2020 has been a strange year, with everyone at home, video games have really saved people from boredom. As everyone is stuck at home; some games have gained a lot of traction.

Some titles that made a big impact were Minecraft and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Although Minecraft has been around for 11 years, it was nice to see it grow in popularity again.

The main games that I think struck big this year were Call of Duty Warzone, Fall Guys, and Among Us. For about five to six years Call of Duty has been a fairly unpopular game, yet in March of this year, Call of Duty Warzone brought in over 50 million players and millions of hours watched for free on all consoles and PC.

It is one of the biggest battle royale games to date, but it does have its problems, hackers and a whole lot of bugs. Hackers have been taking over the servers for months now, upsetting a lot of the players. While some YouTubers try to make a difference by getting the hackers banned, all they have to do is create a new account and continue on ruining the game for others.

Warzone also has a lot of bugs that are pretty game breaking, from crashing the game to weapons being way too overpowered, which makes some impossible to counter. Besides the problems the game is fun and enjoyable, and the future of Warzone looks hopeful.

In August, gamers saw an interesting game come their way, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knock Out. If you’ve seen the show “Wipe Out,” it is a little like that, but instead of being a human, you’re a jellybean doing obstacle courses or working as a team to be the last one. The game was released on PlayStation and PC for $20, yet PlayStation did get it free with PS Plus on launch day. The game was very popular on YouTube and Twitch when it first came out, with 30 million hours watched on Twitch. One popular Twitch streamer, TimTheTatMan became somewhat of a meme within the Fall Guys community.

He struggled to get his first win and Fall Guys twitter made sure everyone knew. Thousands came on his stream to watch him attempt to get his first win, averaging around 200,000 views and more than 69 million minutes watched. Tim really helped the game, bringing people all over the world laughing as the witness a grown man rage at a little kid’s game and finally getting his first win.

An anonymous gamer stated, “I thought I would never get mad at a game so silly.”

Just last week they released their first big update to the game that brought new maps. Just like any other game, it isn’t perfect. They also had their run ins with hackers that made the game completely unfair, because all they had to do was fly to the finish line and win the game. Fall Guys was a different game that brought many together and caused many to get mad at a kid’s game.

After Fall Guys, there wasn’t too much going on, Warzone still dominated the YouTube charts and Twitch, but just last month a game that has been out for over 2 years finally saw the recognition it deserved. Among Us, another jellybean game, where 10 crewmates have tasks to do, yet there are two imposters among the crewmates going around killing. The crewmates must decide who the imposters are and vote them out, hopefully getting the right person.

The game is available free on iOS and Android and $5 on steam, with millions of hours watched. It is a fun game to play with friends, but most of the time I’m playing with random players, which isn’t the most fun. When I play with some random players, some are fun and actually know what they’re doing, other times people have no idea what they’re doing and just say this color is “sus,” the slang word for suspicious.

Chell Flores, a student at ERHS, says “Among Us is a great way to meet new friends. I swear I’m playing with 10-year old’s, just from what they say and their explanation of why they think it’s this person.”

“I hate when people take my go to color, which is white,” Flores adds.

Other problems are imposters getting mad because they got outed so they call out their teammates and ruin the game, but that’s not the biggest problem.

As I’ve said about the last two games having hackers, this one is just as bad. Some hackers even admit to being hackers before the game, yet the 10-year-old hosts don’t do anything about it, so when the game loads up, we die instantly without even moving.

Anonymous thinks, “the game developers need to hurry up on finding ways to stop the hackers.”

Besides the ridiculous problems of the game, I’d say it is one of my favorites of 2020 and would highly recommend it since everyone with a phone can play for free. 2020 for sure has been a difficult time, but I’m glad I had video games to turn to, this year would have been very boring without them.