The titles we’ve beaten on stream represent an array of interesting ideas, concepts, and executions throughout the gaming spectrum. From platformers to adventure titles, from Metroidvania to jRPG’s, we go through a menagerie for the sake of fun and entertainment. As part of that experience I wanted to start gathering up my thoughts about these titles.

The Rankings

As we’ve jumped into a large number of titles, it’s time to start putting things in order of our loves of the year. We’re setting the list on this page to strictly titles played in the current year to date, and once this page is archived in January, we’ll setup our overall top titles played throughout our streaming career. Ongoing titles, such as Warframe, and Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, will be included for major releases, but not patch updates.

Ranked from most to least favored:

• Hollow Knight
• Cross Code
• Stardew Valley
• Hades
• Space Engineers
• Shadowrun: Returns
• Owlboy
• Warframe: Heart of Deimos
• Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope
• Primordia
• Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
• Viscera Cleanup Detail
• Carrion
• Satisfactory
• Phasmophobia
• Genshin Impact
• Sea of Thieves
• Cloudpunk

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MHW:IB was a lot of fun to play, and overall I found the base game’s mechanics a great deal of fun. Where things start to break down for me is the post-game mechanics. The concepts behind the Guiding Lands and the hunting in that region are a lot of fun, but the upgrade mechanics based on the items level left a bit to be desired from me. It felt like they punished you for daring to fight monsters that were stronger to get better weapons. In order to upgrade these weapons you then need to fight even stronger enemies, and it sort of continued a cycle of pushing you as opposed to rewarding you. Yes, with these better weapons you could handle lower level enemies easier, but those enemies became less and less useful for bothering to handle.

Overall, I recommend MHW:IB. Gameplay is fun, the story is alright but serves as little more than a vehicle to introduce the next monster, and overall progression and co-op are great. That said, if you love hard grinds against ever increasing in difficulty monsters, the game is perfect for you. If you don’t love that grind, beat the title and just keep to casual playing. The base experience is very rewarding. I completed this title in March 2020.

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Cross Code has become one of my top ten games. The story centers around the concepts of persona, a digital world and humanity’s presence in it, and what is the self. It handles all of these high concepts in a delicate balance that bleeds just the right amount of trope mixed with satisfying resolution. On top of this, Cross Code manages the balance of puzzler and fighter by making the majority of conflicts in the game centered around figuring out the pattern and ability needed to resolve the battle. Be it needing to bounce, spin, time a strike, or more, the puzzles and fights of the game integrate into each other perfectly. The only complaint is a visual one, due to the nature of attempting to solve a few 3D puzzles in a 2D texture game, but those issues are far between one another.

My overall impression of Cross Code is incredibly positive. Gameplay, story, and graphics all integrate near perfectly. Honestly the only thing I can think of is wishing the game had a mode to play as the other classes, as Spheromancer is fun and powerful, I’d like to try out the other four roles. The game offers satisfying fights that never feel like they’re unfair. They’re intense, action packed, and balanced perfectly. I do want to point out that in case things get a little rough, the game does include sliders for both enemy damage and timing of puzzles so that accessibility never becomes an issue for casual players who just want the story experience. I completed this title May 25, 2020.

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Horatio’s and Crispin’s adventure in the City of Glass and light within Primordia is a tale of lies, illusions, and misdirection. The world is covered and death and the city is a crypt that’s being picked clean. Overall game play focused around piecing together this and other lesser mysteries, and the bulk of the game revolves around that classic King’s Quest style. The biggest gameplay complaint I’d issue is that often the lovely art for the game hides the rare items you’re supposed to find. Most of the time, this isn’t an issue, but here and there are wires, cars, or other items that appear as background pieces are pivotal to resolving challenges. Story-wise, Primordia is short. At only 5.5 to 6 hours of game play, Primordia is over an done in an afternoon, and at the current price point that’s a bit steep. The world building sets up a lot of story potential for Metropol to be act 1 of a 3 act story, and instead it comes to a barely appetite satiating conclusion.

Overall I recommend Primordia with the caution of its shortness. It’s a good game with good mechanics, and a good story, but it has the potential to be so much more. It’s price it a little much for it’s duration, although it is close enough to the $1 : 1 hour price recommendation that it’s forgivable. I started and completed this title May 29, 2020.

