2020 has been an extremely unusual year, so hopefully it's a bit of a treat to end it in our usual way - with the top fifty games of the last twelve months, as chosen by you.

What we said: "You can't call it a comeback when you've always been the king."

"It's early days, but this is as good as WoW has been for over ten years," says Kiliko. "So much content, no vicious gating, very alt-friendly, great looking zones. It feels similar to what I thought WoW 2 would be like back in 2010. A joy to see my friends list extremely active again."

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Hello! And welcome to a special article where a bunch of us sit down to talk about our game of the year. And for 2020, that game is Hades. We hope you enjoy this conversation, and we hope you're leaving such an unusual year with some good memories of the games you've played.

Chris Donlan: There are a lot of Roguelikes and Roguelites - what makes Hades stand above the rest? Is that even the right lens to be viewing it through?

Malindy Hetfeld: I have a counter question if I may. Just to clarify. I'm not sure what the roguelike lens entails, because that means we all have a fixed idea of what that genre is about.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I love the ring in Ring Fit Adventure: the way it pulses when positioned correctly for a move; hitting the sweet spot, feeling it tug like a bump in the air. I love the tremble and buzz as you pull hard for a Bow Pull, or go low for a Squat (or a Wide Squat, or a Knee Lift Combo which feels suspiciously like a Squat). I love the main theme, and the track that sounds like Kylie. I love that the linear stages feel a bit Sonic with all their springs and jumps, and I love the first level's beat-drop as you burst into a vivid colourscape. From leader board competitions against friends (200 on Endless Deltoids!) to the custom workouts I made after injuring my Achilles (fuck you barefoot trainers!) Ring Fit has been a 2020 constant. And I never would have played it if the gyms hadn't closed in Lockdown.

I'm one of those who secretly quite enjoyed Lockdown 1. I work in a hospital, so decided to move out of the house for a few months. This worked out fine, because I'd get a social fix from work - suddenly and strangely the most communal place in Birmingham - then I'd have my days off to do as I pleased and play Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

In this unnaturally long year, I found myself seeking out games whose worlds were filled with quiet, relaxing, magic. It's the kind of magic that, rather than bombarding you with rules and consequences, slowly envelopes you until the barrier between it and what might be considered normal has dissolved entirely. These games helped me forget what was happening around the world for a while, transporting me instead to places where the wonderfully bizarre is commonplace.

In Spiritfarer I found the magic of discovery; nearly every island has something you need hidden away somewhere on its shores and I started keeping notes on which lands I hadn't been able to fully explore, so that I wouldn't forget to revisit them. Even the sea has its own secrets - I love sailing through the patches of endless night, because the music and change in atmosphere create the idea that, for a short while, you're gazing upon the true nature of this world. My favourite part of Spiritfarer, however, was, in a year where I've spent six months in the same room, it made me feel helpful. You're not just ferrying the dead, you're healing their wounds, soothing their demons and finding the perfect way to help their souls finally rest.

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From Tolstoy to Tolkien, sometimes it's good to go back and sample the classics. You know, for educational purposes. And when it comes to gaming, it doesn't get much more classic then Doom. Though it spawned in the early days of home console history, the series has proved enduring, with the most recent instalment coming out just this year.

Right now, Steam and Microsoft are both offering the original 1993 title for just £1.19. The port comes with the spooky Thy Flesh Consumed expansion pack, plus 4-player deathmatch and co-op. The multiplayer options are all local, which is a shame in these locked down times, but you can at least rope your flatmate / spouse / offspring in for some demon killing fun.

The port is available for PlayStation and Switch, though it's still full price on those storefronts. You can also get the crazily huge DOOM Franchise bundle for £35 on Steam, which includes all the classic games as well as the current bloodsoaked reboots. If you fancy a proper trip down memory lane, Doom Classic Complete (including Doom II and the severely misnamed Final Doom) is down from a tenner to £2.99.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I never used to be particularly outdoorsy, but the passing of years seems to have graced me with an irrepressible itch for a sweeping vista and a curiosity for distant climes. No surprise then that Flight Simulator has been my safety valve in 2020, offering a welcome escape from the waning thrills and increasingly claustrophobic over-familiarity of my immediate locale.

The joy and genius of Flight Simulator 2020 is in its wonderful accessibility, meaning it's not just a game for aviation lovers, it's a game for those that love travel and discovery too. And its breathtaking digital Earth hasn't just sated my niggling wanderlust this year, it's stirred my curiosity, encouraging hours of blissful revery among the clouds, seeking out fresh geographical wonders, and giving me a whole new appreciation for the majesty of our world.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Can you hear that? It's the sound of video game composers, audio engineers and voice actors having an absolute blast. My favourite games of 2020 all have parts that are wonderful and parts that don't quite work, but they all have one thing in common: they sound awesome.

Let's start with Call of Duty: Warzone, which I spent much of the first half of 2020 playing almost exclusively. This isn't one for memorable music, but it is one for memorable sound. Infinity Ward did a cracking job with the sound of Modern Warfare and Warzone's weapons. They thunder from the middle of the screen! Sniper rifles boom and crack realistically, echoing across the Verdansk expanse. It's the zip of fire that races past your head, coming from the rooftop over the hill somewhere. And the footsteps. Oh god, the footsteps. At one point, when I was playing Warzone pretty much every night, I could hear the footsteps as I drifted off to sleep, above me or below me, getting louder or quieter. Warzone is one of the best-sounding shooters I've ever played. Solid copy, IW.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Sometimes when I have trouble sleeping, I imagine myself climbing out of a vast underground citadel, stairways upon stairways following each other upward in the light of a single candle. I pass doorways heaped with dust and swivelling, gold-rimmed mirrors of the kind that often feature in Zelda puzzles. Reaching the top after many days I halt inside the entrance, listening to birdsong, my toes inches from a bar of sunshine. Then I rewind the daydream and start again. I fantasise that I'm some ancient creature roused from long slumber to right some epic wrong, but in the end, I don't really need to know what lies out there in the surface world. I'm in it for the suspense and serenity of the climb.

I haven't played Hades, the current Stygian adventure of choice, but I've spent a lot of time in virtual underworlds this year. You don't have to look hard for a real-life parallel there. Nor do you have to be an ancient Greek adventurer to know that underworlds aren't just places of death and disease. They are refuges for wayward imaginations, shelters and spawning vats for ideas swiftly killed by the harsh clarity of sunlight, the abrasive fresh air. The games that define 2020 for me understand this.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

I barely played any new games this year. It feels wrong to admit that, as a professional games journalist, even one who's not exactly on the frontline any more. It feels like an unforgivable lapse of curiosity. It feels like a retreat. And if I am honest with myself, it was a retreat that began before March - before everything in life became a retreat. I just couldn't bring myself to start new games, to enter new worlds. I wanted familiarity. As I wrote in May, "there was nothing new I fancied playing, or rather I fancied playing nothing new - I wanted the soothing feeling of old routines, patterns of thought and movement worn smooth with use."

No, this isn't a pandemic thing, although it hasn't helped. It's also nothing to do with what's been going on in games. I don't mean to suggest we're in the doldrums. Quite the opposite. A glance at my colleagues' pieces will tell you that this has been a year of exceptional creativity and fun in games, marked by many brilliant releases - from Streets of Rage 4 to 13 Sentinels, Flight Simulator to I Am Dead - and supercharged by the excitement of the new consoles. It used to be de rigueur, come the end of every year, to declare "it's a great time to be a gamer", and it's an awful cliché, but it's as true now as it ever was.

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Editor's note: Take a breath. We're almost there. 2020's been quite the year, and it's very nearly over. Across the festive break, members of the Eurogamer team and our contributors will be running down their personal top five games of 2020, before we announce our game of the year - and before, of course, we hand over to you for the annual Reader's Top 50. Thanks for being with us this year, and see you on the other side.

Of the five games that have had the greatest impact on me this year, four of them weren't even on my radar when the clock ticked over from 2019 to 2020.

I knew Assassin's Creed Valhalla was on its way, of course, but I was... indifferent, I suppose? Burned out on all things Creed, perhaps? I'd loved my time with Bayek, and had a lot of fun with Alexios, too, but I couldn't reconcile how an Assassin's Creed game could work with a Viking at the helm. Let's face it; Viking's aren't particularly renowned for their stealthy ways, and I couldn't work out how - or even why - the ancient brotherhood would court a warrior with a tendency to axe first, ask questions later.

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