Top 5 Games of 2017

2017 was a pretty crazy year for Gaming. So many good titles came out at once that GotY truly had some real fighting competitors instead of just being the years "nice looking and nice played" game. I certainly enjoyed a few of these games. So here is my top picks (with some honorable mentions at the bottom).

5. Super Mario Odyssey

Since I'm writing this to get it done before 2018 is over, I can't exactly give a full review of SMO since I havent /fully/ completed it yet. I'll be sure to edit this paste when I'm done with 100%.

But so far this has defintley wowed me in terms of gameplay. I was expecting alot of things from this game and I havent been disappointed yet.

4. A Hat in Time

Before I write about this one, let me just give you a tiny history on my experience with this game before it was released.

I first saw this game from a video from our mans JoshJepson on youtube. He had been given a "fuck around" code for a video and it looked pretty ok. Then I saw a stream from the streamer formerly known as Cosmo Wright, he had also given a fuck around code but spent much longer on it than Josh did in his video. I was super intrigued by this game and thought about giving it a go when it came out.

Fast forward like a year and this game just got an Alpha release. Exact same situation, Cosmo streamed it. It looked fun. "I'll get it when it comes out"

ONE MORE YEAR LATER and the game gets a Beta Release. This is where I bit the bullet and backed the game myself and got the Beta Build on top of it. I played the shit out of it and even speedran it and got the impression that it was going to be a pretty amazing game with alot of neat little plot things coming here and there that the tiny community around the game had unearthed. After some intense drama and all that jazz, I deemed this game "pretty good but i'd rather see how final build will be like" and blocked off any spoiler and announcement of the games features so I could play it 100% blind when it came out (since I made a bunch of speedfriends out of the game they tended to retweet them alot so thats why i did this).

That was in 2015. 2 WHOLE years before the game came out. At the start of this year I made a call that this game probably wont ever get released and will get stuck in developer hell. Well eventually in June(?) the release date was announced and my hype for the game went from being a cold pit to being back to a tiny flame. Then in the months leading up to the release, a bunch of cool shit happened. There was an speedrun event, an crazy ARG put on by one of my best friends and TONS of mainstream attention. This turned the tiny flame into a fully blown hype train. It had finally settled in that I was going to play the final build for the game and I was ready to be blown away.

Well....it kinda happened? The game isn't bad don't get me wrong. But it isn't 100% amazing.

I enjoy this game alot. The graphics are beautiful, the story and characters are cute and the 4 chapters are unique and really cool. But after one playthrough and 100%ing the game. I just couldn't bring myself to open the game up again. It kinda lost all replayability even with the promising mod community. Now dont take this as me disliking the game, cause that isnt the case at all. That playthrough I did, was fun as FUCK. Chapters 2 and 4 were absolutely cool and I wasn't expecting them at all. It was so cool finally getting to walk around Subcon Forest after years of teasing it. The music is fucking AWESOME and i'm even listening to one of the tracks as i'm writing this right now. The artist (Jenna i think her name is?) did an absolutely wonderful job of drawing the art all around the game and I hope she sticks around for more. It's truly a game worth playing if you LOVE 3D platformers.

The game just felt lacking. I don't really know about the full story of why things were cut (I dont care enough to really look it up either lol) but alot of things that were promised or were shown off in great detail were either missing or just cut down to size. Like one chapter that was shown was called Sand n Sails i think? where there was a gimmick with Hat Kid slowly but surely getting malnourished and needing to collect water to be healthy again. This was really cool concept to read about but was omitted which was a shame. There was also the entire last floor in Vanessa which I know was cut for plot reasons but it made the entire level feel lacking and the whole moonjumper thing and i dont know. It just made the game feel short and rushed, which considering the development time is weird to me. I know it was just a small dev team but yikes.

Whatever, this game is still crazy good and I will defintley give the DLC a whirl when they come out.

3. Breath of the Wild

Time for game 2 out of 3 on the list of "games that took forever to come out"

In 2013 I asked for a Wii U for Christmas because of the announcement of a new Zelda game on the horizon. 2014 went by with a cool (and controversial) trailer and eventually a small gameplay look at but then it went silent for 2015 and most of 2016 until late into 2016 when they showed off the "super awesome amazing trailer" for Breath of the Wild, the new game on....the Nintendo Switch.

