In a June interview with Rolling Stone, the musician Woodkid spoke about working with Hideo Kojima to create the soundtrack for this year’s Death Stranding 2. Asked what he’s learned from his time with the veteran game director, Woodkid shares an illuminating anecdote about a time when Kojima approached him with a concern. According to the singer-songwriter, Kojima said, “I’m going to be very honest, we have been testing the game with players and the results are too good. They like it too much. That means something is wrong; we have to change something…If everyone likes it, it means it’s mainstream. It means it’s conventional. It means it’s already pre-digested for people to like it.”
I’ve been thinking about this quote now for months. As a player, as a reader, as a movie lover, I value work that has some integrity to it. I don’t like it when I’m playing a game and I can feel the designers straining to make it all as convenient and frictionless and pleasant as possible. That doesn’t mean that I like having my time wasted either, or that I don’t value good design. I just don’t like it when things feel focus-tested, sanded down, made all glossy for the masses. Sometimes I will think a popular, mainstream work is very good, but it won’t be because of the ways in which I sense it calibrating itself for mass appeal. It will be in spite of them.
This year, I played a number of games I thought were fine, and a few I didn’t like very much. I didn’t play many that I found really special or exciting, so this list is a top five, not a top ten. That’s not a commentary on the overall quality of the year’s games. It’s just a reflection of the fact that I played fewer games overall this year than I sometimes do–I’m trying to make more time for books, movies, and so on than I have in the past, and to spend more time with people I care about, too–and that, of the games I happened to play in my limited time, not all of them were winners. But I did still play some very good games this year. Let’s get on with it, shall we?
Honorable Mention: Death Stranding 2
Man, what a frustrating game for me to grapple with. The original Death Stranding is an all-time favorite of mine, a bold, bracing experience that was truly unlike anything I had played and that has only become more strangely resonant in the years since its release. This sequel, despite that secondhand Kojima quote I shared above about him apparently not wanting it to be too “mainstream,” felt to me very safe, leaning into conventional combat and away from the kinds of environmental friction that made forming connections in the first game so rewarding. It also, as Maddy Myers so effectively noted in a piece for The A.V. Club, exemplifies Kojima’s tiresome tendency toward gender essentialism.
But amidst the typical AAA gunfights and deeply disappointing narrative decisions, there were still some cool discoveries and memorable moments. I loved it when I hopped in a hot spring only to find that taking a bath in one can transport you to another; this felt to me not like another “quality of life”-oriented fast-travel option, something non-diegetic you select in a menu, but a feature of the world, the way Warp Zones used to be. And as I wrote about in our piece on the year’s best moments, the game’s big reveal near the end is goofy, exuberant, and audacious, a reminder of what Kojima can do when he’s truly willing to take risks.
Honorable Mention: Avowed
Obsidian’s first-person fantasy RPG was refreshingly distinctive, with a world recalling that of Morrowind in its originality rather than more traditional swords-and-sorcery settings. I enjoyed wandering around and seeing who and what I would find more than I have in a game like this in a long time. It also tells a tale in which, depending on your actions, some pretty major events can happen or not happen, and I appreciated that it found ways to confront some pretty big themes and incorporate some impactful choices while working within some clear limitations of budget and scope. Avowed punches above its weight and proves that big mid-budget adventures still deserve a place in today’s gaming landscape.
#5: Absolum
©DotEmu
2020’s Streets of Rage 4 was the best damn beat ‘em up I’d played in a long time. With it, co-developer Guard Crush demonstrated a real knack for the fundamentals of the genre, delivering clobbering action that was accessible, nuanced, and so, so satisfying. This year’s Absolum sees them take all that savoir-faire and apply it to fantasy beat ‘em up action with roguelike elements, and it works as well as ever.
I really dig a good fantasy beat ‘em up (Capcom’s D&D games of the ‘90s are particular favorites), and Absolum makes great use of its setting, peppering in just enough lore to tell us what we need to know about its central conflict and to understand the personalities of its four terrific playable characters. It also benefits from a striking art style that had me feeling like I was playing a lush fantasy cartoon from the 1970s. Random events and hidden secrets keep the world feeling lively, and going toe-to-toe with its terrific bosses is as enjoyable on your 20th run as it is on your first.
#4: Despelote
©Panic
When you have a passion for something, especially when you’re young, it stays with you everywhere. It’s with you when you’re wandering the halls of your school, when you’re hanging out with your friends, when you’re lying in bed at night. Some passions separate you from others; my high school obsession with Peter Gabriel wasn’t something I could really share with my friends who were into Nirvana and Pearl Jam, for instance. But sometimes, a passion binds you with others. Sometimes, it binds a whole nation together.
