It’s not a shock to anyone when I say that more than ever, a game’s release is just the beginning of its story. Changes, patches, DLC, many games continue to get tweaked and built up, not to mention Early Access games. All of these are good games. But what games have had add-ons that really push them above and beyond this year?
The Winner
A World Betrayed (Total War: Three Kingdoms)
It’s funny that this add-on is named after a Cao Cao quote (“I would rather betray the world than have the world betray me”) when he isn’t the star of this DLC. But then again, he kind of is, because he’s lowkey the star of every part of the Three Kingdoms story, games and otherwise. Whether he’s a hero or a villain in your eyes, his influence defines the time period. And certainly, the two big stars of A World Betrayed, Lu Bu and Sun Ce, exist largely in reaction to Cao Cao and his influence.
I still need to spend time with Sun Ce, the Little Conqueror. He’s a man who died from getting TOO MAD, so I bet his faction mechanics are really something special. But Lu Bu, man. Playing as Lu Bu in Total War: Three Kingdoms rates among my favorite experiences of the year. He’s such a petty, small-minded asshole. The most powerful man in all of China is a tempermental himbo! It’s beautiful! And the way Three Kingdoms captures the dynamic of playing the man perhaps LEAST SUITED to becoming Emperor is so fascinating. God. GOD. Why am I writing this instead of playing more Total War: Three Kingdoms?!
The Runners-Up
Rollback Netcode (Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R
The not-so-secret secret is, I don’t really like Guilty Gear. I have a begrudging respect for it, but I would rather play almost any other fighting game. I just don’t find any of its characters fun to play as. And they didn’t add new characters this year. They didn’t add new modes, they didn’t do a rebalance. They did one thing: they added rollback netcode to it.
It’s a deceptively difficult thing to do. For all the FGC members saying “just put GGPO in it” to every fighting game developer, it’s REALLY not that simple, especially for games that already exist. Taking an existing fighting game and completely reworking the netcode, which is baked into the engine and fundamentally defines how the game handles input, is a hell of a task. And even if you do rollback netcode, you can fuck it up! Street Fighter V has rollback netcode, and it’s GARBAGE! It is some of the worst netcode I’ve ever touched!
So yeah, it may seem like a weird pick, but for all the work that was done under the hood, and with the hope that it is the tip of the spear for more netcode reworks for great established fighting games, it deserves this spot.
Journey’s End (Terraria)
One of these days I’ll get Kyrie and Jen neck-deep in Terraria. It’s the BEST crafting game, because it isn’t just a crafting game! Whatever, I’ve written about the rolling revelations about the nature of Terraria other places, I don’t need to rehash that here. But with the last (™ ™ ™) update to Terraria, they showed the kind of design genius that made me love it in the first place. Two words: Journey Mode. A perfect compromise between Creative and Survival modes, eliminating busywork and enabling free imagination without inhibiting the progression and discovery that makes Terraria so special. It is the single best idea a crafting game has ever had.
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The worldstate of 2020 may have put a damper on a lot of game releases, but it also gave developers more opportunity to expand the games they’ve already released with some really special content. It’s one of the few silver linings of this hellyear, and we’re glad to have a chance to celebrate it. If you haven’t, consider listening to the discussion and decision-making of this category over on the Scanline Talks feed! One more category for Day 3: we’ll see you with it in two hours!
A big thank you to Zwimmy (@zwimmy on Twitter) for our Game of the Year art!
