Keeping up the tradition, here are the games I played in 2020.
Legend
🌟 A personal favorite. (Not necessarily for everyone.)
👍 Recommended if you haven’t played it.
👎 Avoid it. It’s terrible.
Xbox One
Darksiders Genesis
Played a bit of this with my wife for some couch co-op fun.
Switch
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
A fun beat-em-up in the Ultimate Alliance franchise. Got boring fairly fast, though.
Animal Crossing
I still have a love-hate relationship with Animal Crossing. Building stuff is fun, but it feels like too much of a chore. I stopped playing after a few months.
PC
Destiny 2 🌟👍
I still love Destiny. Beyond Light introduced a bunch of changes that I really appreciate, though it’s starting to get a little boring.
Satisfactory 🌟👍
My newest gaming addiction. Played this hard for a while, building up a factory, oil refinery, and a skybridge that circled the map. Stopped playing for a while once I had unlocked everything, then came back for the extremely well-designed FICSMAS event.
Kerbal Space Program 🌟👍
Started playing this again to see where it’s come in the time since I’ve been away. It got a lot more fun once I started using MechJeb extensively to handle launch and rendezvous so I could just focus on designing rockets and missions.
X4: Foundations 🌟👍
Played a lot of this. I’ve always enjoyed the X series, but X4 is one of the easiest to play. I barely even touched the story missions until I already owned about half the galaxy and had several shipyards. (I also did a lot of idling, letting my fortune grow while working.)
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
A puzzle game where you’re slicing open ships to salvage them, using the money you make (after fees from your employer) to upgrade your equipment. A time limit on each shift is your biggest obstacle, forcing you to cut corners to save time. If you’re not careful, you can cause an explosive decompression, slice a fuel tank, or cause a reactor explosion. And any accidents cut into your income.
There’s also a hyper-capitalist dystopian backstory here. You’re an “independent contractor” and you’re charged rental fees for your equipment and housing, so that $1M in salvage may only net you about $200K. Eventually you’ll save up enough to buy your equipment outright and avoid the fees, but it’s a long road to get there.
Diablo 3
Season 20: Barbarian. Season 21: Demon Hunter. Season 22: Skipped.
Trailmakers
Got this in one of the Humble Monthly bundles. It’s a fun little vehicle-building game using Lego-like components. I had a hard time designing anything I really wanted, so I ended up pulling things from the Steam Workshop to finish out the campaign.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Loved this. It’s a great CRPG with the depth of Pathfinder underneath, though you can’t always pull off some of the builds you can with the pen-and-paper version.
Jurassic World: Evolution
Kept playing this in 2020. Still love it.
Warframe
I don’t play a lot of Warframe, but I still enjoy it. Came back this year for some 7th Anniversary events.
Command and Conquered: Remastered Collection
I love classic C&C, and this brought back some memories.
Spacebase Startopia
One of my favorite games from the 90s. Played the beta. Still a little rough, but all the basics are already there and it definitely feels like the original. Planning to have a lot of fun with this after release.
Observation 👍
Great sci-fi story. Basically a story-driven puzzle game. It’s pretty easy and relatively short, but worth playing.
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
Starts off slow, but once you get a few pilots to fill out your lance (after the third or fourth mission), it gets better. It’s a bit of a grind to earn reputation and c-bills, and it’s difficult to find good mechs and pilots until later in the game. Overall, it’s good, but not great.
Spiritfarer 👍
A fun game about ferrying spirits to the afterlife. You have to keep them happy and solve their problems so they can rest.
Not For Broadcast
I don’t think I’ve played a game like this before. It’s difficult and has a very odd story. If you like British humor, definitely give it a try.
Supraland
A fun little first-person Metroidvania. Good humor and some great Easter eggs.
Gris 👍
Deserves all those awards.
Phoenix Point
Fun. Similar to XCOM.
Everspace 🌟👍
I’m typically not a fan of rogue-likes, but something about Everspace clicked with me and I loved it.
Nova Drift 🌟👍
Surprise hit for me. It’s a rogue-like shooter with some incredible ability combinations. Every run is fun even if it’s short-lived.
Genesis Alpha One
Another rogue-like where you build up your ship and crew until you can start a “Genesis” colony on an alien world. Fun and super creepy at times.
Little Big Workshop
Build a factory, hire workers, build stuff. Cute, but gets tedious.
The Universim
I’ve been playing this through several betas (even before it was on Steam). A civilization builder that’s had a lot of content added.
Railway Empire
Got through Humble Monthly, played because I was bored. If you like trains, it’s good. I found some of the rail laying annoying, but overall a solid tycoon game.
