Top 10 Favorite Video Games of 2020
I realize I should probably begin by finding some pithy way of summarizing my year in video games. Something about the themes that came up in the games I enjoyed or my feelings on them overall, or in this year in particular, how they served as a coping mechanism to deal with the onslaught of heartbreak brought about by COVID.
But instead, I want to talk about the end of Hard Lads, a game that I wanted to put in my list but couldn’t quite justify.
About a decade ago, there was a Puma commercial that featured a bunch of pub guys in England singing Savage Garden’s “Truly Madly Deeply.” It was a cheeky commercial about soccer and celebrating Valentine’s Day, and while it’s a bummer that it’s an ad, it’s great and you can watch it here. Keep this in the back of your mind.
Now, behold “British lads hit each other with chair.”
Hard Lads is a game where you play as the cameraman in the video. It’s really stupid and funny. You film the guy getting hit, the guy gets knocked out a few times, and each time it ends, more and more chairs flood the courtyard. You’re not told why. The last time you film it, the guy who gets knocked out floats up into the air, and a group of men appear on the rooftops and start singing “Truly Madly Deeply,” the same recording from the Puma ad. The lad drops from the sky, and the game ends.
It’s incredible. Incredible. Also, no, I did not get a PS5 or a Series X.
Anyway, let’s talk about some 2020 games!
SPOILERS BELOW!!!
Runner-Up: Embracelet
Every year, there’s an indie game that doesn’t get the love and attention it deserves. Well, really, there are several dozen such games, and the same can basically be said for every medium. That’s just how it is. But there’s always one or two that slip through the cracks that really shouldn’t, and this year, one of those games is Embracelet.
Embracelet is an adventure game set in Norway. You play as Jesper, a kid on his Summer vacation who’s struggling at school and was raised by a single mother after his father died before he was born. The “fatherly” figure in his life then was his grandfather Leif, who passes at the beginning of the game. However, before his death, he gives you an artifact that he’s never told anyone he has: A bracelet that gives its wearer the ability to move any object at will. He senses that the bracelet wants to be returned to its place of origin, and tasks you with returning to his home island where he found the bracelet in the first place to put it back where it belongs.
So you return to your grandfather’s home: Slepp, an undeniably beautiful and idyllic island town. But unfortunately, it’s in decline. After the local fishery had to shut down for repairs, the surrounding towns went to larger companies for their supplies. The jobs dried up, the school shut down, and the residents moved away. As it stands now, the town is on its last legs, and it’s about to have the rug pulled from under them because an oil company has reason to believe they can strike gold in the area. Maybe the industry can bring in some revenue and some foot traffic. But it’s an island surrounded by coral. One spill and the town’s done forever.
Though I should talk about the game’s much welcome and well executed anti-capitalism bent, what stuck out to me about this game was the simple act of being in it. Wandering the island. Solving puzzles and meeting the locals and helping people when you could. Taking in the luscious score and imagining myself being there, far away from my increasingly cold apartment in Los Angeles.
At its core, Embracelet is a coming-of-age story, and like any coming-of-age story, a lot depends on the friends. In this case, it’s the only two other teens on the island, Karoline and Hermod. Karoline’s capable, bright, and optimistic. She can play a beautiful piano piece as well as she can repair a house. Hermod is an artist who hates the island and craves life in the big city. He’s lazy and shits on everything, but he’s also incredibly relatable. Jesper’s existence is a lonely one, marked by death and poverty. Thus spending time with these two is not only uplifting, but shockingly so given how little time we actually spend with them. (It should also be noted that should you so chose, you can pursue either one of them romantically.)
The structure’s a bit wobbly, it could’ve given you more to do with your power, and not everything’s as well explained as it could be. But it’s an incredibly affective feel-good game. It’s a story about friendship, growth, and how oil companies suck shit. What else could you want?
10. Wide Ocean Big Jacket
When I was a little kid, my dad and my stepmom took me on a camping trip to West Virginia. It was at a… place. I don’t remember the name of the place or what you would technically call it, but the premise was that during the day, you’d go white water rafting and at night, you can set up your tent wherever you want on its grounds. We rafted. We camped. It was a lot of fun.