So yeah I got a whole new console (which is now a paperweight) for a game that wasnt to come out until 2017 on a new console. Sure it did get a Wii U release and thats what I played it on but man. Talk about a crazy ride of events.

Moaning about games taking too long to be released aside, what do I think of it?

I love it. I wasnt initially too impressed with the open world idea dropped in 2014 and even in the coming trailers over the couple years after but when I played it myself? I absolutely fell in love. This was the first Zelda game I've played where I can say I got a true sense of "Adventure", Crazy right? an Adventure game series that took this many games to give me a sense of Adventure? Who would have thunk.

After the first 1-2 hours of the game locking you to an area to give you a feel for how the game works. The entire map just opens up to you and the plot takes a backseat. "ok now what" I said. Do I just go straight to Hyrule Castle and beat the game and call it a day. Do I go find every shrine and beef Link up to the max? or do I just chillax and explore? So many options were dropped on me at once and it felt really amazing. I was given this huge world to play around with. So I went with the latter and made it my goal to explore the whole map and unlock every tower and do plot things as they come at me. After maybe 40-50 straight hours of this I was done exploring, beefed up Link. Did a couple dungeons and shrines. Made a bunch of food and thought "ok maybe now I should fight Ganon right?" so I did just that. Beat Ganon, credits roll. Done. "cool" I said. "Lets check the percentage counter"........."14.6%" "oh i see".

So yeah I played a fuck ton of this game for so long and did so much and it was literally only 14% of the game. Holy fuck. There is so much to do and see that I haven't done, there's people to talk to. Items to pick up. Food to cook. Shrines not done. Koroks not found. SO MUCH STUFF.

aaaaaaand I put the game down and didn't touch it for months. In fact I still haven't touched it. There was so much to do that I felt if I attempted to even do everything I would still be trying to this day (I take alot of time doing things like that dont judge me). So yeah I put that specific playthough down and haven't touched it since March. I do plan on re buying the game for my handy dandy new Switch so I can play it on the go but this time I'm probably gonna do a different style of Adventure since that's what the game wants you to do and it fuels my drive to want to replay it again and again

Shame I dont have £54.99 to buy it again right now though LOL

But seriously. This game is actually amazing. I was blown away and it was well worth the wait. Please buy it if you own a Wii U or plan on buying a Switch. It is really worth it.

2. Sonic Mania

DID YOU SAY A NEW CLASSIC SONIC GAME CREATED BY THE GUY WHO DID THE MOBILE PORTS AND THE HD PORT OF CD?
SIGN
ME
THE
FUCK
UP

Holy shit. When this got announced last year. I. freaked. out. The Classic Sonic games were the first games I ever played (thanks Older Bros) so my nostalgia goggles were firmly in place and ready to get splashed with everything this man had to throw at me.

The game is perfectly reminiscent of the original games, more Sonic 2 and 3&K but it was all there in beautiful HD and 60FPS glory. The graphics are pretty awesome and the animations are smoother than a babies bottom. The music is like sex to my ears, Light's Camera Action is one the greatest Stage themes ever in a Sonic game. The level design while retarded sometimes (really need to cut back on those crushing objects Taxman) has a really nice blend of casual and hardcore. The Boss Fights are really well done and have some awesome references to old games (to this day I'm still sad my stream cut out when I first found about the Mean Bean Machine boss. I FUCKING LOVE MEAN BEAN MACHINE AHHHHH) The special stages were really well thought out but some had some dumb difficulty spikes (particularly Special Stage 6). The Blue Sphere levels were really fun and the reward for perfecting all of them were really nice (i'm pretty good at Blue Sphere) and the replay value is just as awesome as the previous Sonic games by having that same old "exploring gets your goodies" the old games have. The only small issues I have is some dumb weird difficulty spikes, the classic remastered stages to new original stages ratio and some references are little obscure that even I (a casual sonic fan) only just barely got.

