Gaming in 2020

[Moonface]

It's been a week since 2020 ended, and despite all the miserable bullshit it was filled with, gaming was probably more comforting than ever for everyone being safe and hunkering down for the lovely pandemic still going on. While we do have a thread that let's you share your 2020 game of the year (along with every other year), this thread is to look back on gaming in 2020 as a whole. What new games did you try? What were your favourite announcements or moments? What are your favourite games of the year based upon a category such as platform or genre? If whatever you think of involves games and the year of 2020, drag it kicking and screaming in here and share!

I feel like the biggest impact the pandemic had on gaming last year for me was that it felt like announcements and news were rather scarce compared to normal. Geoff Keighley tried that Summer Game Fest thing that was meant to replace E3, but it was too spread out to the point I kept forgetting it was going on and that entire thing could've just not happened and the announcements would've probably still come out in the same way, but just through exclusive reveals through IGN or Gamespot or Game Informer or wherever else. I'd rather have a week of announcements with a day dedicated to a company if they have enough for a day, or otherwise just do a day with general announcements from various developers and publishers. E3 is too condensed, but Summer Game Fest was too far in the opposite direction.

At least with E3, you know that Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo or whoever is going to have this day, this time, for all their stuff. The Summer Game Fest didn't have that structure and it was hard to get excited for announcements when you don't know who's showing something next. Crash 4 was exciting to hear getting an announcement but it came 4 days out. Exciting when you hear it at the time but before that, there was no way to get excited for it because there was no clue whether it was going to be at the start, middle, or end of the Game Fest. At least with E3 you know way ahead when it's going to be so you have something concrete to set your sights on.

[Karo]

You know I honestly didn't really try many new games last year a lot of them are just kinda unappealing I really just played XIV and Dead by Daylight. I did try Monstrum 2 and signed up for the beta and that is coming into early access I do hope the gameplay loop will be fun enough to keep me engaged cause I could use another game to play beside the two listed above.

[Moonface]

You know I honestly didn't really try many new games last year a lot of them are just kinda unappealing I really just played XIV and Dead by Daylight. I did try Monstrum 2 and signed up for the beta and that is coming into early access I do hope the gameplay loop will be fun enough to keep me engaged cause I could use another game to play beside the two listed above.

What happened to Animal Crossing? I thought you'd have played a lot of that. XD

[Mr EliteL]

I didn't do much with games last year. Let's see, I started or was playing another game or two at the start of it, can't remember what, by July my birthday I got Xenoblade Definitive on Switch and played that for a while, then took to November time when I started playing Genshin Impact, all the while playing Smash Ultimate on the side. Then finally started a game I had still in it's sealed box at the very end of the year. Twitch helped a bit when discovering Among Us and later Phasmophobia for me, but only for watching then that's it.

What happened did set back announcements a lot and already didn't pay enough attention on them in the first place, but with E3 cancelled did feel like the year missed a big event for announcements, the one event I kind of cared about. I would watch a conference if I were able and interested enough. Anyway, there wasn't much going for the year for me and I mostly was happy to keep to what I already had plus the odd two new released in '20 games I got.

[Dragon Lord]

2020 was a great year in gaming and made the year pretty good overall.

For me personally, 2020 brought the English release of Arknights, which has become my favorite mobile game and one of my favorite games overall. The year also brought Genshin Impact, which I have been obsessively playing since its release.

2020 also brought me the release of Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, a game I had been highly anticipating for several years. Nioh 2 was another game that released this past year that ended up being one of my top 5 games of the year.

For continuing games, 2020 brought many great events in Azur Lane, and just this past month we got a major update to the game that added what is essentially a completely new game mode, as well as tons of new equipment. They revamped the Guild System to actually be worthwhile, which has been awesome.

Though I haven't played it yet, the year also brought us Ghost of Tsushima, which you can tell just by looking at the game that it is grand. We also finally got the much needed Demon's Souls remake for PS5, and although I haven't been able to play it myself yet, just knowing it exists makes the 2020 gaming year all that much better.

There's tons of other games that released this past year that I haven't gotten around to, but even without those, what I have played so far had made 2020 a wonderful year, and I'm looking forward to how good 2021 is already looking with what is scheduled to release.

[Moonface]

Though I haven't played it yet, the year also brought us Ghost of Tsushima, which you can tell just by looking at the game that it is grand.

Did you actually get to play this yet, or intend to do so?

[Karo]

You know I honestly didn't really try many new games last year a lot of them are just kinda unappealing I really just played XIV and Dead by Daylight. I did try Monstrum 2 and signed up for the beta and that is coming into early access I do hope the gameplay loop will be fun enough to keep me engaged cause I could use another game to play beside the two listed above.

What happened to Animal Crossing? I thought you'd have played a lot of that. XD

The thing is I burnt myself out and I haven't had the courage to face my animals since then.... I am the worst mayor ever! XD

[Moonface]

Having listened to a track of it just now, I think Hades is my pick for best game soundtrack of this year. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is my second place pick, and if I'm not forgetting anything else then Doom Eternal would be third for me.

[Dragon Lord]

Though I haven't played it yet, the year also brought us Ghost of Tsushima, which you can tell just by looking at the game that it is grand.

Did you actually get to play this yet, or intend to do so?

