As strange as it may sound, I felt I was effectively coping with the many challenges 2020 threw my way on a day-to-day basis. However, upon any degree of reflection during rare quiet moments, I often realized the cumulative personal toll I was paying. Throughout it all, I had to continue working, wh… Read More »
Best RPG of 2020: Final Fantasy VII Remake It feels like we’ve been talking about an FFVII remake since 2000. Decades later, and one of Square Enix’s finest games in recent memory falls into our laps: a wild, wholly rambunctious romp through the best cyberpunk city of 2020, Midgar. Every inch of the… Read More »
Not Just An RPG, An RPG With A Giant Robot Award! If you skipped out on 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim this year, you missed out on one of the best games of the year. Fantastic music, great characters, and amazing storytelling come together to create a masterful game. The super fun combat brings everything… Read More »
Best Discovery: Necrobarista Having stepped into an editing position amongst my duties as Video Manager here, I’ve been privileged to play or see many otherwise unfamiliar titles. When Zach reviewed Necrobarista, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my playthrough for capture, but I in turn was capture… Read More »
I’m a sucker for ambition. Show me one game that reaches for the stars, stumbling every step of the way, and one that knows what it is and executes it to perfection? I’ll pick the former every day of the week. This year, however, in a rare convergence, my top three games and my three favorite narrat… Read More »
Best RPG: Yakuza: Like a Dragon In November, the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio team gave 2020 a shot of pure joy in the form of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. A reinvention of the beloved RPG brawler, LAD trades real-time fisticuffs for full-blown turn-based RPG combat while keeping everything else that Yakuza fans… Read More »
2020 has been a precarious year. Through all of the trials and tribulations, the one thing I found comfort in this year was playing RPGs. In that regard, 2020 was great! I present to you a list of my favorite games I played throughout this year: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim Never in my whole life have I… Read More »
2020 has been an…interesting year, at least in terms of gaming. I certainly never expected that I’d ever be able to play or want to play some of the games on this list. But 2020 has been a year for defying expectations, usually for worse but just occasionally for better. With my GOTY picks, I’d sa… Read More »
Remake of the Year: Final Fantasy VII Remake I move at mach-speed-molasses when I play games, so I’ve only actually played two RPGs that came out this year: Final Fantasy VII Remake and Trials of Mana. The fun part is they’re both remakes, so let’s pit ’em against each other! These games are largely… Read More »
2020 was a disastrous year in many respects, but at least we got some great new video games and ample government-mandated time and opportunity to play them. I ended up knocking out several 2020 releases, at least enough for a ranked top 5. (You probably see where this is going.) Retro Encounter of t… Read More »
Retro Encounter Game of the Year: Mother 3 Mother 3 blew me away. After multiple failed attempts to play it, I’m beyond happy our Retro Encounter episodes finally encouraged me to get around to it. Mother 3 is a stone-cold masterpiece and surpasses EarthBound in almost every way. I could go on and o… Read More »
3) Mythic Ocean Mythic Ocean is a visual novel with a 3D open-world feel, a go-with-the-flow vibe, and some pretty funky characters. Its imaginative setting is an odd “limbo” where the world just ended and it’s now time to figure out how to make a new one. Mythic Ocean is a very interesting game who… Read More »
Best PS2-era RPG of the Year and Also 2011: Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition I really like Dragon Quest VIII. I like Dragon Quest VIII so much, it became my golden standard for JRPGs and nurtured my obsession with PS2-era JRPGs. Their overarching scope, the broad variety of game mechanics, a… Read More »
Whether we like it or not, 2020 is going to be a historic year for a bunch of reasons. The start of the 2020s is forever shadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on everything, including the video game industry. Despite all this, 2020 still managed to push out some great games and, more t… Read More »
Preview in new tab I don’t think I’ve ever struggled to write about my favourite games as much as I have this year. Not because I couldn’t come up with anything, but because it meant looking back at a year I’d rather forget. At times, I’ve barely had the energy to play video games; at others, I’ve n… Read More »
Buried Stars OST Buried Stars is an engaging visual novel with a fantastically tense atmosphere, and its music certainly helped to convey the claustrophobic sense of stress and unease that the plot was going for. I adored the vocal theme “Be Honest,” but the instrumental tracks used throughout the t… Read More »
KINGDOM HEARTS – III, II.8, Unchained χ & Union χ [Cross] OST by Adam Luhrs I previously described Final Fantasy VII Remake’s soundtrack as a “musical smorgasbord of absurd dimensions.” I realize now that I should have kept that superlative in my pocket because the soundtrack to Kingdom Hearts I… Read More »
Haven Original Soundtrack Where the heck did this come from? I hadn’t heard of Haven until its appearances in summer 2020’s many virtual game showcases, and quickly became entranced by the setting and visual style. The music seemed pretty nice too, but it wasn’t until I bought Danger’s full soundtra… Read More »
Best Original Soundtrack KINGDOM HEARTS – III, II.8, Unchained χ & Union χ [Cross] – Original Soundtrack Well, we have been waiting quite a long time for this one. But it finally happened. And not only did we get the full KHIII soundtrack, but — as has been done in past releases — Square Enix de… Read More »
The “Overlooked Final Fantasy Music” Award: Final Fantasy III: Four Souls So, I may have been touting FFIII music as overlooked ever since “Elia, the Maiden of Water” showed up in the A New World concert repertoire. Whether you’ve heard it there, in the extremely well done Crystal Tower series in FF… Read More »
Shin Sakura Wars Kayou Zenshuu (New Sakura Wars Vocal Songs) Picture an alternate history in which Mel Brooks was born in Japan, he directed a series of Tokusatsu musicals in the 90s, and then SEGA dug up his work decades later and said, “This…but EVEN MORE!” That’s Kohei Tanaka’s soundtrack for Sak… Read More »
Overall Favourite – 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim Original Soundtrack A video game about school kids, giant mechs, yakisoba pan, idols, and more needs a varied soundtrack to match its overwhelming world. Luckily, long-time Vanillaware collaborators Hitoshi Sakimoto and Basiscape have created what is easil… Read More »
Origins has an awards ceremony every year, honoring designers in the board gaming industry in one fashion or another. Historically, developers, artists, and writers have all received awards, and being added to the Hall of Game is truly an indicator of prestige. With names like Gary Gygax, Richard Ga… Read More »
My wife and I made the big decision to attend Origins as new parents this year. We wanted to bring Zoe to her first gaming convention and share with her something we found incredibly important to us. Although she was only nine months old at the time and probably incapable of remembering anything abo… Read More »
KeyForge For those not in the know, KeyForge released last year with a gimmick that I sneered at. I’m not sneering anymore! After earning the Origins award for Best Collectible Game (which I voted for), Richard Garfield’s latest creation is here to stay, and fans couldn’t be happier. I have a lot to… Read More »
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