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Tempered angst pumps through the veins of a dying city in Cloudpunk as we follow the story of Rania during her first night working in the city of Nivalis. Wrapped in a coat of Cyberpunk fashion, Nivalis is a city of perpetual rain, thick fog, corrupt police, power hungry corporations, and deadly mobs. Nirvalis has a consistent character of failed civilization attempting to make it in a rotten futurescape, but this stands in sharp contrast to Cloudpunk itself as it fails to find the identity it wants to be. The game isn’t so much fun as it is interesting, and that’s sort of its problem. When the writing is trying to point out social issues often associated with cyberpunk and dystopia it either comes out as well earned and well presented (a certain long collectable storyline highlights this), or it comes off as awkward and forced (the majority of the random one-shot NPC encounters). The story is either really good or really bad, and there’s not much in-between.

Further, Cloudpunk tries to come off like it’s setting up features gamers might expect to lead somewhere, but then does nothing with them. The biggest example of this is the apartment; in which the player can furnish throughout the course of the game with things like a music player, a fridge, a game console. A modern gamer may expect the music player to let them to listen to different tracks from the OST, or the game console to let them experience mini-games they’ve been collecting for an eclectic NPC, but neither of these feature arrive. They, like many of the experiences of the game, feel unpolished and unfinished. Overall, I do recommend Cloudpunk for the core story, but little else. It’s feels like a released beta. The current $19.99 price tag makes me hesitant against the 12 hours it took to complete the game, but as it’s an indie dev I’m more forgiving for the $1=1 hour requirement I have from AAA titles. If you’re in it for the core story, it’s worth the time. At the time of this writing, the developers are still actively adding new features, and perhaps my judgements above might be alleviated. I beat this title on June 1, 2020.

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The knight’s adventure in Hallownest is one of mystery, danger, and survival. It’s a growing measure of risk and reward as you master the movement of our silent protagonist. Team Cherry takes their time as they ramp up the difficulty, gradually forcing you to risk more and until at last you understand the beast that lies ahead. The puzzle of a battle that has stripped you of your coin and your life, and the pleasure of conquering your foe at last. Only to drive a nail into your heart, as they expose the nightmare versions of these bosses before you. They beckon, they tease, “come for us, Knight. Show us how sharp your steel truly is.” And you oblige them this challenge.

Hollow Knight is a grand adventure that owns the genre of Metroidvania. It does not seek to copy others, but to leave it’s own mark in the tapestry of gaming history, and it’s a grand time to visit and explore the love the developers have placed in this setting. At the time of this writing, Hollow Knight comes in at $14.99 for price, and easily fufills the $1:1 hour desire I have for titles, while also offering lovely chances to revisit for different play styles and challenges. I completed this title on June 17, 2020.

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Efficiency and design is the name of the game in this game, and exploring a strange alien world and the possibilities within offer lovely challenges to the engineer at play. The team I played with, Ethan and Enthnal, created a trio of innovative ideas and philosophies as we explore sector MASSAGE-2(AB) b, our home away from home around the binary stars of Akycha. We built massive water towers, extended sky ways, and tubes to throw us across the world. Enthnal chased away (because I hope he didn’t do worse) cute alien dogs, and I picked up uranium and put it in my pocket. It was a blast.

Satisfactory is in early access, and has much more to come as its development continues. If you’re into building games like Minecraft (Especially modded minecraft servers), like logistics, and have a general love of the mysterious, I think Satisfactory is worth your time. Coming in a current price of $29.99, I think over the long haul this title will be worth your time spent in there. We played this title in June and July of 2020, and will revisit it in the future.

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Stardew Valley lent me and Ethan a chance to slow down and explore the lighter side of life. Planning harvests, clearing mines, and exploring a town of lovely people, the story sung in graceful choirs of simple pleasure. Though we only made it to Fall, our time of working on Vanmost Farm was well spent. Only the time was a little overburdening to us as we played both this and Satisfactory on stream at the same time, perhaps leading to a touch of burnout.

The only complaint I can bring towards the game is the speed in which online play passes, and the requirement we felt to install a mod to let us control and slow down the flow of time. Without the ability to pause as we thought about our plans, it felt like the game swept by too quickly that first week. Otherwise, it was a charming adventure and I look forward to revisiting it later this year. At $14.99 and updates still on there way, this title is well worth picking up. We played this title in June and July of 2020.

