top games of 2017 wip

Alright, I'm looking over the December releases and it doesn't seem like anything's really coming out that'll change this list too much, so welcome to Schir's top however-many games of 2017!


18) Tacoma


17) Persona 5



16) Digimon World: Next Order

	Digimon's been doing some interesting things recently. The tri movies have been exploring some more mature themes, as did last year's Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuths. Cyber Sleuths also, to me, seems to mark the point where Japanese RPGs really started having some of the slickest visual design in the business.
	Digimon World: Next Order isn't quite on that level. It's a bit impenetrable and grind-heavy to a ridiculous extent. Honestly, I'd imagine that a lot of people bounced off of it after getting their ass handed to them when they stepped outside of town with their initial Digimon without training any.
	But that's not to say that this is necessarily a bad game. After realizing I needed to grind my Digimon up to make them decent, I went down a rabbit hole. Three days later, I found myself buried in Digimon evolution requirement spreadsheets and GameFAQs articles on the game's nuances as I tried to balance progression through the game with the amount of time my Digimon had before they died and went back to eggs again while also managing how I wanted to upgrade the buildings in the city as I worked to find and finish the quests necessary to upgrade the city to its next stage.
	There's a lot to this game, frankly. It's more of a management game than it is a straight RPG, and the pacing is slow. But I think it's one of the more interesting games of the year, and I probably would've finished it if Nier Automata hadn't come out as I was getting into the thick of it. But it's a bit difficult to go back to because of all the things you need to be keeping track of. It's still a good game, and I'm looking forward to where the Digimon games go next.

15) this space intentionally left blank

Please see the section of this video entitled "Games that aren't on this list" for an explanation.



16) Mario Odyssey
	You already know about Mario Odyssey. Everyone's been bigging it up since before it came out, determined to like it without having touched it.
	My feelings on the game are a bit more complicated. Is it a good game? Yeah, I guess. The levels are a bit too big for moving around them to be fun, and something about the way Mario moves feels a bit off to me. Maybe it's because the inputs necessary for the cap dive are a lot more complex than one would expect for a Mario game. Jump, press and hold Y, then press ZL to dive in the direction you press the analogue stick. That's not too complicated, but a similar movement was accomplished by just pressing B in Mario Sunshine. It feels like a weird step back in mechanical polish for the Mario series.

	So then, do I dislike Mario Odyssey? Well, no. I don't think I do. My feelings on the game are a bit mixed, because on the one hand you have the aforementioned nitpicks. But then, on the other hand, you have moments like the initial conclusion to New Donk City, where you platform Mario through this whole construction site that culminates in a recreation of Donkey Kong's first level while Pauline sings over this excellent big band swing remix of the main Mario and Donkey Kong themes and it's really nice.

13) kuso
	Did you ever play that minimalist platformer, Love?
	No?
	Okay, well this is the sequel to that.
	Starting with a really minimalist visual aesthetic and then gradually increasing the complexity of what's depicted as you progress through it, Kuso stands as one of the coolest platformers of the year. The visual design throughout is just really cool, and the music is some of the best electronica I've heard this year. The game's maybe an hour long, and it's one of the best hours I've spent with a game this year. The difficulty is masterfully tuned so that no one section ever feels excessively frustrating, and it's just really good.
The game's minimalist in its approach to just about everything, and this means that the game's the purest platforming experience I've had all year. Saying this in the nicest way I can, it's nice to play just a really video game-y video game for once in a while. Start over here, get over there, okay go. That sort of thing.
	If nothing else, give the game's OST a shot because it's really good.


12) A Robot Named Fight

	Procedurally-generated Metroid. That's the conceit behind A Robot Named Fight.
It works really well. It's good.

11) Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaire's Conspiracy




10) Everybody's Golf

	I've gotta say, I'm usually not one for sports games. I don't care for sports generally and I don't particularly enjoy the photorealistic look that the annual licensed sports games go for. Unfortunately, that's the majority of games in the genre, so I end up ignoring them because there's usually something better to play. And I mean, I can't really comment on their gameplay because the last time I really played sports games was back in 2004. I think they seemed fine?

