In looking for an overarching theme of my favorite games of 2020, I found myself continually surprised how neatly each of them maps to the sense that this was a “lost year” for myself amongst so many others. What we wanted was growth, movement, intimacy, forward momentum, and stability. What we got instead was a year of tragedy, impotent frustration at the powers that be, and structural injustice. Through it all, I’m so glad to have the community of friends and family that I do, and so we persist. Here are my games of the year 2020, in no particular order:
Hades– Plenty has been said about how Hades tells a story through the player’s failure, integrating the conventions of its genre to weave a surprisingly touching tale of family. Sometimes we all feel like we’re stuck in a cycle, endlessly repeating the same day and routine over and over, looking for some improvement or some heavenly sign that we are not wasting our time. I would not have gotten through this game without God Mode, which essentially guarantees your runs will get easier, not harder. Nothing but respect to Supergiant once again nailing the things they do best.
Microsoft Flight Simulator– Holy hell, this game hit me like a ton of bricks. You can ask multiple friends of mine, but I basically went from a passing interest in flight sims that I watched my uncle play in the 90s, forever curious about that cool flight stick on his desk to spending multiple very late nights just calmly flying over New York City and Boston, wishing I could make that flight myself and see friends again. In the lost year of 2020, I would have flown to Washington, D.C. completely alone, a huge first for me. In the 2020 we got, I bought a HOTAS, I ran this game on two monitors, and I learned how to fly above the clouds, immersed as I will ever be.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons– I feel torn about including this one. While New Horizons is still not even my favorite game in the franchise (sorry, I’m weird and like Wild World because I didn’t get a 3DS until New Leaf was years old), New Horizons brought the franchise to almost everyone I know who plays video games. My best friend’s mother ONLY plays this. It was that captivating at the time. History will never allow us to separate New Horizons from the time of its release in early quarantine, and frankly it shouldn’t. We figured out its arcane friend visiting system, we fished together, traded literal bags of money back and forth, and participated in a broken version of the real world stock market. I think one of the things that both scares and impresses me about this one is how much its faults did actually mirror the real world; nobody knows what to do when they hang out in person, progress is hampered by unfair systems from above, and there just isn’t enough to do any more.
Wide Ocean, Big Jacket– So, true story about me. In 2019, I lost my job! I was extremely not cut out for a marketing research/sales job that I accepted way too quickly, and I was summarily fired after two months. Immediately following that, I went on several vacations in a row with both friends and family. I was clearly trying to escape the truth back home, which was that I was 25, unemployed, and completely unmoored from the career I thought I wanted. But each of those vacations helped me see the world a bit, expand my perspective, and have some profound conversations with my travel companions.
Wide Ocean, Big Jacket knows what it is like to leave things behind. The characters all have complicated history with each other, their doubt shows in every line of dialogue, and the trip itself quickly falls to the wayside as they attempt to mask sadness with humor. This resonated deeply with me in 2020, when I longed for those long car drives where there is nothing left to do but enjoy music and occasionally pipe up to ask some philosophical question you’re going to forget when this is all over anyways. I always seek out indie games like this one because they capture a specific time and place so well, and Wide Ocean, Big Jacket really is at the top of its form for that.
Star Wars: Squadrons– Sometimes you take a fixation way too far. Sometimes you buy an expensive HOTAS, you get a VR headset for Christmas, and you become the X-Wing pilot of your dreams. And while Squadrons’s multiplayer offerings are a little sparse in terms of actual mode variety, the Dogfight mode alone gave me more Star Wars-ass stories than Disney did this year (no offense to The Mandalorian, although please stop hiring transphobic actors). My squad and I still look back fondly on the match where we were pit against a full team of 5 aces, all in the same clan and identical red and black pilot uniforms. The matchmaking in this game is broken, y’all. Unfortunately you will be matched up against a level 100 hardcore player in casual play, but fortunately the matches are short enough that you will live to be on the other side of the matchmaking someday. And hell, sometimes the Empire did throw their crack team of aces at the Gary Squadron (my team’s name…is good) and that to me is very cool. Also I REALLY want to finish the campaign this year because the characters are fun.
Half-Life: Alyx– I’m afraid to play more of this game by myself because it really does hook you in and not let go. It is the only game I’ve played on my Oculus Quest 2 so far that really justifies being in VR exclusively. The Half-Life games have always been about tactility, intertwining systems, and traversing strange spaces. There is something deeply lonely about exploring City 17 all alone, more so than the previous games. While your Vortigaunt friend does chime in occasionally, I would really like to stream this game with a lively Discord or Twitch chat sometime just so people can SEE how weirdly satisfying it is to throw an oil barrel at those ceiling tongue aliens and watch it explode. Hell, imagine being in the same room with people watching you play this. Couldn’t be me, at least not in 2020.
Kentucky Route Zero– I’ve been in and out of Kentucky Route Zero since the first episode’s release. Years ago, on a now-defunct blog I ran, I wrote about how it is a game about traveling and enjoying the company of strangers. Oh to be young and only two episodes into this mediation on capitalism, the gig economy, and the ways capitalism destroys rural communities. And like my own understanding of the world, KR0 has grown since its release in response to the world around it. When people discuss this game as a brilliant meditation and an essential work of art, they’re usually talking about the whole thing, interludes included. But the experience of constantly replaying each previous episode as a new one came out, wondering where the story would next take Conrad and company, that to me felt like the selling point of this game. It’s like having a really profound, thoughtful dream, forgetting about it the next day, and then going back to it years later. I don’t know how much sense I’m making, but I do think anyone who cares about video game storytelling and critiques of capitalism owes it to themselves to go all the way in on the Kentucky Route Zero universe. Call the weird phone numbers, play the little interludes (helpfully included in the base game now!) and sit with these characters for a few nights. You won’t regret it.