Ed Zitron is the CEO of the PR firm EZPR, and he likes to play games to forget about work.
Hello everyone! This is my first top 10 list for Giant Bomb, and it was a special year for me to play, because it was the first I could think of where I did not necessarily love ten games, and hated several major releases (Doom Eternal and Spider-Man: Miles Morales). But mostly, the games I loved absolutely fell head over heels.
10. Crossing animals: new horizons
I did not list this game because I think it’s great – in fact I think it has the worst user interface in a game, but that was because of the experience I had playing it with other people. I can not think of a game I’ve ever played with my nephew, half my friends, my wife, her friends, my family, her family – everyone! Everyone wanted to play it, they all wanted to swap fruits and exchange the turnip and try to make more bells to upgrade the house. It took up my life for a whole month and then disappeared as if it had never been there. Amen.
9. Fuser
I like Harmonix, even though they never gave me Rock Band: Queens of the Stone Age. Fuser is probably one of the weirdest games anyone has ever made, let alone Harmonix, and it’s incredibly engaging as a result. It’s basically a mashup simulator, while you constantly drop parts of the songs (vocals, drums, guitars, etc.) and try to match the tempo and fuck around with the timing of the songs. You can really make some monsters – these include Smash Mouth’s “All Star”, Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of”, LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem”, Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”, to name a few. It’s a nightmare machine, but there’s so much going on under the hood that it always makes the songs fit. There were already several moments in the game where I laughed with real, genuine joy at how well something was put together – the guitars of ‘Killing in the Name Of’ work in many places – and then at the actual comedy of any Smash Mouth- song. Please play this game. This is very good. I want more songs.
8. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2
Go ahead and apologize for the large amount of reissues on this list, start with this one. THPS is a game that fluctuates because it knows you want to play a video game, and not pretend otherwise. It’s a very simple update that adds tutorials to the game (has it always been there? Where are my pills?), Graphic updates (of course) and some new objectives. But it’s good. This game has always been good. All it took was to update. And here it is. Except that they removed Alley Life’s “Out with the Old,” which is a crime, and everyone involved has now been arrested and imprisoned.
7. Maneater
It was my surprising top 10 game of the year. It takes a while to get started, but the Maneater mechanics are so good – it’s so nice to say ” and eat things and straighten your shark. It’s not like it’s deep, it’s not like it’s a big story, it’s just fun. You’re a big shark who eats people and the people shout, and Chris Parnell gives TV style a shine all the time. It’s very funny, very pleasant, a very fun joke and a deceptive discussion of the whole world.
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
I did not like Spider-Man: Miles Morales – it felt hollow and off in a way, on a mechanical level, to the point that I immediately started the PS5 remaster of the original Spider-Man from PS4. The reason Morales did not work for me was that it did not feel like you were Spider-Man – you did electro-punches and constantly had to kick guys with guns in different buildings. However, the original Spider-Man has shaken up and the graphical outburst that the remaster adds is important to the point that it feels like a whole other game. Apparently they also rasterized the faces of everyone, which is cool, but mostly the radiation detected and the high resolution and everything that just added a big layer of wow factor that made me want to swing constantly.
5. Ghost of Tsushima
I was shocked at how much I enjoyed Ghost, but got it from a strong recommendation from a buddy. Although the story is a bit cheesy, it’s one of the best games in the open world I’ve ever played. The best open world games reward you for investing in the systems and exploring the world, and Ghost keeps doing it, even if you avoid the main story (which I still enjoyed) completely. At one point I got a little too powerful halfway through, to the point that it was almost impossible to die (I think I could increase the trouble), but there’s something in the power fantasy to become The Ultimate Samurai .
MLB The Show 20
I never thought I would write how much I enjoyed a baseball RPG, but The Show 2020 has really improved the single-player Road To The Show mode so you can build relationships with your teammates (and competitors) while you play the game. This is still what you buy The Show for – a nice and technically amazing baseball simulator – but adds the ability to fuck with other players to increase certain traits, adds boss challenges (challenging batsmen or pitchers) and rewards to go with to go together It. I never touch the rest of this game, and it can all be awful, but I will always sit in the baseball RPG for over 30 hours to increase my stats.
Demon’s Souls
Demon’s Souls feels more than just a graphical upgrade. It’s smoother, you can move in more directions, the menus are significantly improved and the loading times change how you feel about deaths – they suck, there were two times I threw my controller (5-1 and 5-2), but you do not hate yourself as much as when the loading screen was 30 seconds long. The speed and fluidity of the remake reinforces the fact that many Demon’s Souls are deep inside a mystery – finding the right combination of moves to go through a specific bit to move on to the next. It looks good, it feels good, but retains everything I loved the first time.
Final Fantasy VII Remake
I wondered if my nostalgia might prevail with Final Fantasy VII remake. I loved the original, and thought I would be willing to forgive a lot in this game if they did it well enough to push the right buttons in my brain. Sure, it did, but it also has a cohesive and new story, and had the best best fight I’ve ever played in an RPG, to the point that I sometimes resented the game because I did not give myself another chance to fight things. It’s so rewarding and delicious.
It also contains some of the best narrative moves in games, especially in music. They have what sounds like a wholly or partly orchestrated remake of the original soundtrack, but what FF7: R does with music goes beyond that – it’s constantly flowing around what you’re doing, and time in and out of battle like ‘ a well-made TV score. It is beautiful, moving and captivating and does not rely on you to remember the source material. I also really like where they take the story. The whole game feels refreshing after movies and TV have completely focused on undermining expectations – it knows what you want, and it gives it to you.
1. Hades
I was amazed at Hades. It’s beautifully made, visually and audibly, made clear with a tremendous amount of love and care in a way you just do not see with games. And it would have usually made me a little friendlier about the mechanics, if it had not been for the fact that Supergiant became the first and only company to ever make a game that Diablo does better than Diablo. The rich roguelike system is so well set up, so rewarding, so perfect performed that I finally did about 50 full cleanup of the game on both Switch and PC. I can not express in words how good Hades is. I can not think of another game that was so beautifully presented and stiff mechanics.