	Anyway, that's all to say that Everybody's Golf is pretty fun!
It's been about 6 years since the last installment in the series, so they've had some time to polish things up.
If I were to classify this as I would any other game, I'd describe this as a clever physics puzzler. The goal of every level is to get a ball to a specified point in less than a predetermined number of turns. The ball is affected by slopes, terrain, wind, and angular momentum that the player must consider when setting the ball's initial velocity.

	It's a game of getting better for the sake of improving, but there's a nice core loop of playing 9-hole tournaments, competing against rival characters to unlock the next course, then playing the new course, occasionally using the money obtained from playing tournaments to buy newer, nicer character outfits.

	The game's just really solid as a game, and good fun to just chill out and play a round or two of every now and again.



9) Universal Paperclips

	If you tell an artificial intelligence to just make paperclips without specifying the parameters, it might just end humanity by accident. This is the central idea that this unfolding game from the creator of Diner Dash sets out to explore.
Unfolding games are generally really interesting in and of themselves, but Universal Paperclips sets itself apart from its peers with its continual gameplay innovations. I mean, first you're just making paperclips, then you're automating the creation process, then you're trying to increase the public's demand for paperclips, then you're running tournament simulations to increase your AI's ability to make optimal decisions in the stock market, then you're buying out your competitors to get a monopoly, and then you release the hypnodrones.
After releasing the hypnodrones, you begin to automate the process of exploring the universe to mine resources from other planets, having subjugated and exhausted the carbon resources of earth as you take on the role of a totalitarian leader rallying their robotic drone army as they do battle with defector drones in an endless robot war while continuing to drain the universe of all its resources to create paperclips.

	It's a hell of a game, with some of the craziest progression I've ever seen.




8)A Hat in Time




7) Torment: Tides of Numenera

	Alright, I'm gonna be honest here: I never played through Planescape Torment. I have it installed somewhere but I haven't booted it up. I'll get around to it one of these days, but I haven't yet.
But we're not here to talk about that old game, we're here to talk about the Tides of Numenera. I'm about ten hours into it, so I haven't fully finished it yet, but what's here is some of the strongest, densest writing I've ever seen. The atmosphere walks a line between alien and mundane, asking the player some very interesting questions along the way. Dilemmas in the game have no clear answers. Do you save the ancient robot who wants to die to keep him from depriving his equally ancient other robots of a companion and considerable knowledge or do you kill him and give life to new, living robots? Do you force the bug monsters who eat the electricity gained from the friction their claws make when mining rocks to move to lower-quality rocks, killing a substantial part of their population, or do you let a portion of the city collapse?
	It asks these sorts of questions while also maintaining a fascinating atmosphere and imagery. The opening dream sequence takes place in a room whose paths are comprised of undulating hexagonal prisms, and when you wake up you're falling from the sky. One of the first weapons you'll find is an arm-shaped club taken from a writhing mass of arms. In the city there are fountains streaming fish-shaped masses and there are floating cones that giggle a bit as they swirl around. Then there's this whole story about the Changing God, a deity who possesses a host's body, uses it, and discards it, leaving the former host to a confused life. The player, incidentally, is one of these former host bodies.
	The whole thing's dense with intrigue and there's way more going on than I've mentioned, and we'd be here all day if I went over the specifics of every weird, interesting thing I've run into here.

	Tides of Numenera oozes one of the most intriguing atmospheres of the year. I had a bit of trouble getting into it at first, but that was alleviated when I realized that the whole game was going to be set in the one city, and would be about exploring the goings-on and happenings of this one fascinating place. It's definitely worth a look.

