I've not gotten around to playing a lot of new stuff in the second part of 2020 but thanks to the quarantine, I played A LOT of stuff in the spring and early summer.
This year I remember playing the following.
Rage 2 - An incredibly mediocre and underwhelming game. Sort of okay combat but everything around it is bad. It's like a 2005 shooter that accidentally got released in 2019.
Death Stranding - This was a heck of a game to play through. I started it up expecting to hate the gameplay and stupid courier concept but I felt the patented Kojima crazy story telling would carry my through. I mean the trailers were really cool. To my suprise it turned out that the story is complete nonsencial trite but the actual game, transporting stuff from A to B, was incredibly satisfying. I feel like this game is somehow an incredibly bad and great game at the same time.
Jedi: Fallen Order - A good game that never quite hit a high note for me. I don't care for Souls games and the story wasn't spectacular, though the ending definitely had a very cool moment. I'd play a sequel. Thinking about it, Respawn, the developers, are reall on a hot streak, I don't think they've made a mistake yet. The Titanfall games, Apex: Legends, Medal of Honor, Jedi. They're sort of the MVP of EA right now.
Astroneers - This is almost one of my favorite games of all times - If it didn't have such frustrating camera controls and vehicle mechanics. It's an incredibly slow, often tedious and meditative game but boy did I enjoy it. Collecting ressources, building stuff, that allows you to refine your ressources, build better stuff that allows your to create other stuff. I got the same sense of joy from playing this as playing Minecraft. I'd definitely recommend playing it with other people if you have friends that don't hate you.
DOOM ETERNAL - Very cool shooter that didn't quite feel as pure as the 2016 reboot. I think in evolving the combat they've made the game a bit too convoluted, though I so like the combat soduku of managing armor, health and ammo, switching between the right tools to kill a big demon. The story was complete garbage and I'd honestly wish they'd just do simple levels with a bit of environmental storytelling like the Souls games instead. Still, a very good shooter.
Animal Crossing - I'd never played one of these games before and it was really cool for a couple of weeks until it became boring. I think the controls needed A LOT of work, it's ridiculous that you have to use a menu to switch between digging, chopping, crossing streams, catching flies, etc. etc. And the game needed more activities to fill out your day. After a while you're reduced to only doing the same activities for an hour each day which drained my interest.
The Division 2 - This time around the game didn't grab me the same way D1 did but it's still a very good military urban combat version of Destiny. I finished the main campaign but never got into the seemingly packed post game content explosion.
Devil May Cry 5 - I'm not great at these spectacle fighters. I mostly just mash buttons until things die. Thankfully the game has this easy mode where if you mash buttons it creates awesome combos anyway so that was cool. Didn't care much for the story, dividing the game into three story paths, with three characters seemed unnecessary. To be honest I liked the DMC reboot more. Had better bosses.
Outer Worlds - This was a really solid attempt by Obsidian at recreating the Bethesda/Fallout experience with a smaller budget. It's limited in certain ways but interestingly, I think Obsidian proved that you can create that patented Bethesda game - with out it being full of bugs and breaking constantly. It seems they're doing a sort of Elder Scrolls/Hexen games next but I hope they come back and do a proper 50's inspired Space Fallout sequel to Outer Worlds.
Borderlands 3 - I picked this back up after dropping it in the fall last year. It was a disappointment then and it didn't improve on a replay. I ended up finishing the story out of a sense of duty but it's just not a good game. It's just Borderlands 2 over again with no improvements based on the progress in co-op and looter shooters the past 7 years. Also the story was a travesty.
COD: Modern Warfare (2019) - Didn't bother with the multiplayer but the campaign was phenomenal. Really well designed, well told gaming experience. There were so many times throughout the campaign where I thought I was playing a next generation game. Really solid.
Tried playing
The Last Guardian but rage quit after a while because the controls are a war crime.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Absolutely loved the first half of this game, totally GOTY experience filled with nostalgia, and then I played the second half that's full of japanese bullshit and the producers injecting meta content into the game ruining the experience. They completely ruin the introduction and mystery around Sephiroth and they have this reality/space-time ghost/god stuff they cram into the game for no reason. It's just awful.
Still I loved the remake of the original parts of the game. It's Disney levels of beautiful and heart warming. I'll definitely play part 2 but boy I hope they stop injecting Kingdom Hearts bullshit into the game.
The Last of Us Part 2 - First things first, this is an extremely well made game. The production values, animations, assets, combat feel, exploration satisfaction is superb. It's a shame then, that I came to hate the game's story and characters increasingly, the more I played. The way the game is designed is gratuitous in the way it tries to evoke a very specific feeling in you, that is ruined from the outset, in my opinion, if you played the first game and absolutely hated a certain protagonist because of their actions. The game then pulls a switch half way through that feels completely unneeded if the game wasn't so hamfisted in it's story telling. And this is actually weird, because the writing is good and so are the performances, but I think that in terms of writing, as games become better, there's a narrative equivalent of the Uncanny Valley, where the closer games writing comes to proper good writing, the more glaring the narrative dissonance and hand waving becomes. I hated TLOU2 by the end. Fuck Joel and fuck Ellie. Also the game is far too long.
Next up was
Ghost of Tsushima. I didn't have high hopes for this game but I think it might be my Game of the Year. The story isn't that good, the textures aren't that high quality, it's filled with copy paste content - But holy crap is that game beautiful and vibrant and damn if I didn't enjoy playing a samurai. Long after it should have become tedious I was still cutting down mongols and bandits, collecting weird stuff and enjoying the scenery. I 100% that game and I could easily had gone back played through it again. Just a very enjoyable, very user friendly gaming experience.
Played through
Days Gone but honestly, this game was so forgettable that the less said about the game the better. Strangely, I've heard they may make a sequel.
Paper Mario and the Origami King - I'm torn (ha!) about this game. It's not bad, it has a lot of heart, but it's just a very slow boil. There's not much challenge to the game and you're pretty much doing the same type of combat and collectable finding for 100 hours. Good game if you want something with no stress.
HADES - This game didn't click with me. I understand why it gets praise for the art work, the voice work, the writing but the combat didn't feel right. There wasn't enough variety in the rooms and I didn't like the weapons feel.
Finally there was
Persona 5 Royal - Damn this was a great game. I feel like the actual story missions, in the palaces, became boring half way through, but the meat of the game, the daily life simulation, where you go to school, play games, go on dates, etc. was wonderful. Really satisfying gameplay. Incredibly well written characters and story paths. I went from never having played a Persona game to thinking Persona 5 is one of the best games ever made. I'd jump into Persona 4 Golden but I'm worried the game will take up another couple hundred hours of my life.
Don't play the third Royal semester of the game though. It's garbage and a waste of your time.
This post has been edited by Aptorian: 18 December 2020 - 03:57 PM
Aptorian 
Jump Around, on 23 October 2011 - 11:04 AM, said:
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