weeks when everyone was playing Fall Guys were a lot of fun.

Nine
Lonely Mountains: Downhill

Speaking of simple concepts, Lonely Mountains is all about cycling down a mountain as fast as possible. The mountains are the star here, each so perfectly crafted, scaling up smoothly in difficulty and offering a huge number of shortcuts that are “unlocked” by your own increasing ability to handle them. It makes it one of the most addictive games I’ve played this year. You’ll always see a section where you know you can shave off a little more time, so let’s just give it one more try…

Eight
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

A delightful little game about a little girl observing wildlife and cleaning up the environment on a European island, Alba is full of clever touches and design elements. You use a smartphone to take pictures of the birds and animals you see, using your own phone’s gyro sensors to move around the in-game phone (one of the few times I’ve genuinely enjoyed moving my phone around in real life to play a game). Watching Alba break into a skip as she runs across the island is one of the many simple pleasures in this charming game.

Seven
Star Wars: Squadrons

A game we’ve been waiting for years, both as a sequel to the classic X-Wing games on PC and to the Rogue One mission on PSVR, I can’t help but think that Squadrons missed its moment a little — or maybe that’s a bad take from someone who hates playing online. Still, the short single-player campaign is fun, and it’s dripping in the sort of wish-fulfillment elements that big Star Wars fans like me are looking for.

Six
Spider-Man: Miles Morales

In some ways, I found this spin-off to be more compelling than the original. Don’t get me wrong, I liked 2018’s Spider-Man, but it was a little too long and overly stuffed with open-world activities (hi there, Ubisoft). The tighter scope here means greater focus, and I felt much more of a connection with the neighborhood of Harlem and the characters who live there than anything in the previous game. (Also, Photo Mode is gorgeous.)

Five
Super Mario Bros. 35

More proof that anything can become a great battle royale: 35 people play the original Super Mario Bros. at the same time until just one is left standing. The key is that any enemy you defeat is sent to other players. It means the game very quickly shifts from the all-too-familiar to the completely unexpected: Yes, you’ve played the first level of Super Mario Bros. before, but have you played it while facing two Bowsers, three Hammer Bros and fifteen Goombas at the same time? I love how this remix preys upon your nostalgia. Sometimes the biggest obstacle isn’t unexpected memory or other players; it’s your own decades of experience, as you fight your muscle memory demanding that you play Super Mario Bros. the way you’ve always played it.

Four
Final Fantasy VII Remake

This may not seem like a surprising pick, but it was for me. As I’ve said before, I’m not much of a turn-based RPG guy, so I don’t have the nostalgia for FFVII that many do. But the much-hyped remake is a good game in its own right. It’s gorgeous, the battle system is interesting, the cast of characters is great, but for me the real star is the city of Midgar; the variety of environments and settings so lovingly rendered here kept me coming back for more.

Three
Ghost of Tsushima

Where Watch Dogs: Legion tried to reinvent open-world action games and failed, Ghost of Tsushima is far more conventional, and is the better for it. This, admittedly, does the game a bit of disservice; Tsushima is a fresh and exciting setting that looks like nothing I’ve seen in an open world before, and playing as a samurai means a lot of fun swordplay. But Ghost of Tsushima feels less like a game trying to reinvent the genre than one trying to perfect it, building upon the lessons of past games to produce something exceptionally well-made. Jin’s journey may be a straightforward tale of revenge, but when it looks and feels this good, it doesn’t really matter.

Two
Astro’s Playroom

It’s very easy to dismiss Astro’s Playroom. At best, it’s a glorified demo for the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller; at worst, it’s, uh, PlayStation propaganda? Both miss two key points: One, the DualSense is a remarkable device worth experiencing to the fullest, and two, Astro’s Playroom is a damn fine game. It’s not difficult, no, but it’s not without challenge either, with the way it teaches you then pushes you one of the many things that remind me of a Nintendo game. But more than anything, Astro’s Playroom makes me smile. It makes me smile when I nail a tricky little section. It makes me smile when I spot a little PlayStation Easter Egg. It makes me smile when it shows me a crazy new use for the DualSense’s triggers. Astro’s Playroom just makes me smile, and there is no greater feeling I want from a game.

One
Animal Crossing: New Horizons

It really couldn’t be anything else. I’ve liked past Animal Crossing games decently enough, but New Horizons finally seemed to hit the sweet spot — to the point where some new features fit the game so well that I’d honestly thought they were in the series all along. (We really couldn’t place furniture outside before?!)

The appeal of Animal Crossing seems almost impossible to explain, even to other gamers. I certainly won’t be able to explain it. Instead, I’d like to celebrate the diversity that Animal Crossing represents. Games can be tests of dexterity and skill, but they don’t have to be. Games can be about telling a deep story, but they don’t have to be. Or in Animal Crossing’s case, it can be about providing a canvas for players to create their own little communities.

It shows that this wonderful hobby isn’t just about offering a challenge to players, but offering experiences. And no experience captured as much of my time or attention in 2020 than Animal Crossing.