6) Superbeat Xonic
	Am I just ignoring the genre, or has it actually been a really long time since there's been a solid rhythm game that doesn't have some sort of gimmick?
	Like, the Miku games are bad for people who play rhythm games more casually. Persona 4 Dancing All Night had good music but mediocre gameplay. Crypt of the Necrodancer's out if you can't stand roguelikes. Rez Infinite was cool but short. Thumper seems okay, if different. The Frederick: Resurrection of Music games are fine but I couldn't really recommend them in good conscience.
Anyway, this is all to say that I've been playing a lot of Superbeat Xonic lately. As a casual rhythm game player, I'm not that fond of the strict timing requirements that these games tend towards. I just want to press some buttons roughly to the beat of some decent sounding music and chill out.
	Superbeat Xonic reminds me that the way I had fun playing Guitar Hero when I was younger was by playing the songs on Easy or Medium and enjoying the music when it was decent. I mean, I had no stake in any of the bands or songs that Guitar Hero licensed, so my experience with it was one of playing a bit, unlocking some new weird song that was or wasn't fun to listen to, and then playing that one. I wasn't that invested in the 'pretend to be a rockstar' aspect of Guitar Hero and didn't really care about the story. I just liked playing through songs at a middling level and gradually unlocking more songs in so doing.
Anyway, I bring up Guitar Hero because that's the last rhythm game I can say I really played for more than a week or two and enjoyed. I feel like Superbeat Xonic captures some of the experience I liked there, and then adds in various handicaps that don't feel like they're condescending to the player. The game doesn't punish the player for using them, at any rate.
	Playing the game, I have to say that I think it's a ton of fun. Granted, I stick to the four track mode, but I think that's enough. I can, and sometimes do, go to the 6 track mode, but I don't really need to to get the experience I want out of the game. Unlike a lot of the other rhythm games I've played recently, the easy mode here doesn't just feel condescendingly easy. It creates a reasonable challenge at the physical level while keeping a consistent method of displaying notes in the same places.
	Now, if you're wondering why I'm focusing on talking about the easy mode and not the others, well, that's because the easy mode's what I play and find to be the most enjoyable part of the game. I don't really like playing rhythm games when they demand really precise timing, nor am I especially fond of playing rhythm games at the absolute highest difficulty. I can do it, I will do it if the game absolutely necessitates it, but I prefer more relaxed timing and want to just listen to some nice music most of the time. Superbeat Xonic gives that to me and pretty much nails the sort of experience I'm looking for in a rhythm game.



5) Nier: Automata

	It's been a little while since I've played Nier Automata. I'm going to be going over the fragments of the game I remember, so spoiler warning is in full effect.
Like, spoilers up to Ending E spoiler warning.
---
I'm having trouble remembering all of this game. I remember the pianos and violins creating an eerie mood in the copied city where Adam took 9S to crucify him. I remember the beginning of Route B, where 9S watches one of the robots try to deliver oil to its dead brother, and how effective playing that sequence was. And then my memory of the game gets hazy for a bit, only half-remembering the hacking sequences that 9S goes through in his route because the beginning of Route C, where everybody aboard the ship gets infected as 9S learns that humans have been dead for thousands of years. My memory starts picking up with the combat suits getting infected a bit earlier and watching 2B fly out of the ship as it explodes. Then there's the sequence where you play 2B as she gradually becomes more infected and powerless as she dies, that sticks out. I remember 9S fucking losing his shit at seeing 2B ask A2 to kill her. My images folder definitely remembers A2 as she looks when she cuts off her hair because man that's a really good aesthetic and I like it way more than 2B's gothic lolita nonsense. I remember 2B's mind possessing A2 a little bit. I remember the questline where the girlfriend resets her boyfriend's memories time and again, and I remember how that foreshadows what happens with 9S and 2B. Then my memory gets hazy again until the Meat Chamber as 9S just continues to break down mentally while A2 becomes the voice of reason in the game. I remember the robots at the factory going berserk and trying to become as gods by committing suicide and murder. I remember leaving Pascal to kill himself because I didn't want to give him the easy out. I just remembered that the reason that happened was because the children that Pascal was looking over had just all killed themselves out of the fear that Pascal had instilled in them. I guess that's a wager that Pascal lost. I remember seeing the ruins of Facade in the desert. I remember Emil having cultivated a garden of Lunar Tears where Kaine's grandma had lived. I remember Devola and Popola being scorned for the actions of the Devola and Popola models in Nier. I remember 9S screwing on 2B's arm after his had been cut off. I remember the sequence where you're switching between controlling 9S and A2 as you fight these twin bosses while riding an elevator before the two of them face off in a cool one-on-one duel and determine which ending you get. And then I remember that you have to battle the Square Enix corporate hierarchy and use other people's saves to get to the last ending. I wasn't as fond of the way that Automata handled giving up your save and memories for someone else. I just prefer the quiet, personal choice you have to make in Nier to the more communal choice you make in Automata.
---
Spoilers over now.

	I remember lots of individual moments from Nier: Automata, and most of them are backloaded toward the end. Not that the first part of the game is bad, mind, it's excellent. It's just that the cool moments in Route C completely eclipse anything that happens in Routes A or B.


