Skip to main content

2020 Year In Review

It's time once again for my year end review. I can't believe I'm doing this again, or that I've been doing this for two years. Not going to lie, I didn't anticipate this going longer than a few posts. What started as a new years resolution two years ago has become something I look forward to doing each week (and also my de facto excuse to play more video games). 

But enough about that, it's time for the year end review. As I did last year, I will be calling out best game, worst game, most surprising and most disappointing. It goes without saying, but 10's games are ineligible and will not be factored into the scores. I will also not be counting my review of the "High Score" series, since comparing a video game to a documentary makes zero sense. Speaking of scores, here's a reminder of what I gave each game:

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne - 9.75/10

F-Zero GX - 9.75/10

Final Fantasy VII Remake - 9.5/10

Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millennium - 9.5/10

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire 9.5/10

Anodyne - 9/10

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game - 9/10

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighter - 9/10

Kagero: Deception 2 - 9/10

Streets of Rage 2 - 8.5/10

Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring - 8.5/10

Diablo III - 8.25

Spelunky - 8.25/10

Shining Force - 8/10

Magic the Gathering: Shandalar - 8/10

Gain Ground - 8/10

Grandia II - 7.5/10

Mega Man 8 - 7.5/10 

Fighter's History - 7.5/10

Mario Kart Double Dash - 7/10

Tekken 2 - 7/10

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers - 7/10

Dirge of Cerberus - 6.75/10

Power Instinct - 6.5/10

Street Fighter: The Movie 6.5/10

Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels - 6/10

Justice League Task Force - 6/10

E-Swat: City Under Siege - 6/10

Fatal Labrynth - 5/10

Goat Simulator - 5.5/10

Nano Breaker - 5.25/10

The Golden Compass - 5/10 

Tech Romancer - 4/10

Toy Story - 4/10

Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls - 4/10

Ecco The Dolphin - 3.5/10

Battle Arena Toshinden 3 - 3/10

Antz Extreme Racing - 3/10

Super Thunder Blade - 2/10

First, some score adjustments. I think Dirge of Cerberus needs to be bumped up to an even 7. Diablo III also needs a bump up to 8.5. The only other adjustment I would make would be for the Final Fantasy VII Remake. After letting its impact sink in for a bit, I think it needs to be bumped to a 9.75. I wanted to make sure my positive reaction wasn't pure fanboy-ism, and I think at this point I can comfortably say that wasn't the case.

Which leads us to the three way tie at the top of the scores. I think it's pretty clear that this year's crop of games was far stronger overall than last year's. Our highest score last year was a 9.25, which we bested three times this year. But which of those games came out on top? The Final Fantasy VII Remake was mind blowing, it's beautiful, engrossing and absolutely awesome. But it's an incomplete story. As a huge fan of the original, it was great to see Midgar in all its glory. But I really wish they had included more. That leaves us with F-Zero GX and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. It was a tight race between the three, but I would have to give the edge to SMT. It was a gaming experience that was completely unlike anything I had ever played before. But at the same time, it was so familiar from an actual gameplay perspective. I really, really miss RPGs like this. Still, I think all three of these are must plays.

Worst game may seem clear cut, but lets look beyond the numbers. First, improved quality of the games is visible here. The games at the bottom of this list are still bad, but none of them are scraping the bottom of the barrel like Rise of the Robots or Rocky and Bullwinkle. Super Thunder Blade got the lowest score, but that was largely on the back of its graphics making me physically ill. In terms of actual fun, I would have put this well ahead of Antz Extreme Racing, Battle Arena Toshinden 3 or even Ecco the Dolphin. But again, it did make me physically ill. I really can't overlook that, even if the 10 minutes it I could play were better than any of the time I spent with those other games. It's way better than some of the dreck I played last year, but STB is the winner (or loser) in 2020.