Despelote is a slice-of-life game about an Ecuadorian boy named Julián and the weeks surrounding the country’s qualifying run for the 2002 World Cup. Julián loves soccer. At home, his parents make dinner and talk about the changing state of the world and the latest challenges in their careers, but Julián just wants to play the soccer game on his console and hog the family TV. During recess at school, he and his classmates immediately seize the opportunity to kick the ball around. Everywhere you go in Despelote, soccer is woven seamlessly into life. People are still going on dates and exercising and walking their dogs, but soccer is in the air, inescapable. The game doesn’t need to didactically explain to you what qualifying for the World Cup would mean to the country, to these people. Thanks to Despelote’s brilliant blend of realism and surrealism, you’re there, in that space, living it. You can feel it yourself.
There’s a common misconception about “relatability” which says that the more generic a work is, the more relatable it is because it means that we’ll all be more readily able to project ourselves onto its characters and connect to its situations. I find it’s almost always the opposite that is true. The more specific something is, the more precisely it captures an experience that is not my own, the better I’m able to feel connected to it as well, to appreciate both how it differs from my own experience and how it reflects the things that bind us all together. I’m not a soccer fan, and I’m sorry to say that I know woefully little about the history of Ecuador. But when I reached the game’s incredible climactic moment, which I wrote about here, I practically stood up and cheered. I get it now. Sometimes, soccer really is life.
#3: Terminator 2D: No Fate
© Bitmap Bureau
Finally, we have the game that James Cameron’s seminal sci-fi flick has always deserved, a game that truly captures the movie’s pulse-pounding action and distinctive visual sensibilities. More than just a good licensed game (which is rare enough in itself), No Fate immediately establishes itself as one of the best arcade-style run-and-gun action games of all time.
I’ve heard a few people criticize the game for its brevity. It certainly is short, but I wouldn’t want it to be longer. A full playthrough of Contra III: The Alien Wars, one of the other greats in the genre, takes maybe 30 minutes, but it’s so jam-packed with showstopping setpieces and memorable moments that half an hour feels like a perfect length to me; after that, I’m ready to try for a higher score or tackle a tougher difficulty. The same principle applies here; a runthrough of No Fate might take 45 minutes or so (there are three possible routes through the game and some are longer than others), and when it’s over, I’m ready to catch my breath and then give it another shot. No Fate makes repeated attempts rewarding with a scoring system that sees you keep building up a multiplier as long as you don’t take damage; I’ve already seen some amazing efforts to get high scores that show off some really skilled, high-level play. No Fate also makes harder difficulty options worthwhile, changing enemy placement and behavior to make the game tougher in an interesting way rather than just going the route of giving enemies more health.
But ultimately it’s the stage design, pixel art, and wonderfully precise controls that make this game a masterpiece. It constantly keeps you on your toes, tossing you from future war run-and-gun scenarios to breathless vehicle chases to stealthy prison escapes, all animated beautifully and moving along at an exhilarating pace. A number of fairly high-profile games this year tried to recapture and build on the excitement offered by some of the best 2D sidescrollers of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but for my money, this is the only one that really knocked it out of the park. It’s a total banger.
#2: Blippo+
©Panic
I watched some crap on TV when I was young of course, He-Man and Knight Rider and whatnot, but TV also often felt like a way to broaden my horizons. In the ‘90s, I think channel surfing and stumbling on cool, random shit was a pretty common experience for people, and it was certainly one I had time and again. I liked venturing into the world of TV without consulting a Guide and just seeing what I’d find. Maybe Huell Howser would show me some aspect of California history I was unfamiliar with, or I might catch the end of an R-rated movie, all the swears hilariously dubbed over for broadcast TV, that blew my mind. TV was a gateway to learning about nature, being exposed to art, and sometimes just seeing human beings doing weird and interesting things.
Blippo+ recaptures that feeling of just flipping through the channels and stumbling on good stuff. Its varied assortment of programs–ostensibly signals from an alien planet much like our own–includes game shows, talk shows, cooking shows, science shows, news programs, and more, each with its own distinct vibe, yet united by a cohesive aesthetic that gives the whole thing the fuzzy warmth and genuine humanity of, say, old Bob Ross episodes or other PBS programming funded by viewers like you. But Blippo+ is more than just a collection of TV shows, it’s also a fascinating narrative experience that immerses us in a culture on the brink of potentially radical change. A better world is possible, and the revolution just might be televised.
#1: Shadow Labyrinth
©Bandai Namco
Okay, I need you to understand something. I was very young when Pac-Man became the world’s first video game superstar, but I do remember it. And look, Pac-Man was everywhere; in cartoons, on t-shirts and magazine covers, in hit pop songs. But here’s the thing: there was no one singular image of Pac-Man. On arcade cabinets, he looked like an armless yellow blob. In the box art for the Atari 5200 version, he looked like a sleek floating sphere. In this stunning envisioning by Japanese artist Hiro Kimura, apparently rejected by Atari due to its terrifying rendition of the ghosts, Pac-Man is a little metallic robot man gobbling wafers and wearing track shorts and a Pac-Man t-shirt.
