It’s the end of 2020, and I think I speak for everyone and their clenched sphincters when I say, thank fuck that’s over with. Let’s hope in 2021 we can start rolling things back to the previous more stable state of hell on earth. We might’ve been living in constant fear of climate disaster and financial ruin under leaders that could barely display the minimum pretence of caring, but at least we could still hug our elderly relatives as they died gurgling on their flooded lungs. But let’s not forget the most important thing: making sure that the beings that one day discover the ruins of our civilization are very clearly informed on which video games from this year I liked and which I didn’t like. And which just sort of dropped straight through my perception without leaving a mark like a high-fibre turd through an incontinent rectum. Yes, it’s the 5 best, the 5 worst, and the 5 blandest, the tiresome yearly ordeal that, unlike Thanksgiving, you can’t use global pandemics to wriggle out of.
5th best: Ghost of Tsushima
This year I coined the term “Jiminy Cockthroat” to refer to the gameplay style that every triple-A game has now, stealth action open world with crafting and collectibles and probably that one mission where they take your stuff away and leave it on a table six feet from your cell in an astonishingly small bag. But it’s a style that’s overdone for a reason, so let’s give one of them a prize. Ghost of Tsushima, I can’t pronounce your name without spitting on the mic but your art design’s good so you’re officially the least shit. Have a stale biscuit.
5th blandest: Amnesia: Rebirth
Fifth blandest is a game that started disappointing right out of the gate with its terrible subtitle and then took us on a veritable rollercoaster of disinterest. Amnesia Rebirth. The first Amnesia was a game that spawned a genreful of imitators and all Rebirth seems to want to do is sit right in the middle of them playing with its belly button.
5th worst: Deadly Premonition 2
As any of the agencies currently tracking my movements will tell you, I do like weird things. I’d play a Christmas-themed felching simulator that only makes sense to the homeless meth addict with a shoe on his head who designed it, but it has to not run like gravel through a chocolate fountain. Hence Deadly Premonition 2 being 5th Worst. You’re an odd little duck and I like you, Swery, but your amusing quacks can’t keep you out of the hoisin sauce forever.
4th best: Half-Life Alyx
When audiences have been awaiting a new instalment of your historically significant shooter franchise for over a decade, finally releasing a new instalment in the middle of a global crisis exclusive to VR, and as such playable only by twelve rich people and their accountant, requires the sort of psychotic boldness that one can’t help but respect. I, for one, enjoyed Half-Life Alyx, Valve. Perhaps one day we’ll all come and join you on your planet.
4th blandest: Immortals: Fenyx Rising
I was going over some of my previous top 5 videos and thought “Man, do I make a joke every single year about the inevitability of a Ubisoft sandbox being in the bland five?” You have to point these things out to me, guys, most new years I’m too drunk to remember. What? Oh, any of them. It hardly matters. Immortals: Fenyx Rising, there you go. Really shitty title and the exploration is about as exciting as combing nits out of your pubes.
4th worst: Minecraft Dungeons
Fourth worst narrowly missed out on consideration for the bland list because, while the game is undeniably bland, the utter wrongheadedness behind its concept deserved extra credit. Minecraft Dungeons. It’s Minecraft but with no mining and no crafting. Were there no six year olds around who could have explained the problem to you, Microsoft? Were they all too busy consulting for the Xbox marketing department?
3rd best: Yakuza: LAD
Things weren’t looking too great for the Yakuza franchise with the last couple of sputtering instalments, but Yakuza: Like A Dragon turned it around with its fun characters and greater lean into the inherent silliness of the franchise. Yakuza has been running out of steam ever since the zombie spinoff, but I should’ve known the series couldn’t even decline unless it’s in an unnecessarily drawn-out and grandiose manner.
3rd blandest: Serious Sam 4
Ah yes, always the best part of this process – having to write something funny about the year’s third most mediocre game. Which was Serious Sam 4. Once all the unnecessary story and skill tree bullshit flakes off it’s just another Serious Sam game. That’s it. Something that ruled the roost back when retro-style boomer shooters weren’t common but I’m picking retro-style boomer shooters out of my cornflakes these days.
3rd worst: Battletoads
God, is there anything worse than a bad game that thinks it’s funny? Pustular psoriasis? Oh. Maybe. The remaining two games on your list? ALRIGHT RHETORICAL. It’s Battletoads. Why stop at boring, poorly designed gameplay when you could also add hilarious prolonged comedy animations to make it slow, clunky and confusing as well. It’s like trying to count ceiling tiles while a clown is sitting on your face.
2nd best: Hades & BPM: Bullets per Minute
I just couldn’t decide which of two games stood out the most in the ever-overcrowded field of indie roguelikes. On the one hand, Hades, beautifully artistically crafted and all that. But on the other, BPM: Bullets per Minute, just plain more fun. With a primary gameplay loop that makes me unconsciously dry-hump my box ottoman. So fuck it, I’m squeezing them both into the two slot. Because Indie can also be short for Indecisive.
2nd blandest: Dark Pictures: Little Hope
True greatness has often been found in the pursuit of the pointless. Climbing mount Everest is ultimately pointless, and yet every year people kill themselves trying to do it. You, too, can get in touch with that spirit by playing The Dark Pictures: Little Hope. Because once you get through its disjointed, quick time event riddled story and discover that the whole endeavour was completely pointless, you too will want to kill yourself.
2nd worst: Remothered: Broken Porcelain
It’s Remothered: Broken Porcelain, the atrocious bugfest that’s unpleasant not in a “creepy horror” way but more like that weird-smelling kid at school who was caught licking the door to the girl’s toilets. It was probably giving the game away to put “broken” right in the title, alongside a couple of other words placed together with all the care and thoughtfulness with which one pitches soiled underpants into a laundry basket.
1st best: Spiritfarer
Yeah, it’s a bit buggy and has a weak ending, but Spiritfarer’s still the game I think most fondly of from this year, the lovely heartwarming cartoon adventure about how everyone you love is going to die. Appropriate for 2020, really. Your elderly relative might have died gurgling on their flooded lungs but hey, life is a journey and death is coming home. Why not imagine them as a giant anthropomorphic toad and feed them fried chicken on a boat? Okay.
1st blandest: Marvel’s Avengers
There was a time when Marvel comics getting a massive multi-film big-budget crossover universe would’ve been exciting, but now it’s here, and it’s blown its load a few times over with generic supervillains and badly explained Maguffins, it’s hard to maintain enthusiasm. And the fact that Crystal Dynamics managed to take that and somehow make an even duller and more jaded version clearly deserves the top spot in the blandness list. And perhaps even a lifetime achievement award for blandness if they can be bothered to pick it up.
1st worst: The Last of Us Part 2
I’m not trying to be contrarian, I genuinely can’t think of any game that gave me a more miserable experience than The Last of Us 2. And here we fucking go. “Ooh, look at Mr. Controversial Opinions. You think The Game Awards Game Of The Year was actually the worst game ever, do you? And you think all the people who think it’s good are wrong, do you? And you think The Game Awards have their noses shoved so far up triple A buttholes that they wouldn’t notice a good game if it was speedbagging their testicles, do you? And you’re going to put all these views into the mouth of a notional third party in a weak attempt at creating deniability, are you? You gonna interrupt at some point? I wasn’t, no.