A year or two later, we went on the exact trip, only this time my brother tagged along. Once again, we arrived during the day. Once again, we all chose different places to set up our tents. (I chose an open field, my brother somewhere in the woods, and my dad and stepmom somewhere a little closer to the main building.) Once again, we woke up, stumbled blearily into a bus, ate a shitty lunch from a cooler, went rafting, watched the tape the videographer made, bought a copy of said tape, slept outside again, and drove home the next day.
On the surface, the only difference between these two trips was that the second time, my dad and I had managed to put our wetsuits on inside out, and we held up the rafting for a half hour while we took the suits off and put them back on properly. (If you’ve ever had to put on a wetsuit, you know how much of a pain in the ass it is.) But in my head, the trips couldn’t have been more distinct.
The difference, you see, was puberty.
On that first trip, I stayed up all night playing a port of Super Mario World on my Gameboy Advance. On the second trip, I brought a discman. My dad had recently burned me all the Douglas Adams audiobooks, and I was going through the Hitchhicker’s Guide series. (The recordings of which I still have, and all are read by Adams himself.) On the first trip, all I had on my mind at night was how much of a fucker Soda Lake is and whatever else little kids think about. I honestly don’t remember anymore. On the second trip, I was thinking about the changes with my body, and how said changes effected my standing with the girls in my class.
I hadn’t thought about either of those trips in years. Then I played Wide Ocean Big Jacket.
The circumstances of my camping trips and the one in the game are quite different. Wide Ocean Big Jacket, after all, concerns the camping trip of thirteen year old Mord, her best friend/new boyfriend Ben, her aunt Cloanne, and her (uncle?) Brad. They go to a different place, they do different things, and more importantly, this unit has their own qualities. Their own traditions and quirks in communication.
However, Mord has similar thoughts on her mind, and Wide Ocean Big Jacket is, ultimately, a game about a teen going through changes. (Cue Big Mouth theme song.) Specifically, it’s about using the intimacy and the isolation of a camping trip to explore what said changes mean. There’s a difference between going on a camping trip when you’re 10 and going on one when you’re 13, and Wide Ocean Big Jack is all about exploring that difference.
9. Ghosts of Tsushima
If you and I met six feet apart in the street and we had a chat about Ghosts of Tsushima, you’d walk away thinking that I didn’t like it.
Indeed, despite its placement on this list, when I think about this game, my thoughts immediately turn to the negatives. I thought the main story and the side quests, especially the character centric ones, had a lot of needless bloat. I found the mission structure and the open world activities repetitive. I found the reasoning deployed in the back half of the game that is used to exile Jin from his clan to be barbaric, and it turns what I think was supposed to be a morally grey situation into a rather black and white one. (Or: Yes, poison is justified if the difference is that hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people are going to die.)
I also had every intention of playing this game in Japanese, as I told myself I’d do ever since I first saw footage of this game at its E3 premiere, and afterwards when I saw the word “Kurosawa” being thrown around in interviews. But then I saw that the lip-sync was off and I couldn’t do it.
My biggest gripe, however, is a simple one. It’s a standard open world game. There’s a map full of crap. Do all the crap on the map. This isn’t to say that there aren’t aspects of it that stand out. I love the wind system because it points my eyes back to the center of the screen as opposed to the map in the corner. I like the idea that if I follow any random animal, it might lead to a reward. Once I got used to the combat, I’d while away the hours riding around and righteously killing Mongolians and bandits. And, of course, it’s a real beauty. However, all these things often feel like a bell and a whistle meant to distract you from the fact that this is, as previously stated, a standard open world game.
But you know what? I like standard open world games.
I don’t need every game I play to be a transformative experience. Sometimes I want something familiar and comforting, like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day. (Not that I have those anymore now that I live in Los Angeles.) I like doing the crap on the map. Give me an enemy camp and a means to systemically take it down, and I got everything I need. At least for a little bit.
And here’s the fun part: If Ghosts was only a standard open world game, it would not be on this list. So what makes it stand out? The wind, the animals, the combat, and the aesthetics. All the stuff I just dismissed as bells and whistles. Yes, I’m aware of how frustrating this is.
However, there’s one thing I didn’t bring up. Ghosts of Tsushima is a stealth game that outright discourages you from using stealth. Instead, you’re encouraged to go in the sword equivalent of guns a-blazin’. Whereas Assassin’s Creed wants you to strike from the shadows, Ghosts wants you to walk up to your enemy, call him a coward, and cut his head off. It is incredibly stupid. But magnificently so.
