HELLO. AND WELCOME TO VIDEO GAMES POLLS. Fourteenth Coint and Plick results (best games of 2020)

https://i.imgur.com/fTGgAWk.png

It's another Coint & Plick! Which one is this? The fourteenth one! What! And the second one of not leaving your house because someone else told you to (vs because you don't want to anyway like the other 12 years. I KNOW YOU, GAMERS.)

We really stretched the definition of "games" and "2020" this year, as we always do!

I will try to roll out a bunch of them today, time permitting, hopefully leaving a nice pace to finish on Thurs/Fri.

Also side-polls! They'll be peppered in as I look up how they were supposed to be scored and I score 'em!

Woo! Games!

I didn't vote for any games that I enjoyed watching someone else play this year, all games that I actually had my own grubby hands on, thus avoiding controversy.

i didn't vote because i've only had my Piss5 for a couple of weeks and a ballot with just P5 Royal getting all my points seemed unhelpful but

yaaaay, tell me what i need to get into this year

We have less than (Cyberpunk 20)77 games voted for this year, sadly, so we will start with our least-voted-for game at rank 70:

https://i.imgur.com/gxITp2P.png
70 - Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues - 2 points / 1 Vote

oh also, the way i did these images was an idea i had a few days ago but didn't actually commit to doing until ~2-4am last night, so don't judge me if the execution is sloppy af

just to get it out of the way are you gonna list platforms on these Will?

no biggy if not, i can google

Ha, if you do can you truncate my rambling "not entirely sure what platform this is but I guess browser will do" into an actual platform? I'm sorry!

I did not include platforms, but if you look up the nomination thread you'll see most of them there!

https://i.imgur.com/6yWgY9c.png
69 - Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - 3 points / 1 Vote

Oh also there are a lot of ties coming up as there always are. This year they are in no particular order, because I basically kept reordering the list every time a new ballot came in.

(there were of course a couple of write-ins also so hopefully the writer inners mention platforms here)

https://i.imgur.com/sAloCIZ.png
52 - Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020 - 5 points / 1 Vote

i'm gonn have to do more than 6 of these an hour today to get thru as many as i want to lol

That one sounded potentially fun, but I am a sucker for creepypasta gimmickry.

https://i.imgur.com/70ihNOo.png
52 - Evan Birnholz’s December 27, 2020 Washington Post crossword, “5×5” - 5 points / 1 Vote

Haunted PS1 Demo Disc is a fun, free sampler of janky spookiness and the 2021 installment drops later today!

lol good stuff

sorry i didn't play any new games last year so i abstained. will try harder this year though i haven't played a 2021 game yet either and now have all these 2020 games to catch up on so who knows

https://i.imgur.com/lJ9jhHB.png
52 - The Impossible Bottle - 5 points / 1 Vote

https://i.imgur.com/crFWWDm.png
52 - Marvel's Avengers - 5 points / 1 Vote

this rollout has been amazing so far

cryptic spoiler, which you may be able to decipher and figure out some placements: there are three games in this rollout where i am furious that their ranking is not one higher or lower

i haven't seen cobra kai, i'm not interested in how the karate kid saga continues (although i hope that the karate kid does continue to win tournaments), and i don't know what system that Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues is on.

but despite all of that, i am impressed and intimidated by the results leading off with that game

banner saga at #50?!?!

i could see wanting cobra kai to come in at #69 instead of #70, but i won't make that one of my three guesses. banner saga at #50 though, that's an official guess.

Oh, ha, whoever nominated the Impossible Bottle didn't vote for it, then, as that was my five points. It was the joint winner of the 2020 IF Comp and I thought it was a fun game with a neat mechanic - you can manipulate items in the real world through manipulating doll's house versions of them. But I never actually finished it, just didn't find it quite compelling enough. I also had issues with the other joint winner (it was buggy when I played it), but the third placer I thought was wonderful, and it will make an appearance later.

love the cyberplick logo; lots of stuff i never heard of!

