2020 will be forever remembered as one heck of a year. The pandemic has affected many lives and with stay-at-home / shelter-in-place orders still on-going in, folks are looking for means of entertainment and one thing I’ve seen getting a lot of attention would be video games.

Writing in this blog about video games is a no brainer, but for this year, video games do deserve an MVP award as one of the avenues for keeping people sane with what’s going on in the community and the world at large. For me, 2020 has been an even more of an accelerant (more like pouring fuel into a fire) for video games for what usually would be a conservative approach towards adopting platforms.

For starters, I took virtual cycling like crazy. The early days of the pandemic also led to super strict lockdown measures which meant no exercise outdoors. Those who know me know that I love marathon running and cycling. The start of the lockdowns was when I bought my first smart trainer and ditched the rear-wheel of my carbon road bike (and the tarmac outside) for the virtual worlds of Zwift. Needless to say, the ability to bike and compete at home puts Zwift at the top of my list of best games of 2020.

Not really content with just settling for the Nintendo Switch and the PS4, and sick and tired of the dearth of Mac games, opportunity presented itself to get back into PC gaming when a friend of mine managed to get a deal on several 1070 GTX video cards.

I decided to have a PC built around one of the cards as soon as the initial lockdowns were lifted. I had a lot of catching up to do so one of the first games that I installed was Halo Reach / Halo 3 from the Master Chief Collection. Years after my last encounter with a Halo game on PC (Halo: Combat Evolved), I finished both titles back to back.

I’ve also played and somewhat survived XCOM 2, which I felt was a lot harder than the original remake. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to finish the last level with poor Julian, the tin can, finally kicking the bucket in that one. It was so tough I didn’t want to replay the last level to try and bring everyone home. I’m just glad I got the game crossed off the proverbial “bingo list”.

To add some camp into the proceedings and perhaps to compensate to the lack of Command & Conquer games on the Mac, I finished Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. While I still think that Red Alert 2 is the gold standard, the third installment in the series still managed to kick-ass.

While more recent games such as Hades and the remastered Need for Speed Hot Pursuit did catch my eye this year, rounding up my top 5 for 2020 would be Fallout 4. I spent 50 hours in the Commonwealth Wasteland, piping the amount of time I spent on XCOM 2, and this is coming from a guy who played the game on the PS4. Why? The DLCs were on sale on Steam.

The most recent platform purchase would the PS5 on Christmas Eve. This one is a bit of an outlier, since I would prefer to wait a couple of years before adopting a new platform in order to have a decent catalogue of games to choose from. Crazy? Maybe. But I did win a ballot to purchase what happens to be a rare item, so yeah. Why not?

So here’s the full list for my Best Games of 2020 (thanks for keeping me sane):

  1. Zwift (iOS) – 2,689 KM (year to date)
  2. Fallout 4 (PC) – 50 hours
  3. XCOM 2 (PC) – 41 hours
  4. Halo Reach / Halo 3 – Halo: The Master Chief Collection (PC) – 20 hours
  5. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (PC) – 18.7 hours
  6. Diablo III (Switch)
  7. StarCraft II (PC)
  8. Hades (PC)
  9. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition (PC)
  10. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered (PC)

So what are your favourite games of 2020? While you are at it, check out Nine Over Ten 9/10 on Facebook for livestreams on almost all of the games listed above: https://www.facebook.com/NineOverTen910