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Carrion was fun. Bloody, violent, fun. It’s pixel format barely hides the horror of becoming the monster in it’s lovely stretching, screeching, ripping way. The game is a grand ride, suffering only from two major flaws. First, it’s short, very short. At only six to seven hours of game play, it’s $19.99 price tag is just a bit much even if this was an indie publisher, which it isn’t. I’d wait until it goes on sale for $12-$15, if not lower. If, however, they continue to update the game with new content such as a challenge mode or other mechanic that encouraged replayability, then the price tag would become more reasonable.

Second, while most of the game drives forward, near the end of the game, the fact that it doesn’t have a map is very harmful to it. It became quite confusing and frankly added on thirty to sixty minutes of just figuring out where to go. It needs something to help people around. But other than those two problems, it’s a wonderful little gem of a game and worth having a blast in. I completed Carrion July 26, 2020.

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It’s worth stating, like Stardew Valley and Satisfactory, Owlboy was part of a two-parter series of games I played, and so I think of Carrion a lot as I think of the charming characters of Vellie. Such a comparison likely catapulted Owlboy high into the island filled sky as a charming and sweet title, but a title not without flaws. the game is tender and sweet and such a lovely little platformer. The puzzles are well done, visuals are stunning, and the core storyline is satisfying. It paints a picture of a lovely world with an intriguing past that’s slowly revealed through most of the game.

Where Owlboy faulters, however, is that its outer points feel unpolished. Side characters that seem to develop an arc, don’t. Mechanics works well, but never quite get challenging (with one exception of a mechanic that’s thrown at you as a side game and is just super hard for no reason), and it pales a little compared to contemporaries that arrived on the scene around the time it did. It’s also a little short if the player doesn’t seek out all the collectables. Like Carrion, while I’m forgiving for indies about length, six to seven hours isn’t long enough of a game that is still $24.99 at the time of this writing. Get this one on sale as well, except the soundtrack! Buy that soundtrack at full price because it is soooooo worth it. We said our goodbyes to Otus, Geddy, and the rest on August 3, 2020.

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A fun and mildly challenging platformer, Shovel Knight has been on the scene for some time offering fun adventures and a lovely aesthetic. Gameplay is solid although slightly flustering, but rewards the patient and deft trowel wielding hero. It’s a short game, however, even with bonus fights, and I would have marked it poorly back in 2014 had we played it upon release. But, I purchased Shovel Knight back when it first released, and as such I was granted the full release bundles of the Shovel Knight Treasure Trove collection as they came out. This means that for the current $39.99 price tag, you get a fairly large amount of content.

As this is the first in a series, I’ll keep the review a little shorter until the entire series is complete. So far I’m loving the title, and I look forward to playing the knights in the Order of No Quarter. We saved the day on August 9, 2020.

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Heart of Deimos introduces us to the Entrati family, a secretive Orokin house whose researches served as the foundation of much of the empire’s latter glory and the possibility for the Tenno to even exist. The update brought with it a change in the location of the derelict maps, now nodes around the infested moon Deimos, as well as the Cambion Drift, a putrid and corrupted field home to the Grey Strain infestation. HoD offered a lot of the content we’re used to in open worlds, and was a welcome break in terms of content, but I’ll be honest, I did not connect with the personalities of Deimos as much as I had with that of the previous open world, Fortuna.

HoD also brought with it two major game play elements worth noting for the greater Warframe experience, Necromechs and the Helmith system. Necromechs are archguns on steroids, granting Tenno not just the firepower of heavy weapons, but a suit of armor to back it up. Building on the transference system first seen in The War Within, Necromechs add to the lore that Tenno are far more adaptable than just mere Warframe pilots. The Helmith system, however, focused on adding in variety to the Warframes themselves. By sacrificing Warframes, Tenno could now add specific powers from these avatars to other Warframes. It has allowed a number of interesting builds to come about, and I’m still enjoying playing with them.

As of now, I’m nearly complete with the current HoD content. There’s more for them to add, but for the purpose of this review, I found HoD fun but predictable. The story elements were quite fun and were built on the strong weave of hints they’ve been presenting for some time. The change to the faction points system was welcoming to me, but seeing the same fishing, conservation, mining, gun, and “special faction” vendors again feels like lather, rinse, repeat, and I hope The Duviri Paradox release in the future can break this mold by allowing us to see something new from the visons it held.

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Full Disclosure before I start my review, I helped Kickstart Shadowrun: Returns, so I admit a potential bias as my mind likely wants me to feel confident I spent my money well. Take that for what it’s worth, chummer.