...

And man, speaking of the nothing I've become after playing this game, let's get on to

4) Pokémon Edge Rising
"Schir, are you telling me that you think that some dumb Pokémon romhack is better than Nier Automata?" I hear you asking, with some venom in your voice. To answer your question, I mean, look at this:
[cut to the 'you can kill any trainer you beat in battle' line followed by the nightcore remix of bring me to life]
[cut to the 'martha!' scene]
[cut to floatskull battle]
looK AT THIS
[cut to "Kill him harder?"]
[cut to 'you have killed 20 people']
[cut to 'with how much exposition you've been reading, you can understand why they did this']
LOOK AT THIS!
[cut to how cool mako is]
[cut to mako's red torterra]
[cut to 'bro do you want some ice cream?']
LOOK AT IT
[cut to Yahn Deer's notes]
[cut to "I sense a hidden power within you, brother"]
[cut to simple and clean]
IT'S THE BEST.

	Sometimes I'm playing a game to explore some deep themes about the nature of reality or to get immersed in a fascinating and intricately-woven world. And sometimes, I want to play games that just nail the aesthetic of an edgy teen with a wink and a nod. The edgy teen aesthetic is half taking things to a place that's dark and fucked up and half being a sarcastic, meta git about it. The things that aren't taken with sarcastic quips are the people that approach life the same way. It's a sort of identifying solidarity that the edgy teen shares with other edgy teens.
	But I think that this game is best understood as a period piece. It's a parody of the Pokemon romhacks that take themselves way too seriously, as well as an accurate depiction of the sort of mood and themes that a certain sort of teenager in the late 2000s and early 2010s would've found captivating. That the work is depicted in the form of a Pokémon romhack is a necessary part of the sort of mood that the work aims to capture. Teenagers would choose this medium because Pokemon romhacking tools were readily available, and a fairly easy way to create a game while avoiding the stigma of using RPG Maker, as well as because a fondness for Pokemon was carried over from childhood and internet culture had only barely begun to take its first tentative steps beyond the copyright theft of Newgrounds. I think I need to stop listening to this game's OST now. It's putting me in a really pretentious place.

The game's really good.




3) Super Cloudbuilt

I'm in the middle of writing an analysis and critique of Super Cloudbuilt right now, so pardon me if I end up repeating things I say here in that video.

Super Cloudbuilt's a third-person 3D parkour platformer whose gimmick is that its main character has a jetpack. The jetpack factors into the platforming to add a ton of layers of nuance to the platforming. The game's story is kind of mediocre -- main character's in a coma, and the levels are the dreams she's having while asleep. Or maybe they're an army training simulator to prepare her to go back to combat. It all depends on which set of levels you're going through, really. But that's all just window dressing on what really matters, which is the platforming. The platforming here is fast, technicall, and set in some of the most technical, interesting, and layered levels I've seen in a platformer. Most levels have three or four paths running through every part of the stage, and which one you take is generally dependent on how well you can notice and execute on it. The layout of levels is much more fluid and apparent than 2014's original Cloudbuilt, which is due largely in part to a softer lighting engine and better path signaling.
The controls have been fine-tuned to give the player more control over the jetpack. For me, this changes the experience from 'wildly boosting around with a rocket strapped to my back' to something that's fast, but over which I control. Come to think of it, the acceleration here feels a bit more like a car than a rocket. Maybe that's because I'm playing this one on PS4 and a trigger's more precise than a binary switch. I'll have to do more research on this. Regardless, I appreciate the parkour here a lot more now that I can precisely control my speed.

The reason I'm putting this game at number 3 is because this is the game I've gone back to the most this year without being encouraged to do so by predatory gambling practices. The platforming's good to a point where getting better at it makes me want to play more of the game and improve even more. I mean, when you get past the game's initial difficulty wall, you're left with a ton of really cool levels that feel better to run through as you get more familiar with them. And if you really want to get better, then you might start looking up some of the combo tutorials on Youtube because those exist and they open up new depths to what's already the best-feeling platforming of the decade. I'm genuinely looking forward to Coilworks' next release because what's here is just fantastic.




