The DeanBeat: My favorite games of 2020

Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat picks his 10 favorite video games of the year, ranging from Cyberpunk 2077 to The Last of Us Part II.

[SullysCigar]

The Last of Us Part II ROCKS!

[NukeDaHippies]

I don't think any political agendas are actually relevent to this game games quality....well not greatly related. That being said, this game was utter crap. It's boring and stupid.

Who the hell would go through so much effort to kill someone in the apocalypse? Why bring your girlfriend in your quest for bloody vengeance? Why is abbys story unrelated to the first half of the game?

The structure of this story is one of the worst i've seen in a loooong time. I wish i could pin point everything i hated about the game here, but that'll make this way too long.

[Final_Aeon]

Do you guys even know who you're agreeing with?
Maybe look up his gameplay from Doom Eternal or Cuphead.
A casual gamer would be embarassed to have their name linked to those "gameplay" captures.
It's as shameful that someone of his "skill" can be a "professional" games journalist.
It's like trusting someone who's never/rarely driven a car with in-depth car reviews.

[HankHill]

He's the guy who couldn't beat the Cuphead tutorial? LMAO!

[Final_Aeon]

Exactly, but people don't do their research. They see another games journo praising TLOU2 and it's all good.
BTW you should check out his Doom Eternal platforming. It's almost as bad. And that's 3 years later...

[mgszelda1]

Quit praising this games mediocre narrative. You got the dark knight with lou1 and you got batman forever with lou2.

[VerminSC]

The narrative is fantastic. Stop faulting people because you lack the maturity to understand an emotionally complex story.

[Final_Aeon]

Just because it did some extreme things to characters, things that one could even claim to be revolutionary in the gaming medium, it does not mean it's emotionally complex. It just means there enough there so people can try and use that as an argument. Well guess what: it isn't. Just because you and a million others are yelling: "look at how perfect this game is", doesn't make it so. There's facts and there are opinions. Stop trying to push your opinions on to us, who saw straight through the heavy-handed but weak narrative.

[LucasRuinedChildhood]

@Final_Aeon

"There's facts and there are opinions." You're saying that your subjective opinion of a game is objectively true? Are you 6 years old?

"Just because you and a million others are yelling" Projection. The people who are yelling are those who are offended by the game and felt the need to make 70+ videos about it without even playing it.

"Stop trying to push your opinions on to us." I think the side that review bombed a game for political reasons, and that intentionally spoiled the game on at least 100,000s of random people in an attempt to "cancel" it is the side that's trying to force their opinions on others.

[VerminSC]

Final_aeon

Joel’s death and the revenge plot isn’t what makes it emotionally complex

Ellie is having to deal with grief from loss of a father figure she lost right at the moment she began to forgive him. She is at war within herself trying to decide if she is willing to make extreme sacrifices to do what she thinks must be done in order to find inner peace. Sacrifices such as her friends, her relationship and ultimately herself. Only to realize that all that sacrafice won’t bring her inner peace. Then she has to come to terms with the terrible actions she did at the cost of “justice”.

To portray that level of emotional complexity in a video game is unfathomable. And I haven’t even touched on Abbys plot.

[RgR]

Maybe he's just more emotionalñy complex and what you find complex some of us may find as deep as a puddle.

Theres nithubg emotionally complex about the narrative. Revenge gone bad and redemption at the end...or forgiveness whichever you prefer.

That's not complex.

Tlou1 ending was far more complex or at least evokes clear differing responses. But all agree it's great

[Imalwaysright]

Complex? What's complex about this narrative? Joel kills Abby's father, Abby kills Joel and Ellie wants to kill Abby. There's nothing complex about this narrative. It's a shallow and nihilistic narrative about revenge sprinkled with nonsense, extremely obvious, lazy and forced situations and the disrespect/retconning of characters that many of us became attached with due to the brilliant TloU.

[RgR]

@verminSC

Yea I think you might be mixing the story with the voice acting and animation work. The acting and graphics are incredible and they help convey those emotions you're talking about. The writing is separate and that's what many had an issue with.

That's probably were most people get confused with the issues that others have since the incredible voice acting and animation work elevates any story. Doesn't hurt that the gameplay is also incredible.

[VerminSC]

Zeroblue2
Rgr
Imalwaysright

By your logic the last of us 1 is simple. The story is “transport immune girl through an apocalyptic wasteland”
But the PLOT is about the bonding two unlikely companions develop over a emotionally impactful journey.

The story of part 2 is “joel is murdered , Ellie seeks revenge”
The PLOT is about the cycles of grief and acceptance, redemption, forgiveness and the cost of obsession.

[Final_Aeon]

@Lucas:
* 6 year old? Great argumentation when you have to resort to personal attacks.
* Projection: I'm offering some much needed counterweight. Heck FFX and Dark Souls are some of my all time favourite games, but even I can see their weaknesses. How about everyone who likes the game admits it's not the 2nd coming of Christ! It did some amazing things in many areas, but its faults are so much more glaring than in 1st game (which was flawed in many ways, but succeeded in being unanimously loved, despite of them).
* Cancelling: I'm sorry that's what twitter tries to do when they get offended about the next ridiculous thing. Extreme Xbox and Nintendo fans will always try to undermine things that make a game great. It is very tiresome of seeing people who didn't enjoy the game being packed together with the fanboys. Because otherwise our opinion would be valid, huh? So it's just easier to try and dismiss someone, instead of coming up with proper counter arguments to tackle the issues presented.

