Along with the Game of the Year awards, voted on by our staff, each of our writers has compiled their own personal lists, covering their top five PlayStation 5 and PS4 titles of 2020. Today is the turn of the specialist in retro Jamie O’Neill.
My favorite part of Spider-Man: Miles Morales is the beauty of its wintery Christmas atmosphere. There is a factor of nostalgia for me. By 2018, Insomniac Games had already been successful with a modern rendition of the PS2 Spider-Man 2 rocker, with an expansion of the free-flowing combat of Arkham games, but Miles adds style and style. I find the succinct length of the game to be ideal, so I hope the shortest, most independent template, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, continues into the ninth generation. The upgrade to include a Performance RT mode was welcome, as the combination of 60 frames per second of PS5 with the 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 since Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 in 2001. The remake of Vicarious Visions was instrumental in its fidelity to the flow and feeling of the original Neversoft controls. If at the beginning of the PS4 generation you told me that Activision would release two of my favorite remakes, the other Nashro-Fueled Crash Team Racing, which also had Beenox’s development skills, wouldn’t have believed me. So, celebrate a combined over 100,000 points, groms, because Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is sick on PS4 and I can’t wait to hear you call it that.
Along with Hotshot Racing as a modern and retro version 2020, developer Guard Crush Games can be praised by Streets of Rage 4 as a PS4 fight that feels authentic to the game design of the classic SEGA of the 90s. When it was announced by for the first time, I initially wanted Streets of Rage 4 to incorporate traditional sprites and pixel art, but similar to Lizardcube’s Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, the magnificent hand-drawn images of Streets of Rage 4 exceeded my expectations. I loved the details, the secrets, and the bosses in the retro games, as well as the absurdity of the final boss battle. I also appreciated later balance improvements, such as the 1.03 patch, which improved Axel’s movement speed.
Before reading Christian Kobza’s 10/10 Push Square review, I was thrilled by his subtitle praising PS5 Demon’s Souls as “The Best PlayStation Launch Game”. Bluepoint Games is known for the work of PS4 Shadow of the Colossus as masters of the remaster, so Demon’s Souls is a true graphic showcase for PS5. Fast loading times and 60 frames per second performance mode are a blessing. Also, if you’re not sure of its difficulty, read Sammy Barker’s Soapbox, because anyone lucky enough to own a PS5 release shouldn’t miss any games found at Push Square’s rare “Featured” scoring club .
Not only do I consider The Last of Us: Part II to be the best game of 2020, it’s also my favorite PS4 personal game of the eighth generation. With the opening lyrics of Pearl Jam’s song Future Days stating “If I ever lost you, I would surely lose myself,” it still sounded in my ears, that feeling represented an ongoing theme throughout the Naughty Dog series. Similarly, the idea of the PS3 expansion of being “left behind” after losing a loved one continues in the groundbreaking story of The Last of Us: Part II, which was sadly reflected in 2020 as a year groundbreaking for me.
So these are Jamie’s five favorite games of 2020. Do you agree with his choices? Give your opinion in the comments section below.