 2020 was a rough year for everyone. It was one of the more difficult years I've had in a long time, and for someone with a past like mine, that's saying something, man. Work got stupid, and then it got crazy and stressful, and the more crazy and stressful it got, the more I realized how pointless it actually was, which just made it more stressful in turn. Also the world broke, the republic teetered, and the very notion of objective facts became a subject of debate. On the home front, things were difficult the whole way through, and I finally came to understand that old saying, you're only as happy as your least happy kid. It's a lesson I hope none of you ever have to learn, and one I now realize must have made my parents live in constant turmoil. And some small way this year is probably a kind of karmic punishment for what I did to them, but in a more accurate way, it really wasn't about me at all. And that made it even harder. That's probably why I made less videos this year than I did last. Looking back, nearly half as many videos, which kind of shocks me. I felt I was keeping up with this, but I guess not quite like I had been. Odd, then, that I doubled my subscriber count while having my work. Maybe if I cut my effort 90% in 2021, things will really take off. When I was young, and writing stories and songs, I thought that hard times were needed to be creative. And while I still think our hardest times end up being fuel for our most creative work, as I've aged, I've come to understand that this is only true afterwards. After the fire burns itself out, there's fertile ground for building back up, but while that fire is raging, there's very little one can do except put your arm in front of your face and grope your way out of the inferno. When things are at their worst, you're not thinking of all the great songs to come. You're just hanging by your fingertips trying to get through another day. Still, in this year, more than any recent year, I came to realize that games are a really important part of my life. As important in many ways as music and family and friend. When things are going well, games bring me joy and give me something to share with people. And when things are going bad, they're a place to escape to. Not in the sense that I like retreat into a fantasy world, but in the sense that focusing on the fact that the few nights hit boxes are total fucking bullshit unless me stop focusing on all the things that actually scare the shit out of me. Even for only a few precious moments. I know I don't have many viewers, but as we head into what I hope is a better year, it is my sincere hope that I can take your mind off whatever stressful or frightening shit is going on in your life even if for a few minutes. With that out of the way, here's a list of the best games that were released this year, in my opinion. Let's start with the games that made my honorable mention list. I'll just throw them up there with like a two sentence explanation of why they're worth playing. It'll save us both some time, dude. Number 11, Cyberpunk. I really struggled with where to put this. Did I really enjoy Cyberpunk more than I did the Resident Evil 3 remake? Or Mortal Shell? Or even Destiny 2? I don't know. And should a game with such a disastrous release on base consoles even make the best of the year list, Cyberpunk has a bunch of flaws in both its storytelling and its gameplay. But it's also got so much that done well, and it's so impressive graphically that I don't think it's fair to not at least mention it as one of the better games of the year. Still, when I finally sat down and made the list of the 24 new games I played this year, I honestly couldn't justify putting it any higher up. Still, if you haven't played it, I do honestly recommend giving it a shot if you're on PC or the new consoles. Obviously, it simply doesn't run on the base Xbox One and PS4. 10, Immortals, Phoenix Rising. Immortals was originally called Gods and Monsters. Then they got sued for copyright infringement by Monster Energy Drink, under the theory that the word monster is now owned by the makers of putrid green energy swill and that consumers would confuse Monster the Drink with Gods and Monsters the game and then get mad when the game neither came into can nor succeeded in making them feel edgy and irritable. So the folks at Ubisoft went back to the drawing board and held a contest to see who could come up with the shittiest name possible. Immortals, Phoenix Rising, was that name. Now, there's a reason I told you that. It's not just that it's both funny and a perfect example of how big companies think they're allowed to own everything. You see, there's a truly amazing irony in them having to change the name in response to a copyright dispute. Because you see, Ubisoft didn't rip the name Monster off from Monster Energy, TM, but they did rip the entire game off from Zelda Breath of the Wild. Immortals isn't like inspired by or kind of similar to Zelda. It is a shocking, truly shameless rip off of it. In fact, Immortals is basically what would happen if a bunch