Going to eventually. I'm still working on finishing up Sakuna, but Genshin Impact takes all of my time and money, so it's been a slow going. I'll get around to it in like 2035 or something.

[Moonface]

Sony has opened their PlayStation 2020 Wrap-Up site, allowing all PlayStation players to check their stats for last year. Here's what mine turned out to be:

Total Games Played: 29
Top Three Games: The Last of Us Remastered (183 hours), The Last of Us Part II (85 hours), and Days Gone (75 hours).
Top Genre: Action-Adventure (511 hours)
Total Hours of Gameplay: 893 (719 locally, 174 online)
Days Played: 231
Top Day of the Week: Monday (afternoons)
Total Trophies Earned: 535 (10 platinum, 40 gold, 118 silver, 367 bronze)
Top Game Played Online: The Last of Us Remastered (148 hours)

Code:

[b]Total Games Played:[/b]
[b]Top Three Games:[/b]
[b]Top Genre:[/b]
[b]Total Hours of Gameplay:[/b]
[b]Days Played:[/b]
[b]Top Day of the Week:[/b]
[b]Total Trophies Earned:[/b]
[b]Top Game Played Online:[/b]

What did you guys get?

[Dragon Lord]

Total Games Played: 23
Top Three Games: Genshin Impact (584 hours), Nioh (287 hours), Nioh 2 (284 hours)
Top Genre: RPG (1431 hours)
Total Hours of Gameplay: 2504 (2470 locally, 34 online)
Days Played: 319
Top Day of the Week: Sunday Afternoons
Total Trophies Earned: 646 (13 Platinum, 51 Gold, 141 Silver, 441 Bronze)
Top Game Played Online: World War Z (24 hours played online)

Mine are way down this year, especially with how much of a time sink Nioh and Nioh 2 were, and Genshin basically taking all of my time from the end of September to the end of the year.

Definitely disappointed in only obtaining 13 platinums last year. Going to have to get that back up this year.

[Mr EliteL]

Get yourself ready for some abysmal numbers.

Total Games Played: 8
Top Three Games: Code Vein (121 hours) Genshin Impact (111 hours) Grand Kingdom (70 hours)
Top Genre: Action-Adventure
Total Hours of Gameplay: 380 (371 locally, 9 online)
Days Played: 92
Top Day of the Week: Sunday Afternoon
Total Trophies Earned: 46 (1 Platinum, 2 Gold, 4 Silver, 39 Bronze)
Top Game Played Online: Tekken 7 (4 hours online)

Considering my PS Plus ran out in July, I really wasted my £50 for that. Need to check my '19 numbers if I did that. I really wasn't in the mood to play online though. Don't know what took up the rest of the 5 hours, I think at least 1 was Genshin when I was doing that event in December, since you don't need Plus for playing online thank goodness, unless it didn't count that. Oh wait of course, CTR:NF. Code Vein and Gran Kingdom I played earlier in the year too so I didn't play much stuff.

There's a Switch version like this but can't remember how I got that up when I checked. Oh I think it might've been a link in an email, but also accessed if you go on the site....at the time though, which was late December and the link on the Nintendo website has already been removed/inaccessible when using form an outsourced site. WTF? Fine....wish I posted about it, damn it.

EDIT: 49+9, 58 hours (57 maybe), that...wow I'm really disappointed. Something has to be really special for me to want to buy a PS Plus again, geez. I also played 8 games in '19 too. They had different categories too for then, if you two wanna check and compare yours in '19: https://universalgaming.net/showthread.p...51#pid9951

[Dragon Lord]

Hmm, odd that my 2019 Trophy counts aren't that much different. Guess that means I slacked off in 2019, too. Although my hours played increased by almost 500 hours this year. I also played Genshin impact over 200 more hours than my top most played game in 2019.

Top Genre is correctly RPG this time though. Still, I need to pick it up in 2021. Gotta set a goal of at least 30 platinums this year.

[Moonface]

EDIT: 49+9, 58 hours (57 maybe), that...wow I'm really disappointed. Something has to be really special for me to want to buy a PS Plus again, geez. I also played 8 games in '19 too. They had different categories too for then, if you two wanna check and compare yours in '19: https://universalgaming.net/showthread.p...51#pid9951

Yeah, considering I only played one game really online for last year compared to how many I used to play makes PS+ feel a little iffy for me to keep subscribed to it. I found there just wasn't many games I got for 8th Gen that featured a good online component. Uncharted 4 was fun but the co-op is trash by forcing people to speed run it for good scores (just let me take as long as I want like you could in every other Uncharted games co-op mode), and LBP3 has a much slower feed of content compared to 2 because the servers and load times were so bad at the start of that games life cycle that it drove people away. It really says a lot for the state of the online modes of any games I bought when I keep going back to the online mode of a game that originally launched on PS3. CTR:NF was another one that could be great but that again is riddled with problems that make me just want to pull the ethernet cord and race against bots with all the rewards of the online mode attached.

[Karo]

Total Games Played:8
Top Three Games: RDR 2, What Remains of Edith Finch, FFXIV
Top Genre:N/A
Total Hours of Gameplay:36
Days Played:5
Top Day of the Week Evening on Sunday:
Total Trophies Earned:31
Top Game Played Online:N/A