Greg Miller is the head honcho of Kinda Funny Games. He's @GameOverGreggy on Twitter.
Let’s cut to the chase--I’m putting a couple games on here that aren’t great. Like, they have problems and everyone makes fun of them, but much like how wrestling is still real to that one guy, these games are still fun to me.
That’s the thing: we’ve fallen all over ourselves to talk about the best games of the year on Kinda Funny Games. Gamescast, PS I Love You XOXO, etc.--I’ve put on my video game critic hat and monocle and been, like, “The technical achievement of blah, the scope of this, and the tenor of that.”
Enough of that.
I’ve put 130 hours into Marvel’s Avengers, so it’s about time I said I love that game somewhere, and I can think of no place better than Greg Miller’s Top 10 Games of 2020 Where the “Best” Is Replaced By “Favorite” and You Can Send Your Snarky Comments Jeff.
Predator: Hunting Grounds
Yeah, that’s right. Fuck you; I’m putting Predator: Hunting Grounds here. I adored Illfonic’s Friday the 13th despite all of its flaws, so you best believe I adored their follow-up Predator: Hunting Grounds… despite all of its flaws. At launch, Predator didn’t have enough maps, matchmaking was garbage, and the framerate could chug, but damn was it fun. A bunch of Kinda Funny crewmates and me would sign on night after night to trade off being the Predator and being hunted by four of our friends. The Combistick! The different Predator classes! Nick Scarpino’s inability to stay hidden! Some of my best video game memories of 2020 are from this game and horsing around on Fran Mirabella’s nightly Twitch stream. I put 60-plus hours into this online only multiplayer shooter. That is not normal for me. I haven’t been back in months, but all I need is someone to ask me, and my blue camo Deathstroke lookin’ fireteam member would be there. Side note: just a TERRIBLE Trophy list. “As the Predator, claim 1000 Fireteam member trophies?” Are you serious, Illfonic? I love this game, but I’m not going to be playing it for the years this grindy-ass Trophy would take if you didn’t want to cheese it.
Before I Forget
When I was a reporter back in Mid-Missouri, I did a bunch of stories about Alzheimer’s, a disease that destroys your memory over time. It all started when I covered the disappearance of a veteran who left his doctor’s appointment, walked past his car, and just kept walking. His body was found months later by a lake in the area of a previous residence. The theory was that he left the doctor, and his mind just reset. That he thought it was years prior and hitchhiked back towards what he thought was home, became confused, and succumbed to exposure at the lake. It’s a disease that truly terrifies me.
Before I Forget puts us in the shoes of a woman living with it, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a medium tackle what it’s like to have Alzheimer’s the way this game does. It does such a good job of presenting us--as we play in the first-person perspective--with a question we know the answer to but making the answer impossible to achieve. As the player we know the layout of the home, but even when we go to the exact spot the game tells us, the home shifts. It’s a glimpse at how frustrating this disease is for the patients and their loved ones.
Bugsnax
Full disclosure: my wife’s company helped bring this game to market, but if anything, that should stand as a testament to how good Bugsnax is, because if I can’t get sick of the theme song and hate the game, no one can. Bugsnax was just what I needed in the PS5 launch--a laid back, colorful game with no failstate and a mystery. I’m usually not a puzzle game guy, but Bugsnax were just the right amount of “How do I get that to do this.” When I couldn’t figure it out, I’d move on to catching the next adorable/horrifying creature, and eventually, I’d have an eureka moment that showed me how to catch the creature I was stumped on. Toss in a great VO cast, great Trophy list, and reasonable completion time, and I had a blast.