of game developers played Breath of the Wild and then sat down to figure out how to make the exact same game but also fix the big and small flaws that are kind of annoying in that one. I got bored playing Breath of the Wild because it's just too big and empty. And the puzzles were kind of too simple and the combat's pretty weak and the story kind of doesn't exist and I really hate the weapon durability bullshit. Phoenix Rising takes all the very best ideas of Breath of the Wild and then adds them to a fun action game with a really cute little story. The puzzles are great, movement feels good, the map is just big enough to not be annoying and it is ridiculously densely packed with shit to do. And the combat is actually really great. I'm going to do a whole video on this one, but I figured I would hate this game. It's one of those ones I buy specifically because I think it'll piss me off and then I can make a fun ranting video about it. Instead, it ended up being one of my very favorite games of the year. The title is still terrible though. They should have called it like Emelda, Death of the Child or something. 9. Final Fantasy VII Remake $60 for the first third of a classic game. Remade in the style of Final Fantasy XV sounds like a recipe to annoy me. And to be fair, this game did annoy the shit out of me pretty regularly. There is a bunch of garbage in the combat including constantly being put to sleep or one hit killed or paralyzed. The backtracking can get very annoying. The side quests are just weak. The game would have been better being either open world or like truly being reimagined as a level based linear game. Still a lot like Final Fantasy XV, it just kinda has something special about it. Memorable characters, a story that is exciting and touching and really really great world building. It seems like a million years ago that I played this game but that's more a reflection of this damn year than it is the game. If you missed it, it's really quite a little gem as long as you try not to think about the fact that they're gonna end up charging you 180 bucks for the remake of Final Fantasy VII when it's all said and done. If that doesn't make you too infuriated, then you know, you should buy it. If you like me never played the original, you'll get to find out what all the fuss was about. 8. Deep Rock Galactic A co-op shooter about drunken space dwarves mining rare metals and alien infested caverns, Deep Rock Galactic has more charm than any game I have ever played. From the voice acting, to the emotes, to the animations, and even the little robotic bartender makes the time you're playing this game fun. It's just a fun game. I mean, look at this guy dude, look at this little guy. How is that not fun? It's actually really tough to make a co-op game with classes and get the balance between difficulty, class utility, and progression right. The DRG really does thread the needle in a way that very few games do. Each of the four classes is simultaneously enormously helpful without being overpowered or strictly needed. You can complete all the missions without a digger, it just works way better when you bring one along. More than even that, the game is just so well thought out and designed. The missions are great. The FPS combat is surprisingly excellent and the progression and cosmetic grind feel perfectly balanced to give you like a minimum of 80 to 100 hours. And I mean, if this game ends up floating in your boat, this could give you like hundreds and hundreds of hours of play. Finally, I've never played a co-op game with a less toxic player base. In my nearly 200 hours with DRG, I encountered only one fuckface the whole time. That's astonishing. And I don't think it's an accident. When a game looks and sounds like this, how could you get mad enough to be an ass hat? 7. Neo 2. Neo 2 is the most ridiculously cheap bullshit garbage crap I have ever played. The enemies are full of cheap ass moves and a bunch of them have like five times too much health. There's just a ton of garbage one hit killed and instant death traps and falling to your death off of tying the little beams and sinking in water. A ton of the bosses are just straight up unfair and the yokai realm sections that cut stamina regeneration in half are annoying as hell. Then there's the problem that the game looks all blurry and dark because it's on the PS4 and not the superior PC platform. You can choose 30 FPS and bleeding eyes or 60 FPS and crossed eyes from the hazy blurriness but either way it's not a great looking game man. And then there's that same issue the last game had with the diarrhea geyser of loot making you constantly spend 20 minutes in fucking menus selling all your useless gear for souls. I mean, uh, amrita. So many problems with Neo 2 man. And yet it's one of the best games of the year. The combat in Neo 2 is great. Just great. It's unfair bullshit sometimes, but it's great all the time. And while the game is indeed extremely hard, it's also deep and complex and satisfying in a way that makes it the most fluid and interesting of the souls