This content was originally posted in early 2021 on my Twitter account, @Capshot18, and may have been edited slightly to better fit this site's formatting.
It's that time again. Another year, another overly-long slightly-late way-too-personal end-of-year wrap-up thread. Like last year, I'll spend a few tweets detailing some overall reflections on 2020 and then I'll get to some of my favorite things I watched/played/did last year.
2020 was... a bad year (though, honestly, pretty much every year from the past decade has been a "bad year" on a global scale) but I made it to 2021 and, given how bad things almost got for me, I'm extremely thankful that I'm able to say that.
I still don't feel super comfortable talking about it, but I was in a really bad, potentially dangerous state of mind back at the beginning of the year and I'm not sure what would've happened to me if I hadn't essentially been forced to move back in with some of my family.
Most of the things that were bothering me a year ago are still things I'm worried about (and the past year has obviously also added new things to worry about) but I don't feel quite as hopeless as I did back then and I'm unbelievably glad for that.
I know it's been a rough year all around, so I don't know what good there is in trying to find a "silver lining" to all of this, but despite the otherwise awful year we've all just had I'm relieved that, on a *purely personal* level, I'm more hopeful now than I was a year ago.
Now that all that's out of the way, I wanted to get to the meat-and-potatoes of this thread: a bunch of self-indulgent "best of" lists of things I saw/played/did last year.
(Here's last year's thread, for reference)
I'll start off with my favorite movies from last year:
10. Minari
9. The Mortuary Collection
8. Emma.
7. The Invisible Man
6. Sound of Metal
5. Shadow in the Cloud
4. One Night in Miami
3. Wolfwalkers
2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
1. 1917
Next, and with considerately more detail, my favorite video games from 2020:
10. SpellTower+
This is a pretty intuitive word game with daily challenges and I don't know exactly what it is about it that got its hooks in me, but something did, and I loved it. Honestly, it's a really well-crafted mobile game and a good one-of-those goes a long way.
9. SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE
Did you like SUPERHOT? Do you want more SUPERHOT? This is more SUPERHOT.
8. The Last of Us Part II
To put it simply, I have extremely mixed feelings about this game. Mechanically I think it refines and improves upon the (already great) combat and gameplay of the first game, and it's a technical marvel, but... I think I hated the story. There are strong performances throughout and, structurally, it tries to do some interesting things (and almost succeeds!) but at the end of the day I think the narrative fails on a fundamental level and I don't think its story's a great followup to the original. Lastly, since it was on my mind when I played the game, I wanted to link to an article detailing some of the conditions at Naughty Dog when this game was in development (in summary: things seemed not great): https://kotaku.com/as-naughty-dog-crunches-on-the-last-of-us-ii-developer-1842289962
7. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
This is basically just more of Insomniac's Spider-Man so if you liked that you'll probably like this. They manage to make Miles feel different from Peter (he has a few more powers but fewer gadgets) and it's an enjoyable followup.
6. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2
It's a remake of sorts of the early Tony Hawk games and while there are a few changes made to make it seem "modern", it feels like the old Tony Hawk games and that's what matters. And Tony Hawk games still rule.
5. Watch Dogs: Legion
While it may be a pretty familiar Ubisoft open-world game on its surface, there are some extremely cool procedural hooks underlying it all. Essentially, each NPC is theoretically playable and has pre-existing ties to other NPCs. The end result is an open-world where each person you control has a history that you helped shape and, while the game may not always give you a reason to vary things up, picking apart and examining how (I think) it all works has been extremely fascinating to explore.
4. Noita
The elevator pitch for this is "what if one of those physics-simulation web-toys was structured like Spelunky" and the end result is a lot of fun. I'm lousy at it and can't even consistently make it out of the first area, but even failure in this is entertaining. Systemic interactions can lead to a lot of memorable moments in games, so a roguelike *built* on those physics-driven moments means that every run is unpredictable in a really fun way.
3. Ghost of Tsushima
It's the first Sucker Punch game we've gotten since 2014 and, amazingly, I think it was worth the wait. It might be a bit larger in scope than I'd want but, since essentially all of the content is worthwhile, I'm not sure I should hold that against it. It's comprised of a lot of familiar pieces but it's all handled with a high degree of polish and tied together with some genuinely stunning art direction. On top of that, it has a really strong cast of characters with some strong performances all around.
2. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Part strategy game, part visual novel (or maybe adventure game?), this is a cool thing. The story may seem a bit convoluted (there are an absurd amount of moving pieces in play and a lot of characters to keep track of) but it all somehow works. The sheer ambition (and audacity!) of this game's plot (it's a high-school drama, it's a mecha-anime, it's a mystery, it's so many other things) means that it's constantly throwing new ideas and elements at you and it's always compelling.
1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
I haven't played much of this since last summer, and I haven't thought about it much since then either, but putting anything else at the top of my list would feel dishonest. I could go into more detail about this but I've got a good feeling you probably already know what this game is. You're on an island with some talking animals and you do some yardwork and other repetitive tasks and just sort of... relax. Because it's tied to a real-world calendar and a real-world day-night cycle, it added a sense of normalcy and structure to an otherwise... unpredictable and chaotic year, and I definitely needed that.