So yes, Ghosts of Tsushima is a standard open world game. But it’s a standard open world game that knows that you’ve played standard open world games before, and it wants you to walk away feeling differently. At that, it more than succeeds.
8. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released on March 20, 2020. It finished downloading before Doom: Eternal, so I played that first.
I made a character that looked like me. Or at least as much like me as I could get it. Normally, I’d make a goofy character or do my go-to character customization move and try to make Questlove, but I wasn’t feeling inspired. I then picked my island. On my island, there’s a small circular recursive island (which Google informs me is what you call an island within an island) right in the middle, with a large recursive island to the east, west, and south, and the elevated areas above to the north.
I chose this map because I had the idea that I was going to build my house in the small recursive island that the entirety of my map centers around. (Turns out I couldn’t access that little area in the beginning, so instead, I built my house in the upper left corner of the southern recursive island.) I then named my island Hot Butter. Again, feeling uncreative, I scrolled through my iTunes library and landed on Isaac Hayes’s Hot Buttered Soul. The island was going to be named that, but I hit the character limit.
I then found myself on my island with Tom Nook, the other Nooks whose names escape me at the moment, and my two new neighbors Mira and Lyman. Mira is a bunny who dresses like an anime character. She’s amazing. Lyman is a jock koala bear who doesn’t wear pants. He’s also amazing.
I did the tutorial, I found out that I was deeply in debt (a moment that made me laugh very hard, as I think Tom Nook being the embodiment of capitalism is the joke), and I fell into the rhythm of the daily chores. I then played every day for about six months.
I connected every recursive island with a bridge. I very quickly made a ton of money and built up my museum. (Though I opted out of participating in the Stalk Market.) I hit my capacity for island residents. I didn’t build a super regimented town or a city, but the thing is that even if I had the vision or the know-how to do that, which I don’t, I wanted to commit to the fantasy of building a paradise on a deserted island. Thus I only chopped down trees when I had to, and I didn’t build any paths to connect the houses. In fact, apart from the buildings, the bridges and the inclines were my only mark on the island.
Time passed. Residents came and went. Some I grew attached to. Some I didn’t. For those I didn’t like, I decided not to kick them out. “That’s life,” I figured. So instead, I dealt with the hand I was given. A bunny named Coco moved into my island. She has weird hollowed out holes for eyes and a mouth. I didn’t like her at first because I thought she looked creepy. Then I got to know her and she became one of my favorite residents. The moment I had this realization, I made a mental note to include that in this very write-up.
Eventually, the fun video game chores began to feel like actual chores, and though my mind fought against it, I weened myself off the game and I haven’t returned since. Not even to see the Halloween or the winter updates.
Look. You know why this game is here. It’s here for the same reasons its on mostly everyone else’s list. Escapism blah blah blah. I just thought I’d tell you about what happened in my little corner.
7. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2
I’m pretty sure this is the first remake I’ve ever put in a top ten games of the year list. There was a time where that would’ve bummed me out. After all, what better way to signify a lesser year in video games than by including a game that came out in the previous decade. But I’ve made my peace with remakes, and if there’s one franchise to be remade in 2020, thank god it was Tony Hawk. Like many a millennial lover of video games, the Tony Hawk franchise bore an incredible amount of importance in my life.
For starters, there were the soundtracks. Not only were they a deceptively great crash course in punk and hip hop (my first exposure to Public Enemy and The Dead Kennedys were from 1 and 2 respectively), but as the series went on, they opened up more niché avenues of musical appreciation for me as well. The first Underground introduced me to underground acts like Cannibal Ox, Living Legends (and Murs as a solo artist), and Juggaknots. Underground 2 narrowed it down even further, introducing me specifically to the Minneapolis scene and older acts I had yet to discover on my own. (Specifically Pete Rock & CL Smooth.) And we can into non-hip hop as well. I played the Tommy Guerrero song from American Underground like a billion times.
But on a larger scale, the Tony Hawk games made me aware of the concept of “good” gameplay, and what that concept meant to me personally. Very few games at the time were as responsive or snappy as Tony Hawk, even at its shittiest. (Looking at you, N64 port. Which for some reason we had, despite having it on Playstation.) I’d play a Tony Hawk game for hours and hours, then I would try to play something else, and for some mysterious reason I wouldn’t enjoy it as much.
