My Top 10 Games of 2020

Feeling inspired after reading through Jeremy’s Favourite Games in 2020, I have decided to steal his idea and do a list of my very own. Attempting to track down what games I played this year alone has proven to be a challenge. There is no single source of truth – nothing out there that keeps track of everything for you. And even though GoG Galaxy 2.0 does a great job of bringing all your games together, it still lacks the Year-in-Review aspect.

Luckily for me, I only play on two platforms – PC and Xbox. Unlucky for me, PC is then split into Steam, GoG, Epic, Origin, Battle.Net and UPlay… So, gathering every game I played this year in order to list them makes this quite a challenge. And I don’t really keep spreadsheets like other people…

With this very manual process in mind, let’s go through the best games I have played in 2020. Keep in mind, not every game on this list would have been released in 2020. After all, it’s called a backlog for a reason…

Number #10: Astrologaster

I started this game during Lockdown 1.0 as part of the podcast’s April Achievement Challenge. It was a small game that my laptop could run, the reviews said it was funny, and it was a quick game. It ticked all my boxes really. For me it was a quick game to rack up achievement points, but from the very first line of dialogue I was convinced to actually give this game the attention it deserves. Don’t get me wrong – if you drag it out, this game will still only take you about 5 hours. But in those 5 hours expect many giggles, laugh out loud moments and some very scathing commentary on the world in general. You can even ask Simone – I was sitting with my headphones on and giggling away while playing. Great humour, a great little story and fantastic writing left me rather impressed.

For coming out of nowhere, surprising me, entertaining me, and getting me to move my laptop to the couch to continue playing, Astrologaster makes this list. Oh, and it’s on Game Pass for PC, so you have no excuse to try it out.

Number #9: Nier Automata

I had heard a lot about this game. Multiple endings, great hack-n-slash combat, and a great story come together to make this game something special. It went on special, I bought it, and now it’s on Game Pass… But alas, I still sat down and played it through to get to the first ending at least. The combat feels great – you really get a feel for the light and heavy attacks. The setting and world building is top notch. And if you know me, you know I am all about that world building. And then the meta-game…

Not every game asks what it is to be human, or what it is to have sentience. And the way this game does it really makes you wonder where the line is. I love the setting – a world left to alien robots for thousands of years while strike teams of androids go down to fight them. An endless loop of machines fighting machines, while mankind sits in safety, thinking it’s the bee’s knees.

At one point the robots start chanting, and it gave me chills. I still have so much to do in this game, and I will be going back without a doubt.

Number #8: Frostpunk

How to describe this game? It’s an RTS, resource management game at its heart, but its also so much more than that. Set in the 1800’s, the world has been overrun by global cooling. A band of people head north and try survive. You have to manage food, heat, resources, work force – all the typical stuff.

What makes this exceptional though, are the laws you pass. Should children be able to work with the adults? You may need extra hands at some point, so being able to recruit kids could help, but it makes the settlement lose hope. And what to do with the dead? Should you put their bodies out in the cold to freeze, or bury them? If you bury them, people will stop work to hold burial services.

It’s the choices like this that really test your humanity. Sure, things are tough, and this is a life-or-death situation, so where do you draw the line between what makes you human and merely surviving? More than once I had to stop my play session and get a cup of tea while wrestling with a hard decision. This is where the game really shines. You could mainline this game, make all the choices to make the game easier, but you’ll have to divorce yourself from your feelings to do it.

And the music, the interface, the dialogue all come together to make this a heart wrenching experience. I loved it and also hated it for the hard choices I had to make. It’s a brutal game, both in emotions, game play and achievements, but it’s well worth playing.

Number #7: Deliver Us The Moon

I love space. This is no secret. Space travel, space stations, moon bases, probes – all so exciting! So, a game set on the moon is even better. Deliver Us The Moon also features some of the best anti-gravity / low-gravity simulations I have ever felt in a game.

The story and world building is great. Not once do you feel like something was missed. Your mission for going to the moon is solid, and the environments are just incredible. I can’t praise this game enough! Parts of it had my heart racing, adrenaline spiking and holding my breath. Other parts had me trying not to move in my chair as I sneaked around the moon base. When it comes to immersion, this game nails it. I think I sat down and got all the way to the last level in about one sitting!

It’s currently on Game Pass, and has no achievements on the PC version, so try it out. And if you have an RTX graphics card, it supports some really great looking raytracing.

Number #6: Oxenfree

Simone wanted me to play this for about a year after she did, and for our terrorTober event, I decided to play this game. What awaited me was some of the best dialogue I have ever heard in-game. Every character feels real. Every reaction feels like something a real person would do. Every situation walks the line between real and creepy so well. You find yourself getting sucked in completely.