@Vermin: you don't have to explain where you think the depth comes from. Those who don't agree with you understand what ND was going for and I understand why it might resonate with you. But if for some reason people don't get a proper bond with the characters, they're not going to feel the same emotions, so it doesn't have the same impact as it did for you.

As for your latest reply: yes TLOU1 is simple. If you look at the sum of its parts it shouldn't be as good as it turned out. Heck, there are plenty of elements present in the 1st game that so called bigots, -ists and -phobes were bothered with in 2nd game. However, because of the execution of the narrative, it didn't matter, because in the grand scheme of things, those things didn't drag the game down in any discernible way. As replied to Lucas, it's succeeding despite these (sometimes glaring) issues, is what makes TLOU1 so great.

[Imalwaysright]

VerminSC

Yes, TloU narrative wasn't complex either but it was competently written, well structured, much better paced, the character development was second to none in this industry and the message and core themes had much more impact because of it.

What I saw in TloU2 were forced and lazily written situations in order to develop its characters in wich they parallelly put Abby and Ellie in similar situations (Ellie kills pregnant woman/Abby spares pregnant woman; Abby plays with dog/Ellie kills that same very dog) to make one look like a monster and the other some sort of tragic hero. How is this good writing and the disrespect shown to Ellie?! No bueno!

TloU2 commited what I call storytelling sins because laziness and because Druckmann only cared about the crappy message he wanted to send and the characters, wich was exactly what many of us LOVED about TloU, be damned as they basically retconned Joel so that he could find himself in the situation that led to his death and the sheer disrespect shown to them. Joel nothing more than a throw away character, disposed off in order to kickstart and send a lazily and badly written message and Ellie becoming a monster because that's what the message required of her. A message that has been done many times and by infinitely much more competent writers than Druckmann will ever be. Even goddamn mangas do a much better job at sending the same message.

Oh and don't get me started on the unadulterated nonsense that was that ending.

[LucasRuinedChildhood]

@Final_Aeon

You're obviously entitled to your opinion, but in retrospect, I think you probably understand that's a bit childish to claim that you have the objective, definitive opinion about a video-game. No one does. If you say something silly like that out of anger, you're obviously going to get a light jeering. I don't even fully agree with VerminSC because you can obviously be mature and not like the story but he was clearly just annoyed with the OP.

There's nothing wrong with not liking the game and criticising it in a substantive way (e.g. AngryJoe) but most of the reaction to this game was never substantive (averaged 3/10 on Metacritic with 38,000 negative user scores within 3 days which has never happened). The "side" that likes TLOU2, for the most part, just wants to be allowed to like the game and usually accept criticism if it doesn't devolve into an argument. If you express that you like TLOU2, there will always be over-the-top comments, often with strange lies like "they dumbed down the gameplay" because many of these commenters didn't even play the game and just follow political channels.

You didn't actually address anything I said about projection either, and just side-stepped the crazy behaviour. It wasn't primarily Nintendo and Xbox fans. It was a different, political audience that got extremely offended by the game. They wouldn't frame it that way but their actions tell the real story. They intentionally spoiled the game on at least 100,000s (myself included) of random people before it even came out, using spam bots to drown out others' opinions, and made ridiculous amounts of political videos about it without ever playing it or the original, etc. I really hope this never happens to another video-game again because it was crazy and people get overly offended discourages developers from taking any risks in an industry that rarely does outside of indie games which are obviously limited by low budgets. The same audience that did this (mostly TheQuartering fans who do have a presence on N4G) recently sent loads of fake supportive message to a games journalist to induce an epileptic seizure because she criticized Cyberpunk.

To be clear, I don't think that you're part of this group but to say that you're "offering some much needed counterweight" is a bit absurd when you consider the reaction this game has received. There is more counterweight against The Last Of Us 2 (both substantive and nonsensical) on the internet than almost any video-game. "Quit praising this games mediocre narrative" was the the start of this comment thread.

[mgszelda1]

Lol the maturity. You know God of war has mature story telling and the story made sense. Lou2 subverted a lot for the sake of it.

[mgszelda1]

@VerminSC
Give me a scene in lou2 better than
The ranch scene
The opening with Sarah
Joel fleeing the hospital

Joel and Ellie were better written and more interesting than any character in lou2. And you got lucky with the actors of Joel and ellie just having great chemistry.
You get none of that magic in part 2. In fact the best emotional scenes in part 2 are flashbacks with Joel and ellie.