Like Shovel Knight, Shadowrun: Returns is part of a larger series of games, this being the trilogy of titles produced by Harebrained Schemes. I’m a major Shadowrun fan, and have been since the release of the SNES Shadowrun title back in 1993, which only makes me love SR:R that much more as I dig all the little references to that title. SR:R offers a strong emergent story that gives the player the chance present a certain feel to the game. These choices don’t often reflect in story points as much as they reflect the attitudes NPC’s will have about the player. For story and NPC presentation, SR:R grants you a full on sixth world experience, and tells a wonderful dark tale of hope, betrayal, and to never trust a dead man.

Where Shadowrun: Returns fails is in interface and the extent of Sixth World content in game mechanics. Summoning feels weak compared to the Rigger counterpart, and using Charisma is a rare. Its a fairly combat or nothing else story most of the time, and even then it hurts with targeting layered enemies around what should be simple geometry. I’m hoping titles further along in the series fix these issues. At $14.99, I feel like SR:R is worth the money especially with the presentation of user content, not to mention the elephant in the room mod of the SNES remake within the user content files. We got our street justice on September 26, 2020.

I first played Space Engineers back in 2019, introduced to it via Enthnal and promptly joined in on a friends only multiplayer server. These days we end up playing solo most of the time, but it’s one of those titles I’d love to get a community server up and rolling.

The game is a fairly standard Build/Survival rotation similar in vein to Minecraft, but with the added focus of getting vehicles and structures built to better process resources. It’s a lovely experience for exploring a physics engine, getting creative with ship design and in general just having a good time enjoying zero g’s. Where Space Engineers kind of falters is the lack of a need for exploring. Most resources are available on all planets, and the few that aren’t are only available on asteroids in open space. This keeps the base game solo experience from evolving after a certain point without mods to add depth. Multiplayer, however, permits this game to shine despite these limitations. If you’re going solo, you’re going to need a love of design for this game to hold your attention.

Despite the lack of an expansion progression system, I recommend Space Engineers as a solid representation of the build/survival style of games. It shines in multiplayer, and has a splendid mod community to nudge the flavor to an individual’s liking. I also want to point out that SE also does something I think other indie games should consider when it comes to DLC. New DLC bundles seem to come out once every 3-9 months with cosmetic content, and are paired with an update that adds free mechanical content, all at the price tag of $3.99. For me, that’s a reasonable ask for a smaller developer. They’re not constantly trying to milk their community. We played travelled cold moons and made a home on a floating rock throughout 2020.

It’s one of those titles that few people avoided playing. Genshin Impact was an easy to get into title with a lovely story to initially draw people in. Game play was fun and for your first few hours playing it felt like the game was throwing characters at you. Visually lovely, a musical experience so pleasant to the ears, just over all a lovely artistic display centered around the simplicity of it’s design.

Where Genshin faltered, however, was the same experience that plagues many gacha titles. Limited play time (doing specific dungeons to gather progression gear). Slow progression in terms of getting new characters (unless you bought tokens to make new rolls). An incomplete story. The first two could be solved with money, which highlights the predatory nature of these types of games. For me, it creations a tension to play everyday, as the few resource they give for progression can get wasted if not used. I don’t like when a game pressures me to play each day. I should find I want to play every day because of the experience, not because I have to use up resources. Which is ultimately why after we completed the story segment available from Genshin, we put the game down and haven’t returned.

I don’t hate games like Genshin Impact, but as I said above, I find them predatory and stress inducing when pressed up against schedules and artificial limitations. I think the gameplay was super enjoyable, but I couldn’t shake the shadow of the gacha experience from the title, and left when that shadow was all that remained. We travelled through the world of Teyvat in Septemeber and October of 2020.

It’s an amazing experience to see a new gaming sub-genre come into existence. I’ve seen it a few times, with Minecraft coming to mind as the most recent titan birthing a new experience. Phasmophobia does this by introducing a type of horror meets puzzle solving. The game focuses on finding clues in a guaranteed haunted house and using them to survey the location for the type of spook present without getting slain. Best played with a full party, the game shines when everyone has a modicum of experience but hasn’t become too jaded and clinical of the treatment of the game’s subject.