I can’t say much about this game without giving anything away, but it’s a game I will be going back to once the first play through has faded in my memory a bit. The character relationships blew me away with how nuanced they got. Like I said, this game feels like real life in that aspect.

Oh, and the ending! Oh. My. Word! Oxenfree is probably one of the best story games I have ever played.

Number #5: Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

It was Easter Weekend; Simone had gone to a ski camp with people from church and I was left to my own devices. Why not start Hellblade, I thought. After a day, I had completed Hellblade. Yes, it’s that good! Everything you have heard about how great it is pales in comparison. Great combat, amazing story, fantastic acting and mocap. If this is what Ninja Theory can do on a budget, I look forward to what they can do when Microsoft hands them a blank cheque and the world’s most powerful console…

Play with headphones, play when you won’t be disturbed, and just enjoy every creepy minute of this game. Also, seriously play with headphones! You won’t regret it.

Number #4: Gears Tactics

Would you believe I have never played a tactics-style game before? Not once in my life had I ever been interested in that idea of turn based, tactical team games. Which is odd, since I love turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy.

Well, it took Gears of War to get me to re-look at this genre of game, and what can I say? I love Gears of War, I love the universe, I love the characters and the action and the story. Sure, Gears 5 was super meh, but the horde mode, PVP and multiplayer are still top tier.

So with Gears doing it, I jumped in. And boy! I could spend hours just going through one mission. I could spend hours customising my characters. Gears Tactics is the first game I have looked at and thought to myself “If I put this on Insane difficulty, and really took my time with it, I could beat this game”. That alone is a testament to how good they have made it.

Number #3: No Man’s Sky

I pre-ordered No Man’s Sky when it came out in 2016. I like the idea of space after all. What was delivered was a chill exploration experience of a game. I enjoyed my time in this game, even though it was quite bare and not much to do.

Over the years, Hello Games have poured their heart and soul into this game – delivering something like 8 free content updates! And it shows too! This is a completely different game from what came out in 2016. And it’s so much better than anything else. Exploring, building, flying, and taking photos – everything in the game gets you sucked in for hours.

This year I got sucked in again, and spent a month on only 3 planets! I had an idea of going on an adventure in this game and then writing a story about it. That never happened as I become an explorer and cataloguer – collecting everything on each planet, taking too many photos and just living in this amazing universe. Now with cross-play between Xbox, GoG, Steam – it really has become an amazing experience.

Number #2: Satisfactory

And the award for spending the most time in any game of the year goes to Satisfactory. This year, I have spent about 6 days in total playing this game. Thats about 144 hours… Normally at the 10 hour mark I get over it and look for something new. but this year, Satisfactory introduced pipes, and fluids to the game, so of course I had to restart and rebuild my factory from scratch!

This game is super chill. There’s not much to worry about, and you just build, reiterate, tear it down and build again. I love this game and honestly had to find something else to play, or I would never play anything else. And that doesn’t make for very good stories for my podcast…

I can’t recommend this game enough. It seems so simple and yet is so in depth. And building your factory to get to the mythical 100% efficiency is the greatest challenge. This year, I made a 100% efficient (and visually and symmetrically pleasing) iron factory. It took way more time than I will admit to, and I even have notes in OneNote and on random bits of paper that got me there.

Number #1: Cyberpunk 2077

So much digital ink has been spilled about this game. And here I am just adding to it. Sure, it has some bugs, it doesn’t play nicely on last-gen consoles, and other things, but my time with Cyberpunk 2077 has been nothing short of incredible.

Everything in the game seems to have been thought through. Night City feels alive and real. Your character is not the most likable person, but that’s fine considering their backstory. And the graphics have made my GTX 1080 Ti cry. This game had me jumping in and doing random bits just to get another hit of Night City, not even progressing quests or jobs.

There will be patches, there will be updates, and there will be DLC. Of this I have no doubt. And for that very reason, I was happy to pre-order it and experience it in its first days. I look forward to jumping back in when I get a computer again!

Wrap Up

Next year, I’ll be going computer-less for the first time in my life. My Xbox Series X will be my gaming machine for the foreseeable future, and I am fine with that. It’s more powerful than my current machine and way more capable anyways. And only one of these games is not available on Xbox – which is probably for the best. I really don’t need to spend another 144 hours in Satisfactory just yet!

2020 was a great year for gaming, allowing me to catch up with some truly amazing games. With all the big Xbox releases next year, and moving countries, 2021 is going to be a completely different beast entirely.