Though I hadn’t played a Tony Hawk game since American Wasteland, I was hoping for the day that someone would do a proper remaster or remake. I watched the series go down in flames with the peripheral games and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5. It’s a franchise that didn’t deserve to go out like that, and on top of this, in a time when I crave games that I can put on mute while I listen to podcasts and albums (apologies, various audio people who work very hard and whose work is rarely recognized), I wanted Tony Hawk back more than I could stand.
Then Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 came. It’s everything I wanted it to be.
Okay, fine, I have three complaints. I wanted a more robust character creator, I wanted the uploading of custom maps to be a bit more encouraged, and I think a lot of the new music added to the soundtrack is kinda shit. (Especially when it comes to the new hip hop songs, the majority of which sound like you’d find them on unlicensed music sites. The two exceptions are Skepta and A Tribe Called Quest.)
Other than that, it’s what I’ve always dreamed of. The gameplay is as perfect as I remember, it looks gorgeous, all the new skaters are great. So on and so forth. I can’t think of anything else I want, other than for them to keep going with the rest of the franchise.
6. If Found…
I don’t know why, but in 2020, I’ve become keenly aware of the homogeneity of video game settings.
Jungles. Abandoned cities. Modern day cities. Steampunk cities. Future/cyberpunk cities. Open fields and combat arenas and ancient kingdoms and spaceships and forests and deserts and fire worlds and ice worlds and so on and so forth.
It’s not that a game is bad if it takes place in a location I’ve seen before. Hell, that’s most of the games on this list. Sometimes literally, as the last game I talked about is a remake of a game I played when I was a kid. But if you set your game in a location or a time I’ve never seen before, the probability of me playing it will skyrocket.
Case in point: The primary reason I gave If Found… a shot was because it takes place on Achill Island, an island located in Northwest Ireland, during the winter of 1993. I knew that, and I knew the element that it’s a visual novel where you erase every page after you read it. That’s about it.
So I came for the location. I stayed for the incredibly affecting and utterly devastating story about what it meant to be trans in the early ‘90s in Ireland.
If Found… is a game that sells itself on its intimacy. Though the overarching story is touching in its own right, it’s about the small details that transport you to a certain time and place. The island. A rock show in a small pub. A repressed Irish Catholic’s home. A freezing cold house to live in after everything falls apart.
It’s a game you should play for yourself, as all I can really do is list details and intricacies at you ad nauseam. It’s a shame, because I’m not really giving this game what it’s due. But I will say this: Once I finished If Found…, two impulses began to fight it out in my head. The first impulse was to find out everything about this game, especially when it comes to the writing. The other impulse was to do the exact opposite because I knew it could break my heart.
The point is that If Found… is one of the darkest video game experiences I had in 2020. But in a way, it’s also one of the most uplifting, and it’s worth your time. I just have two more thoughts to offer. The first is that the spaceship aspect of the story did nothing for me, but it didn’t really matter because of how powerful the rest of the narrative hits. The other is that I looked at some pictures of Achill Island, and I want this fucking pandemic to end so I can go as soon as possible.
5. Spiritfarer
Let me get the obligatory compliments out of the way. It looks beautiful, it plays beautifully, the score is beautiful, and though the plot itself suffers occasionally when it choses to be withholding, it has some of the most beautiful character work of the year. Moreover, as far as management sims are concerned, Spiritfarer finds a perfect balance of the charm of Animal Crossing (including the anthropomorphic animals) and the nitty gritty of Stardew Valley. (Both games I played for the first time this year, by the way.) It’s charming, it’s fun, it’s emotional. It’s everything you need in a year like 2020.
Now let me tell you about the ending.
In Spiritfarer, you play as Stella. For metaphorical reasons made clear later, you take over the role as ferrymaster from Charon, and your job is to prepare stray souls to leave purgatory and enter the afterlife. You do this by getting to know those who board your boat, you find out what their last wish is, and you help them achieve it. When they’re ready to go, they let you know, and you take them to the gate to enter the next world, or the Everdoor as it’s called in the game. You prepare people for death, you bring people to the Everdoor, then you say goodbye.
A game about death may be a hard sell in 2020. But trust me. This is one of the most uplifting game experiences of the year. There’s even a hug button!
