Gumf Game of the Year Round-Up 2020
PAID PROMOTION - Sponsored by Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS
Gumf’s Ben Cotton lists his top 5 video games from the year of our Lord Jesus Christ, 2020, and uses the word Annus quite a lot for someone born in Stoke in the mid-1990s.
Well, there we have it, folks. Another classic year of gaming in the books, and what a year it’s been! If the Romans were knocking about in the year 2020 AD, they’d be describing this absolutely vintage set of 366 days (ever heard of a leap year? 1 ) as an Annus Mirabilis - a wonderful year. It’s hard to blame those guys. Even the most miserly Mediterranean sod from classical antiquity would have to admit, this year has been pretty bloody Gucci, when you think about it, and in case you’ve been shutting yourself away from society in 2020, here’s why: der Videospiele, les jeux vidéo, the video games.
That’s right, whether you’ve been tapping away on your Commodore 64, wildly gesticulating like sports motion games are going out of fashion on your Nintendo Wii, or capturing and subjugating rare Pokéman on your mobile phone, the consensus is: if you were looking to describe an Annus as being Mirabilis, this guy’s going to be right at the top of the list. So cast your square eyes back, wrap your button-mashers around a relaxing mug of cocoa, and join us for the Gumf Game of the Year Round-Up 2020 compiled as part of a paid promotion by Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS!
5: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
March, Nintendo Switch
Right, have to be honest, I’ve never even heard of this one, but based on the title, it appears to be some sort of game about chaperoning an animal (frogs?) as they cross a road, which more or less sounds like a right load of old bollocks. Either way, enough children and pathetic grown-ups seem to have been suckered in by this cobblers, that this thing’s somehow managed to sneak its way into the Gumf Game of the Year Round-Up 2020 compiled as part of a paid promotion by Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS, and if this is number five, then Jesus, how bad has this year’s slate of video games been? Wikipedia is telling me that this tripe’s gameplay seems to feature digging, fishing, and shopping. So chores, basically. Fun(!).
4: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2
August, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC
If there’s one thing I pride myself on, it’s not research (too busy). What I do pride myself on, however, is my pedantry. I’m a stickler for the rules, and I make no exceptions! Which is why number four rankles me a little. The Internet’s absolutely insistent that this thing came out in the August of 2020, but to that I say: my arse it did! I swear I played this thing on the PlayStation in 1999, and last time I checked, 1999 and 2020 are not the same! For that reason, this teenager simulator can get itself right off this list. If you came out in 1999, you can’t come out in 2020, that’s just how time works. There are books about this sort of thing, they’re called calendars. No way does this game sneak into the Gumf Game of the Year Round-Up 2020 compiled as part of a paid promotion by Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS a mere 21 years after it came out.
3: Cyberpunk 2077
December, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC, Google Stadia, Xbox One (sort of), PlayStation 4 (sort of)
Again! The Gumf Game of the Year Round-Up 2020 compiled as part of a paid promotion by Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS is exclusively for games that were released in 2020. If I was looking for games released in 2077, I’d have called it Gumf Game of the Year Round-Up 2077 compiled as part of a paid promotion by Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS! This appears to be a bit of a losing battle, so I might as well chat a bit of shit about this one, even if it’s another illegal entry. So, the Cyberpunk series continues to be an annual release, and the new edition for the 2077 Cyberpunk season does little to distinguish itself from previous iterations. The mechanics are the same, albeit with a few welcome additions to Manager Mode, consequently, this just feels like another £59.99 update that gives gamers all of the new kits and players. The standout feature is still Cyberpunk Ultimate Neo-Team, and it’s likely to remain the main draw for returning customers, who will keep buying CUN-T points in order to get the best cards. Hardcore fans will be satiated by the stat updates, and minor gameplay improvements, but for the rest of us, Cyberpunk 2076 offers basically the same experience, and is now so discounted at CeX that you could probably shoplift it and get an actual standing ovation from the staff.
2: Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
November, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Guns? Check. Grenades? Check. Precarious nuclear stand-offs between the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and the United States of America? Check. Zombies? Check. Love it. That’s going straight to number two in the Gumf Game of the Year Round-Up 2077 compiled as part of a paid promotion by Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS! In fact, it’d probably be a shoe-in for the number one slot, if not for…
1: Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket
August, Nintendo DS
Wow! Here it is! Fuzzy-Frog Games Ltd’s magnum opus! Art hath been reinvented. Entertainment hath been rendered anew and its visage has scarcely been as beautiful.
Where to start with this thing? Well firstly, let’s get the elephant in the room dealt with. It does just fall out of the catchment period to be covered by this year’s Gumf Game of the Year Round-Up 2020 compiled as part of a paid promotion by Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS, which is technically, 01/01/2020, and Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket was released in August 2010, but let’s not be too stringent on this sort of thing, it’s only a bit of fun innit? And on the subject of a bit of fun, this game really is!
It’s the first (and last) cricket game on the Nintendo DS, so if you’re looking for a bit of the beautiful game (...of cricket) on a portable console, Freddie’s your man, and Power Play Cricket is your game. There’s only one licensed player featured on the roster, which is good because you’ll only get confused if we start tossing in any old Virat Kohli or Steve Smith. In my eyes, it’s better to have one player, but do him right, rather than have a load of the blighters, but not actually flesh out any of their backstories and character arcs. On that note, however, the game’s namesake Freddie Flintoff isn’t even the featured professional. It’s actually some goofus called Andrew Flintoff, who I guess must be his uncle or something? No idea. Still, it’s nice to get even just one tangential member of the Flintoff dynasty on the old Nintendo.
So, let’s talk about game modes. FFPPC boasts T20 cricket, and also no other forms of the game, but that’s fine because you don’t really want to be slogging your way through a five-day test match on the Nintendo DS because all Nintendo DS games are basically a bit crap, even the really great ones! In addition to that, there’s a net practice mode, so you can really sharpen up your batting away from the tension of the exhibition and tournament modes. There’s also FOUR whole bonus challenges! Which is the ideal quantity of bonus challenges, if we’re being honest. Three bonus challenges is an absolute non-starter, and five bonus challenges is taking the piss, so let’s just stick with four.
Graphically, the game is in-line with the prettiest Nintendo DS releases, which is to say it’s phenomenally ugly, but that’s actually a good thing because you won’t get distracted by the visuals when you’re peppering the batsman’s toes with some yorkers. Also, due to the nature of cricket, there’s ample opportunity for the Nintendo DS to flex its graphical muscles when it comes to verdant pixelated greens.
In tediously realistic real-world cricket, the maximum amount of runs awarded for clearing the boundary is six. In FFPPC, however, you can actually score a twenty! Since 20 is 333.33% of 6, Power Play’s version of the game is actually 333.33% more fun than the actual sport! How many games can say that? Look, if that offends you woke liberals, then I’m sorry, but this isn’t your dad’s cricket game (your dad’s cricket game is Subbuteo Cricket, which is wank and old, unlike 2010’s Freddie Flintoff’s Power Play Cricket on the Nintendo DS, which is new and dead cool). So if you’re going to buy any 2010 Nintendo DS cricket game, make it this one, because there are no others
1The Romans had! The Julian calendar introduced the leap year in 46 BC, and the first one was in 45 BC. However, the year 46 BC actually had two leap months, amounting to a total of 455 days, and thus was known as Annus Confusionis (year of confusion) You learn something new every day, so this might be the 22nd thing you’ve learnt this year. Back to article^