I can't find a Google result for that crossword puzzle thing that doesn't look like a spoiler...

xpost yes i love that header logo too!!

https://i.imgur.com/TmAjdEp.png
52 - Watch Dogs: Legion - 5 points / 1 Vote

also i love the jump from 69 to 52, which is confusing at first, not so much because of the skip but because suddenly you're dealing with the crossword guy

he's like "fuck YES i'm in a videogame rollout!"

I am Crossword Man, dooby-dooby-dooby-dooby do do do

i had no idea what to include as an image for that until i google evan birnholz, and it all became clear

that's a smile that says "i'm about to confound some folks and outrank a zelda game in a year-end kinda-about-video-games poll"

i did that crossword after it was nominated, and good lord is it a hell of a puzzle. (i actually managed to get most of the way through it before i just had to look up how to solve the end)

^^same here!!

https://i.imgur.com/EzQEUPl.png
52 - Trackmania - 5 points / 1 Vote

(see noms, this made it in on a technicality that i cannot remember. re-release i think?)

me: says he needs to rollout faster
also me: doesn't

https://i.imgur.com/hXnGSvi.png
52 - Teardown - 5 points / 1 Vote

i had to check if this was my 5 points (it wasn't)

almost made my ballot! really fun game that lets you break stuff. it's the mars game except it's actually what we wanted from the mars game! i should ahve included it, if i had given it some points it would've been ranked like idk 3rd overall or wahtever there was not a lot of consensus this year

Teardown looks fun! i'm waiting for a chance to play it

yeah, it definitely sounds cool, but I'm not so sure about the semi-voxely aesthetic in a post mincraft world.

it differentiates itself enough, somehow? idk how to describe but i wasn't really thinking about minecraft at all while playing. for one things the voxels are smaller, haha.

https://i.imgur.com/6fGPbdg.png
52 - Noita - 5 points / 1 Vote

https://i.imgur.com/FTqDtMB.png
52 - Half-Life: Alyx - 5 points / 1 Vote

fun fact: there are 16 year olds on the internet saying "half-life 3 when" guess how many of them were born when half-life 2 came out? that's right, none. or maybe i guess like half of them. none of the 15 year olds though!

lol did i lose everyone on account of taking so long

WELL, we're almost at the end, which means it's time for the last side poll of the thread...

TOP 10 GAME-RELATED CONTENT (OPEN-ENDED POLL)

Some of these we've already seen of Forks's excellent year-end tv/streaming poll but many of them we did not! Since this is the games poll we get lots more games content! Twitch streamers! Podcasts! Other YouTube channels!

Some solo first-, second- and third-place votes tied at 8th, 5th and 3rd respectively, but three voters each (in the same configuration as well -- two firsts and a second each) gave us two consensus winners. And, at least in 2020, they included the same person! wow! congrats to tim.

T8. Vektroid - link
T8. Playstation Accesslink
T8. Jacob Geller - link
T5. Gary - link
T5. Matt McMuscles's "What Happened?" series - link
T5. Outsidexbox / Outside Xtra - link
T3. Videogamedunkey - link
T3. Wario64 - link
T1. Action Button - link
T1. Insert Credit Podcast - link

xp

my #1 (out of the 3 2020 games i'd played when i voted)

honestly a bit disappointing, yakuza revealing its true form as a turn based RPG sounded great to my ears, especially since i'd played DQ XI in late 2019/early 2020 and it became probably my all-time favourite jrpg, but the combat in Y7 never felt as good as DQXI and the ui issues were aggravating

still, it's a yakuza game, i enjoyed it despite not living up to my expectations but i've already put serious time into about 5 of those and if i was submitting my ballot today the top spot would have gone to 13 sentinels instead, which i began playing in the meantime

xp to the media... Plenty of honourable mentions for me in this category that i couldn't include in my top 3:

- Hbomberguy had only one 2020 video game video, but it's real good and about New Vegas!
- AOC playing Among Us with Hasan, Contra, Ilhan Omar, Jagmeet Singh, The Serfs, XQC, Hbomb and others was a distinctly surreal experience
- Limmy's Twitch, or if you live in the exact opposite sleep schedule like I do, the highlights on his YouTube
- Speaking of, plenty of comedians ended up moving to Twitch to play games. Some of these are pretty good! I've enjoyed watching john hastings (nb: irl friend).
- after the AOC thing I checked out xQc, and while it's not always for me, him trying to speedrun Who Want To Be A Millionaire while knowing very little of anything about anything had me scream-laughing by myself in my house
- speaking of blaseball, fans of the Seattle Garages made an album and it's... pretty good!
- fumble dimension from Kofie and Jon Bois is an utter delight

name some others gamefreaks!

it was also my #1 (yakuza)! although i hit a wall real hard and haven't returned yet, i should do that soon. i was so excited, and spoilers start now, when i got to majima... but then he stomped me multiple times and i realized i had to actually grind and i just haven't gotten around to it. if anyone is gonna kick my ass though, it should be him...

same here, and i agree the storytelling nailed it by making that fight such a difficulty spike

reaching top floor at yapi's (sp?) arena is enough, worked for me but even so not at the first attempt, i finally was forced to put a bit of thought into the combat vs playing on auto-pilot like i had until then. the boss run for that section is such a PITA too

There Is No Game is really funny and full of surprises. I'd recommend it as a group activity on Zoom or etc.

I was surprised by how funny Crusader Kings 3 was to me. The interfamily squabbles and scenarios that develop are great. It's a storytelling machine.

Paradise Killer was my number one at the max points available. It's set in a hellish dayglo cult society, who kidnap, enslave and sacrifice humans to eldritch gods, and you're a detective who has to solve the murder of your occult council. The detective game is fairly simple, you interview people and find clues and bring them all together in a trial (the in-game tracker is very good in a way I'd not seen in a detective game before, so plus points for that). The world is massive and immensely fun to explore while collecting blood crystals for optional extras, and chatting with the weird demon who keeps popping up is A+++ fun.

In terms of games I didn't vote for, I very much enjoyed the original There Is No Game and may well pick up last year's one at some point.

Also, you totally get to boff a couple of characters if you want to, hehehe

https://i.imgur.com/8RkbiNI.png
4 - Fall Guys - 58 points / 6 Votes

I probably should have put Fall Guys at #1 since it's the 2020 game I played the most.

I'd actually compare it to Trackmania or Astrobot's time trials, where you could see new strategies develop in real time if you played it day to day.

i threw 20 points to Crusader Kings 3. it rules - if you're familiar at all with paradox, just jump in

I probably should have put Fall Guys at #1 since it's the 2020 game I played the most.

this might be true for me too! and yet i didn't vote for it. that's how much i hated the grab mechanic. my record in games that just involve jumping, timing, and dexterity: undefeated. my record in the games that involved any sort of grab mechanic: 0 for one billion. fuck that fucking grab thing

https://i.imgur.com/J8vQQeF.png
3 - The Last of Us Part II - 60 points / 2 First-place votes / 2 Votes

we're so close to the end!

tap triangle to climb a ladder.

NO

still working on the first one!

i dunno if i'll ever get around to this one, i crashed out hard on the first game... who knows, maybe someday. it took me years to finally get to uncharted.

two people sure did like it! talk about a weird year. third place has two votes, each 30 points.

OK HERE YOU GO

YOUR ABSOLUTELY

REAL

TOP

2

GAMES

OF

2020

...

heh heh heh

https://i.imgur.com/Zilji4I.png
2 - Obligatory Quarantine Joke - 77 points / 6 First-place votes / 6 Votes

https://i.imgur.com/0dQX4IV.png
1 - Second Quarantine Joke - 177 points / 9 First-place votes / 9 Votes

omg wow did april fools come early on march 26 or something! i feel bamboozled that totally got me

haha just kidding it didn't get me. i made the joke! i didn't trick myself. i bamboozled you AGAIN.

LETS DO THIS FOR ACTUAL

https://i.imgur.com/1N3eslR.png
2 - Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 109 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 6 Votes

https://i.imgur.com/9dqSYEI.png
1 - Hades - 168 points / 4.5 First-place votes / 7 Votes

FLAWLESS VICTORY

Thanks to everyone who voted and kept me company during this accidentally very long rollout!!!

