Action games are favorites of gamers due to the incredible stories they can weave, memorable open worlds, fast paced combat, and many other unique ideas that have been around for decades. This year saw a lot of great action games and sadly not all could make it on the list.
The Last of Us Part II isn’t just a great game story wise (controversy or not) but a fantastic action game. It has stealth, gruesome combat, and an overall amazing cinematic experience that’s we don’t get very often. The action is intense, suspenseful, and polished just like it’s predecessor. When it comes to action Naughty Dog are masters at their craft and few do it as well as they do.
Simulators of any kind are cream of the crop on PC. With the more advanced graphical and processing power you can play simulators that are years in advance over consoles, especially the PC ones. With dedicated hardware like wheels, pedals, shifters, and entire cockpit cages, racing is something that is taken very seriously on PC. 2020 was a light year in good racing games, but what we got was nothing short of bad.
F1 2020
Usually F1 always gets pushed out by bigger racing games that did something just a little bit better or bolder. F1 2020 pushes itself past the competition this year with a fantastic career mode, amazing visuals, and more options than you can shake a stick at. I can’t remember the last time a Formula One simulator was this good and addictive. F1 games have always been decent, but you either love it or hate it. F1 2020 is the start of a new decade for the series and hopefully it has nowhere to go but up.
Strategy games are the bread and butter of PC games. It’s what used to set them apart from consoles years ago. The keyboard and mouse and faster CPUs allowed for faster calculations, more on screen enemies, and multitasking. Strategy games have wavered over the years and have become more niche, but 2020 was a huge comeback for the series. Large AAA budget strategy games en masse are something that doesn’t happen very often. You might get a StarCraft here, a Command & Conquer there, but never something like this in today’s age.
Crusader Kings III
Crusader Kings III just went ahead and went all out and out of left field. Fantastic stories that are weaved seemingly forever, deep addictive strategy, and the ability to control a kingdom like no other game can. Crusader Kings III is the start of something fresh and bold and takes the strategy genre into new heights, especially in the story and character area. Customizing characters in a strategy game? Unheard of. You can mine resources all day, but adding meat to an already chunky bone is something that hasn’t been done in this genre in over a decade.
Reissues have grown over the years and matured from single resolution upscaling to full on love projects that take years to perfect. Our most beloved games have been updated with modern gameplay mechanics and visuals and have become even more immortalized more than ever. This also creates a great risk as you can ruin and smear a great game with a reissue that isn’t well done.
No other remake has received a spotlight larger than FF7 and that’s for a reason. Being teased over a decade ago as a tech demo for the PlayStation 3, FF7 Remake has been on everyone’s watch list for seemingly ever. While we didn’t get the full game right away, the first part wonderfully recreates memorable scenes, updates combat, and gives us gorgeous visuals. Fans will appreciate the attention to detail more than newcomers, but a remake like this just can’t be ignored. It’s pure perfection and delight.
Multi-platform games are great as they can be shared by anyone whether you’re a fanboy of a particular system or not. The downside is that it can lead to lots of bugs and glitches, but overall these games are played more than exclusives and can reach a much larger audience. These tend to be the largest hits of the entire year or even hidden indie gems.
Cyberpunk may not be perfect, but it’s rich storytelling, larger than life world, and fantastic atmosphere are something that can be lost in. Very few games can achieve this level of God-like RPG status. Exploring a setting that most games haven’t really touched outside of smaller indie games. Seeing that a large AAA budget game set in a cyberpunk universe is just something beautiful to behold and its unforgettable.
Shooting games both third and first person are among the most popular genres in gaming. They can provide amazing scripted set pieces, beautiful stories, memorable atmospheres, and even fantastic multiplayer options. This year was a bit light in shooters, but what we did get was solid quality with games that could ride out the genre single-handedly.
Half-Life: Alyx
Half-Life has always been a juggernaut shooter. With revolutionary storytelling for its time, fantastic characters, memorable enemies, and solid mechanics, it was a recipe for perfection. Alyx takes that formula and throws in some amazing VR elements and what we get is one of the most memorable shooters of the year. Puzzle solving, storytelling, atmosphere and an overall immersion that you just can’t get outside of VR and Half-Life. Who knew two things could mix so well.