Souls come and souls go. Some of the souls were hard to say goodbye to, and some weren’t. At the end of the game, I had one soul left: A dog named Elena. Elena is my least favorite character in the game. She’s a teacher in the old school sense of the word. She’s strict, she’s quick to criticize, and she is, to put it mildly, a fucking asshole. (She doesn’t even like being hugged!) As part of her final wish, she puts you through a series of challenges. For me, these challenges weren’t fun or engaging, and every time you fail, she harshly puts you down.
Eventually, it started to feel abusive, and at this point, the mission I knew would end the game was available. I retried one of Elena’s challenges. Once again, I failed, and once again, she chastised me.
I wanted to say that I brought everyone to the Everdoor. But something about that final tongue lashing got to me, and I was done. So I said “Go fuck yourself” out loud to Elena, I took myself to the Everdoor, and I crossed over.
Every character has a moment where they know they’re ready to go. Then I went through the same process myself. Of course, how hard the ending hits you depends on if and when you take that final mission and why. But to me, it was perfect. I wasn’t sad that the game was over. I was at peace.
4. Hades
Even I’m sick of hearing about the greatness of Hades. To the point where I don’t even want to write about it anymore. And I had this whole thing ready to go about how it’s the first rougelike I ever beat, and I beat it enough times to see the true ending. And the first time I beat it, I did so without the assistance of God Mode.
But whatever. You know why it’s here.
So I’ll just rank my Supergiant games.
1. Bastion
(I think the story’s slightly better executed. That’s about it.)
2. Hades
3. Pyre
4. Transistor
And guess what? That ranking barely matters because they’re all great. More digital ink needs to be spilled about Supergiant. At this point, they deserve more than a quick write-up on a top ten list.
Just a fuckin’ great game all around.
3. Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Early on in Miles Morales, Miles’s best friend Genke designs the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man App. In the story, this allows anyone in New York City to contact Spider-Man about a problem they’d like him to solve, but in game speak, this is how you access the game’s side quests.
The first side quest you get is from Teo, the owner of Teo’s Grocery, a twenty four hour bodega that happens to be located across the street from your family’s apartment in Harlem. Someone has ransacked Teo’s store, and besides the stolen items, they took Teo’s cat, who’s adorably named Spider-Man. The fuckers.
You leave the bodega. Depending on where you go, you may pass the Spider-Man Mural, which was painted by a local deaf artist named Hailey Cooper. Hailey’s a character you’ve encountered before, and I was quite fond of her. Later, you do a mission with her assistance where you track a group of thugs who’ve been terrorizing local businesses and eventually stop the group from attacking a celebration in Harlem. (I don’t remember if it’s based on a real celebration or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was.)
Once you’ve saved the day, she gives you some leg warmers, a scarf, her ear muffs, and a hat. The Winter Suit, as it’s called in the costume menu. It’s unquestionably dorky, but I spent a long time wearing it because I liked the idea that she would see me wearing it on the news or on social media and smile.
Maybe you leave the bodega and see Hailey’s mural, or maybe you see Roxxon Plaza, the massive structure built in Harlem by Roxxon, an evil private military company you spend a large portion of the game’s main story fighting. Roxxon moved in promising to help the neighborhood. Instead, they’re driving up the cost of living and displacing many of the local businesses. Miles Morales is a AAA video game where you fight gentrification. You gotta love it.
You help out Teo, and you save his adorable cat. (Who you can later have as a traveling buddy as part of a costume. Yes, it’s pandering, but it’s my kind of pandering.) You help out many more people, like the the homeless shelter that’s being shut down by the local authorities. Or the black owned barber shop and the Puerto Rican owned restaurant that have had their inventory stolen. Someone’s trying to hijack a shipment of toys from the local charity. Someone’s trying to rob the local bank. You later find out that all these crimes against Harlem are being carried out on behalf of a certain villain who has his gold plated name on a large tower in the richer part of the city.
When you complete all these side quests and stop said villain, you’re told that there’s a gift waiting for you. You find it under the big beautiful Black Lives Matter mural at the top of the Financial District. Maybe it’s not the most obvious place to put up such a mural, but it’s certainly where it needs to be seen the most.
The gift is a beautiful black and gold version of your suit. I loved it. True, one could argue that it’s a little garish. But I’m not above garish, and moreover, I loved it for what it represented and who gave it to me in the first place.
