Along with the Game of the Year awards voted by our employees, each of our writers has created their own personal lists, covering the top five PlayStation 5 and PS4 titles of 2020. Today, it’s the turn of retro specialist Jamie O’Neill.
My favorite part of Spider-Man: Miles Morales is the beauty of its Christmas winter decor. There is a factor of nostalgia for me. In 2018, Insomniac Games had already succeeded with a modern approach to the swinging crossing of the PS2 Spider-Man 2, with an extension of the free-flowing fight in Arkham games, but Miles adds an extra style and style. The short length of the game seems ideal to me, so I hope that the shorter, independent template, Uncharted: Lost Legacy will be continued in the ninth generation. The upgrade to include a Performance RT mode was welcome, as the PS5 combination of 60 frames per second with ray-tracing was the icing on a snowy skyscraper cake with bright reflective windows.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is the most fun I’ve had playing a Tony Hawk game from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 in 2001. Vicarious Visions’ remake turned into his fidelity to the stream. and the sense of Neversoft’s original commands. If you had told me at the beginning of the PS4 generation that Activision would release two of my favorite remakes – the other being Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, which also contained Beenox’s development skills – I wouldn’t have believed you. So I’m going to bail a combination of over 100,000 points, groms, because Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is sick on PS4 and I can’t wait to hear me shout at him.
Along with Hotshot Racing as the modern version of 2020, the developer of Guard Crush Games can be praised for Streets of Rage 4 as a PS4 brawler that feels authentic to the design of the classic SEGA game from the 1990s. When it was first announced, I wanted Initially, Streets of Rage 4 incorporated traditional sprites and pixel art, but in a similar way to Lizardcube’s Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, the brilliant hand-drawn images from Streets of Rage 4 exceeded my expectations. I liked the details, the secrets and the nods to the retro games, as well as the absurdity of the final boss battle. We also appreciated subsequent balancing improvements, such as the 1.03 patch that improved Axel’s movement speed.
Before I read Christian Kobza’s 10/10 review of Push Square, I was delighted with its subtitle that praised PS5 Demon’s Souls as “Best PlayStation Launch Game.” Bluepoint Games is known for working on the PS4 Shadow of the Colossus as the masters of remastering, so Demon’s Souls is a true graphics showcase for the PS5. Fast charging times and 60 frames per second performance mode are happy. Also, if you’re not sure about its difficulty, read Sammy Barker’s Soapbox, because anyone lucky enough to have a PS5 release shouldn’t miss a game that’s in his “Outstanding” score club. Push Square.
I don’t just consider The Last of Us: Part II as the best game of 2020, it’s also my favorite personal PS4 game from the eighth generation. With the opening verse of Pearl Jam’s Future Days song, which states, “If I ever lost you, I would certainly lose myself,” it still rang in my ears, and that feeling was a theme throughout Naughty Dog series. Similarly, the idea of the PS3 expansion of being “left behind” after losing a loved one is continued in the heartbreaking story of The Last of Us: Part II, which unfortunately became a reflection of 2020 as a heartbreaking year for me.
So, these are Jamie’s five favorite games of 2020. Do you agree with his choices? Have your say in the comments section below.