2) Golf Story
	I don't like sports games, and I don't like sports. That's what I would've said of sports and the video games emulating them before playing Golf Story. Since playing Golf Story, however, I've given a couple of other sports games a try and actually started following some sports news, as well as started to understand what's fun about watching sports. To me, at least. I'm still probably not going to go over to some uncle's house to watch the game, because it seems like the sports-enjoyers in my family are way more loud, social and rowdy in their enjoyment of things than I am. I like the interesting physics puzzles of golf, and I've found that I enjoy the more statistical end of sports. I'm probably not going to watch any games anytime soon, but I'm less dismissive of them as I was. I mean, what I've now found to be fun about watching sports is watching a highly-skilled group of players try to outplay another group of highly-skilled players in the game at the highest level of competition.
	Anyway, I've come to these realizations because Golf Story strips away all of the impenetrable malarkey around sports to tell a cartoonish, goofy story about golf. Your character played golf as a kid, was pretty good at it, gave it up for 20 years, then abandoned everything in his life to play golf again. He works his way through the ranks with nothing but the golf clubs on his back to become a true golf success story. The game doesn't take itself too seriously, but has a really charming writing style that works to its credit.

-------------

Now, before I get to number one, let's do thing that these top whatever lists do and go over some that aren't on the main list, be they good or bad. Let's call this the "games you might be wondering about that aren't on this list" section.


Doki Doki Literature Club:
	I haven't gotten around to this one yet. I've heard pretty good things about it, but I kind of doubt that it'd be good in a way that would really change any of the games on the list prior to maybe number 15.
Heat Signature:
	This game is why number 15 on the list is intentionally left blank. I liked Gunpoint and expect to like this one but haven't had the time to try it yet. I expect that this game or maybe Doki Doki Literature Club will be excellent, so I'm leaving that spot open as an intentional "I haven't gotten to every game that might be really good" sort of mea culpa.
	(note: I have since gotten to heat signature. it's pretty good)
Yakuza Zero and Yakuza Kiwami:
	These games are actually pretty good and worth checking out. They're sitting at like number 19 on the extended version of this list, but I'd like to finish this video sometime this decade.
Dream Daddy:
	Also genuinely excellent. It's sitting at like number 33 on the extended version of the list and is worth checking out. I just haven't played enough of it to have anything to really say about it.
Snake Pass:
	Really cool, liked it a lot, sitting at number 23.
Absolver:
	Interesting, not totally my thing but still pretty good. Sitting at number 24.
.hack//G.U. Last Recode:
	Haven't played enough of it, but it seems like a blast if you can stomach the repetition of it all. It's a bunch of dumb, cool anime bullshit. It's sitting at number 21 on the extended version of the list.
Divinity Original Sin 2:
	What I played of it seemed pretty cool, and a substantial improvement on the first game, but it didn't really leave a strong impression on me. This opinion may very well change when I play more than two hours of it.
Cuphead:
	I'm not especially drawn in by the 1930s cartoon aesthetic, I don't like how the game plays, and the bosses feel unending. It's just not my thing. Sorry.
Breath of the Wild:
	I've been burnt out on Zelda and this one isn't doing anything to alleviate that. Sorry.
Destiny 2:
	I don't like MMOs, I'm not fond of shooters, and I've never been all that interested in Bungie's stuff. Sorry.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds:
	See above, replace Bungie with DayZ. Also I'm not that interested in Battle Royale.
Horizon Zero Dawn:
	I really just don't like open-world games and had no interest in this one. Sorry.
Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces:
	[2017-11-24 sonic mania and sonic forces opinion.wav]
	(just an audio file of me going eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhh)
Kamiko:
	It's okay.
Frog Fractions 2:
	Came out in December 2016. Pretty good though.
Night in the Woods:
	Haven't played it.
Pyre:
	Wasn't too thrilled with Supergiant's previous offerings and I have no reason to assume this'll be much different.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole:
	Haven't gotten around to it, don't want to give Ubisoft money. Speaking of,
Whatever this year's Assassin's Creed is:
	Never been too interested in Assassin's Creed.
Cosmic Star Heroine:
	The opening was groan-inducing and made me stop. Maybe it gets better later.
RiME:
	Didn't play it.
Ruiner:
	Didn't play it, have no plans to play it.
Cyberdimension Neptunia:
	It's a Neptunia game. Decently charming, sitting at number 20 on the extended list.
Danganronpa V3:
	I burned out on Danganronpa while the translation LP of it was going on a few years back.
Flywrench:
	Forgot that came out on PS4 this year. Pretty solid, worth a shot.
Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon:
	I didn't really like the direction that Sun and Moon went in.
SteamWorld Dig 2:
	It's alright.