Most surprising came down to two games, Anodyne and the FF7 Remake. Not going to lie, I thought Square was going to massively disappoint with this game. That said, I kind of always knew it would be good, I just thought it would be a 7 or 8/10 instead of a new classic. I literally bought Anodyne by accident tapping the X button too fast while I was looking around on the PlayStation Store. I probably would have thrown a fit about it if it didn't cost $1. For the price of a doughnut, I got a beautiful, bizarre, impactful Zelda clone that's biggest flaw was that it ended too soon. It gets the nod for most surprising.

Most disappointing was easy. I waited a long time to give Ecco the Dolphin a shot. It was an absolutely miserable experience, probably the least fun I have had with a game that's actually functional in a long time. There really isn't much to be said about it, Ecco is just bad.

So that's a wrap there, but here's a quick update on the 10s project. Games with a strikethrough are complete.

Borderlands 2

Breath of Fire 2

Civilization 2

Deus Ex: The Conspiracy

Doom

Earthbound

Final Fantasy 6

Final Fantasy 7

Final Fantasy 8

Goldeneye: 007

Half Life 2

Heroes of Might and Magic 3

The Last of Us

Legend of Legia

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Lunar II: Eternal Blue

Madden 04, 08, 09

Mega Man 3

Mega Man X

Metal Gear Solid

Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow

Resident Evil (REmake)

Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil: Code: Veronica

Soul Caliber

Star Ocean: The Second Story   

Street Fighter II Turbo/Champion Edition

Super Mario 64

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the 7 Stars

Super Mario World

Twisted Metal 2

Valkyria Chronicles

WCW Vs. NWO: World Tour

aaaaand I barely made a dent in the list. I might have to pick it up a bit with these this year, but I don't want to rush either. A lot of these are long games, so I don't know if I'll even finish it this year, but I'm looking forward to trying.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 10s: Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

When I first started writing about games, I was very hesitant to include PC titles at all. As I've said numerous times before, it's just not something I've ever really felt qualified to talk about. There are so many iconic PC games that were just blind spots for me as I never really actively sought them out. If it didn't come on a PC Gamer demo disc or I didn't hear about it through word of mouth, I didn't know about it. Does anyone else remember those PC Gamer demo discs? I had as much fun playing with the UI on them as I did any of the actual demos. Maybe if I spent less time clicking around the secret underground club and more on actually playing the games, I would have had more PC experience. Eh, I'm okay with the fact that while Fallout and Diablo weren't nearly as critical a part of my early gaming life as Coconut Monkey. Even when I did play and enjoy PC games, it was typically because I played the console versions first. Games like Doom, Command
Post a Comment
Read more

Terranigma

  As usual, it took way longer than it should have, but I did EVENTUALLY do exactly what I said I was going to. It's a year late, but I've finally made my way through the Quintet trilogy. Playing these three games became a stated goal of mine since I started podcasting last year. One of my earliest episodes covered Soul Blazer, the first title in the pseudo series. The second game, Illusion of Gaia, was also a landmark episode as it was the first one to include the intro song ("A Glass Half Full of Tears" by Aura Blaze, who's music you should check out here ). Both of them received pretty solid scores, though I didn't quite like the latter quite as much as a lot of people seem to. After all these years, I'm still surprised I never played these games when they came out. Both were definitely right up my alley and readily available to buy or even rent at my local video store, but I just never picked them up. It's a little more understandable that I had ne
Post a Comment
Read more

Lost Odyssey: Part 2

Last week, we started our look at Lost Odyssey, a title that seemed to break unwritten rules of gaming left and right. We have a traditional RPG, which is the brainchild of the creator of Final Fantasy, released for XBox, a console not known for the genre, at a time when said genre was at what felt like the absolute bottom of its popularity. We started with the story, characters and world, all of which I thought were really good to great. That's a great start for an RPG, where those aspects are very important. But all of that can be undone if the gameplay isn't up to par. It's critical in any generation, but this is an essential aspect to call out in 7th gen RPGs. There was a lot of experimentation going on in the genre at the time, a lot of which didn't yield positive results. I guess I get it, the genre wasn't doing well at the time and developers were trying to do anything they could to bring it back to relevance. Sometimes, that meant terrible gimmicks. Other ti
Post a Comment
Read more