Mostly Normal Monthly #0005, January 2021
Mostly Normal Game of the Year 2020
AJ’s Personal top Three
By AJ Eide
The end of the year in gaming is always an exciting time. There aren’t any big in-person events to get hyped about so this year’s game awards spoke to me a little stronger than usual and while there were so many exciting new games announced, I am going to take a moment to reflect back on the top three games that I chose as my personal favorites from 2020.
#3 Final Fantasy VII: Remake
I’ll start with my 3rd choice for game of the year, which is none other than Final Fantasy VII: Remake. I was originally on the fence about buying this game. The hype for the release hit me like a freight train the day before release (the FOMO was real) and I quickly pre-ordered on my PS4 Pro, and boy am I glad I did. This game did everything the original did but better. It not only held the same charm, quirkiness, and guile as the version from the 90s, but improved on it. The graphics where incredible, they stayed true to the origins of the game, and tweaked the story just enough to give us a few little surprises along the way. If you haven’t played this gem of a game, get out there and find yourself a copy ASAP.
#2 Animal Crossing: New Horizons
This game will always hold a special place in my heart. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was my first foray into the capitalist bastard Tom Nook’s world. But wow, climbing out of crushing debt has never been so lovely. This game came at a time when the world was just starting to grapple with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. People were isolated for the first time in their lives. Animal Crossing provided all of us a place to go. I even hung out with friends from Australia! I remember a day where @Dutchi_86 was beating me with the very rainbow bug net I gifted them, another time fishing with @gruchie_P (from Austria!). The game never ends, and I hope to come back again sometime to visit. And as I’m sure some of you have seen, if I ever came to your island, check your message board because there is sure to be a sloppily written (in blue of course) “Mostly Normal Was Here.”
Photo via Ghost of Tsushima Website
#1 Ghost of Tsushima
My personal selection for game of the year comes as no surprise to any regular listeners of the show. Ghost of Tsushima spoke to me in a way not many games ever have. It was serene, then—POW!—suddenly stormy as a group of Mongols raided your village. It was beautiful then brutal. It was despairing then hopeful. The game play itself was a dance with a samurai sword, dangerous and swift. It happened fast and it was deadly, then came the wind. The wind itself is a character in this game. It adds to the game’s personality and provided a great way to traverse the beautifully designed environment without staring at a mini-map in the corner. I loved playing this game, and it was my first platinum of 2020. Needless to say, this year Ghost of Tsushima blew me away.
Angie’s Top Three Games of 2020
Photo via Halo: The Master Chief Collection Website
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Even though I have not played a lot of the new games that were released this year (especially anything exclusive to the PS5), I think I still would have chosen Halo: The Master Chief Collection. This game brings all the nostalgia that one could want from such an incredible series as well as a high-definition redesign. I love that you can choose from any Halo game and type of game for your matchmaking pleasure. You just want to play Shotty Snipes? Sure! Grifball all day? Do it. Since being released on the Xbox One in 2014, it was later released for the PC through 2019 and 2020. 343 Industries released an enhanced version for the Xbox Series X|S in November 2020.
Besides the matchmaking ability in this collection, you can also replay the campaigns! Why you would want to replay Halo: 2 is beyond me, but they give you the option. The campaigns are broken down by mission, and, in the Career menu, you can also view what achievements you have completed for each game if you want to try to unlock a specific achievement. Max Szlagor (Senior Designer at the time for the initial release on Xbox One in 2014) did a great job with the breakdown of the games all in this one amazing series collection.
Gears of War 5
Specifically multiplayer, but The Coalitionreleased another wonderful game to add to the already impeccable series. The story takes you on another ride and (spoiler alert) toward the end you must choose between killing off J.D. or Del. Though, I feel the ending in Gears of War 5 was still not as exhilarating and heart tugging as the ending of Gears of War 3 (I mean, Marcus lost his best friend Dom and his dad)!
What is truly impressive about this game is the updated multiplayer gameplay. In Horde mode specifically, you now have classes you can choose from to upgrade to become the best Combat Medic, Slugger or even Technician and it is all about teamwork. It may be best to talk to the people you are playing with. Otherwise, you have a 50/50 shot at making it through the horde or failing miserably. Also, The Coalition does it right when the holidays are around. The recently ended Gearsmas (ended January 4th) had the Horde Event:Jingle Juvies, Versus Event: Snowball Fight, 2XP and a free Boost for everyone, all for the chance to earn a Father Gearsmas Marcusskin (Santa hat and wrapped grenades included).
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
This game did come out in 2017, but I cannot help but include this game in my top three! NEP&D did a great job on the in-depth puzzles, weapons and vast majority of little details that make this game feel like another world. I love that I get the feel of Ocarina of Time in this game as well as a Studio Ghibli feel with the inner workings of cooking (it’s a huge thing and I highly recommend learning recipes). You do not get the legendary Epona right away! You must find her and tame her. Besides that, you do find wild horses that you tame and become attached to only to have them electrocuted by a Lynel (personal experience and I may have been a little emotional about it).
I also love the shrines in this game. I am a big puzzle nerd, so these are right up my alley. Each one is different, and some are combat trials that when concluded you get some ancient materials (worth it) or you collect Runes. The Runes are special abilities that Link will use throughout the game as well as in other shrines. The camera ability is okay. I do not understand why having a picture of some of the enemies you find is useful besides for a few side missions.
