It takes the iconic story of the original and draws it out, but not in a shallow way. Sure, any game surrounded by this much hype was bound to have criticism heaped on it, but Final Fantasy VII Remake is a masterful reimagining of the title that redefined what an RPG could be. This year we finally got to return to Midgar, and it was glorious. And I don’t anticipate forgetting it anytime soon. But at the end of the year, the game that sticks with me the most is The Last of Us II. Hell, I’m not even sure if it was wise of me to play it during a time like this. I’m not sure a game needs a narrative as heartbreaking as this one. In the months since, I’ve wondered what a video game needs to do to be good, or great. They wrote a story so challenging, so tortured, that it left many of us flat on our backs, afraid to ever press start again. But, although it may have isolated some fans who were hoping for more of the same, Naughty Dog deserves a lot of credit for having the courage to spend some time looking in the mirror and reassessing the modern action-adventure genre that the studio itself helped create.

(I won’t spoil anything here, but you can check out my review if you’d like to relive some of the trauma.) It defied a lot of what made the previous title so good, and caused a bit of a riptide in the gaming community. As a follow-up to the famous first title from Naughty Dog, it was daunting, reckless, and unexpected.

The Last of Us Part II hit right in the first few months of the pandemic, which meant all of us were already in a not-so-stable mood when we first got a chance to catch up with Ellie and Joel again. The game with a story so good that I’ll never-and I mean, never-play it again.

Relive 2020 game online