All in all if you like 2D fast paced platformers. Get Sonic Mania. If you love the OG Sonic games. Get Sonic Mania. If you havent and want to give them a try. Where the hell have you been and Get Sonic Mania. Its on PC. PS4. Xbox One. Switch. YOUR TOASTER. GET SONIC MANIA AND SHOW TAXMAN THAT HE IS A GOOD DEVELOPER AND SEGA JUST NEEDS TO GIVE HIM THE REINS.

1. Persona 5

I love it. You love it. So many people love it.

Yeah here's the obvious one. This game was my KH3 or my FFXV or my Last Guardian. I've eagerly awaited for this game since 2013 and here it is with the most mainstream attention any game in this hecking franchise has ever gotten. P5 is a masterpiece, it has an amazing JRPG battle system that's (finally) been refined from the other Persona games. It brought back the neat shadow interrogation from P2 and made it better. The music is KICKASS and I nor others can stop listening to this god damn OST. The story is utterly amazing and keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entire game. The characters I absolutely cant get enough of and can't wait for more games with them (assuming they give them as much love as they did the Investigation Team) The Persona fusion system was refined since the last couple games and allows for some pretty broken creations. The Social Links (or Confidants in this game) are my favourite out of the last 3 games. The Palaces/Dungeons oh my GOD THE PALACES, the music in them fit the mood, the atmosphere and enemies make you feel unwanted as a group of thieves and the style and layouts are absolutely CRAZY compared to P3 and P4. Its truly one of my favourite games ever.

....but it isnt without faults either. For example, it still has the worse thing in the Persona series which is, if the Main Character dies in battle, its game over whether you like it or not (which is still the most bullshit thing for a otherwise perfect battle system. especially when instant kill moves like Hama and Mudo exist). The Music which I and others love so much does get really repetitive over time. The first few notes of Last Surprise wont ever leave my head and its annoying. P4 also had this problem which was *kinda* fixed with P4G by adding two kinds of battle music for Player Advantage but holy moly does it get really tiring after hours of grinding. The plot setup is almost the same as P4s and also has the same annoying problem as P4 where the game likes to constantly remind you "Hey, doing Social Links/Confidants is really fuckin important so remember to do that" and then lock you to plot for up to 7-8 days at a time which is annoying.

But other than that, this is my favourite game in the series. Persona 3 and 4 had alot of kickass moments and there are still things I will love about them more but this game just left with a huge sense of satisfaction that I haven't felt in a game since I beat KH2 10 years ago.

That was my shitty list of my top 5 games of 2017. Tbh I think this was my favourite year for gaming so far. Alot of really awesome games have come out some of which I haven't even played yet. 2018 looks pretty crazy too so hopefully we might get another good year.


Honorable Mentions:

Yakuza 0

This one had the unfortunate happening of being released right at the start of the year making literally everyone forget about it. A super fun game in the Yakuza series that I makes me want to go back to play all of them (Literally only ever played Yakuza 1 on the PS2 LOL)

Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony

I fucking LOVE Danganronpa but this came out the same time I didnt have any money and class had just started back up again so I still need to sit down to play this one. I've heard good things about it and considering I love DR1 and 2 (and UDG) I'm sure this one is just as awesome.

Sonic Forces

This game gets an overall review of *cue the simpsons clip of Lisa saying "eh"*. It was ok at best, didnt top previous games but wasnt exactly a harmful release. It had an ok story with ok gameplay. It wasnt great though.

Stormblood:Final Fantasy XIV Online

I would have cheated putting this on my list considering this is my most played game in the last year and a half but fuck me has this Expansion been amazing so far (and it keeps getting better and better too). I'm defintley gonna keep playing FFXIV for a while.

PlayerUnknownsBattleGrounds (PUBG)

This game is both fun and completely fucking infuriating at the same time. I'd consider myself an average fan of these Battle Royale games. This game isn't bad by any means considering the amount of attention it gets but its DEFINITELY 100% FLAWED. Like holy moly the system menu's are legit just UE4s default setting ones (I used the exact same menu's in my project last year LOL) and the graphics while i'm sure look really nice on high end graphics cards (something i would have to sell a kidney for) wouldn't even pass QA in a higher end studio (seriously the amount of textures overlaid on top of each other in certain area's can make a persons eyes bleed. 100% fact) The gameplay however is pretty gosh dang good and addicting to all hell so I mean what do I know.