like combat systems. Levels are way better designed than the first game. The new yokai powers and counters system add a whole new aspect to the combat with an extra layer of resource management and like parry timing. Of course it has the really great progression and skill tree that it's had. Although to be honest, the skill tree is like a freaking nightmare. The way it's laid out. It is just like eye cancer. Now I still wish there were less of the here's three bosses and 15 mobs in a closet. Try 22 times until you figure out exactly how to kill them levels. But overall if you like hard games and especially if you like the souls like the genre, Neo 2 is a can't miss title. It's one of the very best games of the genre and easily one of the best games of 2020. Six. Miles Morales. I just did a whole video on this one, so I'll keep this super short. Miles Morales is basically a perfect big budget third person action game. It is ridiculously amazing looking. The map is gorgeous. The animations are perfect. And the effects and lighting make it just look so good even on the base PS4 which is what I have. And it manages to do that without looking like it's running at 140p like Neo 2 does. Literally every single thing about Miles Morales is better than the already excellent original game. The main story and characters are great. Progression is perfect. Combat is sublime. Side missions are memorable. Even the damn collectibles are great because the simple act of swinging through the streets of Manhattan never gets old. The only reason it's this low is because the other games above it are so uniquely awesome. Five. Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Both Ori games are really interesting titles. They're both beautiful looking games that seem like they'll be simple and casual platformers but end up being pretty damn challenging and unforgiving. The boss fights and escape sequences require near perfection from the player because they have no checkpoints. This causes me to rage as I fail them. I have one boss failure in me before I start cursing usually and Ori's hardest sections routinely take like four or five attempts. Now the sign of a good game for me is one that makes me fail four or five times without me screaming fuck and slamming alt F4. Ori is one of those games. This isn't the kind of design we expect in modern times and it shows that they had a cohesive vision for these games. The first Ori game was amazing because it managed to be sad and hopeful, difficult but accessible, simple but engaging. Will of the Wisps had some performance issues at launch but I've played it twice more since then and I appreciate this game more and more as time passes. Will of the Wisps takes several influences from Hollow Knight which I think is great. It adds melee combat, magic spells and a very similar rune system. Hollow Knight and Ori are basically the very best examples of Metroidvania games around. Together they've kind of created a whole new Metroidvania genre. We could call that genre Ori Knight games. Will of the Wisps is just as sad and beautiful and epic as the first game. Its graphics are simply stunning. It routinely makes you stop and just gawk at how gorgeous it is. And its gameplay is smoother, deeper and more intense than the first. Not only is this one of the best games of the year, it's one of the best games of the generation. If you never got around to this, I honestly think it's one of the very finest games around and any player will love it. Just don't let the colorful graphics fool you. This game, like the first, it isn't a kids game, man. It's a top-notch platformer that demands the player master its movement and combat to finish it. It's only like, I don't know, 15 to 20 hours? So please, play it before the crazy amount of great games coming in 2021 start releasing. It's free on Game Pass and Game Pass PC by the way. And also, it has that whole like cross-save feature which is freaking awesome, dude. You can like play it on the Xbox, get up, go play it on the PC, you're in the same spot. It's great. Pick it up. 4. Ghost of Tsushima I am not a huge fan of the modern Ubisoft style open world collectathon. The new AC games bore me to death and I find these games mostly annoying because you spend half your damn time walking from one end of the map to the other. Recently, I was eating a sandwich while playing Valhalla and it occurred to me that this is ridiculous. I should not be able to play a game and eat a damn sandwich at the same time. Still, every so often, one of them ends up being really good. Whether that's because they have a great story and missions like The Witcher 3 or an amazing setting and combat like Horizon Zero Dawn, these games must do at least one thing, well enough to overcome the fact that most of the game is fucking walking. Ghost of Tsushima does a bunch of things really well. It is gorgeous. I know that's going to be a common refrain, but like we're getting to the point where graphics are really a big part of these games, but Ghost of Tsushima is really beautiful. It has a map that