A Hat in Time:
	This game belongs in the top 10, but I can't find the words to justify it being there beyond "It's really cute, charming, and fun to play. It doesn't overstay its welcome and is consistently good throughout its 15 hour runtime."
For all the rest of the games in the top 10, I've had some sort of deeper emotional or personal experience with it, but I didn't get that with A Hat in Time. It's excellent and undoubtedly one of the best platformers I've played all year, but the experience is, and I mean this in the nicest way, white bread. It's light, it's fluffy, it's good, but doesn't really leave a lasting impact.

----------------

Anyway, with those out of the way, let's get to number 1:

1) West of Loathing.
	Alright, the number two game on this list literally changed my perception of an entire genre of games. What could the number one game do to top that? Well, first, West of Loathing is an excellent game in its own right. It's a comedy game with some of the most solid joke writing I've seen in years, and one of the most distinctive visual aesthetics in video games. The music's solid and the puzzles are really nicely varied. West of Loathing feels like a game out of time. It feels like a game made by people who play video games making the sort of game they'd want to play. They play around with limited mechanics and constantly try new things within that context, but understand that most people are just there to have a good fun time. I could go on about how they've written different dialogue for every pardner on every screen or I could talk about how Ghostwood's genuinely one of the funniest sequences I've seen in years that had me howling with laughter or how the end credits are just a movie in the last town or how the secret in the tutorial that requires a ton of preparation and planning is a comical anticlimax or how there's good jokes just about everywhere and so on. But beyond that, West of Loathing got me looking into Kingdom of Loathing again. KoL's a fun trip down memory lane, but most importantly it led me to the Kingdom of Loathing Podcast. If you haven't listened to the Kingdom of Loathing podcast before, I'd say that it's among the most direct and frank views of game design out there. The developers talk about forgetting how they implemented certain mechanics ages ago, add things to their to-do list on-air, and just -- it's really refreshing. I mean, everything I see about game development in public is showing off things that work perfectly. Seeing some people who are clearly competent, but just say "I don't remember how we implemented that" is really humanizing. It comes across with a sense of figuring things out as you need to figure them out. Better, that frank attitude makes game development seem like something doable by humans. Honestly, it makes me want to give game development another shot, because that sort of attitude makes the stakes not feel as high as it seems from the outside.
	And then the Kingdom of Loathing Podcast re-introduced me to Video Games Hot Dog. I didn't like Video Games Hot Dog in the past, though I think that's because I lacked a bit of context on who the hosts were. The hosts, incidentally, are Zack Johnson, Riff Conner, Kevin Simmons, and Jim Stormdancer. Zack, Riff, and Kevin made both Kingdom of Loathing and West of Loathing, while Jim made Frog Fractions and Glittermitten Grove. It's a video game talk show, but the people involved have made some excellent games themselves. They play a game a week for an assignment, and play other games as well. What I find really refreshing about Video Games Hot Dog is the way that the hosts clearly listen to other podcasts and play some weird games. Even more refreshing for me is that I tend to genuinely agree with at least one of their perspectives on a game being discussed. I don't usually get that feeling when I listen to other podcasts, so that's really nice.
	So then, the reason I'm giving West of Loathing the spot as my game of the year for 2017 over games like Nier Automata, Persona 5, Golf Story, Mario Odyssey, Torment: Tides of Numenera, a Hat in Time, and all the other excellent games that came out this year is because it's an excellent game that introduced me to two excellent podcasts which fundamentally altered my view of game development for the better. None of the other games I mentioned did that for me. If I ever release a game, it will be, at least in part, because West of Loathing and the people who made it more or less directly influenced me into taking the plunge and giving it a shot. This game has literally inspired me to open up GameMaker and start trying to make games. And I think that if we're talking about the best game of the year, a game that changes a person's opinion on game development to a point that it actually convinces them out there to go and start trying to make games for themselves while also being an excellent game in its own right is a hell of an impressive achievement.