Chris’s Games of 2020
By Chris Stern
Photo via Supergiant Games’s Website
1) Hades
When I think about Hades, the first thing that comes to mind is family. The next thing is probably “FUCK YOU, DAD.” For many people those two concepts are one and the same. At first, Zagreus’s story is that of a young man and his quest for individuation. Zag’s aunties and uncles are more than happy to lend a helping hand and throw shade at the Dad of the Underworld in the process. Supergiant breathed life into its pantheon like Athena did to the first human with their spectacular writing, character portraits, and voice acting. Every tale from Greek myth is full of lessons about family dynamics, and Hades uses this existing framework to build interesting relationships that flow into the game’s mechanics like the River Styx. Duo Boons will rely on the pre-established relationships between the godly siblings to provide flavor. Each character has far more depth than first appears, and all of the strands of this game’s dialogue and story are seamlessly woven into a cohesive tapestry. The different Olympian gods’ sets of boons draw on their personalities and domains.
The third thing is generosity. There is just so much to do in this game. The six weapons and their four different forms each evolve depending on the boons and Daedalus hammers that are taken on each run. Countless variations cascade out of these combinations. I was able to get at least one clear with each of the weapons in my time with the game. But beyond just being viable, each weapon felt fun to use and any one form could have sufficed for a game’s entire combat mechanic. The combat tuned as tight as all hell.
All of these things are under the surface of the true groundbreaking part of Hades—it is a run-based Rogue-lite that seamlessly tells an engrossing story. Death may be the end of your run, but it’s the start of interacting with friends and family back home, improving the realm of the Underworld, and uncovering the mystery of why Zagreus wants to escape so badly.
No other game this year drew me in quite the way Hades did. And no high point was quite as high as triumphing over the final boss of the game for the first time. My hands were shaking and my heart was aglow. I felt like a total badass, and in a lot of ways that moment was just the beginning of understanding what this game had to offer.
2) Animal Crossing: New Horizons
As I said in our Game of the Year pod, New Horizons let my girlfriend and I build a space that was just our own in a time when we did not have one. It was the warm blanket that I needed to be wrapped in in 2020. And yes, I cried when K.K. Slider came to play a concert at my island.
3) Good Sudoku
I played this game every day of 2020 since it came out. I always had an appreciation for the beauty of Sudoku puzzles, but had not found an app that made playing them seamless. Apparently neither had Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger, so they made this one. The game taught me how to solve harder and harder Sudoku puzzles, and now I can’t stop. Someone please break the spell it has on me; I can’t escape.
4) Final Fantasy VII: Remake
Final Fantasy VII: Remake is a 16-year-old’s birthday wish come true. This game is the materialized form of twenty years of fanboy lust, and one reading of it has the enemies channeling that fan expectation to impede the progress of its heroes. Remake is a game about remaking one of the most popular and loved games of all time. It is a game about escaping your fate and creating your own destiny. It is jam packed with big stupid emotions, loud action set pieces, quiet character moments, and lovingly crafted spaces to steep in some sweet, sweet nostalgia tea.
5) Blaseball
Blaseball is home to an inclusive community of fans who create amazing visual arts, music, and lore inspired by and informing the quirky universe of the game. Blaseball shows the possibilities of communal games and the beauty that can be fostered when developers and their fan communities engage in an improvised dance with one another, keeping each other on their toes. Sometimes that dance leads to ritual necromancy resurrections of pitchers who become cursed and start to destabilize other players when they are hit by her pitches, and no piece of media told me a story more engaging in 2020.
Jon Swanson’s Game of the Year
By Jon Swanson
Photo via Ghost of Tsushima Website
Ghost of Tsushima
The first gameplay footage for Ghost of Tsushima left me thinking we were finally getting the feudal Japan version of Assassin’s Creed for which we’d all been waiting. I was expecting a fun and explorative jaunt through beautiful areas of Japan and not much else. However, upon playing the game I was surprised to find that, while the gameplay was very similar, the characters, scenery and story set Ghost of Tsushima apart from its action RPG predecessors.
While playing as Jin Sakai you are supported by a few characters with their own motivations for wanting the Mongols out of Tsushima. Sensei Ishikawa, Lady Masako (referred to as Murder Grandma by the developer Sucker Punch Productions), Yuna and others give the player other human touchstones to feel ingrained and empathetic to their cause. The main story following Jin and his relationship with his uncle, Lord Shimura, has its share of mundanity and tropes, but ends in a way that left me on the verge of tears.
Getting through the more mediocre story points is still a pleasure because the backdrop that is the island of Tsushima is breathtaking. Whether it’s the trees, grass, mountains, streams, hot springs or wildlife, the scenery and landscape in Ghost of Tsushima is a character on its own merits. Everything seems alive and dynamic. You can follow a fox or bird to points of interest. In lieu of constantly opening your map to find where you are relative to your objective you can simply swipe the touchpad and the wind will tell you where to go. If you follow me on Twitter you certainly saw (and were subsequently annoyed by) me posting pictures from this game’s photo mode. While photo modes are commonplace in games these days, I’ve seldom encountered one that rivals the one contained within Ghost. These features embolden player immersion and make for a more compelling experience.
The single-player aspects of Ghost of Tsushima were certainly enough to keep the average lone-wolf gamers like myself content for dozens of hours. However, as if this wasn’t enough, Sucker Punch Productions surprised us a couple months after launch with Ghost of Tsushima: Legends. This brings to life a lot of the mythological tales encountered in the main game via a multiplayer mode. Through a story and survival mode you can team up with your pals to combat the various baddies of Tsushima. This easily could have been phoned-in as it was free extra content, but, in fact, Legends has content to rival the likes of Destiny and Division. Choosing from four classes, you can level up your character and weapons and unlock various cosmetics en route to make you and your team raid-ready. Did I mention this is free?