It’s that time of year again when we start talking Respawning’s official Game Of The Year! Here’s a quick rundown of how it works this year..
Each content creator here at Respawning will list their Top 10 games of the year across all platforms. Each place gets awarded an amount of points depending on where they come. So for example the 10th place game gets 1 point, 9th place gets 2 points all the way up to 1st place which gets awarded 10 points, you get the idea!
Then come the end of the week we’ll add up all the scores to confirm Respawning’s official overall Top 10 and our Game Of The Year in a special video over on our YouTube channel! Next up, it’s Alexx!
Whilst I have played more than ten games that released in 2020, I haven’t played ten that I liked. That said, this year my top ten will comprise of the six games I liked, one game I didn’t hate and three games that I enjoyed watching.
I am yet to play Hades but I haven’t seen Will gush about a game to this extent since 2016’s Overwatch so I’ll put it here for now until I get round to playing it.
It seems weird to put a game I have no intention of playing in my top ten, but I enjoyed the story and what Naughty Dog were trying to achieve with this game. Great graphics and an even greater cast.
Completing the trio of games in this top ten that I didn’t play, everything I watched and read about this game looked truly terrifying and not something you could pay me to suffer through (unless it’s a large amount, DM’s are open). Credit where credit’s due for making a scary game scary so gold star to Frictional Games.
Here we arrive at the games in this top ten ranking which I did play. My experience with Journey to the Savage Planet lasted for all of two hours before I got bored and moved on. There is a lot to be commended for the art style but the constant attempts at humour that totally fell flat played a large part in my decision to uninstall this game.
I really enjoyed playing this until I lost one race too many and deleted it out of rage. Definitely a fun game at times but one that does little to aid my blood pressure.
I am putting this game here as it was my favourite game of 2019 and it launched on PC this year. I don’t play PC games but as it released this year it still counts..
Everyone told me going in to this that the combat is ‘just like Final Fantasy XV’ (my favourite game of all time). It appears that nobody has actually played Final Fantasy XV as the comparisons start and finish with the protagonist being moody and having crazy hair. In all honesty it was the fact the combat wasn’t what I was told that put this remake on the back foot immediately for me, and even though I enjoyed what I played the number two spot on this list released while I was playing and so I abandoned this for that and haven’t gone back.
I played both expansions, Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra, for at least 20 hours each. It was great to see so many returning Pokemon who didn’t make it into the base game, and seeing my boy Scolipede wandering around in the forest on the Isle of Armor is somehow one of my happiest gaming memories of this year. Crown Tundra brought back all legendary Pokemon from previous games which I highly approve of, though the decision to not allow players to use their own Pokemon to catch them is the sole reason this game isn’t higher on this list.
I loved Ghost of Tsushima immediately upon playing it, and scored it highly in my review on the site which you can read here. I’m juggling playing through it again on new game plus alongside a couple of other games, and even if you aren’t into samurai themed media you will not be disappointed with this. The grind to Platinum is particularly arduous here so be aware of that if you plan on going for it.
I wasn’t planning on playing this game until watching the Bear’s Den review of it and immediately purchasing it. What followed were 15 hours of the most satisfying, fresh and fun gameplay I have had all year, and aside from some late game camera issues when your shark grows to be too big for certain environments, Maneater is a perfect game and an absolute necessity for anyone which I cannot wait to play again when my PS5 shows up (likely years from now judging how things are at time of writing).