Over the next week, we will be posting features for what we've nominated to be the best games of 2020. Then, on December 17, we will crown one of the nominees as GameSpot's Best Game of 2020, so join us as we celebrate these 10 games on the road to the big announcement. Be sure to check out our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best Games of 2020 hub.

Half-Life: Alyx is familiar. In comparison to previous installments in the franchise, it even looks a bit samey. You get guns, you fight terrifying headcrab-controlled zombies, mow down the militant Combine, solve puzzles, and try to liberate a world from a multi-dimensional alien takeover. On paper, it’s hard to pinpoint a hugely notable difference between Half-Life: Alyx and Half-Life 2, a 16-year-old game. Yet, Half-Life: Alyx is unlike anything I’ve ever played before. Yes, it’s a VR game, and the immersion that comes from that defines the experience. However, beyond the virtual reality is a video game so meticulously crafted and so spellbinding in its execution that the familiarity and simplicity becomes a stroke of brilliance.

In the opening moments of the game you have time to interact and play with the world. Before you get your hands on any guns, one of the first things you can arm yourself with is a marker. Using my actual real-life hands and the Vive’s controllers, I picked up the marker and began drawing on a window with it. I could clean it off with an eraser or smudge it off with my fingers. This moment, seemingly inconsequential in the moment, actually served as the bedrock for what would come by rewiring my brain and opening my mind to possibilities that the game would execute on in the hours following.