just is constantly a joy to look at and to traverse. It's got a bunch of side missions that reward awesome armor sets and player power. And it has a progression system that's actually impactful and exciting and makes sense and is well balanced and well paced. And while the story isn't some amazing masterpiece, it's got good characters, good acting, a fantastic setting, and competent if unspectacular writing. But the most important thing is that this game has a unique and fluid combat system that combines the best of a few different genres. It's like a perfect mixture of Batman, Devil May Cry, and the old Assassin Creed games. It's a game that requires a lot of inputs from the player, but it's not a button masher. And on hard, it's challenging enough to really require actual skill. And that's the main difference. Ghost of Tsushima is basically Assassin's Creed, but good, where EC's combat is simply bad. Ghost of Tsushima is actually great, even after dozens of hours I never got bored turning my horse toward a group of Mongols so I could cut them into pieces. I said in my Cyberpunk story video that that game would go down as one of the better examples of the Bethesda open world action game genre. Well, Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon Zero Dawn stand as the very best examples of the Ubisoft collect-a-thon genre because it feels like the gameplay loop in those games was designed before the map rather than the other way around. Ghost of Tsushima is a great game. It's not perfect, but it's as close to perfect as these types of games ever get. 3. The Last of Us 2 Somehow The Last of Us 2 was controversial. I have no idea how this was possibly the case. It had a bunch of stupid fucking culture war angers surrounding it when there's nothing in the game to warrant that on either side. It somehow got knocked for being violent and to quote a YouTuber I really really like being quote, baby's first morality tale, when its story is as thoughtful and considered as literally any game ever released. Yes, it is grim and violent, but so is no country for old men and most people think that's a pretty freaking great movie, right? I have an entire hour, I think it's more actually, video about this. And that video talks about how this isn't actually a simple morality tale about violence being bad, but rather an extremely complex look at vengeance, justice, and the real price of violence. The game doesn't say violence is bad, okay? It says violence is expensive. And that's an entirely different thing to say. Beyond that, the game is simply vastly superior in every way to the first game, which was already a masterpiece. It has large, meticulously crafted and detailed levels, a well-paced crafting and progression system, wonderful exploration, competent gunplay, simple but decent stealth, and most importantly, a diverse cast of characters that are morally complex. It shows that everyone is the hero of their own story, and right and wrong are often a matter of perspective. Nobody is wrong in this game, there's like really no villains, well I mean except for the cannibals and slavers and zombies, but the main characters and factions, everyone responds logically to the things that happen to them. And then things still just spiral out of control. And the story is not predictable. So many games and movies don't engage me because I know how they're gonna end within like 10 minutes. Hell, with some games, I know how they're gonna end after watching the trailer. The main thing to remember is that The Last of Us 2 is a work of art. There are like 3 games a year that have stories better than a He-Man cartoon. This is one of the rare games that's as good as any film you'll see. It's a must play, it's grim and depressing, but I'm depressed all the time anyway. So you know, I'm cool with a game coming down here to meet me where I'm at. Here's the link to my review of this game because I had a lot to say and I had a bunch of responses to the unhinged criticisms of what is objectively a masterpiece. 2. Ultra Kill Yeah, I know this is high, but whatever man, is my list. Ultra Kill is a lot like The Last of Us 2, except instead of a gripping and morally complex story, you're a robot who uses blood as fuel while descending into hell. I consider Ultra Kill one of the very best FPS games ever made. Here, look, this is my Steam review. It says, I now consider Ultra Kill one of the very best FPS games ever made. It's still only about halfway done, but it's already one of my favorite games ever. With amazing music, great level design, perfect enemies, perfect weapons, great bosses, and the best movement system ever designed in an FPS game, Ultra Kill is the total package. It's my second favorite game of the year and one of my very favorite games ever. Take Doom, add 2 cups of Titanfall 2, 1 teaspoon of Devil May Cry, and bake at 500 degrees for 5 hours and you get Ultra Kill. I still play the Endless mode every week or so. The best part is, it's worth like 50 bucks right now, but luckily for you, it's less than half that price. I got this for two friends for Christmas. I could have like donated money to cancer kids in their name, or sent them a really nice basket of crackers and sausages, or bought them both drugs, or gotten them a gift card to steak and shake, but I didn't. I bought them Ultra Kill because hell is full and blood is fuel and this game is more fun than cancer. 