[Final_Aeon]

@Lucas:

I know I'm entitled to an own opinion. The much needed balance is on places like here - I mean just check out all the dislikes, yet only one or 2 actually dare to say why they disagree with what I'm saying. Going by Facebook, yeah plenty of politically charged people that have top comments and invade every post, even if it's just a nice artwork. But here, it's just so one sided; you would think TLOU2 fans were trying to indoctrinate people in believing it's the best game ever, even if one would want to disagree.

Some of things I wrote are subjective, but I mostly go on facts and published statistics. In any case, where did I come across as angry? Just because I bring up arguments, doesn't mean I'm arguing. As for the political people (your projection point), I did address them and even said they saw right through the "woke" elements in the first game because its execution of the story was done so much better than TLOU2.

If you're open to actually seeing an opinion that's not too extreme but actually puts things very well in perspective for those of us that didn't enjoy it, check out NakeyJakey's review. I think he worded it best, and even put in plenty of comedy.

I too was spoiled early for the game. Yet with all the low expectations, I'm just happy I didn't experience it all spoiler-free, because it might have made lose faith completely in ND. Now I'm at least willing to check out their next game with an open mind (but a lot more cautiosness).

Lastly, I do tend to watch a video of TheQuartering every now and then. I don't agree with all of his points, nor do I agree that harassing people is going to solve anything. Yet the whole Cyberpunk review is very similar to the Cuphead/Doom issues with the writer of this article. They're people who are getting paid well to play games, yet they can't be bothered with improving their gaming skills, or even making sure they play for than just the main story of an RPG.

Incidentally, the so called "cancelling" of TheQuartering from journos and twitter altogether afterwards was way worse. Basically they were trying to take away his means to make a living. And for what? Because he called someone out for not doing their job properly. You could hypothetically be the world's greatest journalist, but if you only played 1/5th of what's available, you should get called out for it. It's sloppy and unprofessional. It's why people don't take mainstream game review seriously anymore. These people aren't gamers and they couldn't care less about getting better. As long as they get to spout their political and ideological views.

[VerminSC]

Lucasruinedchildhood

It was insane what I saw happen to this game.
1. Tlou2 subreddit turning into a pysychotic hate echo chamber
2. Youtubers who had never played the game calling it shit and saying “naughty dog dropped the ball” because they read the room and wanted to cash in on the popularity of bashing a game. Meanwhile when dunkey and girlfriends review praise it they receive record downvotes.
3. Metacritic getting BOMBED receiving more reviews than any other game. 0/10 reviews popping up minutes after it went live.
4. Countless comments you mentioned, like “the game is 90% shitty flashbacks!” Or “the AI is so dumb!” That clearly indicated they had never played it.

I received DOZENS of PMs spoiling the game. It sucks. My most anticipated game of all time was completely trashed and the residual of those idiots still persists MONTHS later.

[mgszelda1]

I played and beat the game and I still hate it. I beat the first game and immediately started a new play through.
Lou2 I beat it. Uninstalled it and moved onto ghost. I wanted to love the game but it was so disappointing. If they ever bring mp back I'd buy it though. The gameplay is amazing.

[Final_Aeon]

@Vermin

1. It's a bit extreme and it's never fun to see it happen to a game you like, but it's just the natural consequence of angering/disappointing people that had high hopes because of their passion for the first game

2. That's arguable: can you prove they didn't play the game. And getting dislikes isn't sending hate speech. If someone agrees with a video it's how people show they disagree or didn't like the content. I agree that those who didn't actually complete the game shouldn't be pretending they did and be allowed similar influence, as it should be with any game.

3. Agree with this, it's a lazy and dumb way to critisize a game, especially if you're just a hater/fanboy. BUT do you think it's okay for those passionate TLOU2 fans to be downvoting and giving 0's to direct GOTY competion like Ghost of Tsushima. Because thousands also did that when GoT was heading to being one of the best user reviewed games in a long time.

4. Those are extreme and overblown opinions. However, just because someone states such an opinion, doesn't mean they didn't actually play or complete the game, nor that their opinion is invalid.

As I mentioned above, I don't condone personal attacks and harassing through PM's. However when there are just as many overblown TLOU2 positive statements, basically saying: if you didn't like the game: you're dumb/racist/fanboy/didn't actually beat it. With such a strong "positive" push, is it really so weird to see people pushing back as extremely from the other side? Even now, with all the GOTY winners being announced, I see even more of those: see it won here/awarded by this game journo/won this user submission vote. And about the only "conclusion" that I see being said is: "see, we were right, it is the best game ever. So you can't have any negative opinon about it. So just shut up." I just don't like seeing such subjectivity being proclaimed as fact, so that's why I bring in some counter arguments, without (IMO) getting too offensive.

I'm always open to having a proper discussion, but it doesn't seem like there are many willing to do that on this site.

[lukasmain]

The narrative WAS THE BEST PART

[Magog]

He got everything right about TLOU2 but putting two COD games in the top ten? Lol

[MadLad]

Baldur's Gate and Wasteland e top my list. Technically Baldur's Gate is still a work in progress, but they're both some of the best RPGs to come out in a long time.

[P_Bomb]

13 Sentinels right up there. Twas like nothing else in my playlist this year. Credit where it’s due!