10 Best Nintendo Switch Games Of 2020

Although it sits atop this list, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was not, objectively, the best Switch game of 2020. The laconic, quotidian pleasures on offer eventually degrade into unrewarding daily chores, as the lack of meaningful interactions and painfully clumsy controls frustrate rather than delight. Ultimately, it's a game that can't escape its very nature, and likely left many novitiates in Tom Nook's usury wondering just what all the fuss was all about.

And yet, New Horizons is unquestionably the defining release of 2020. No title has ever captured the societal zeitgeist so extraordinarily, so endearingly. Just as a global crisis crumbled our established way of living and forced us into unwilling hermitude, Nintendo invited us to a place of endlessly feel-good digital escapism. A place where, by proxy, we could once more connect with our loved ones, be part of a society, and laugh at silly fish puns (the first five times, at least).

Yes, no doubt a slew of newcomers will have since abandoned their electronic island getaways as they did their actual ones, leaving behind a combined metropolis of ghost towns begging for attention like so many poor, neglected Nintendogs. But for a while, these animal-infested idylls were paradise; a creature comfort when the real world offered nothing but despair. Animal Crossing: New Horizon wasn't, perhaps, the best Switch game of 2020, but it was, by some margin, the most important.