Inch By Inch
Bought and played this after seeing it on YouTube. It’s a short, simple puzzle game with an interesting mechanic. Won’t take long to beat it for the first time, but you can adjust the settings to customize your challenge.
No Man’s Sky
Decided to play some more of this after the Origins update to see where it’s come. It’s still a great solo exploration game, but they’ve added a lot of extra content to really expand on the original formula. I’ve always been a fan.
Fallout 76
Played this because it was part of Xbox Game Pass. When I started, my one-sentence review was: “It has the Fallout setting, but not the soul.” After playing further, I’ve started to see that Fallout is here, setting and soul, but I’m convinced Bethesda just doesn’t know how to build a multiplayer game like this. That said, they’re slowly getting better. The One Wasteland For All patch fixed a lot of issues with exploration and quest progression (for example: low-level quests with steps in high level areas, lack of content for mid-level players). Plans to build equipment and structures are difficult to find.
In my opinion, the worst part of the game continues to be the “Fallout 1st” subscription; it seems like you’re actively punished for not paying. Weight is constantly an issue, but Fallout 1st members get containers with unlimited capacity (scrapbox to store as many crafting components as they want).
I desperately want to like this game, but there’s so much that’s annoying by design. There’s content to enjoy here, but unless you have people to play with regularly – or are a huge Fallout fan – probably avoid it.
Marvel’s Avengers 👎
Super buggy. The single player storyline can’t figure out what type of game it wants to be (beat-em-up? stealth-action? adventure?) and does a poor job being anything.
Star Trek Online
I haven’t played this in several years, but I wanted to fly around in a spaceship and shoot things, so I started playing again. I’m not a fan of the daily grinding for things, and the inflation of the real-money store is crazy ($30 for a single ship). There’s a lot of pay-to-win stuff going on here (and I don’t like the gambling in lock boxes), but through lots of gameplay, you could actually convert earned resources into premium currency and buy things (which partially contributes to the inflation). As long as you’re not playing PvP (which I’m not), there’s still a lot of fun content here. Can be played solo, but a lot of content is behind fleets (several ship upgrades, officers, some items).
Tropico 6
Good old Tropico. Hasn’t changed much, but that’s not a bad thing when the game was already great.
Everspace 2
After playing Everspace, I got really excited about Everspace 2. Played the prototype during a Steam event and I love where it’s going. Unfortunately, the Cyberpunk juggernaut pushed the release into 2021.
Per Aspera
Mars resource management strategy with an interesting story. Played during one of those Steam demo events and ended up buying it when it released.
Mars Horizon
Played the demo. A simplified version of the history of spaceflight. (Maybe a little too simplified.)
Fights in Tight Spaces
Played the demo. Loved the concept and execution of this one.
5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel
And here I thought I was pretty good at chess. I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around this one.
MarZ: Tactical Base Defense
A really good tower defense game about zombies on Mars.
Siege of Centauri
Another sci-fi tower defense game. Not quite as refined as MarZ, but still fun to play.
Mindustry
The 6.0 update made some major changes to how the game is played and vastly expanded how much game is here.
Cyberpunk 2077 🌟👍
I played this on PC, so I didn’t really run into many of the problems I saw making the rounds online. Still working through the story after 70 hours, and still enjoying every minute with my quickhack-focused build. This is probably my GOTY for 2020.
Cloudpunk
It’s like a chill version of Cyberpunk.
Iron Harvest
Haven’t managed to put a lot of time into this yet, but first few levels make this look like a highly tactical RTS. (Positioning and cover are extremely important.)
Tabletop
Wingspan 🌟👍
Wingspan continues to be one of the best board games I own.
Azul: Summer Pavilion
Queendomino
Fences
Darkrock Ventures
Chai
Kodama
Tiny Epic Dinosaurs
I love the “Tiny Epic” series of games. The label fits: they’re small-box games with big gameplay. In this one, you’re managing a tiny dinosaur park; buying and selling dinosaurs for points. There’s some puzzle-style gameplay and a ton of cute, tiny dinosaur meeples.
Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries
I don’t think this is as good as the original. It’s a tighter map, but my wife and I both had a hard time getting the colors we needed to complete things. Locomotives are still wilds in this version, but can only be used on ferries and tunnels.
Horizon: Zero Dawn The Board Game 🌟👍
Captures the fun of hunting robot dinosaurs across several short encounters.
Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time 🌟👍
Tower defense in board game form. My wife and I loved this one. It’s like playing a series of tiny Tetris games. Narrowly beats Horizon as my 2020 Board-GOTY.
Seven Wonders
Owned this for a while but only just got around to playing it for the first time this year. Fun, but a little awkward with two players. (Probably should play Duel for two players.)
Elder Sign
Despite winning, I didn’t really enjoy this game. Felt too random.