This wasn’t as strong a year for exclusives on the Switch, but we got some amazing ports, remasters, remakes, and collections. What was exclusive was just fine, but it was very experimental this year with genres spread all over the place.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
New Horizons may not be groundbreaking, but it was unique in it’s time. With COVID-19 hitting the world right before release, many people were stuck inside trying to find new hobbies and things to do. This lead to a Switch shortage and New Horizons blew up like never before thanks to everyone being stuck inside. The game is warm, fun, colorful, and sparks a sense of community like no other game today. It may not be considered deep or difficult, but it shows one aspect that the Switch can do – bring people together.
The last and final year of PS4 exclusives and what a year it was. The PS4 has proven to be the true winner the this current-generation console cycle but bringing us amazing exclusives both new and old. Breathtaking visuals, intense stories, memorable characters, unforgettable gameplay experiences, and everything that makes up video game DNA.
Despite the controversy surrounding the game it’s fantastic. A gripping story, amazing voice work and motion capture, fantastic visuals, and memorable characters are a must in any single player game. The journey with Ellie is even more intense than the previous game and the strong focus around the narrative is what makes The Last of Us Part II so unforgettable.
PC exclusives are really making a bigger comeback every year. PC brings the best of gaming out with always state of the art visuals, modding, and user interfaces that can’t be done on console. There’s a reason PC gamers consider themselves the master race.
Half-Life: Alyx
Alyx might not just be the next Half-Life game we have been craving, but using VR brings the series into a whole new dimension and reality. The writing, atmosphere, story, and characters are all fantastically done and long-time fans will take in every moment. There’s something about a long-dead series that gets resurrected using a brand new technology that just tickles your funny bone.
Oxenfree is all about horror and mystery. It starts out with five students in their early 20s arriving at a small town in the Pacific Northwest to discover some sort of weird thing that goes on in the caves there when you tune a radio to a certain frequency. After a good amount of dialog, plot, and character development, you tune your radio and discover a rift in time. You also discover the island is actually haunted, and you are trying to free the ghosts within. Why, how, and what they are in the mystery that I won’t spoil.
The horror elements are mostly audio-related and are something I have not really heard in a game before. The game uses the eerieness of radio static and voices. Have you ever gone down a scary YouTube rabbit hole and watched “Top 10 Scariest Sounds” or something like that? Well, if you ever heard one that was about strange radio call signs that were used in the Cold War, then you know what you will hear in this game. It made the hair on my neck stand up and was very chilling to hear. There are various stones you can find throughout the game that give you tidbits of stories about the island, and these creepy radio calls are part of this.
You wander around the island, listening to the dialog, as there are no puzzles in this game. It’s very much a “walking simulator,” but you walk and talk with the characters and choose from three different dialog options as they pop up in conversation. Some of these are story-altering, and some are not. These choices determine the ending you get, which I found was a little too short and disappointing. I really got to like the characters here, and the game is so short that you can’t invest a lot of time into them. Every so often, the game will bring you into a time loop, and these are when a lot of important choices are made. Even for a 4-hour game, the story is done quite well and has a beginning, middle, and clear ending, and you wind up exploring most of the island, albeit at a snail’s pace. You can wander around further to collect letters and find these frequency stones, but I honestly didn’t find the story of the island as interesting as the characters.
The voice acting is actually really well done, and I like that when you answer before someone finishes a sentence, Alex, your character, will interrupt with a correct tone and inflection in her voice. The constant bantering between the characters is the most entertaining part of the game, and I was always looking forward to hearing what they had to say. The game also looks really good with 2D backgrounds and 3D models. It’s a 2D side-scrolling adventure, so it’s hard to get lost here. I found the game’s pacing was all over the place; however, there would be sections where I felt I was progressing quickly only to get slowed down by too much backtracking or lots of cut scenes and dialog. You don’t have to really think to finish the game, and I felt collecting everything was too tedious due to the slow pace of the game.
Overall, Oxenfree is a great horror mystery game that, while not very memorable, will entertain you for an afternoon and might be something you discuss with friends as the story does have a twist ending. It looks good, has great voice acting, and the characters are interesting, but the constant backtracking, slow pace, and almost zero gameplay may put some off.
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Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !