Hades is great, but Mario 64 from the 3d All Stars Collection was the best for me. Trying to get the 100 coin star on Tick Tock Clock without the clock moving requires some precise side jump/wall jumps, and it just feels so good on the Switch Pro Controller. I was shocked by how well the feel of that game holds up decades later.
Should this count for 2020? I’d say a hard MAYBE, and if you don’t count it then that’s fine
Oh this reminds me that I can go back and play Sunshine without joy-con drift!
Hm, it occurs to me I actually didn’t play a lot of new games in 2020.
Anyway, Hades is a shoo-in for game feel. The controls are perfectly responsive, the lock-on is exactly the right amount of generous, each weapon is distinct but equally viable, the enemies have exactly as much health as it feels like they “should”, the dash travels the right distance and has the right number of i-frames. And that extends to the boons, keepsakes, and mirror upgrades as well, I don’t think I’ve encountered any of them yet that doesn’t seem to have a place in some build.
After that, I have to shout out Project Wingman. I can’t compare it to Ace Combat, which I haven’t played, but standing on its own it’s a fast and brutal dogfighting game that is extremely satisfying. There’s nothing like jumping into a target rich environment and doing some Top Gun shit while everybody is spamming missiles.
It’s a rare day when I get to talk about “feel” in a more literal sense in video games, but I have to tip my hat to Insomniac for nailing the haptics in Miles Morales on PS5. You can actually “feel” the web pull taut as you hit the highest gravitational pull of your swing. It’s very subtle but it’s a remarkable achievement to improve on some of the best traversal in video games.
My comment on hades is I think it plays (in terms of feel) identically to diablo 3, which is just smooth as hell. It is a triumph for a team of supergiant’s size to match the feel of a AAA, marquis hack and slash game. In both games, once you’ve gotten significantly powerful, there’s just a way you slice through enemies like they’re paper, and you just feel so fast, so nimble and canny. It’s incredible.
Don’t have much to add that hasn’t already been said, but still wanna give a nod to Hades.
Ghostrunner is another standout for me. I mentioned the other day that I’m a sucker for a variety of traversal mechanics in games and Ghostrunner has it in spades. That combined with the 1-hit-kill-for-you-and-enemies rule, means that you’re constantly plotting your route through an area, thinking about the order you’ll be taking out enemies, and chaining togethers jumps, wallruns, air dashes, grappling hooks swings, and of course, sword slashes together in a Hotline Miami meets Mirror’s Edge mashup I didn’t know I wanted.
Because vehemently did say that we’re allowed to talk about games we played this year even if they didn’t release this year (
) I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if I didn’t shoutout my boy Titanfall 2. Yes I know people have been talking about how good and slept on a game it is for years now, but I finally decided to check it out over the summer, and y’all…I love how this game feels so much 
I’ve been playing Apex Legends pretty regularly since it launched and a good part of that is because of how satisfying it feels (again, those traversal mechanics tho). I thought Titanfall 2 would feel pretty similar and to an extent it does, but dang, that game’s wallrunning and grappling hook (especially in multiplayer) adds so much. It should almost be a crime that it’s not present in Apex.
Finally, my unexpected favorite game feel has got to go to Astro’s Playroom. At the risk of sound cliche, the adaptive triggers + haptic feedback + the sound design all come together to produce something great that you truly have to feel to believe. I could sit hear and talk about the tink tink sound of Astro’s feet on ice, or how a constant gust of strong wind legitimately made me shift my body because it felt like my controller was going to be blown out of my hands, but like VR, words don’t do justice here, it’s something you have to experience for yourself.
EDIT: Crap, how did I also forget Skater XL? Always love a good skateboarding game, and Skater XL’s take on skateboarding controls is just unorthodox enough that it makes landing anything feel satisfying.
I almost did this, too, but I didn’t play that much of it this year… It’s absolutely still the fucking coolest FPS out there, though.
The much slept-on art of rally deserves a shoutout here. A finely tuned impressionistic rally racer with an incredible driving model that feels equal parts sim racer and RC car fantasy, it’s my favorite racing game to come out this year. The game knows when to impart a sense of weight, and alternatively weightlessness at the perfect moments to put you at the edge of control at all times. Pretty soon, you’re drifting around curves and modulating speed like the car is an extension of you. Do not miss out on this game!
I would write about Rain World here, but vehemently made an incredibly good write up about how this game feels earlier this year.
Otherwise for 2020 games as @just_benj mentioned, Ghostrunner not only plays incredibly well, but has such a tight rhythm of play that makes it fun even when you’re failing over and over
I had plenty of fun with plenty of games, but let’s be honest, it’s Hades.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 feels fantastic to play. Which is wonderful after years of robomodo games that got the feel of tony hawk wrong and late era neversoft tony hawks that added too many mechanics that didn’t really add anything.
Despite being a remake of 1 and 2 they included mechanics from 3 and 4. So it’s a best case scenario. I really would love if they did a remake of 3 and 4 to or even made a new tony hawk game. Vicarious Visions really got what made those early games feel great to play.
I completely forgot about THPS and I have a hypothesis about the “feel” of remakes too.
Basically, if you can imagine the precise frame-and-physics-perfect “feel” of a game as existing in a 3D coordinate space, there exists a positive epsilon ball around said point such that as long as your “feel coordinates” wind up in the ball, it’s going to feel like the real thing.
I have to say Session takes this one for me. It’s a weird choice with it being an early access skateboarding game, especially since theres a new physics update incoming any day. Anyway, I know absolutely fuck all about skateboarding but oh my god the game just feels good. I guess the same way a good fighting game feels, once you get the specials down they come flawlessly but feel good to do so, the same can be said for Sessions trick system.
Crashing or botching a trick over and over and over again only to finally nail exactly what you want was one of my most satisfying moments all year. I dont know if they’re on the forums but I have to thank Cole Henry, his writing about skateboarding made me dive in.
I tried out Session last year and had a good time with what I played. However, I do most of my gaming on console, so I just naturally ended up spending more time with Skater XL. Totally agree with everything you’ve said here though!
I picked up session on the Xbox Game Preview program but I do keep looking at Skater XL and thinking should I. I probably will
It’s Miles Morales for me. Spider-Man 2018 was already one of the best games I’d ever played in terms of feel if only for the web-swinging and traversal mechanics. I felt like its combat got very samey after a while, but with Miles’ new abilities like, it really expanded the ways I was able to approach encounters and take them on once I was engaged. Connecting invisible stealth KOs with a couple of swing kicks and a Venom smash is genuinely one of the most satisfying sequences I’ve ever experienced in a 3D action game, and with it the combat flows almost as beautifully as the swinging does.
Star Wars: Squadrons feels so good to fly ships in that I’ve put so so many hours into it despite some pretty major bugs and the game overall being light on content. Now it’s not what many people expected, and the flight model doesn’t really make you feel like you’re in space, but space in Star Wars has never really behaved like space. I only play on keyboard+mouse, so no VR and no HOTAS, but flipping switches managing the power systems and shields, and drifting around all over the place just feels so great. I’ve never played a space/flight combat game before, but I really took a liking to Squadrons. In a way, its unique flight model let me sorta go in with no expectations and just learn how this one specific game works and get really into it.
Looking at my Backloggd I realized that, while mine is still Miles, I want to give a shoutout to Astro’s Playroom, which, if I were making a Top 10 list, would be on it. It’s a genuinely brilliant little 3D platformer that uses all the bells and whistles — vibration, feedback, adaptive triggers, etc. — of the PS5 controller in ways that feel really, really good.
I’d like to put Part Time UFO (switch) in the mix, because it nails that feeling of lighthearted creativity I love in videogames, that gleeful goofiness you get in titles like warioware or rhythm heaven
Hades comes to mind here, as many have said before. It feels like the best gameplay moments of Bastion every run. It’s incredible.
Surprised no one has mentioned Spelunky 2 yet, which somehow improved the buttery smoothness of the original’s feel (seriously, go back to the first game and it feels way clunkier now, somehow). They did this, by the way, without adding more buttons while still adding a ton of different ways of interact with items and the world. I have been so impressed by it.
DOOM: Eternal I hesitantly put on here. I didn’t make it far enough to get all the mechanics down and really have it all gel together for me and, judging by the original, that will take until late in the game. But I’m also willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, considering how much I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played so far and just how much I enjoyed the Game Feel of 2016 DOOM.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne also technically came out this year and, if this was another MH generation, that would have been the MHW: Ultimate sold separately. So it definitely counts. It still feels fucking great to play and was able to jump back into it a year and a half after I left no problem.
Granblue Fantasy: Versus might just be my favourite traditional fighting game this generation. It’s either that or last year’s Samurai Shodown. Wish I had a better internet connection to play more of it… and there wasn’t a pandemic preventing me from going to locals since literally the day the game came out.
