What video games did you play this year and what did you think of them? 2020/Quarantine edition

I like open world games with a storyline the best. I’m a bit of a completest so it takes me a long time to complete. I’m currently playing Assassin’s Creed Origins which has sat on my shelf for a while.

I replayed Medievil on PSN for a bit of nostalgia. Still fun.

I game I don’t here much about is Days Gone. I loved it. Open world with a good story line and good voice acting. I hope it was popular enough for a sequel.

Played through all of the Wolfenstein games that I missed. Still think New Colossus was the best but all were fun.

Here are the video games I’ve played this year:

The Witcher 3: I don’t understand what all the hype was about. I saw it through, it didn’t feel like a slog, it was a… decent game, I guess, but I didn’t enjoy it any more than I did, say, any of the Assassin’s Creed games. I didn’t enjoy it any less, either; I just don’t get all the lavish “greatest game off all time” praise that’s been heaped upon it.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: I started this only to bide my time until the release of Watch Dogs Legion, because it had been free as part of Borderlands: The Handsome Collection on PS Plus a while back. I didn’t finish it; by playing it, I confirmed that I still don’t like first-person shooters. Too repetitive. Nothing but run-and-gun.

Watch Dogs Legion: I’ve been a fan of the Watch Dogs games since the first one, which I thought was a great game and didn’t agree with all the criticism of. This was fun, but it felt like the main story campaign was short. Also there were so many f-bombs it felt gratuitous. Online multiplayer had been planned to start by the time I finished the main campaign, and I was looking forward to trying it, but it’s been postponed to an undisclosed date.

Interesting take. I have no idea how to rank the greatest games of all time, but if there were 20 or so games on the list, I think Witcher 3 could make the list. I have not played enough Assassin Creed games, though.

I like them as well. I do find them distracting though. My current experience with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is that it takes me ages to move a small distance across the map because I feel compelled to locate every item of wealth and “world event” along the way.

I beat this game today at about 32 hours of gameplay. I did not shoot for 100%, but made an effort to get a good chunk done, both required and optional.

My favorite new game of 2020 and a game I hope gets a sequel. I also hope the DLC is worth it and is available cheap by summer.

During the initial days of the quarantine, as I sat at home looking for things to do, I watched a lot of vlog posts by a couple video game reviewer groups, and I was enthralled watching the chill of Animal Crossing New Horizons.I found a used Switch and got it, and I’ve been playing it pretty steadily ever since.

I’ve also picked up Memoranda, which is a puzzle/mystery game that I mess around with from time to time. I like the artwork and “feel” of the game, but I’ve needed some online pointers to make headway early on. I’m beginning to “grok” it a little better now.

Another one I picked up for the artwork is a platform scroller puzzle game called Fobia. Nice to look at, but kind of frustrating to play. Some of the physics don’t make a lot of sense.

And of course I wanted to try my hand at a notoriously difficult one, so I picked up Cuphead. Wow. Even at the easy level it’s tough. Of course I’m way out of practice on video games, and there’s some things that are standard now that I never did before. Such as “parrying”. I’m still having trouble doing that.

I just picked up Call of the Sea, a game I have heard is similar to Myst(but more modern, I guess?).

I know we are into 2021 now, but still. The quarantine continues!

My kids and I finished the year playing a bunch of Overcooked after one of them got it as a Christmas gift. What a hilarious party game. Some of the leaps in difficulty, though, were pretty intimidating for my children as kid gamers; the first time we hit a level in total darkness, where you have to memorize the positions of all the stations after hunting for them with a flashlight, freaked them out for a few minutes. So they retreated into the anarchic fun of just setting a kitchen entirely on fire and playing hide-and-seek with each other among the flames.

I started playing PC Building Simulator which is you running a PC repair shop and doing repairs in a pseudo-physics sort of way. Like you have to undo the case screws but that’s just you clicking on them and you have to run the cables but you just click the points and it automatically routes them. So it’s not as annoying as it could be.

