Earlier last year, and against my better judgment, I decided I was gonna try to make an effort to play more modern games. If only for this year alone, I wanted to pick up at least one new game for every month of 2020—but then, of course, a world-stopping monkey wrench known as COVID-19 was thrown into every industry known to man, with video games being no exception. There have been a great deal of delays and push-backs aplenty over the past six months, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight, leaving a relative dearth of overhyped and overproduced bullshit for us to consume. Whether that's ultimately good or bad is up to you, but that's just kinda the state of things right now.
Nonetheless, I still wanted to follow through with my plan, even if it meant buying some bum-ass indie game on Steam, because nothing else came out that month. So, here's everything that's been on my radar:
January☐ Journey to the Savage Planet
☐ Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Japan only)
☐ Hypercharge: Unboxed
☐ Puzzle & Dragons Gold
☐ Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV
☐ The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners
☐ Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
☐ Kandagawa Jet Girls (Japan only)
☐ AO Tennis 2
Basically nothing came out this month, which, for January, isn't out of the ordinary. I was initially
somewhat interested in the new Yakuza, but it won't be coming stateside until later this year, and I haven't even played any of the others anyway. On top of that, I guess it's going to be an RPG, which seems to be a major departure from the rest of the series—so I'll have to pass on it, unfortunately.
That doesn't really leave very much, though. The only thing here that has me
mildly interested (at best) is Journey to the Savage Planet, which looks kinda decent, but it also just looks like a bootleg Ratchet & Clank game to me, so I'm hesitant to drop $29.99 on it. I'll see if I can't get it on sale, or something.
February☑ Dreams
☐ Granblue Fantasy Versus
☐ Vitamin Connection
☐ Boris and the Dark Survival
☐ Katana Kami: A Way of the Samurai Story
☐ Persona 5 Scramble (Japan only)
☐ Death end re;Quest 2 (Japan only)
☐ Zombie Army 4: Dead War
☐ Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix
☐ Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash!
☐ Dota Underlords
☐ One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows
☐ The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics
☐ Monster Energy Supercross 3
To think that if Dreams never came out, I'd be stuck playing some weebshit fighting game instead. Long story short—Media Molecule did it again this year, having dropped what is almost assuredly going to end up being my GotY, although it's certainly debatable as to whether such a release should even count. Nonetheless, playing Dreams is the most consistently mind-blowing virtual experience I've had in the past ten years.
Dreams isn't just a sandbox game, or a simple creative tool—it's a straight-up
game engine, but streamlined to be as welcoming and as user-friendly as possible. You can make anything with it; the degree of creative freedom that you're granted is seriously un-fucking-paralleled, and truly something to behold. As much I'd love to prattle off a list of things that I've seen created in Dreams, it would be futile, because the list of things that I
haven't seen would be significantly shorter. The possibilities truly are endless with this one, and to top it all off, it's only $39.99. How can you beat that? An absolute and emphatic
must-have for any PlayStation owner.
March☑ Animal Crossing: New Horizons
☐ Ori and the Will of the Wisps
☐ Half-Life: Alyx
☐ Nioh 2
☐ Doom Eternal
☐ Good Job!
☐ Biped
☐ Murder by Numbers
☐ Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure
☐ Bleeding Edge
☐ Cooking Mama: Cookstar
☐ Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX
☐ Panzer Dragoon: Remake
☐ Black Mesa
☐ My Hero: One's Justice 2
☐ One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4
☐ MLB The Show 20
☐ R.B.I. Baseball 20
Probably the strongest month of the year in terms of options. I'm definitely interested in the new Ori game, but I still need to play Blind Forest. I love Half-Life, but I don't have a VR device (nor a PC powerful enough) to handle Alyx, so I'll keep my fingers crossed for a PSVR release. I also haven't played Nioh, so I'd rather hold off on the sequel, and I've never really given a shit about Doom, so Eternal was kind of off the table for me.
That pretty much leaves Animal Crossing: New Horizons—which is just as well, because as several others have pointed out, this game could not have come out at a better time. After putting up with the ongoing turmoil in the outside world, day in and day out, some of us
really needed a relaxing game where all you do is hang out in a cute little village with your cute little animal friends. It's not a game for everybody—and indeed, it's yet another one of those games that challenges the definition of "game" itself—but regardless, with 13 million units sold in six weeks, it seems plain enough that AC was exactly what a lot of people needed in their lives.
