The Top 6 Games I’ve Played in 2020
I’ve played a good amount of video games this year. But finished a few. Here are the games I’ve played and ‘completed’ this year. Note that many of them didn’t even release this year. The games are: A Plague Tale: Innocence, Resident Evil 7, Close to The Sun, Amnesia: Rebirth, Strange Brigade, and the top↑ 6 below↓.
What is your criteria?
Honestly, not sure. It mostly depends. Some games are terrific at certain aspects that it doesn’t matter that much if the rest is mediocre. Other games are just plain fun. I would say if I had to unify: It’s the feeling your brain perceives when playing something. Where does it value that feeling among other things. Are the activities engaging and interesting to it enough to tell me hey this is cool, gonna allocate precious brain cells to it. HEY SHUT IT AND SHOW US THE LIST. Right on, here it is:
6- THE HEX
What a trippy game. Should’ve expected that, it’s from the same person who made Pony Island. The games will take you on an adventures through the lenses of these blockbuster video game protagonists. From The Fighter to the mysterious First Person Perspective?.
As you can see from the trailer, the mystery is finding who is planning the murder. But it’s about the road getting there. Play it! Them!
4- Red Dead Redemption 2
Rockstar has got one of, if not the best writing team in the industry. They’re basically flexing their writing skills in this game. Phenomenal moment to moment dialogue. Rivals many prominent feature films and TV shows. I can listen to Arthur ranting about Dutch all day long. Same goes for most of the main and side characters. They are just a joy to chatter with.
The world and art-style is terrific. Super convincing and immersive. Gameplay is solid, even though I wasn’t fond of the mission structure and some gameplay elements. STILL, fantastic game!
3- Return of the Obra Dinn
Cunningly, superbly designed.
Game premise is this: you are an investigator, you board the great cursed ship of Obra Dinn. Your job is to find out what happened to the crew members. There are 60 of them (yes that many). You need to find out their identities, what fate became of them, and by whom/what!
The way you find out is by ‘reliving’ the incidents. They go like this (watch the trailer):
-First, you hear a conversation and audio cues (no visuals here, only audio)
-Then the audio ends, and you’re brought back to the last moment of that scene. Your work starts here. You’ll need to analyze everything you see in this last shot of the incident.
When I say everything, I really do mean it. The characters you see matter, their accent matters, who they talk to matter, the clothes they wear matter, the spot they’re in matters.
All this complexity seems daunting. But it is beautifully crafted and honed to not be.
A masterpiece of work.
2- Slay the Spire
The most addictive game I simply suck at.
Slay the Spire is rogue-like card game. If you’re familiar with card games you will find it quick to pick up and understand. The game is not groundbreaking in terms of design. It borrows many elements from other card games. However, it does bring very interesting ways to play each run. They work wonderfully well together. The randomness in the game works well for the most part. This is the addictive part of it. You just don’t know what enemy you’ll be facing next. Most games don’t handle randomness well. Slay the Spire I think does a good job at that.
The way you complete a basic run is to go through ‘3 floors.’ At the end of each floor, you fight a boss. The levels get progressively harder as you ascend.
Once you near the end. The game becomes incredibly intense. You’ll need to carefully plan each card played in order to maximizing your chances of beating the last thicc and wide boss.
Great. Challenging. Fun.
1- Half-Life: Alyx
Valve’s still got it!
This is their first single player game since Portal 2 and the first Half-Life project since 2007. That’s over a decade ago!
Half-life was known to bring something revolutionary in the medium with every iteration. Virtual Reality made perfect sense for Valve to do that again. While the elements in the game aren’t ‘innovative’ or ‘revolutionary.’ What Valve did here is to sharpen and hone interactivity in VR to the point of ruining almost every other VR game out there for me.
They knew that interactivity is the single most important thing in VR and they needed to nail it. I think they did.
Almost all objects can be interacted with naturally. From picking and squeezing cans to the satisfying reloading animations of guns.
Every level and chapter in the game has new ideas. While the first few chapters are there to ease you into the realm of VR. It’s the latter levels that are SO, SO immersive and interesting.
Normally VR play sessions are WAY shorter than playing games traditionally sitting on an elite p2w gaming chair. With Half-Life Alyx I think I played well over 4 hours straight without feeling tired cause it’s too damn immersive.
Did I talk about the ending of the game? I did? ok.
The question that remains is, will we wait another decade for the next game?