In Miles Morales, the people you help aren’t random NPCs on a random fixed point on a map. They’re tangible people in a tangible place. Never has a video game made me feel so connected to its setting and the people who live there. As a result, though there was a vast open map of NYC to explore, I never wanted to leave Harlem.
2. The Last of Us Part II
I’ve already written at great length about The Last of Us Part II here.
Long story short, I think it’s pretty great.
1. Kentucky Route Zero
The first time I attempted to play Kentucky Route Zero was back in the winter of 2013 when Act I came out. I saw a picture of the brightly lit horse on the gas station. The one in the above image. I saw that image and I thought to myself, “Huh. That’s neat.” I was a Junior in college.
I gave it a whirl, and I liked it quite a bit. It didn’t feel like video games typically feel. A consistent theme you’ll come across whenever anyone writes or talks about Kentucky Route Zero is that it’s extremely difficult to describe what it’s about or why you like it. But I liked it, and decided I was in for the long haul. So I decided I wasn’t going to play anymore until all five chapters were out. I wanted a complete story.
At the time, I didn’t know how long that was going to take. With season one of Telletale’s (RIP) The Walking Dead fresh in my mind, I thought it meant that I’d be able to play all five promised chapters in under a year. It became clear one year later that this wasn’t going to be the case.
Normally, when it comes to long video game developments and delays, I’m a patient guy. After all, there’s plenty of other stuff to play. Still, when Act III was released, I replayed Act I, then played Act II and III. (I don’t remember if I played the interludes or not.) I went from liking Kentucky Route Zero to loving it. The aesthetic. The writing. The mood. All the things reviewers point out when they don’t want to get into what the game’s truly “about.” Which is fine, because it’s a beautiful heartfelt game that deserves to be praised on every level.
Once again, I decided not to play until Act V was out. Once again, I invoked the sanctity of a complete story. That was the summer of 2014.
A few weeks later, my dad and I drove across the country. I was moving to Los Angeles, and I told my dad that I’d never seen a desert before. Hence the road trip. We saw great showings of American prosperity, and we saw areas that had never fully recovered from the Great Recession. Or at least that was what my guess was. Either that or some larger force had sucked away all of the industry. The internet or a conglomerate. It’s hard to tell purely on sight.
Two years later, Trump won.
My parents and grandparents had been in or around politics many years before I was born. They spoke candidly in front of me and my brother all my life, and as a result, I don’t recall a time where I haven’t been cynical about the political reality of America. A lifetime of hip hop didn’t help with that either. I thought of myself as a realist. Yet Trump’s win still shook me to my core. I didn’t think it could happen. I was still naïve.
I saw institutions fail. I began to understand the true destruction wrought by capitalism. I saw vast, unfathomable, unforgivable failure and inhumanity on behalf of the government that claimed to represent me. I saw everything come crashing down.
Two years after Trump won, Act V of Kentucky Route Zero finally came out, this time in the TV Edition, a package with all of the chapters and all of the interludes. I was preparing to move, and COVID was still a thing happening elsewhere. I played each chapter and each interlude once at a time. In the game, I saw the same cycle of decay and heartbreak play out all over again. Maybe it’s not as literal, but even then, the protagonist of this series is unceremoniously turned into a skeleton and pulled out of the game to go work for a giant company right before the final act. It’s hard not to read into that.
In Act V, (and in Un Pueblo de Nada, the interlude that leads up to Act V, which is by far the best and most vital of the interludes), the metaphorical destruction becomes literal. However, after the devastation, I saw a community come together, mourn what was gone, and begin to rebuild. From a gameplay standpoint, it’s understandable why one could find this chapter frustrating. But for me, it was a shot in the arm. One I badly needed. Maybe, the game suggested to me, some kind of recovery was possible. Or any kind of upswing, for that matter. I gathered my stuff and I moved to a new apartment.
A few months later, we voted Trump out. Maybe the game was right, if only a little bit.
Honorable Mentions
Doom Eternal
Dreams
The Pathless
Will Play Someday
Astro’s Playroom
Cyberpunk 2077 (Lol)
Ghostrunner (I actually did play some of it, but I ran into a gamebreaking bug and I didn’t feel like restarting.)
Half-Life: Alyx
Spelunky 2
Umurangi Generation
I’m sure there’s others.
