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This Week in Games - Memories from A Year in Hell


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Soulpiece



Joined: 05 Mar 2015
Posts: 14
PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 7:43 pm Reply with quote
I remember seeing a tweet from someone that the last of us 2 leaks were from a hack attack (even going into a step by step on how that happen), i think someone from kotaku even did a small interview with the person on the hack too.

And its really amazing the lengths nintendo went to on getting a hacker to work with them or just C E A S E on them over the 3DS system
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TranceLimit174



Joined: 21 Jul 2004
Posts: 958
PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 8:04 pm Reply with quote
It wasn't the most Earth-shattering or wide-reaching event, but one of my memorable moments of 2020 that deserves mention is the Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable that happened back in August.

Having all of those JP developers talking to one another & publicly acknowledging the FGC as an audience that they all share was a pretty big deal. It also signaled this new era we are in of direct communication between developers & communities.

It was the one big positive to come out of exorcising the evils within the FGC & we have a bright future to look ahead to with the "Rollback Revolution."
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Nate148



Joined: 24 May 2012
Posts: 465
PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 8:57 pm Reply with quote
Yea that whole thing was great the smash kids tho just never seem to get the issue with what they were doing. Nintendo can not endorse prating.
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AiddonValentine



Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 2201
PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 9:07 pm Reply with quote
2020 has been blown up, may it forever remain in infamy. The only good was video games keeping people sane. Enough about the bad memories, so I'll say some of my favorites this year have been the finishing of the Fire Emblem: Three Houses DLC, further cementing the series as a prestige franchise for Nintendo with no signs of stopping. The return of Mana with a remake of Trials is certainly welcome, Animal Crossing being a rallying point for people in order to find some semblance of normalcy, Hyrule Warriors returning with a prequel to Age of Calamity, and smaller titles like Carrion and Spiritfarer getting some limelight. With 2021 being the anniversaries of Metroid and Zelda, hopefully we can get some new entries
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whiskeyii



Joined: 29 May 2013
Posts: 2242
PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 9:33 pm Reply with quote
Despite being enamored by the original Wii launch of Xenoblade Chronicles, somehow I never got around to finishing it til I got it on Switch this year. Definitely my favorite game of the year, full of emotional highs and a more nuanced yet hopeful message about what it means to be a good guy that I heartily, heartily enjoyed. I may be looking forward to it’s fanservicey sequel a lot less as a result, but I’m still glad I managed to not only finish but enjoy the heck out of its predecessor.
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El Hermano



Joined: 24 Feb 2019
Posts: 450
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 10:22 pm Reply with quote
FF7R ended up being my surprise favorite game of the decade. I was originally hesitant on it, but having it be a sequel rather than a direct remake was brilliant since not only is it no longer trying to replace the original and actually makes the original, plus spin offs, mandatory playing if you want the full experience.

I still remember watching streamers break down playing TLOU2 screaming "the leaks were true!" while freaking out after that one scene, one even popping the game out and breaking the disk on stream. I think a lot of people told themselves it was all a troll making up fake leaks. On the other hand, the NInttendo leaks are in the "not important, but interesting" category. Nothing like a glimpse at upcoming games or anything, just various unused assets, original designs and promotional material. We did get that with the Capcom leaks though, which unfortunately also wasn't an elaborate trolling attempt given some of the stuff people saw.

I'm perfectly fine with E3 not being a thing anymore. I always look forward to Nintendo Directs, but E3 always slogged on since they had to stretch for time or delay between presentations so an online only event would be a fine future for me.

Nate143 wrote:
Yea that whole thing was great the smash kids tho just never seem to get the issue with what they were doing. Nintendo can not endorse prating.


Agreed. I never really got why people obsess over Melee so much to the point they're trying to ruin other games for other people. At least the Japanese tournaments weren't affected so we could watch the Kagaribi Smash Tournament in peace.
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Generations



Joined: 21 Jul 2016
Posts: 204
PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 1:51 am Reply with quote
El Hermano wrote:
FF7R ended up being my surprise favorite game of the decade. I was originally hesitant on it, but having it be a sequel rather than a direct remake was brilliant since not only is it no longer trying to replace the original and actually makes the original, plus spin offs, mandatory playing if you want the full experience.


Unfortunately, for me, FF7R is one of the reasons I will forever remember this year for negative reasons. It had so many things going for it -- great combat, characters finally not being flanderized after decades of awful spinoffs, clearly a lot of love put into it -- but it was ruined by the awful dialogue, awful writing, and an awful ending. It felt more like Final Fantasy VII fanfiction than a supposed 'remake'.

But looking on the positive side, I finally got into the Yakuza franchise with Yakuza: Like A Dragon, because it has an English dub. Fantastic game, and Kaiji Tang gets an award for best VA from me.

Also played Code Vein this year, which has become one of my favourite games. I'm also having fun with it with friends, even though the online aspect is kind of horrible.