DAY 3 RECAP - 100% COMPLETE

1 - Hades - 168 points / 4.5 First-place votes / 7 Votes
2 - Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 109 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 6 Votes
3 - The Last of Us Part II - 60 points / 2 First-place votes / 2 Votes
4 - Fall Guys - 58 points / 6 Votes
5 - Yakuza Like a Dragon - 50 points / 2 First-place votes / 3 Votes
6 - Final Fantasy VII Remake - 45 points / 4 Votes
7 - Paradise Killer - 43 points / 1 First-place vote / 3 Votes
8 - Crusader Kings III - 40 points / 3 Votes
9 - There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension - 35 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 3 Votes
10 - Mortal Shell - 34 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 2 Votes
11 - Tony Hawk: Pro Skater 1+2 Remastered - 33 points / 3 Votes
12 - AI Dungeon - 30 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 1 Vote
13 - Among Us - 30 points / 4 Votes
14 - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 30 points / 2 Votes
14 - A Monster's Expedition - 30 points / 2 Votes
16 - Two Point Hospital - 28 points / 2 Votes
17 - Blaseball - 24 points / 3 Votes
18 - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - 24 points / 1 Vote
19 - Ghost of Tsushima - 20 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 1 Vote
20 - Streets of Rage 4 - 20 points / 2 Votes
21 - Disco Elysium - 20 points / 1 Vote
21 - The Longing - 20 points / 1 Vote
23 - Depanneur Nocturne - 16 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 1 Vote
23 - Wide Ocean, Big Jacket - 16 points / 0.5 First-place votes / 1 Vote
25 - War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius - 15 points / 1 Vote
25 - Trials of Mana - 15 points / 1 Vote
25 - Magic the Gathering: Arena - 15 points / 1 Vote
25 - Kentucky Route Zero - 15 points / 1 Vote
25 - Vain Empires - 15 points / 1 Vote
25 - Death & Taxes - 15 points / 1 Vote
31 - Sludge Life - 14 points / 1 Vote
32 - Spelunky 2 - 12 points / 1 Vote
33 - Post-Void - 11 points / 1 Vote
33 - Umurangi Generation - 11 points / 1 Vote
35 - Microsoft Flight Simulator - 10 points / 1 First-place vote / 1 Vote
36 - Murder By Numbers - 10 points / 2 Votes
37 - Ori and the Will of the Wisps - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Tales from Off-Peak City, Vol. 1 - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - 8800 Blue Lick Rd. Virtual Tour - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Lair of the Clockwork God - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Ordinal Markup - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Speaking Simulator - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Synergism - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - The Prestige Tree - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Carrion - 10 points / 1 Vote
37 - Paper Mario: The Origami King - 10 points / 1 Vote
47 - Spiritfarer - 8 points / 2 Votes
48 - Super Mario 3D All-Stars - 8 points / 1 Vote
49 - Deathtrap Dungeon: The Interactive Video Adventure - 7 points / 1 Vote
49 - My Exercise - 7 points / 1 Vote
51 - Marvel Puzzle Quest - 6 points / 2 Votes
52 - Genshin Impact - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Cyberpunk 2077 - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Deep Rock Galactic - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - 51 Worldwide Games - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Bugsnax - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Call of Duty: Warzone - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Cloudpunk - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Frog Fractions - Hop's Iconic Cap DLC - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Half-Life: Alyx - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Noita - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Teardown - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Trackmania - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Watch Dogs: Legion - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Marvel's Avengers - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - The Impossible Bottle - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Evan Birnholz’s December 27, 2020 Washington Post crossword, “5×5” - 5 points / 1 Vote
52 - Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2020 - 5 points / 1 Vote
69 - Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - 3 points / 1 Vote
70 - Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues - 2 points / 1 Vote

for everyone wonder if animal crossing or hades was gonna win... it wasnt even close lol

is Hades the greatest game of all time?!

Wow, no Doom Eternal?

Called it. I almost gave a couple of points to Last Of Us 2 in a "watched my BF play it and enjoyed doing so" style, but thought I had enough that I'd played myself to leave it.

