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Haven't seen this one yet, but curious as to the personal picks and choices of the stuff released this year.

And what a year it has been, ymmv obv. For me, a year of ports and remasters for the most part, along with some other odds and sods they released over the year.

So, on my end:

Tank Mechanic Simulator - Just like any other <insert thing here> Mechanic Simulator, but with you restoring World War 2 tanks found buried in the Polish countryside. Seeing as both my GF and I are treadheads, this is a game that I streamed often over Discord during the early months of the pandemic as something to play whilst we talked about things and kept ourselves sane. Still in early access, but the devs are hard at work adding in new vehicles, improving gameplay and so on.
Command & Conquer Remastered - A remaster they got right by not taking things too far, restoring all old footage from the original tapes and giving you a crapton of behind the scenes footage, images and info about the production of both games. And yes, graphical overhaul aside, it is still the good old unbalanced experience from back in the day. Only downside is that Destructible Times is not in the ingame jukebox.
Control - Bought on a whim and blown away by it, it can be best described as Remedy Entertainment doing their take on Warehouse 13, but with psychic powers, a moody setting and a great story with nice elements of mystery. Also a hard game, but once you get a hang of the combat mechanics, you can get some really nice fights going where you jump, fly, shoot and telekinetically fling debris at your opponents.
Horizon Zero Dawn - Also bought on a whim and it neatly ticked off quite a few of those personal pet peeve boxes of mine in games: open-world, great setting, great story, plenty of side quests and exploration. I will probably not 100% this one, but I know I'll be playing this one for a long time to come.

Honorary mention:

Among Us - technically an older game, originally released back in 2018, but it exploded into popularity earlier this year and, ymmv obv, it lives up to the hype. Certainly a game best played with friends, not a server full of donkey-cave randos. While the devs are working on a new map, tasks and a colour-blind version, there's plenty of mods and house-rules to keep things fresh in the meantime.

And that other game:

Cyberpunk 2077 - For me personally, it's okay. Not bad, certainly not awful, but just okay. A lot of the mechanics work out nicely for me, but the overall game just doesn't click for me as of right now. I plan to revisit it once a few more patches have dropped and a few more months have passed, maybe by then I'll revise my opinion on the game.

Does Stardew Valley 1.5 count?

Anyway, these year-end things are always hard for me. Hard to remember what I played this year, versus what may have really been the previous year. I also don't always keep up with the newest releases, so a game that was new to me this year may have actually been out last year.
Anyhoo, I would put Control as one of the best of 2020. But, I've loved every Remedy game since Max Payne, so that's not really a surprise for me.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is certainly amazing, but is that really this year, even for PC?
There is No Game: Wrong Dimension was pretty fun.

I think Cyberpunk 2077 definitely has the potential to be best game of 2021, though.

But, without a doubt, the best of the year for me, and one that is cemented in my top 10, if not 5, games of all time, and one I will likely replay at least every other year for the rest of my life, was one released on PC this year: Persona 4 Golden. Yukiko is best girl.

Horizon Zero Dawn PC edition. A game I seriously considered getting the console for just to get at it, but never did and then wrote it off as something I'd never get to play. Fastforward to this year and after April Fools jokes and memes and such suddenly BAM its out - actually out and works on the PC!

OVERJOYED is an understatement and I've loved the game. Granted I've paused playing now, in part because I don't want to fully burn out on it and I want to actually complete most of the side quests and such before completing the core game (which is something I rarely do - normally I complete main story arcs and rarely end up finishing the side stuff).

Just roaming and hunting is great fun; the designs are fantastic and the overall story and characters are great. Sure its not quite up there with Witcher 3 in story telling, but its very high up in the list for me.

A great game all around and I really hope the sequel will, in time, make it to PC as well.

For me I would say my top picks are:

Nioh 2, solid souls-type game. Way more enemy variety than the first one and a really good way of incorporating different yokai shiftling styles. You also just create your character in this one which is preferable to the kind of cliche white foreigner character that the first one had.

Judgement, a spin off the Yakuza series that manages to distinguish itself on its on as a hard-boiled detective story while still being within the same world. Only thing I wasn't crazy about was the tailing missions but otherwise was a very cool take on an otherwise classic series. I liked how they distinguished Tak from Kiryu's combat style.

Days Gone. I was surprised by how much fun I actually had with this game since I initially wasn't very interested with its premise and wrote it off as another generic zombie game. When i got it later on sale it was definitely one of the more memorable zombie games that did an open world setting right. They also 100% nailed down a horde of zombie well into something you are legitimately scared of.

 Overread wrote:
Horizon Zero Dawn PC edition. A game I seriously considered getting the console for just to get at it, but never did and then wrote it off as something I'd never get to play. Fastforward to this year and after April Fools jokes and memes and such suddenly BAM its out - actually out and works on the PC!

OVERJOYED is an understatement and I've loved the game. Granted I've paused playing now, in part because I don't want to fully burn out on it and I want to actually complete most of the side quests and such before completing the core game (which is something I rarely do - normally I complete main story arcs and rarely end up finishing the side stuff).

Just roaming and hunting is great fun; the designs are fantastic and the overall story and characters are great. Sure its not quite up there with Witcher 3 in story telling, but its very high up in the list for me.

A great game all around and I really hope the sequel will, in time, make it to PC as well.

+1 on this, I enjoyed the game immensly on Ps4 and ever more so on Pc

I'd say the "RPG of the year" for 2020 is proably AC Valhalla. Cyberpunk 2020 has the potential to surpass it, but that'll require CDPR to polish it more.

Yeah, 2020 was thin.
I think Cyberpunk wins on lack of competition.

Crusader Kings III is the only other thing that comes to mind, but like all Paradox games, its just the starting point. A better one than most, but still needs time to grow.

There are a couple games in early access that have potential, but its too early to say.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Does Stardew Valley 1.5 count?

Ha, that one also crossed my mind, I'll probably bump it into 2021 as a honorary mention then, as I don't have any hands on time with the new content yet. Did not expect him to drop it before the end of the year, my fellow mod and I will have fun with the new content for sure come next year.

I have a hard time remembering what came out in 2020. Should have seen me trying to fill out the steam awards a while back. It was a nightmare and I mostly ended up picking other peoples suggestions off reddit.

I'd prob choose AC Valhalla at this point. Cyberpunk isn't ever going to be a true Game of the Year in my opinion. Not that it won't get the AAA industry's standardised GOTY release in time.

 Dropbear Victim wrote:
I have a hard time remembering what came out in 2020. Should have seen me trying to fill out the steam awards a while back. It was a nightmare and I mostly ended up picking other peoples suggestions off reddit.

I looked over the Steam awards, laughed and left them blank.
I have no idea why they picked most of the candidates or several of the categories they went with.

The best new game I played this year was probably Hades? I don't often play new releases, I only just finished Breath of the Wild and Hollow Knight (Hollow Knight is my actual game of the year!)

Aside from Doom Eternal and Cyberpunk 2077 the year was pretty bleak for me. SW squadrons was good but too repetitive to make any top list IMO. Necromunda UW was the crappiest game I bought this year, in terms of bugs and just being a poorly made game.

Counting on next year to be good, fix up Cyberpunk and release Elden Ring.

SW squadrons seems a good canidate for "about time this genre of game got some love"

TLOU2 was a fantastic, deeply engrossing title, but it's Doom Eternal that wins for me. It's just perfect in every aspect. No downside whatsoever in my opinion, everything it's supposed to do it does flawlessly.