Game of the Year 2020
2020 sucked.
It wreaked havoc on our way of life and it screwed up our mental health. It featured the worst American ever as an exhausting, daily figure in the election of a lifetime. And it forced us to come to terms with So. Much. Death.
Its memory will leave psychological scars that may never heal, so good riddance, and I actively hope the door hits 2020 on its way out.
The video game world wasn’t spared, either. Despite unprecedented demand for gaming content due to quarantines and stay-at-home orders around the world, the global pandemic caused delays and cancellations galore as creators safely and smartly followed the same quarantines.
This muddled a console generation transition more than any before it, and while I managed to snag an Xbox Series X, I spent most of my time with the system playing 2003’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Despite having Cyberpunk 2077, the game I was most looking forward to going into the year, I went back to a classic favorite. What can I say, I needed the comfort food.
When I reflect on my favorite games of this year, comfort food feels like a common through-line. And on that note, it’s time to run through my top five games of 2020. Before doing that, though, I have to call out one game that I absolutely hated this year.
Dishonorable Mention: The Last of Us Part II
I played through the original Last of Us upon release, several months before I became a father. It was a juxtaposition of characters we were rooting for to do the right thing against the viscerally violent backdrop of what society had become, and the Ronjan of that era appreciated the story as a cautionary tale. Despite loathing the over-the-top brutality of the combat, it was one of my favorite games of the year.
Fast forward to 2020, as a real-world pandemic rages and Western democracy is on the brink of collapse. This simply wasn’t the right year for The Last of Us Part II to release. It’s a shame that so much talent, time, and craftsmanship was put into a game that just misses the mark of what our current zeitgeist needed.
I’m not a mouth-breather who’s angry about the fate of Joel or Abby being too muscular or the presence of characters other than straight white males. I simply found that this game was too violent, too nihilistic, and too straight up gross to get more than a couple hours of my time.
It’s not a game I feel comfortable playing in front of my son; it’s not even a game I feel comfortable playing knowing that he’s sleeping a couple rooms down the hall. It’s not a world I want him exposed to or thinking about, and it’s not a world I want on my mind when I’m spending time with him. It’s not a place I want to be or a gameplay loop I want to experience even in the best of times, let alone now.
It may have won the top prize at The Game Awards, but The Last of Us Part II was the biggest miss of the year for me.
Okay, enough of the bad. On to the good stuff.
5. Ghost of Tsushima
What if The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had a story? That’s pretty much the synopsis here, right? Well, I’m not sure.
It’s been months since I played Ghost of Tsushima and I don’t remember much about it. Worse yet, when I look back at my screenshot album on my PS4, the only pic I ever took was of the title card.
Wow. That’s utterly gorgeous. Still, I simply don’t remember much from this game, outside of a few story beats. But I know I played it for hours and hours earlier this year. What gives?
Perhaps this is where the Breath of the Wild comparison really is apt. I played dozens of hours of Breath of the Wild and never beat the story. I enjoyed exploring, I enjoyed climbing mountains, and ultimately I enjoyed being there, in Hyrule, as part of that world. While it wasn’t my favorite game of 2017 and isn’t my favorite Zelda game, it was an escapist haven when I needed it most, right after Trump’s election.
I think the same goes for Ghost of Tsushima. I enjoyed wandering the world, taking in the vistas, chasing birds and foxes, and just being there, in Tsushima, as part of that world. And while the story was present and ostensibly motivating in a way it wasn’t in Zelda, the narrative never drove my interest in the game. I was there because we were in the height of a global pandemic and I needed to take my mind off of it.
I have unfinished business. I’m maybe one-third of the way into the story, and further from the conclusion than that based on what my mind can recall. But I got my fill. I experienced Tsushima Island.
I’ll always look fondly back on my time there, but I don’t think I’ll be going back. Just like Breath of the Wild.
4. Microsoft Flight Simulator
30 years ago, one of my favorite games was an early DOS version of Microsoft Flight Simulator. I remember taking off from Chicago’s Meigs Field in a Cessna Skylane over and over again, just taking in the joy of flight in primitive 3-D environments. I’d always loved traveling the world, and this was a way for me to do it at home. I never once successfully landed the plane, so I never actually completed a flight, but it was still an incredible experience.
This year’s sequel gave me that same magical feeling. It was simultaneously familiar and new, an irresistible combination that I had to share with my six-year-old son.
I handed him the controller, and he was instantly enraptured. He cackled maniacally the whole time he was playing, even when he was flying straight up, doing flips, or even driving a 747 through the woods.
This experience simply transcends generations, both human and computer.
Technically, this may be the most impressive video game ever. What Microsoft has done here in bringing the world to life, through a combination of automated map recognition and hand crafting, even incorporating real weather and air traffic - it’s simply an accomplishment.
