Games We Are Thankful For In 2020

There's no greater a highlight than a moment around fifteen-ish hours into wandering the world. Having already established the omnipresent "the world is one big environmental puzzle" motif at the heart of Genshin Impact and successfully completing a near two kilometre trek to a new region, to activate another beacon filling in more of the map, only to spot one of thousands of optional collectibles atop an incline of rocks; a few seconds of climbing later and off in the distance, another beacon. A subtle indicator -- of which the SLG Game maps does a great job at allowing players to organically discover parts for themselves -- that hinted not only towards another environmental conundrum, but also of what may lie beyond. Even then: what other little moments will distract me. It's a truly great, out-of-the-blue moment but another point in Genshin Impact's favor. How, indeed like Breath of the Wild before it, the journey becomes as pivotal and as fulfilling as the destination. Ultimately, the marvel of seeing yet another perspective on the vast world before you. Before long, you're ready to plot another course and begin that journey all over again.

To tackle the former comparison -- the reference to one of 2017's more lauded releases and a radical shift in series convention, to say the least -- it's not that such a descriptor is inherently untrue. It doesn't take long upon setting out into the fictional world of Teyvat to spot a fair number of similarities with Nintendo's work, some more blatant than others. But to come both into and away from Genshin Impact and proclaim this to be a clone and nothing else massively downplays the ways in which this game is presented. And above all else, does a great disservice to a developer that -- in all their imitation -- understand why the exploration, world and very level design itself of Breath of the Wild worked so wonderfully. There's even a case here that Genshin Impact actually builds atop the ideas Nintendo brought forth. Better still: masters them wholesale in carving out a game, a world, whose back-end monetization, brief technical frustrations and occasional grind can so easily be pushed aside.

The next generation is here and unfortunately with it comes few games that utilize the power they offer. If you were lucky enough to obtain a PlayStation 5, you would be met with only one major game that was truly exclusive to Sony’s next generation platform: Demon’s Souls. While there’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Sackboy: A Big Adventure, each incredibly well-designed games, both were also released on the PS4. It’s a sad state of affairs when the PlayStation 5’s only next-generation exclusive is a remake of a PlayStation 3 SLG game beginner guide, but at least Bluepoint was able to properly honor the original’s vision with adding and slightly refining it. While there are elements that do feel dated to later iterations in the Souls franchise, there’s nothing like revisiting the classic and experience where the award-winning franchise began. Beautiful visuals, a 60fps mode and excruciatingly-challenging scenarios, while FromSoftware was not at the helm, the remake shines as one of the best games this year. If there’s one game to get on the new platform in 2020, it’s this fifty-plus hour RPG with so much replayability. Without Demon’s Souls, the PlayStation 5’s launch would be just plain embarrassing, making me so very thankful of its existence.

Americans celebrate Thanksgiving every November. It’s a time when families gather, friends reconnect and communities unite. On Thanksgiving you also announce what you're thankful for in life, so several of our writers decided to let everyone know exactly which video games they're thankful for. These thanks are comprised of releases from Thanksgiving 2019 to Thanksgiving 2020 and made up of a variety of reasons. Read on to see the titles everyone decided were personally meaningful enough from the past year to make the list!


This powerful Elemental Burst is perfect for setting up Elemental Reactions and healing your main DPS if they are running low on health. The area covered by the Drunken Mist is quite huge and can be incredibly useful in dealing with hordes of enemies. If you have a C6 Diona, the Healing Bonus will be increased by 30 percent when characters are below 50 percent HP. And if the characters are above 50 percent HP, their Elemental Mastery will be buffed by


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Even when the game moves away from its exploration aspect and quest-lines become the focus. When players are dropped into one of many dungeons -- or whose side activities laboriously have you hopping from A to B...back to A again...and then literally back to that same B point straight-after -- combat too is another area where Genshin Impact makes both meaningful but also a pleasure in engaging with. On the surface the set-up may not entirely be all that special; characters have their own pre-determined role of regular DPS, two-handed heavy-hitters or ranged whereby one of six elemental classes is assigned. The appeal lies in dabbling with the make-up of your party, of which you can have up to four characters that you can switch in-and-out on the fly. Combat is fast, frantic and at its best allows players to go wild with the elemental possibilities on offer.