1v Raid Shadow Legends Raid Shadow Legends is an epic hero collector that all the coolest people are playing. It must be amazing because judging by advertisements I see on YouTube, it's one of the only games in existence. It's not only the greatest game on earth, it is literally a new religion for our broken world. Think about your garbage life right now. Look deep into the empty pit where your soul once lived before all your humanity was stripped away leaving only a quivering broken husk. Focus hard on that ball of rage and sadness that's coiled in your bowels, poisoning every human interaction you have, and making it impossible to feel joy anymore. That's what life is like without Raid Shadow Legends. That ball of rage? It isn't a cumulative effect of a life of regret and frustration, it's actually a symptom of a lack of Raid Shadow Legends in your life. This is what life is like with Raid Shadow Legends. Paid for by Raid Shadow Legends. 1 Doom Eternal I think Doom Eternal's DLC might have taken the difficulty up just a bit too much. Like the new spirit enemies are kinda bullshit and I just hate the boss fights. I can't understand why you would make a boss that takes the game's greatest strength and breaks it. I don't want enemies that slow me down in Doom Eternal. It blows my mind that nobody realized that would be annoying. Still, I've played the DLC five times now because Eternal is the best shooter ever made. I love it so much. I actually thoroughly enjoy fighting two marauders at the same time now. Doom Eternal is basically perfect. I don't like the final boss fight or the DLC final boss. And I don't like these stupid fucking cubes. And I don't like having to use the microwave beam to ghostbusters away these assholes. But other than those few things, I love every single thing about Doom Eternal and its DLC. The levels are perfect. Performance is perfect. Progression is perfect. The platforming is perfect. Movement is perfect. Graphics is perfect. Sound perfect. Music in the base game is better than perfect. It's freaking amazing. Music in the DLC is fine. It's fine. It's not that good. It's actually just kinda fine. Enemy design is perfect. This game is nearly perfect. In fact, I mean, aside from those little things that piss me off like the bosses, it's kinda unfair to say the game isn't perfect. When I only have like two annoying quibbles. It's so good that I play it on Nightmare every few weeks, because when there's nothing else to play, I now play Dark Souls, Neo or Doom Eternal. You might even say that it's the Dark Souls of first person shooters. I was nervous that Doom Eternal wouldn't be as good as 2016. And instead, it's so damn good that I can't even play 2016 anymore. It's too slow and boring now. Doom Eternal is so fucking good, it's gone backwards in time to ruin the last Doom game. It's so damn good, it's actually ruined every non-ultra kill shooter for me. Call of Duty Cold War is fine, but compared to Doom Eternal, it's an embarrassing pile of garbage. I still like Destiny 2, of course, but that's a different thing. Destiny 2, like, doesn't do difficulty nearly as well as Doom Eternal does. In Destiny 2, you solo the dungeons by getting good at hiding behind rocks. In Doom Eternal, you dash twice, freeze three enemies, light four others on fire, and then saw one in half with a chainsaw before slinging yourself away with a shotgun grappling hook. It's that good. If you haven't played Eternal, you're crazy, man. I wish it had a better multiplayer mode or better yet a PvE multiplayer horde mode. But it's rare that a year features a game that's the best ever in its genre. 2,000 years from now, internet historians will discuss how the shooter genre was killed by Doom Eternal because nothing would ever feel good again, and instead, we all ended up just playing VR Tetris and Checkers with human skulls for pieces. 2000 may have been the worst piece to shit in history, but at least we got the greatest shooter ever made. And that's it, friends. The year has ended and a new one has already dawned and provided we have at least 10 more months before the inevitable extinction asteroid strike. I look forward to making more videos about all the games that disappoint me and the very few that don't. Alright, thanks for coming, and seriously, thanks for making this year better than the last one in at least one way. I got more new subscribers this year than I had in my first two, so if this keeps up for another 15 or 20 years, I'll be able to nearly pay for all the games I buy with the money I make by annoying you with shitty unskippable ads. I sincerely, sincerely hope you had a better year than me, and I hope we both have a better 21 than we did 20. Alright, I'll see you next time. Bye.