Thanks, Will! A great rollout as usual.

Also, I appreciate that your joke placements were actually jokes rather than very confusing feasible placements. Thank you!

is Hades the greatest game of all time?!

― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, March 26, 2021 7:21 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is according to this certainly the greatest game of *a* time. that time is 2020. a bad time to be sure. but apparently a good game!

i got it at the same time as another game (actually i just looked it up, i got a buuuunch of games around then) so it kinda fell to the wayside. never got anywhere in it. once i clear some of the stuff off of my current list i'll have to jump back in!

Also, I appreciate that your joke placements were actually jokes rather than very confusing feasible placements. Thank you!

― emil.y, Friday, March 26, 2021 7:25 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's my style! no confusion! just dumb goofs!

that sure didn't stop me from being trolled by that cyberpunk placement, guess that means i'm a fake gamer

thnaks for the organising this, great work as usual!

thanks even

Fall Guys easily the game that made me the angriest of last year, it was my #3 I think?

FFS I SHD'VE MADE MY P5 ROYAL BALLOT YOU MONSTERS

Is P5 Royal massively different from the previous iteration? I mean, not that I stick strictly to first release dates either, more just wondering if there was anything hugely 2020 about it.

(I don't think I expressed myself well there. I know Royal was a 2020 release but I'm just wondering how much new content there actually was.)

i've only put a couple of (working) weeks in yet so i'm about a fifth in but yes it's definitely different enough, not sure in totally good ways always but fuck it it's Persona they stole my heart

Lots of interesting stuff on this list, I haven't heard of at least 50% of it. Good work will!

A little sad that we got stuff in the Top 10 with only 2 votes, but that's how this year went, I suppose. Let's try harder for 2021!

Though not totally unexpected, still surprised Hades beat Animal Crossing!

I voted TLOU2 for GOTY. I'm fairly sure it's going to be one of those games that sticks with me a long time. Also glad to see others saw Fire Emblem: Three Houses in the same light I did.

Who voted for Trials of Mana? Considering getting that on the cheap.

I did, it's a neat action rpg where you pick a party of 3 out of 6 selectable characters with their own interlocking storylines, the first one you pick being your main character and each party member can be leveled across 6 (?) different classes

it's relativley short, it took me about 30 hours for one playthrough and i usually take 2 to 3x longer than the consensus average. yakuza 7 was like 90 and i didn't even do all the side stuff nor the secret dungeon

the music is excellent, the english VA is charmingly weird in a 32 bit era way and online people making fun of it was what tipped me over to giving it a try

i played it on switch because i had just got one at the time but i regret it, i think the other versions are 60fps. still a fine port, nothing that ruined my enjoyment or anything

Nice job Will!

Yeah, thanks for this!

re: Yakuza,

i hit a wall real hard and haven't returned yet

Yeah we walled in Chapter 9 at one of the major boss fights and I don't have the patience to grind or replay the fight over and over so that might be it for me and this game. I think we just weren't levelled up enough, even with me insisting on doing as many side quests as possible.

I still gave it points because I love how bonkers these games are, but I think I prefer the non-RPG Yakuza system, and I didn't find Yokohama to be a super compelling as a setting - possibly just suffers from being a bit too spread out.

I voted TLOU2 for GOTY. I'm fairly sure it's going to be one of those games that sticks with me a long time. Also glad to see others saw Fire Emblem: Three Houses in the same light I did.

Twins!

I didn't find Yokohama to be a super compelling as a setting - possibly just suffers from being a bit too spread out.

otm, the city's way too big compared to how dense kamurocho and sotenbori are. so much pointless running around, i've used the taxi more times in 7 than in all the other yakuzas put together

i'd actually prefer the turn based fights if the ui wasn't a mess and animations were skippable or at least snappier

similar complaint applies to FE:3H monastery sections but at least the combat system's well implemented in that one

man i know everyone loves hades but i'm so hesitant to try it bc i suck at twitchy action and i don't like feeling stressed

It definitely has a cool way of taking the sting out of losing. It's fun to go back to the start and talk to all the npcs again and get your new powers.