©Atari
Nowadays, established video game characters often have their appearance totally standardized, and every incarnation of them has to be “on-model.” Earlier this year, for instance, when Donkey Kong started sporting a slightly altered look, we all took notice, and knew that this decision had been made and approved by Nintendo on high. But when I was young, video game characters were in flux. I was free to imagine Pac-Man in any number of ways, none of them “canonically” accurate but all of them feeling like they reflected, in some way, the strange, abstract experience of playing Pac-Man. I miss the feeling that game characters exist as much in the realm of the imagination as they do on the screen.
Now I need you to understand something else. When I was young, the world was just trying to figure out what video games meant, how they might function as part of our society and our artistic landscape. TRON, a formative viewing experience for me, imagined worlds within our computers in which these games actually played out, while The Last Starfighter suggested that an arcade cabinet could be an intergalactic test of skill, a way to find the fighter pilot who could accomplish in real life what the game asked them to do onscreen. And I was a kid with a very overactive imagination. My home life was, shall we say, not great, and at school I mostly felt like a weirdo who didn’t really understand how to interact with the world around me. But in games, I could be capable, heroic even. And so, at six or seven, I would sometimes imagine that, as in TRON, whatever I was seeing on my screen was actually happening in some other realm somewhere, and that maybe my actions were making a difference.
A link to the past
©Bandai Namco
When you first fire up Shadow Labyrinth, the start menu screen shows a figure in a city on a rainy night, sitting on a bench and playing a gaming handheld. As soon as you launch the game, the figure disappears, their device abandoned on the ground. The game’s intro, a cavalcade of over-the-top anime nonsense, shows a human soul being summoned from beyond into the body that will serve as the game’s player character. To me, the implication seemed clear: the game is suggesting that we and the player character are literally one, that we have been summoned into the world of the game to help right whatever might be wrong in this strange world. And though I no longer give myself over to my imagination the way I did when I was six, I enjoyed the imaginative playfulness of this choice, the way it seemed to ask me to remember that part of myself that once believed that video games were one part technology, one part magic. Games don’t always activate that part of me anymore. It’s a nice surprise when they do.
From that point on, Shadow Labyrinth continued to surprise me. I went in expecting a modest game, one that might take me 12 hours or so and offer some standard Metroidvania enjoyment. Instead, its world kept expanding beyond my expectations, surprising me both with its scale and its strangeness. Not since my first time playing Symphony of the Night has a game’s world impressed and bewildered me so much.
And now I want to go back to that Kojima quote I kicked things off with. At no point, in any way, did Shadow Labyrinth ever feel “pre-digested” for my enjoyment. Its moment-to-moment gameplay felt fine, but it didn’t have that luscious quality that so many games strive for. And I like this about it. If you transport me to some other world, I’m not gonna be some badass ninja. It felt like some situation I had stumbled into and was making the best of; what I never felt was the concern of the developers, obsessing over some need to make the game feel the way games like Hades or Hollow Knight do. It felt as if the controls simply…were.
©Bandai Namco
Similarly, Shadow Labyrinth never seemed concerned with me understanding exactly what I needed to do next, or with me being able to conveniently find a save spot, or with me understanding its strange story. It all felt, top to bottom, like a true journey of discovery, in ways that games, in my experience, so rarely do these days. I loved simply stumbling upon references to Bandai Namco properties other than Pac-Man. (The first time I found myself in an area with the enemies from Dig Dug, I gasped in delight.) I loved needing to remember for myself where I might find some type of enemy I needed to fight to acquire some item. I loved figuring out for myself how to hunt down and defeat a boss who looked like a physical manifestation of Pac Man’s famous killscreen glitch.
I’m very well aware that Shadow Labyrinth was made by developers. But I admire this game so much more because they worked so hard to make it feel as if it wasn’t, as if this really is just a strange, hostile world that we’ve been thrust into. I never once felt them looking over my shoulder, worrying about whether I was getting frustrated or finding it all “well-designed” enough. The part of my imagination that this game reawakened likes to think that perhaps this game is the “true story,” the real place where games like Pac Man and Galaga and Dig Dug all come from, and those arcade games were little echoes of this world, little dreamlike manifestations of it, brought into our world by the Namco game designers of the 1980’s.
With Shadow Labyrinth, Bandai Namco eschewed the tendency toward safety and standardization that sometimes limits games themselves and how we allow ourselves to imagine them. I never once felt the developers looking over my shoulder, worrying about whether I was getting frustrated or finding it all “well-designed” enough. This is a game in which the rules that say a character needs to be a certain thing or look a certain way don’t apply at all, an expression of that wild range of possibility that surrounds games when we set them free from specific ideas of appearance or genre and let them coalesce into something strange, risky, and new.
