Games of the Year Two Thousand and Seventeen

There were a lot of really good video games this year. I didn't play most of them. But of the handful I did play, these are my ten favorites. And also a few other games I played this year.

10. Destiny 2
Destiny 2 is a video game where the shooting feels real good. Everything else in it is kind of secondary. The skyboxes are nice, the lore is interesting, and it's a great game if I just want to listen to some podcasts for a while. However, the actual main story is kind of garbage, the progression feels pointless, and the lack of visual customization is an actual crime. Who makes an MMO-like game but doesn't let you put the stats of one item with the cosmetics of another? Criminals, that's who.

9. This Strange Realm of Mine
What a strange little game. The shooting parts of it are pretty fun but the focus of it is defintely on the writing and story. The characters are fun to talk to and although it can get a little "college freshman philosophy 101" at times, the writing is pretty solid.

8. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
I think I like this game more for what it tries to do than what it actually does. The puzzles and combat aren't terribly complicated and by the end they're pretty boring to go through. The game attempts to tackle mental illness, which is rare for video games, and I think it does it fairly well. That along with the really great performances for the characters makes this game something worth seeing. Also I think this game is fairly important for the industry. Ninja Theory set out to bring back the middle tier of games between AAA and Indie and I think they did a good job of showing that it's absolutely possible to fill that gap.

7. West of Loathing
Back in the day, I played a lot of Kingdom of Loathing. That game was just absolutely my jam at the time. After all these years, they've done it again. The writing is great and not just parts of it, the jokes are funny throughtout the entire game. Comedy is hard and writing a lot of it is even harder.

6. Playerunknown's Battlegrounds
One hundred new shooter games drop onto Steam, scavenge for a playerbase, and this is apparently the one that won. It seems like large parts of the industry are going to be chasing the Battle Royale craze for at least the next few years. This could very well be the most significant shooter game since whichever Call of Duty it was that made their style of multiplayer big. Oh and also it's actually pretty fun to play.

5. Tacoma
Fullbright didn't disappoint with this one. Their characters feel incredibly real, the spaces feel lived-in, and the story holds it all together and keeps you going. After Gone Home played a major role in making the 'walking simulator' genre what it is now, I think Tacoma has shown what can be done in that space and has raised the bar on what to expect from games in that genre.

4. Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age
Even though it's a remake of an old game it came out this year so I'm counting it as a new release. I had never played the original so I don't know the full extent of the changes but from what I understand, it's all been changes for the better. It quickly climbed up to one of my favorites in the whole series. It's a Final Fantasy game where I actually don't have much negativity towards the story which is a small miracle on its own.

3. Toukiden 2
Toukiden 2 isn't just a good hunting game, I think it's the first step towards the future of hunting games. The biggest thing is that they've changed it to be one big open world instead of several smaller levels and while I don't think their exact execution of it is flawed, they do a great job of pushing the genre forward. Oh and also the Oni Claw is an incredibly fun thing to use to get around and to use in a fight. They did a really great job on this one.

2. Blue Reflection
I know this game is probably immediately off-putting to a lot of people but I'll still try to get as many people to play it as possible. Yes, it's a JRPG. Yes, it's about high school girls. Yes, it's very anime. But I swear, it's really really good at every aspect of it. JRPG is probably my favorite genres so I've played quite a few of them over the years. So when I say that Blue Reflection is one of my favorites of all time know that that is no small statement. The combat, the leveling system, the characters, the story, the music, the world: every part of this game is great. It's like someone saw the Persona games and decided to make one but better and with more anime.

1. NieR:Automata
In a year where a lot of games were daring in various ways, I thought NieR rose above all of them. While the actual gameplay is a not-terrible-complicated character action game (with a few other bits thrown in here and there), the way it tells the story and the some of the things it does throughout the game just challenge how many people think about stories in games. What kind of game kills off the main character halfway through and is content to never bring them back? A game made by a man with a strange moon thing for a head. NieR was made on a pretty tight budget, and it shows, but I'm so excited to see this game do well because it means someone is going to give Yoko Taro a lot of money to make his next game and that thought is incredibly exciting. I saw it a while ago on Twitter but I'm stealing it to say here: Yoko Taro is like what if Kojima was good.


Honorable Mentions
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
I got this in a bundle with Dishonored 2 and have only played about an hour of it so far. The powers all seem like they were made to slow down the pace of the game. I wasn't exactly speedrunning the first two games but being able to go relatively quickly if I needed or wanted to was nice and it just seems like this one has slowed it all down. The lack of customizability in your powers also is a bit of a bummer. That said, Billie Lurk is pretty rad and I'm looking forward to the narrative end of things so I'll definitely get around to playing through this eventually.

Horizon: Zero Dawn
I only just started playing this and have maybe two hours in it so far. It's good so far and I'm enjoying pretty much every part of it. Those robot dinosaurs look dope as hell.


Old Games
BioForge
Don't let the 1995 graphics, questionable voice acting, and janky as hell controls fool you. This game is actually legitimately good and fun. The history of BioForge is actually pretty fascinating; how it was made, what Origin Systems was trying to do, and the tech behind it are all worth reading about. There's an interview on Giant Bomb with the Directo, Ken Demarest, that is worth reading for all the little tidbits about it. ( https://www.giantbomb.com/articles/flutes-big-guns-and-alien-cubes/1100-4726/ )

Dishonored 2
Hey this game is pretty good. While I think overall it isn't as good as the first Dishonored, I was pretty happy to have more Dishonored to play and more places to explore. This was one of the few games I played this year where I was happy to read all the little notes and squeeze out every last drop of lore.

Hitman
I would have played this last year but my computer wasn't capable of running it at an acceptable framerate so I had to wait until I got some upgrades this year and oh my goodness this game is fantastic. I've put about 30 hours into the game so far and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I've only really put and significant time into the first two maps and I haven't touched the new Patient Zero campaign at all. The game is really good and there's just so much of it. I'll be playing this game for quite a while I think.

Silent Hill 3
I went in to this not expecting to like it at all. Survival horror game with some adventure game-like nonsensical puzzles? Yeah right. But then I actually played it and wow hey they make it work. It isn't just that I ended up liking it but that I actually liked it quite a lot. It's made me go from not really interested in the Silent Hill franchise to actively wanting to go and play more of those games.

TRI: Of Friendship and Madness
Game of the Year All Years

Thanks for reading. Or for at least scrolling through to see what games I mentioned.