The Most Important, Accurate Ranking of 2020 Video Games on the Internet
~ Prologue ~
Every time January comes around I go through the same routine. I think it was a bad year for video games, work on my game of the year list, and realize I was wrong. This year I thought the same, worked on my list, and realized I was right.
So I spent a lot of time with old games in 2020. And thinking about the ones I was naturally attracted to in the absence of anything new got me thinking about what makes me love certain games way, way more than others.
I’m a tactile boy. Call me The Tactile Gamer. I like feeling as physically connected to the games I play as possible. I want to forget the controller is there, like it’s an extension of my hands instead of a device I’m using to make things happen on a TV across the room. My favorite games make me squeeze the controller and curl my toes when I’m pulling off some sick ass shit.
There are different ways a game can do it, and it’s usually hard for me to nail down why it works when it does. But if the feel isn’t there, and it seems like it should be, I bounce off quick.
There weren’t a lot of great games for The Tactile Gamer this year, but that’s OK. It’s fine. I’ll be fine.
— Drew
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10. DOOM Eternal
DOOM (2016) is a beautiful, perfect game. DOOM Eternal was in a bit of an unfair position because it couldn’t be a surprise, and the shock that there was an incredible new DOOM game…a new DOOM game…carried a lot of weight for its predecessor.
There were moments playing through DOOM Eternal when I wasn’t sure if the new mechanics added depth or just seemed like they added depth. The constant, panicky movement demanded by the first game was still there, and the new elements initially felt like an interesting expansion on a pretty basic game.
But after awhile, those resource gathering mechanics felt more like mindless, compulsive things to remember to do, rather than a new layer of depth for the game’s combat encounters. If you need X, do Y. It made things more panicky, and technically more engaging, but it wasn’t more interesting. And at times it made the game a little too easy.
This is all nitpicking, though. It’s fun to play. The music is noisy and strange in a way I didn’t expect, and the sheer volume of handcrafted, creative flourishes in the environmental design had me coasting through levels that otherwise might have felt way too long.
The Marauder sucks, a lot. And the boss fights were mediocre. But I’m excited to see what they’ll do next.
****
9. Call of Duty: Warzone
A new genre was created a few years ago, which is pretty wild. I’ve felt passionate about the genius and untapped potential of battle royale games since PUBG blew me away a few years ago, and it’s been fascinating (and sad) watching so many developers fail to move things forward. Apex Legends is fantastic, but until now, that’s been it.
I really can’t believe how good Warzone is. The battle royale mode in Black Ops 4 was rough, and felt like a temporary failed experiment in a franchise that would quickly move on to focus on its strengths. But what they came up with in Modern Warfare (which is, on its own, maybe the best Call of Duty ever made), is a shockingly cohesive combination of two very different things.
Once the novelty of the circle and the player count goes away, the staying power of a battle royale game comes down to the diversity of its firefights. Apex Legends achieved it with a focus on verticality and movement, and Warzone does it with pure density in its level design.
The map is just so full of stuff. And that density means every single round feels fresh and unpredictable, and the number of options you have navigating the map, at both a micro and macro level, is huge. You can flank an entire squad while your teammates are pinned down. You can hide from a group passing through a small town, and sneak off by weaving carefully between road barricades, parked cars and vegetation.
All these options keep you on your toes, keep you engaged, and help the game avoid many of the worst moments you’ll experience in a battle royale, like instantly dying in a big, empty field because there was nowhere else to go and someone had a sniper.
I still miss PUBG, despite its flaws. It was a multiplayer horror game disguised as a shooter, and nothing since has explored that branch of the genre. But Warzone gave me some of the most memorable, exciting firefights I’ve ever seen in a game. And the Gulag is great. Call of Duty is back, baby.
****
8. Valorant
Valorant came at the perfect time for me this year. I had zero interest in the game when I first heard of it, and even less when I saw the first bit of footage. But when it finally launched I was in a video game rut, burned out by bloated, complicated, exhausting games. And when I tried it out of bored desperation, it clicked immediately. Getting into Valorant felt like stepping outside and sitting on the porch after spending an hour surrounded by people at a shitty party.
