1. 13 SENTINELS: AEGIS RIM
Retroactive GOTY 2020 for me. Started playing it in 2020, so it counts, lol. Until I finished 13 SENTINELS, I more admired than truly enjoyed Vanillaware's games. Their games had excellent writing and narrative design, and the art design was always brilliant of course, but the gameplay systems never really meshed (something I'm trying to come to grips with as I play ODIN SPHERE currently). But it all comes together perfectly in 13 SENTINELS, partly because the gameplay mostly takes a backseat to the amazing storytelling and art design. Don't get me wrong, the real time/turn-based hybrid strategy gameplay is pretty good, but it doesn't ever get in the way of the story. For anyone who grew up loving sci-fi, anime, kaiju, and giant robots, this game is an absolute must play.
2. GRANBLUE FANTASY VERSUS
Finished the RPG story mode. Really enjoyable game. ArcSys has drilled 2D fighting game design down to a science ever since they created their current Guilty Gear Xrd game engine. The fighting roster is diverse and enjoyable and (surprisingly) LBGT+ representative as well. Command list is simple to learn and execute, and most moves even have shortcuts (even supers). I'd like to see this game catch on with a bigger player base (maybe if it got rollback netcode someday), because it's super fun and accessible. It's not hard to find a ranked match even though the community is much smaller than DBFZ, and the East Coast lobbies are usually pretty populated.
3. STAR WARS JEDI: FALLEN ORDER
I think I put the colon in the right place. First piece of Star Wars media I've consumed since the disaster of Episode IX and, on balance, I had a lot of fun with it. The story is pretty good. Combat is just shy of being great - imagine SEKIRO, but sloppier. You can parry but usually there's no reason to bother, because if you try to play aggressive parries the bosses will simply recharge their stamina too quickly for it to matter or the benefit that you receive from reducing their stamina from parries is too low. That's ok though, because the force powers are so much fun to use. Respawn are extremely talented designers, and they put together some really focused levels here, but the game suffers from occasional bloat/Metroidvania syndrome. I'd like to see a more focused, less Metroidvania sequel with more Dark Souls and better combat.
4. TITANFALL 2
Finally got around to playing this game. It totally lived up to the hype. It's nice to play a perfectly focused campaign with excellent level design with none of the bloat that most AAA games suffer from. This is on the level of Portal 2, Half-Life 2, Halo, The Last of Us, and the best single player narrative gaming experiences I've ever seen. It's only 6 hours or so and it's pretty cheap - I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't played it yet. Multiplayer seems to be pretty dead these days, sadly.
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is always right. -Learned Hand
"Jesus christ you are still THE WORST." -FirstBlood
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