April☑ Telling Lies
☐ XCOM: Chimera Squad
☐ Streets of Rage 4
☐ Moving Out
☐ Legends of Runeterra
☐ Predator: Hunting Grounds
☐ Final Fantasy VII Remake
☐ Resident Evil 3
☐ Trials of Mana
☐ SnowRunner
☐ Gears Tactics
☐ Picross S4
☐ Bokuhime Project (Japan only)
☐ MotoGP 20
If you're anything like me, and you don't really give a shit about remakes, then this month was even weaker than January for you, especially if you don't care about XCOM. Streets of Rage is a classic series, and all, but I don't necessarily need a fourth one. That leaves Telling Lies—a live action game where you try to solve a mystery by listening in on Skype calls between four people, and piece together whatever bits of information you can scrounge up, which is an admittedly neat concept, but I'm not sure how much I'd be willing to spend on that.
If you do care about remakes, then this was a pretty good year. Final Fantasy VII Remake dropped, which is kind of a big deal, as well as Resident Evil 3—both of which seem to have been very well-received. I'm interested in picking up the former, but only after I play the original Final Fantasy VII—which, in turn, I will only play once I've beaten I-VI, because I want to be the first American to ever play the Final Fantasy games in sequential order. That's gonna take a very long time, though... so, maybe I'll have to settle for Telling Lies.
May☑ Wildfire
☐ Crucible
☐ The Persistence
☐ Maneater
☐ Minecraft Dungeons
☐ Deep Rock Galactic
☐ Cannibal Cuisine
☐ Synaptic Drive
☐ Umihara Kawase BaZooKa!! (Japan only)
☐ The Elder Scrolls: Blades
☐ Golf With Your Friends
☐ Super Mega Baseball 3
Slim pickings this month once again. Both my initial pick
and my back-up pick—The Last of Us Part II and Ninjala—were pushed back from this month, which pretty much left nothing else to look forward to. Maneater looks kinda funny, I guess, but not something I'd spend real money on. Crucible is appealing strictly on the basis that it's free to play, but beyond that, it looks like a generic piece of shit. The Persistence is mildly interesting, but also not really.
So, the game I'm currently waiting to go on sale for is Wildfire. $14.99 seems a bit steep for a game like this, but it does look like the best option available.
June☑ The Last of Us Part II
☐ Death Come True
☐ Liberated
☑ Ninjala
☐ Valorant
☐ Disintigration
☐ Desperados III
☐ Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia
☐ Pokémon Café Mix
☑ Jump Rope Challenge
☐ Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road
☐ SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated
I've had my sights set to three games in June—The Last of Us Part II for obvious reasons, but also two lesser-known games:
Death Come True and
Liberated. The former is another live action game, this one being Japanese and created by some of the people behind Danganronpa and Zero Escape. It's a choose-your-own adventure where you wake up with a dead body in your apartment, but with no memory of how it got there. The police arrive shortly thereafter, leaving you to think fast and Heavy Rain your way out of the situation. It looks pretty cool, if you ask me.
Liberated, on the other hand, is an action game with graphics made to look exactly like you're reading a comic book. I'm a sucker for cool gimmicks like this, so I'll probably pick this one up down the line. The Last of Us Part II took precedence, though, of course. Despite the controversy surrounding it, I've been thoroughly enjoying myself so far, and I guess you could say I'm still waiting to understand why people are so upset about it.
That's pretty much it, I think. July's not looking spectacular right now, but I'll probably end up choosing Ghost of Tsushima if nothing else.
Just for fun, I made a tier list for sorting out all the games you're interested in playing, and I included everything that isn't a port, remaster, update, expansion, collection, or anything that's not a new and original title, or a full-fledged remake. I couldn't be bothered to add sports games like MLB: The Show 20, so I apologize that those are missing, and Battle for Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated is included because it was
advertised as a full remake, even though it turned out to just be more of a remaster.
So, what have you been playing?
2020 midpoint recap