GAME OF THE YEAR 2020

Once again we’ve been at each other’s throats arguing about the year’s best games. The only way to settle things was to throw the task over to you and let you choose. Here are the 2020 Games Of The Year, in order of greatness, as decided by you and all of OPM’s other readers!

1 GHOST OF TSUSHIMA

In a year beset by lockdowns, Sony offered a great escape

In many ways you’ve played this before: the historical open-world, tense assassinations, side-questing for loot, and galloping over the next horizon for the thrill of the unknown. Yet Ghost Of Tsushima never forgets to be fun, and it presents everything with so much colour you can’t turn down Sucker Punch’s escape out of lockdown.

Jin Sakai is a samurai living beneath a dark cloud. With his family murdered and his island home, Tsushima, torn apart, he begins to see all is not as it seems with the people he trusted. If we’re honest, Jin isn’t the best character in the game. He’s a Batman-like platform from which the game can launch its colourful cast of sidekicks.

Sucker Punch has a history of creating memorable support casts, and in its female trio of Tomoe, Yuna, and Masako Adachi the game finds its true heart. This matters because while the main story arc manages to land some emotional notes, Ghost Of Tsushima delivers its best moments when you venture from the Golden Path and see what else this world has to offer away from Jin’s main quest. These wonderfully orchestrated story vignettes are just one of the reasons Ghost Of Tsushima deserves to be Game Of The Year.

Now turn the page to discover five more reasons to play…

1 THE WORLD

You think you’ve seen it all in games and then along comes Ghost Of Tsushima and presents a mostly historically accurate feudal Japan bathed in a glorious riot of colour and sun-soaked scenery.