It starts off pretty entertaining (for me) but is quickly becoming job after job of “I want a PC that gets a 3DMark score of 4110!” which (a) isn’t how anyone buys/upgrades a PC and (b) is getting obnoxious to guess out what components will get you there. So I was enjoying it but it’s quickly wearing out its welcome.

Because of this thread, I purchased Fenyx Rising. I’m enjoying the game, but I’ve played so much BOTW that I’m struggling a lit bit with trying to adjust to the new buttons to push.

I suck pretty bad at most of these games, but I enjoy them just the same. I got pretty good at BOTW, so I have hope for this new one, but it will take me A LOT longer than most of you.

Hey, I’m glad! I beat it Saturday and it took me 32 or so hours, without 100% completion at all. I just did what I felt like and made it through. Very satisfying game.

I’m getting to the end of “Paper Mario - The Origami King” And it has been a hoot, I’ve been chuckling non-stop. Not a brutally hard game by any stretch but a very enjoyable way of spending a few dozen hours. And both my wife and daughter have played through it and loved it.

I recently finished Control (on Xbox) - the Ultimate Edition with all the DLC and it was my favorite game in a long time. Great gameplay; solid progression of powers vs. difficulty of opponents; crazy, disturbing, funny and just plain weird storyline; cool aesthetic. Just excellent on every level. A very story-driven game - not a sandbox like Skyrim, for what it’s worth, but I’m much more into storylines than sandbox.

Got a switch end of August. First console since launch day GameCube.

Botw has been my primary focus. It is certainly good, but it has felt like a chore and I know that if I take a break for too long I won’t be able to go back to it without a full restart. Feels more like Skyrim than a Zelda game.

Hades is great! Love seeing the indie devs launching premiere quality games at discount prices. Top notch voice acting and story. Gameplay feels great. Even dying moves you forward.

Trimps is still the best game ever made. Love letting it run on a chromebook and just check ins couple times each day. Hard to explain just how great this idle/incremental is.

Path of Diablo is worth a mention too. It is a private server of Diablo 2 with Path of Exile mod and seasonal updates for balance and gameplay changes.

I played a whole lot of Among Us this year. My sister introduced me to it. It still has some bugs to work out, and there are some annoying hackers and assholes, but I had a lot of fun with that game in 2020.

I also went back and purchased The Sims 2: Ultimate Collection and had a blast with it.

I’ve now achieved most of the endings for this game, and I can confirm that the story still did not engage me at all, and was actually something of a missed opportunity after setting up the sentience of the robots.

It’s still a beautiful game but gameplay and story were just “meh”.

I just installed Death Stranding from Steam onto my PC. It’s definitely the weirdest, most surreal game I’ve played in awhile. The setting reminds of films like Oblivion, Annihilation or Edge of Tomorrow. You’re Daryl from The Walking Dead? And you carry a weird psychic baby around? And The Bionic Woman is your mom and sister? And it’s from Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima so the characters all have bizarre names and you aren’t quite sure if the dialogue was correctly translated to English. And your job seems to be some sort of futuristic FedEx delivery guy?

Kojima never met a story/script editor he decided to hire.

I forgot to mention Star Wars: Squadrons upthread. I got it, played it, and was surprised to be pretty disappointed.

It’s fantastically gorgeous. But it’s just XWing/Tie Fighter/XWing vs. Tie Fighter from back in the 90s warmed over with new, better graphics. I was expecting something else I suppose, but it’s the same old game, complete with the same balancing act between your weapon, shield and engine power, and optimizing your weaponry for your play style.

Kind of like how Diablo 3 was the same old game as the others, just prettier.

What year is “this year?”

I just bought:
Breath of the wild (i played a little of it before, and look forward to trying again)
Civilization VI (probably a mistake, but it was cheap.)
Gorogoa (a fun game, but short. I’ve already finished it )
Okami (I watched my daughter play this game, so I know what I’m getting into. I started it and so far I’m enjoying it. But it was a little annoying that after completing a piece (perhaps the intro) I wanted to take a break and had a lot of trouble finding a place where I could save.)