My criticism of the game will highlight how this review was written after the years we first played the title. The game suffers with an update focus that I don’t think serves it’s core experience. Namely, their continue addition of more ghost types and equipment for finding them. For me, new maps draw me back into Phasmophobia and having to figure out new equipment hinders my enjoyment of these experience. Despite this criticism, I still find myself enjoying each revisit to the title, and with the current entry fee being $13.99, it’s not a bad time to pick it up. We stepped in salt and saw our breath for the first time on Halloween night, October 31, 2020.

I cannot praise Supergiant Games enough when it comes to their titles. From Bastion, to Transistor, to now Hades; each title is a wonderful experience of gameplay, visual design, wonderful music, and just so many grand characters. The first of the titles we’ve played on stream, Hades puts us in the roguelike shoes of protagonist Zagreus, and his attempts to flee that both Hades, the place and his Father. With an arsenals of weapons, help from various Olympian sources, and the ability to die and slowly progress to lofty power levels due to the game’s roguelike elements, the game is a charming cycle of victories and defeats.

Where Hades stumbles is…. well… wait a moment. Hold on. I don’t think it does. The game stands on it’s own as a wonderful experience and well deserving of the praise it’s received over the years. I guess my only complaint is just how much thirst the game inspires in people for it’s plethora of lovely cast members. We burned to death, again, in Tartarus in November 2020.

With some titles, you can look at a game’s design and just know exactly who the developer is right away. That was my experience watching Sea of Thieves for the first time; I knew Rare’s fingerprints right away. Like Genshin Impact, SoT keeps the game play mechanic loop simple. Only a few weapons, and mostly cosmetic choices, there’s no gear progression in the title. Similarly, ship parts are all cosmetic and every play mechanically is on equal footing. Which is both good and bad for the core PVP experience that lingers through most of the game. Good because it means a play can never surprise you with a crazy high level weapon that will be indefensible, but bad because it limits your options dealing with players who have spent months to years mastering only a handful of weapons. Tie this into the complexity of controlling a ship, and suddenly you have an environment very punishing to new players.

Where Sea of Thieves becomes less enjoyable is the core PVP fear in the game. Skilled players can completely cut inexperienced or hindered players out of story and quests. Without an ability to opt-out of PVP, a player or group of players can be hounded until they quit the game due to failing interest. I say this as someone who enjoys PVP in games, has experienced joyous victory and crushing defeat, that it’s not a great gaol to leave out these players. It means events like the 2021 Pirates of the Caribbean story can be completely crushed in terms of happiness and hype because all of the focus will be on those camping the quest locations in the open waters. With that in mind, I can’t wholly recommend the game unless you’re joining an experienced group of players. Trying to buy in now while the community has very experienced reaper crews out there isn’t a very valuable experience to invest in. We set sail in December of 2020.

Out final title of 2020, Viscera Cleanup Detail puts you in the rubber wellies of the crew that has to come in after a horrendous and bloody event swept through a level. From exploded labs, first-person shooter matches, alien incursions, and more, the game explores a number of map themes. We spent time cleaning up bulletholes, blood, guts, ooze, acid, explosives, and other Viscera. I’ve played it a few times now but none were as fun as the massive holiday party we had cleaning up Santa’s Workshop after tragedy struck. Almost a dozen players mucking about, blowing things up, and eventually getting the place right and clean.

A word of caution, VCD is not optimized. It’s laggy, has weird physics, and in general can really trudge even well put together machines. But it’s a blast despite it’s short-comings. The game’s $12.99 price point is a fine point of entry, as you spend hours cleaning up each site and the game can keep you in there as you chill to funky music and funky things coming out of the bucket machine. We soaped up and cleaned our mops in December, 2020.

Closure

And that does it. 2020’s title in full review. Our first full year of streaming brought us through over a twenty games, many of them new, sweeping across a multitude of genres. There’s a few we left off the list either because we didn’t complete the game in 2020 (like Aquaria), or it was a one-off that I felt we didn’t get a full measurement of (like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Seige), but look for some of them in future streams.

We’re writing this post and the last few reviews in 2022, and being a year and four months removed from 2020, it’s interesting looking back on how these titles varied over the year. A few were surprise experiences, others have been on our list for years since we first started considering streaming back in 2017. We also started a few series we never got around to completing the next volume of, such as Shadowrun Returns and Shovel Knight, which I want to make good on.

Thanks for checking out my thoughts on these titles. We’ll have more going forward, and in the years to come I hope to be better at being timely with these reviews. The great titles we played deserve them.