HotGirlVideos69’s (AKA Tiffany Treadmore) Top Games Of 2020 | Winter Spectacular 2020
2020 was the best year of my life. Consumed by a constant sense of dread during the first half of this godforsaken year, I finally gave in to chaos and found myself becoming comfortable with uncertainty. My visibility online after a couple video game information leaks helped me make friends with people in the industry I had left behind years ago - bringing me back to the world of game development and game marketing. I felt reborn.
I love video games, but there was a period of time where I had left them behind. Employed within the industry in the late 2000s and early 2010s I was no stranger to the Boys Club that existed and permeated everything during that time. I was a Booth Babe at conventions, then worked my way up to become a Marketing Assistant. The only difference - to be clear - was the title.
A lot has changed since then. While there are still terrible people hiding behind other terrible people, Indie Game Development has pushed forth an onslaught of new ideas, points of view, and life experiences since then that have helped blow apart the gaming industry into something more interesting, more worthwhile, more representative, more beautiful.
As a direct result of that, I played some excellent video games this year. They are not all games released in 2020, but they are games that had an impact on my life during this year of discontent.
Editor here: I played A Short Hike the first month of lockdown and had a small breakdown it was so nice.
A Short Hike (Switch/PC)
Atmosphere is everything. I grew up in the woods in the rural midwest and on weekends and during the summer we would travel to ‘Up North’ to Lake Superior where we would camp, and hike, go boating, and hold bonfires. I remember the sounds and the colours and the atmosphere of these times more than the actions I took. Those smells, those crackling flames, that cool lake wind - that is what has stuck with me.
A Short Hike is less of a game and more of an Atmosphere Simulator for me. There were periods of time where I would let the games ambient soundtrack and soundscapes play through an aux cable into my office, just to help relax me. The simplistic, familiar, warm gameplay as a Smol Birb making your way up the mountain added to this made it an incredibly moving experience that I loved. During this year of death and strife it is good to have something that makes you warm inside.
Hitman 2 (PS4/Stadia)
As a young woman my roommate and I would take mushrooms and repeatedly watch Christopher Nolan’s FOLLOWING. In the film a man safely follows and stalks random strangers in the streets of London, just to satisfy his curiosity. No harm, only a voyeuristic bit of absolutely problematic fun as he follows them through their day until madness unfolds...
A wolf in sheep’s clothing… with a barcode tattoo.
We were completely enthralled by this concept of ‘victimless stalking’. We would dress in dark clothing and go out at night. Flip a coin, and pick a direction. The first man we saw we would begin slowly following like we were spies. We would do this for hours, trailing them as they went to bars, restaurants, on dates, to movies. We would order the same food they ordered if we were close enough to see them. If they went on a date we would make a point to bump into whoever it was they were meeting in the ladies room and strike up conversation. If a man ever cornered us and demanded to know what was going on we had agreed that we would ask him to sleep with us, as if the thrill of a potential ménage à trois for him would be enough to save us from danger.
It was a dangerous game, but we were very careful. We were cunning - we thought. We felt powerful - we thought.
One night something absolutely terrible and tragic happened that made doing this ever again impossible. While I won’t go into details, I will say that it made it abundantly clear that I could only ever do something like this virtually, for the rest of my life
Then I met Hitman. The first and second modern Hitman games have helped me scratch that itch over the last few years. The thrill of stalking someone throughout their patterned existence is different from my real life play, but it’s close enough that when I am down, and when I am stressed, it helps me escape back to those college years where I thought I was invincible. I am ashamed to admit I have played Hitman for likely thousands of hours over the last few years. I rarely play missions. I pick someone, I follow them, I end them. And I repeat.
They added co-op to Untitled Goose Game!
Great… Two asshole geese.
Untitled Goose Game (Switch)
Untitled Goose Game is the greatest ‘family video game’ I have ever played. It was something my son and I enjoyed for many hours during Lockdown. A game about mischief that doesn’t take itself too seriously, it is uniquely compelling and perfect for a child to play. It gives them a world where they can be a bad Goose, a bad kid, who goes around honking and flapping. Stealing keys from gardeners, knocking the glasses off a dork - it is the most wonderful outlet for anxiety-filled misanthropic play for someone little while also being incredibly relaxing.
We bonded while being bad birds. We would cuddle in bed and play it on the TV until one of us fell asleep. These will be some of the best moments I look back on in the next couple years as he likely gets too big, sadly, to enjoy spending time hanging out with his mom.
We loved this game.
The music. Oh my god, the MUSIC. It is like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood by way of a dream world. I love it. I want it on vinyl. I want it to play as a constant ambient background throughout my daily existence.
I beg you. If you have children, play this game with them.
*Editor’s note: You can actually get an Untitled Goose Game Vinyl from iam8bit!
We all know what Nook is looking at.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch)
Animal Crossing was That Thing. There is always That Thing, the item that perfectly encapsulates a moment in time, and I will not wax too philosophically here as others have already done it more justice, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the game made for 2020.
Previously I had played Animal Crossing on DS. An ex and I bought Nintendo DSes together as well as the game and we eventually devolved into a relationship where we communicated mostly within the game. Our relationship essentially became Animal Crossing with sex and vegan pizza breaks.
My obsession with ACNH did not reach these levels, but I still loved it. Is it weird to say I love the COLORS of ACNH? It’s so beautiful and bright and calming. The ambient sound of the breeze blowing a balloon-held-gift through the air. The sounds of the beach. Again, atmosphere is everything for me, and this is rich with it.
Some readers of this will know that I attempted to start a sex club on my ACNH island this year, a month or so after it released. As a result, Nintendo suspended my online play capabilities for a while and I lost interest as I fell so far behind. But now, just thinking about this, I will likely pick it up again and start a new island. Under a new account.
Paratopic (Switch)
Paratopic feels like a series of interconnected dreams and nightmares. It’s really something.
Growing up an awful nerdy woman I took respite from the world of bullying by walking through the deep dark woods that surrounded my home and by playing PC games that gave me a new existence. I hated games that explained the entire story to me. I wanted to create the story in my mind. I wanted to craft this existence. This is why text adventures were so important to me. I could build the world with my thoughts while grasping at clues within the content.
Paratopic tells you minimally and lets you fill in the gaps. With graphics that wonderfully hearken back to the PS1 and PC CD-Rom FMV games of the early 90s, it uses ‘just enough’ to give you visuals and lets you expand, in your brain, the rest of the world. There are hints of what the world is like now, the struggles and strife. There is minimal instruction regarding your actual tasks. It throws you in and lets you play and experience what YOU want to experience. It is stuffed to the gills with ATMOSPHERE.
Are you three persons? Are you having flashbacks? I am still fully unsure as to the full gist of what the developer wanted you to get from the end of the game and I LIKE THAT. I want to feel mystery more in games. Tell me just enough. Let my mind fill in the rest.
Please go play Paratopic. I highly recommend it as my favourite game of 2020.