There were definitely a bunch of positives I got out of the year, as there is every year, but that was definitely a disappointing year in gaming for me, and I already had low expectations.
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Horsefellow



Joined: 01 Jan 2020
Posts: 262
PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:29 am Reply with quote
whiskeyii wrote:
Despite being enamored by the original Wii launch of Xenoblade Chronicles, somehow I never got around to finishing it til I got it on Switch this year. Definitely my favorite game of the year, full of emotional highs and a more nuanced yet hopeful message about what it means to be a good guy that I heartily, heartily enjoyed. I may be looking forward to it’s fanservicey sequel a lot less as a result, but I’m still glad I managed to not only finish but enjoy the heck out of its predecessor.


Definitive Edition really did feel, well, definitive. I always found the original Xenoblade 1 character models to be ugly, even for a Wii game. Some people didn't like how the new models look more "anime', but I do. It definitely looks more in line with the sequels now, and Shulk's model in Smash.

Generations wrote:
great combat, characters finally not being flanderized after decades of awful spinoffs, clearly a lot of love put into it -- but it was ruined by the awful dialogue, awful writing, and an awful ending.


IMO the only awful dialog was all the snarky quips and one liners they added in the English dub for some reason. It made the characters feel really OOC, especially Aerith who they really tried to push as quirky and sassy in the English dub. I had to change it to the Japanese voice option during Wall Market. The story definitely felt like they took a beltsander to the edgier and more interesting parts of the original, but hey, they more or less admit this game is a "wrong" timeline so at least they acknowledge it's scuffed.
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Silver Kirin



Joined: 09 Aug 2018
Posts: 1105
PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 10:06 am Reply with quote
We finally moved from 2020 but in a sense we will still live in that year until everything goes back to normal, this year will be just 2020 Special Edition.
Still, I think the video game industry fared much better than the movie industry last year, there were a lot of great games released and interesting stories. I think the most talked about games were Among Us, Animal Crossing NH, FFVII Remake and TLoU 2. About the new console generation, I feel that the jump wasn't as big as previous generations, the PS5 is still going to be the best selling console but nobody is mentioning the Xbox (the Bethesda buyout was huge, but I don't think it will help as much as they think). I'm also not sure if Nintendo is going to announce a succesor to the Switch, I still think it's very profitable for them and the game selection for this year is pretty good, not to mention that we still have 3 more Smash characters left, though after Steve and Sephiroth I don't think anything can surprise me (unless Ryu Hayabusa is in).
I don't think the E3 will come back this year, and if it does it' going to be very different and much more small in comparison.
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Triltaison



Joined: 03 Jul 2011
Posts: 717
PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:26 pm Reply with quote
For me, 2020 was the year of backlog clearing! I finally had the time to work on Backlog Mountain and I've been having a blast doing so. It feels pretty good to finally get some things crossed off even if I'm a little late to the party.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4463
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 8:04 pm Reply with quote
I'm not surprised that the Switch sold very well in 2020. It has the "it's cheaper and has a lot of games out for it already" factor going for it compared to the next gen consoles.

Barring seeing something like a PS Vita at a thrift store, I'm not likely going to buy any consoles any time soon due to lack of money but, hypothetically, if I, say, got another $600 stimulus payment from the Canadian government like the one I got last spring, I would seriously consider getting a Switch Lite (since it's cheaper than the regular one and I only intend to use it as a handheld anyway; I'm not bothered by the drop in graphics quality compared to playing in docked mode, the graphics on Switch Lite still look better than any handheld I've played before) due to the amount of Switch games I can buy for cheap off the bargain rack at Walmart or online.
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OtherSideofSky





PostPosted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 12:40 am Reply with quote
2020 ended up being a year of barely getting to play any games for me, since I ended up stuck working in front of a screen almost every day without actually making enough to live on. I got through P5R, P5S, and 13 Sentinels (which was in my backlog from late 2019), but that's pretty much it. I did get to watch friends play through most of the year's big AAA titles, though, and I can't say I'm that broken up over missing them.

Gaming news-wise, the growing push for rollback in fighting games really stood out to me (now that locals are a thing of the past, I effectively can't play any game without it, which sucked because I was really looking forward to GBFV).

It was nice to see some big names facing repercussions for abusive behavior, but realistically I'm sure that some level of the same garbage is going on at most if not all major publishers and that plenty of higher-ups who turned a blind eye got off with no consequences whatsoever and will continue to sweep things under the rug.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5887
PostPosted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 4:50 pm Reply with quote
Generations wrote:


Also played Code Vein this year, which has become one of my favourite games. I'm also having fun with it with friends, even though the online aspect is kind of horrible.


Code Vein came out in 2019
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4463
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 5:45 pm Reply with quote
BadNewsBlues wrote:

Code Vein came out in 2019


I think Generations only meant they played the game in 2020, not that it was a 2020 game.

Since I only buy games from the Walmart bargain rack, from Amazon when they're below $30 Canadian, or from thrift stores, no games I personally played in 2020 were 2020 games. The game I played the most in 2020 that was "new" to me was Batman: Arkham City and that game came out in, what? 2012, I think.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Sun Jan 03, 2021 10:07 pm Reply with quote
Most used tournament organizing tools site Smash.gg is now backed by Microsoft
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