GAMES OF THE YEAR

CHRISCH RIS HHAYES PICKS THE TENN BEST GAMES OFO 2020

Call of Duty Modern Warfare: Warzone

Though not technically a standalone game in its own right, Warzone represents the Goldilocks Zone for first-person shooters in 2020. Realistic enough to viscerally engage players while also casual enough to pick up and put down at your whim.

Warzone has no story to speak of, only one environment and carries all of the hallmarks of its progenitor, the Call of Duty series. What Warzone gave to 2020 was a salve for the isolation between a great number of friends and family during unprecedented lockdowns and enforced social distancing.

Had another game been as accessible and universally well-received instead of Warzone then it would have occupied this spot instead. Warzone is just right.

2 Simulator

Where other sectors of the game industry ferociously wring new ideas from a towel that appears dry to everyone but themselves, Microsoft have taken Floyd Mayweather’s tried-andtested approach: hard work.

2020’s Flight Simulator would not have been possible without many other branches of Microsoft’s ecosystem, pinching Bing’s 3D map data whilst streaming much of the game data through Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.

A marvel of game engineering; the deserved instalment to a venerable series. Childlike memories of Flight Simulator ‘98, CRT monitors and rollerball mice brought back in sharp resolution by a game making a firm suggestion that the future is here and now.

5 Kentucky Route Zero

For all the ambition of Hades,s, it never comes within even the peripheryery of the ambitious scope laid out by Kentucky Route Zero, which puts the onus on the players to grasp and straddlee the line between entertainment andd commitment. Despite the backhanded introduction, there is no amount of flattering that would do justice to thisis game.

A point-and-click adventure that is terriblyerribly let down by any attempt at categorisation.n. Surreal and genius, Kentucky Route Zero is a game for thinkers and dreamers, writers and readers.eaders. A seven-year odyssey concluded with its final act this year, the ultimate triumph of a studio reaping the rewards of unbridled ambition.bition.

7

Sometimes a game canan evoke nothing but superlatives, firmly relegatinglegating theorizing and pondering to the backck seats. Doom Eternal is one such example. Godlike. Vicious.cious. Bonkers. Deranged. Breakneck. All of these adjectivestives spring to mind when reminiscing on time spent in thehe meat-grinder Doom universe. Anyone who has played the 201616 reboot of the historical franchise will find themselves in familiar territories with the 2020 release except everything will be even better, even bloodier and even more likely to cause mild shellshock. Spitballing ideas for this game in the drawing-board stage must be akin to what game development students actually believe the industry is like before taking up their trade in the gruelling profession.

9 Doom Eternal Spiritfarer 3

For many people, few games evoke childlike memoriesmories as powerful as Final Fantasy VII.

The absolute blueprint for JRPG’s since the day it hit the shelves, Final Fantasy VII’s modern revision may itself become the benchmark for further remakes of classic video games. Every step of VII’s remake feels like a gushing love letter to its esteemed namesake.

As with any stream-of-consciousness prose of the romantic kind there’s going to be ink splotches, eye-rolling pandering and rose-tinted retrofitting but the game feels larger and more meaningful for it.

Simply put, Final Fantasy VII Remake swells to near-bursting with the love and passion imbued into every detail, silly or serious.

Happy Christmas, we are all going to die. Jarring and unnecessarily dour as that sounds, Spiritfarer takes this paradoxical sentiment and extends it into as warming a game about death and the afterlife there is ever going to be.

Like many games with grandiose premises, it takes a while for this one to truly click but when it does, it’s a punch to the gut.

This isn’t a game that demands much of the player other than their time and their willingness to spatially immerse within the game’s environment, breathing in the stories of the spirits whom you are tasked with ferrying to the afterlife.

Hades Had

Hades Had feels like somewhat of a spiritual successor to 2016’s Enter The Gungeon. Yes, there has been a hell of a lot of dungeon crawlers taking up residence in the Steam store during the four year interim, but few that have measured up to or gone so far as to challenge Dodge Roll’s unique roguelike masterpiece.

Enter Hades, a sublime entry to the genre and a game that begs to be played even if roguelikes don’t tickle your fancy. An exercise in almost impossible creativity, everything from the art style to the otherworldly narrative is lovingly carved by a studio well ahead of the curve in the dungeon crawler dominion. The isometric view won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but entertainment iss gegenerallyeay a matter of perspective.

6 Dreams

Whether this game has any staying power or not will invariably depend on your predilection for creative pursuits. pursu Developers Media Molecule have aascended many layers of abstraction to offeoffer players a largely demystified game development develo environment propped up by a stunstunning story mode, larger and more ambitious ambiti than the threadbare offering by its creacreative contemporary LittleBigPlanet. Despite Despit the whimsical interface, Dreams is a vevery powerful game creation toolkit, offering offer at the very least a pulling back of tthe veil surrounding the curious and often prohibitive world of video game gam design.

Parents: Pare if your child has a PlayStation and an has shown even the slightest inkling ink of creativity then this one is a nno-brainer.

The Last of Us Part II

There’s a prevailing feeling of omniscience on the devedeveloper’s part in The Last of Us Part II. You may find yourself sneaking through a woven snare of long ggrass and - just for a moment - your eyes snap tto a singleil shootht and it hits you: a developer has cast his eye across this blade of grass too. Perhaps this attention to detail has worked against Naughty Dog.

There’s plenty of repeated non-story characters, simple henchmen and such. Even the story, carefully nurtured as it is, sometimes comes across as atonal when recalled alongside the triggerhappy gore of the throwaway gameplay sequences. Nonetheless, Naughty Dog gave voices to the main cast in a way that no other developer has ever managed. Intangible beauty and harrowing sadness dominates.

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Ghost of Tsushima

PS4 was bestown a fair share of incredible exclusive games, with Ghost of Tsushima being its swansong. Tsushima’s beauty wasn’t oversold - for the most part this game is breathtaking.

Perhaps the mission structure and staying power was a tad embellished but with the right amount of polish, there’s very little not to like about playing Samurai in 13th Century Japan. It just comes short of matching up to many of the other big game series that it pinched from the story will sweep you along just as good as any. A beautiful and respectful title.