I’m too dumb to analyze the balance and game design of a Counter-Strike-like. But Valorant was so approachable, so snappy, so clean, that I was never overwhelmed and always ended a night of matches feeling a little bit better.
Of course, like any hyper-competitive game, the biggest drawback to Valorant is that you have to deal with other people (and they have to deal with me). Matching up with strangers usually sucks, but the couple months I spent playing with a regular group was some of the most fun I’ve had with a multiplayer game in years. I really want to get back in.
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7. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The above image is an official design document from the developer of Animal Crossing. It’s a breakdown of the retro fan model, and its animation.
This encapsulates a lot of what makes Animal Crossing special to me. They didn’t need to include the little dent in the fan’s buttons. Look at that zoomed-in profile of the button! All of New Horizon’s most mundane items are covered in lovingly crafted details like these, and it gives the whole thing life.
There’s a uniquely Japanese reverence for tiny details and daily rituals that makes everything in New Horizons feel like a big deal. It’s a significant life event for your little island dude when you buy a new chair and it looks perfect in an empty corner of your room. I got genuinely excited one day putting a thermostat next to my front door, because it balanced things out visually. It’s satisfying, and therapeutic, and everything people say about Animal Crossing.
There are UI problems that are a bummer to deal with. It feels like the multiplayer was intentionally and maliciously designed to convince people not to do it. And pushing the neighbor dialogue in a more friendly direction destroyed a lot of the humor and character from the older games. But I came back to Animal Crossing throughout this entire year, over and over, and it always calmed me down and made me feel good.
****
6. Yakuza: Like a Dragon
I’m about eight hours in on Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and based on what I’ve heard, there’s a lot to go. But what I’ve played is more crammed full of vibrancy, humor, and insane creativity than anything I’ve played in years.
The main story cutscene direction, as it was in Yakuza 0, is some of the best in video games. And bumping into all the bizarre characters you meet wandering around Yokohama, so far, has been incredibly fun.
If a game this long was just wacky, even my kind of wacky, it’d probably become grating. But I can’t overstate how impressed I’ve been with the bold tonal shifts that come and go throughout Like a Dragon. It’s an unbelievably crazy balancing act to stick a sincere monologue about the root causes of homelessness and the delusional savior complex fueling people who apply the bootstrap mentality to the population right in the middle of a game where you knock out gangsters with a five foot long vibrator, but it somehow succeeds more often than it doesn’t. It’s on that same Metal Gear level, to me, of “How the fuck is this working?” I have no idea. It just does.
With respect to the gameplay, I’m kind of just playing through it. It’s OK. I’ve never really played a turn-based RPG, and a lot of the JRPG references are whizzing over my head. Maybe because I don’t have experience with the genre, and it still feels novel to me, the shallow combat doesn’t bother me much. I like that there’s a light timing element to the environmental interactions during fights, and the exaggerated ragdoll is goofy and fun. It’s all just a lot to take in, and I’ve loved every minute of it.
****
5. Factorio
Almost every game I connect with, to some extent, taps into my compulsive tendencies. I like organizing things in boxes and making things look nice. Most games occasionally give that to me, Factorio is basically nothing else.
It is so fucking satisfying for me to line up conveyor belts along multiple rows of mining drills, converge them into a single belt and watch the ore flow. And then I get to set up power lines. And line up little lights. And lay down concrete paths to run around on. And the walls. Fuck! Building walls around everything. My god.
The strategy in Factorio is the interesting part. Making sure things run efficiently, maximizing what you have and expanding your base at the right times. It’s probably well designed, but I don’t really pay attention to it. Simon dealt with all that crap and I pretended to care but I was really just thinking about lining up more power lines.
This isn’t a bit, by the way. My #5 game of the year is purely, for me, about lining things up. And it’s a joy to play. It has great UI, an incredible map, and surprisingly high visual clarity for something with so much animating junk on the screen.