Because I played a lot of older games for the first time last year I also had some opinions on those, so here's another list:
10. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
It may not offer as much granularity as SWAT 4, but this game (and what I played of the first one) evokes a similar feeling of being part of a small, fragile squad being sent out on tense, high-stakes missions.
9. Demon's Souls (the PS3 one)
I've started and stopped this multiple times over the years but, for reasons I'll get to later, I revisited it and I'm really glad I did. It's a bit obtuse and the difficulty has some weird spikes, but it's a very satisfying game if you can get over the hump.
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (the 2019 one)
This fourth "Modern Warfare" game (not to be confused with "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" or that game's remake, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered") is a reboot of sorts of those earlier games, and it's a lot of fun. I haven't played a Call of Duty since the original Black Ops but, for whatever reason, I picked this one up and really like it. The filesize on my PS4 is absurdly large and I haven't even touched the campaign, but DANG this is a good multiplayer shooter.
7. Sea of Thieves
Sailing the wide open seas, completing a handful of the same (or similar) menial tasks, and getting terrified any time I see another player, much like my time with Red Dead Online I've greatly enjoyed playing this (ostensibly-better-in-co-op) game by myself.
6. The Outer Worlds
It may be similar to the Fallouts and Elder Scrolls of the past but, because of the setting or maybe because of its relatively smaller scope, this was the first one-of-those that I've actually finished, and I loved the 30 or so hours I spent with it. The main narrative is fine, with a fair amount of binary choices to make along the way but, much like a good Bioware game, your interactions with your companions are where you'll see most of the best writing.
5. The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories
Mechanically speaking this is a relatively simple (though conceptually macabre) puzzle-platformer, but it has a narrative that deals with some mature themes with a relatively surprising amount of nuance and respect. I would say more but given how important the narrative is I think it's best to go in without any real expectations. I had an element of the story spoiled for me beforehand and, while the story still works, it'd be best to just experience things as they happen. Essentially, if you think a moody, quirky, somewhat-rough-around-the-edges puzzle-platformer with a heavy story made by SWERY sounds interesting then this might be for you.
4. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II
While I also played and enjoyed the first one before this, and have played a lot of the MMO after this, this second entry really hits on what I love about the setting, namely a Star Wars extremely far removed from the films. As it's set hundreds (thousands?) of years before the prequels it's free to use familiar conventions and ideas from that universe without any of the baggage that comes with Skywalkers or Palpatines. It's extremely refreshing. The combat hasn't necessarily aged well, but the narrative is still great and paints a picture of a Star Wars with some actual nuance. The Empire's still the same evil-for-evil's-sake baddies, but the Republic and the Jedi are shown in a... less-than-flattering light.
3. Halo: Reach
For pretty much as long as I can remember I've been hearing about how good Halo was and, in 2020, I was stoked to find out that, yeah, Halo rules. Moreso than that, with Reach specifically, I was surprised how well this works outside of just being a prequel to the first Halo. While I have vague ideas about later Halo plots (I still haven't even started Halo 2) Reach works as a self-contained war story about soldiers squaring off against impossible odds and has emotional beats that still land even if you know how it all ends. Also the combat's just... really darn good. It has AI that's consistent and easy to predict but not necessarily easy to manipulate or cheese, and with the tools you have access to each fight is essentially a wide open sandbox.
2. Bloodborne
Demon's Souls may have shown up on this list already, but it was playing and finishing Bloodborne that convinced me to give that one another shot. Frankly, this is just exceptionally well-made. To put it briefly, Bloodborne has some exceptional level design, some great aesthetics (it's got werewolves! it's got eldritch horrors! it's basically Victorian London!) and, most importantly, some really tight combat that encourages you to stay active and aggressive. While Demon's Souls (and what little I've played of Dark Souls) encourages caution and a slow, careful approach, Bloodborne is just as harsh and punishing but rewards you for staying in the fray. It has a system that lets you regain health by attacking an enemy shortly after taking damage which allows you to take risks you might not normally take, and the end result is pretty much always incredibly exciting.
1. Higurashi When They Cry
I've already said a lot about this but, well, liked it a great deal. Essentially, a teenage boy moves to a small town in Japan where mysterious and violent things seem to be happening and it just sort of escalates from there. It alternates pretty wildly in tone from a slice-of-life comedy to a darker mystery to an apparent psychological horror at other points, and the variety and intensity of each of these moments and moods helps sell the setting as a believable world with stakes. A lot of similar stories might jump straight to the drama, to the exciting and "juicy" bits (and even the anime adaptation is guilty of this, to a large extent) but this game lets you sit with its characters for long periods of time before things... change. When something dramatic or noteworthy happens, then, its effect on the characters and situation as a whole is obvious and apparent, rather than something that needs to be explicitly explained. It's very long (took me around 80 hours) and it may not be very interactive in a traditional video-gamey sense, but I think it's better than the anime adaptation that came after it and I think this format ("video game" or not) is part of what makes it work so well.
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