Sadly, I had trouble experiencing it consistently. My main home computer is a MacBook Pro, and it struggled to run properly, glitching and crashing constantly. I installed Windows on my Mac specifically for the experience of playing this game, but I ultimately decided to uninstall it and wait for the Xbox Series X version. Technical issues may be the only reason this game isn’t atop my list this year. Maybe it’ll take the top spot in 2021.
3. Super Mario Bros. 35
Here’s another game that would blow my 8-years-ago mind.
Super Mario Bros. was the first console game I ever played, and it informed so many of my gaming sensibilities and preferences. I still play it, and I make sure to have it on every platform it’s available on, including the recently released Game & Watch version.
I’m trying to imagine telling 30-years-ago Ronjan about this game. It’s the original Super Mario Bros., except you compete against 34 other people from around the world, and as you defeat enemies they show up on their screens and vice versa. It’s a concept we can fathom today, precisely because it effectively blends 35 years of advances in gaming with classic platforming.
My experience with Super Mario Bros. 35 started with simple observations like, “hey, Bowser doesn't belong here!” after an early death.
That soon became, “and there definitely shouldn’t be two of them here!” as I badly misjudged a jump.
I soon got a taste of victory, a surprising one when I was just about to blow it.
Several more runs led to me properly learning the flow and phases of the game. You spend the first few minutes defeating everything that moves to build an arsenal of coins and increasing the timer. Once you have a bit of a buffer, you can go into attack mode to thin your competition, sending enemies back at those who’ve attacked you. Finally, in the late game, it’s all about sheer survival against a handful of rivals, searching for power-ups to attack and any way to slow down the accelerating clock.
While I never mastered the game, I did manage a couple more wins, including a marathon 16-minute match that saw me KO the runner-up with a final star run.
I only played this game a few times in October and haven’t touched it since, but it is firmly cemented as one of my favorite video game experiences of the year. Few games have ever blended classic design and modern capabilities and sensibilities like Super Mario Bros. 35.
2. Retro Bowl
I fell off the wagon.
In 2013 I began boycotting the NFL out of protest over the cynical and bungled handling of its brain damage epidemic. After a couple years of paying attention without actually watching the games, I’d trained myself to reclaim my Sundays, and I didn’t miss it. Truly.
Then, I started seeing YouTube clips of Patrick Mahomes throwing insane touchdowns. It sparked joy. I allowed myself to make a comeback to fantasy football in an office league. It sparked joy. And finally, during a pandemic election year, I decided to allow myself some grace and watched football again - first the 2019 playoffs and then the 2020 regular season. It has sparked joy.
With me now off the wagon, the website Defector launched at the perfect time - right as the 2020 NFL season kicked off. As the phoenix rising from the ashes of original-Deadspin, I immediately subscribed, and the site and its talented writers have become welcome, familiar companions during my return to the NFL.
These threads converged in October, as Defector’s Samer Kalaf reviewed an iOS game I’d never heard of called Retro Bowl. Obviously inspired by the 8-bit game Tecmo Bowl, Retro Bowl is another game that combines retro design and modern sensibilities.
I’ve played football games for decades, and Retro Bowl is among my all-time favorites. Unlike Madden or even personal favorites like ESPN NFL 2K5, the gameplay is simple to pick up, games can be played in five minutes, and you can quickly move through a dynasty mode that focuses all your effort on your star players.
Like any good old school game, you can completely break the stats.
And like any good old school game, you can win 10 Super Bowls in a row with 5 different franchises.
I don’t know how long my return to the NFL will last, but I do know that Retro Bowl will have staying power, just like Defector. After all, I have just started my biggest challenge yet - making the Jets good.
1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the perfect game for 2020.
It launched just as the COVID-19 outbreak was ramping up and served both as something to do in quarantine and somewhere else to be when the world sucked.
It served as serendipity, novelty, or even just a break from the routine when every day in real life was blending together.
It let us travel to other worlds, go fishing, dig for fossils, and experience new places when we couldn’t go anywhere.
It let people connect in a virtual world when they couldn’t be together in the real one.
It had us make new friends, like the ostrich Phoebe, my island bestie and someone I made sure to talk to every day.
It inspired creativity, leading to an in-game performance of Hamilton among countless other pop culture references.
It was even a fascinating view into the innate materialistic urges we all have, as we all took island paradises and molded them into the modern society we simultaneously miss and want to escape.
More than anything, this game gave us a reason to smile, to press on, to get through this pandemic to the other side.
And even now, as I’ve gone from playing every day to checking in once a month, I relish the moments I had in Animal Crossing and will relish even more the ones to come.