The tower defense element feels a little pointless, since it’s so easy to kill the bugs. But I think it would feel pointless without any kind of threat. And I guess it’s all pointless anyway because I just want to line up those sweet sweet power lines. Maybe one day I’ll just build thousands of power lines in a giant grid, hooked up to nothing. Who cares.
****
4. Spelunky 2
Spelunky is my favorite game of all time. I’ve played it consistently for nearly a decade, for hundreds and hundreds of hours. Hearing the news that Derek Yu was making a sequel, and doing it with a team of people, was crazy. But the game and its genre lends itself to tweaks and additions, so it also made sense. I was excited to see what they came up with, but couldn’t help assuming that it wouldn’t go well for me.
My biggest fear with Spelunky 2 was that I would breeze through it in a week. I’m here to report, officially, that I did not do that. I still haven’t beaten Spelunky 2. It’s really, really, really hard. And that’s really good news.
There are a ton of subtle gameplay tweaks from the first game that are all super smart and literally no one reading this will care about them, so I won’t write about it. But they’re good, OK? The core platforming is still strong, and my concerns about the visual style after seeing that first trailer are completely gone. It looks clean. The snakes look stupid but it’s fine.
The best thing I can say about Spelunky 2 is that I’m still playing it almost every day, and I can’t imagine stopping anytime soon. It’s so exciting to know that there’s a deep well for me to explore, to find new secrets and work through the intensely satisfying process of slowly mastering the game, level by level, until it’s a breeze.
Derek, I know you’re reading this, and I just want to say I love you, and you and your team did a great job.
****
3. Hades
I played Hades when it was out in early access, and knew there was something special about it within 10 minutes. The art, the music and the writing was good, but that was all expected from a Supergiant game, and I didn’t connect with any of that stuff as hard as other people have since. The feel is what got me.
It feels ridiculously great to get a weapon you like, mod it with a few complementary boons, and start mowing bad guys down. And that combat combined with the randomization and addictive progression of a roguelike made for one of the tightest, most gratifying action games I’ve played in a long time.
There’s nothing else to say, I guess. It’s just good. They did good. I should write these entries starting at #1, not #10, because I always get tired of writing by the end and I don’t want to write more about fucking DOOM Eternal than my favorite game of the year.
****
2. Deep Rock Galactic
Sometimes I think about a game I loved in the past, something that felt huge at the time, that created or popularized a genre, and wonder “What the hell happened to that kind of game? Why didn’t anyone keep going with that?”
Left 4 Dead is one of those games. A co-op shooter against waves of enemies is a concept that’s so clearly brilliant, and so ripe for new ideas, that I still can’t believe no one took the torch and ran with it.
Deep Rock Galactic feels like it was dropped out of a dimension where that’s been happening for the last ten years. Every single element of the game — the level design, how you (and the enemies) traverse the environment, how you can change the environment, the varied but not overly complicated tools you have — everything feels maximally creative and passionately thought out.
The theming and visuals are great. For an indie game in development for years, it all just feels miraculously cohesive, polished, and fun. And it gets better as it gets harder, which is rare. Rock and stone.
****
1. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is the best remake of all time, and it’s a remake of the best feeling video game franchise of all time. The Holy Grail for The Tactile Gamer.
Top to bottom, they nailed it. The controls feel faithful but improve on the originals. Adding the revert and wall plant was crucial, and somehow they don’t break levels designed without them in mind. The visuals are great. The online multiplayer is great. They did it.
And almost as important as the controls, they captured the vibe. This is, inevitably, soaked in nostalgia for a lot of grandpas like me. They got so much of the music! I love that the skaters are old. Listening to Superman while making a digital 52-year-old Tony Hawk do a 900 makes me want to cry. It’s genuinely beautiful.
I think I’ll regularly revisit the Pro Skater franchise for my entire pro gamer life. It’s been an endless source of joy for me to skate around, grinding on shit, doing sick ass motherfucking kickflips in these games, and it makes me so happy to know I never have to look at grimy PS1 graphics to do that again.
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