It’s a game that helped define my year, but it’s true that it wasn’t released this year. I’ll remove it.
Not to be argumentative, but have we ever laid out exactly what constitutes a release? With so many new ports of old games and expansions/DLC, it kind of blurs the lines. Like, Street Fighter 2, Final Fantasy 6, Mario Kart 8, Pathfinder Adventures, and Hearthstone are all technically eligible for 2017, but Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, and Pokemon Go are not, even though those probably got the majority of their playtime in 2017.
NieR: Automata is a big departure for me, as I’m normally all about crunchy mechanics and systems. Here that stuff (combat, exploration, and RPG mechanics) is solid and enjoyable, but it’s the aesthetics (story, writing, and music) that elevate it into the stratosphere. Packed with unforgettable moments, both in the main story and the poignant little vignettes encountered around the world.
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a late addition thanks to arriving for Christmas, but it’s made a HELL of an impression in that week, keeping me up playing until quarter to three on a couple of occasions.
And for the record, I default to lukewarm on both 3D Zelda games and on modern open-world design.
Cryptark offers a great mix of planning, executing, and improvising after the plan goes wrong – a thinkier take on Galak-Z, which I also loved.
Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment is an immaculately designed classic platformer that remixes the original game into something even better with a very fun and inventive moveset for the titular main character.
Romancing SaGa 2 is another late pickup that I haven’t finished yet, but it’s utterly charming so far. A 25-year-old JRPG about an epic struggle between seven legendary heroes and an expansionist empire. Oh, and you’re the empire. It’s got a hint of roguelike sensibilities, both in the way that you adapt your tactics to the specific skills your characters randomly learn through combat, and in the way you’re encouraged to live with consequences and setbacks – a total party wipe is a chance to appoint a new emperor to carry on the quest.
Horizon Zero Dawn - I really loved the world building in this one. They took a ridiculous concept, robot dinosaur apocalypse, and made me believe it. I had a large list of reasons why it was stupid and the game shot most of them down with reasonable conjectures and sometimes persuasive arguments. You have to dig for these, they are buried around the world in notes & audio logs but the details showed some nerd spent some serious time making it as realistic as possible. I normally hate this junk, but it was so satisfying to find good answers for my questions. I can’t think of another game that did this half as well. My interest in AI, consciousness, and nanotech probably play an overly large role here.
Prey - System Shock 3, done right.
Divinity Original Sin 2 - Didn’t finish it but it got me addicted hard right up to the end.
Minecraft Modern Skyblock 2 - A minecraft modpack, this one is pretty rough and certainly not to be recommended until you play many others first, but it concentrates on forcing automation in weird and unusual ways. Hope you like wiki’s and undocumented features and bugs because it has them all in spades. None of that mattered in that I always had 10 million things I wanted to do and another 10 million ways to do it.
Fallout 4 Horizon Mod - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/17374/? I got bored of the original F4 pretty quickly due to the terrible gameplay and balancing but this one made it harder in a lot of fun ways. Pretty hardcore in that it changed up the scarcity so that you always felt like you were just barely surviving. Apparently I find that really fun. I love exploring and finding things, but it was just never relevant in the original game for very long. This pushes that curve way, way out.
Honorable mentions -
Monster Slayers
Opus Magnum
Note - I know minecraft and fallout 4 will probably break the script but I am A OK with that. I would hate to give a vote to the base Fallout 4 & Minecraft.
I love the idea of a “best game I played in 2017” contest, but the Quarterlies have always been about what was released in that particular year - I saw that in previous years there was even a link to a “comprehensive list” of games released in that calendar year. So while I sympathize with the desire to include games from earlier years that one discovered in 2017, I can’t count votes for them.
Slime Rancher - It’s a nice exploration game, and I still like to hop in now and then to fiddle around.
What Remains of Edith Finch - Well presented, just a good mix of serious and goofy.
Four Last Things - Lots of click-click adventure game laughs.
The Keep - A smoothly done dungeon crawl experience.
Scanner Sombre - Props for offering up something unique.
Like every year, I’ll probably play more games from 2017 during the course of 2018. I’m seeing a number of my holiday purchases showing up here, so I should have some good gaming ahead of me in the new year. I did play a handful of other 2017 releases, but nothing I think I would care to up-vote much. The latest Telltale Minecraft season was mostly good, and their Guardians of the Galaxy mostly not good. I played a bunch of Neir: Automata… but it’s like Undertale - it has its very vocal supporters, but I’m nevertheless lukewarm about the whole thing. I’ll never finish it. Still popping into Agents of Mayhem now and then, and we’ll see if it gets its hooks back into me again. And then there was Mass Effect Andromeda, which really rubbed me the wrong way - probably the only thing I played this year that I actually hated.
It was a good year for just playing games in general, though! Finished Dragon Age: Inquisition, Just Cause 3, Alien Isolation, and Pillars of Eternity. Played through a bunch of random indie games: Magic Circle, Tetrobot, Space Pilgrim, Turing Test, Valley, Near Death… and some more higher profile games like Abzu, Oxenfree, and OneShot. Just lots of good stuff out there these days, more than I can possible hope to play.
Of the 2017 releases I haven’t played or purchased: Divinity: Original Sin II, Prey, and Heat Signature are high up on the wishlist, but I’m interested to see what tops the charts here.
Mass Effect: Andromeda
I hated the combat changes and it had a ton of dull side-missions, but I still found over 100 hours of enjoyable gameplay and story in it. Ihope the series continues somehow.
Prepar3D v4
The venerable (ancient) Microsoft Flight Simulator engine updated to 64-bit architecture and with good VR support. It really should be considered a new release, as it breaks compatibility with a large perecentage of existing content. And yes, I realize I will be the only person to nominate this.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew
If I invent time travel, I’m going to go back and kill Hitler, and then I’m traveling back in time to let my 8-year-old self play this.
AeroFly FS2
Early access in 2016, but released in 2017. Amazing VR flight sim experience, even if there’s still more to add.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Possibly one of the worst title choices for a game ever, even in a year where one platform has both a Nioh and a Nier, but the design is just ridiculously engaging. And nice to play on my Xbox One X where there’s not the level of cheating I saw on the PC version.
I’d probably have nominated Lone Echo, but I just got it and haven’t played far into it yet. I might have nominated Cuphead if I was better at action games. I bought Prey, haven’t gotten around to playing it, but this topic shows me I should. And apparently I need to check out Bomber Crew and Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Star Fleet Armada Rogue Adventures, so as with every year this topic delivers.
And yeah, I bought a Switch just for Zelda. I don’t dislike it like Rod does, but it hasn’t grabbed me in the early game so far.
I’m sure that any game that got a re-release as some kind of HD update or something like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe which was put on a new system with included DLC and a whole new game mode should be considered. Okami HD or Yakuza Kiwami for other examples too. Where I think you draw the line is with GotY or Gold editions and the like where it’s not a new release but just a new box holding all the exact same stuff.
For the most part, those games aren’t going to register too much anyway. They’re usually not different enough to snag new people that didn’t already know about it and play it in the previous year. MK8D is a good example of that because while it’s an awesome game and reaching a lot of new players on Switch, it’s a known quantity that can’t supplant the likes of a Zelda, Horizon, Nier, Yakuza 0, etc.
Mass Effect Andromeda is a badly made game full of interesting content.
The premise of the game is perfect for me, but it is so bogged down with so much extraneous crap. There are like 15 different systems to manage!
And I think even worse than the clunky animation or the bad and repetitive VO is the UI. 20 hours in and I still don’t know how everything works. The weapons attachment system is asinine and unnecessary.
It is like someone saw how clean and simple the UI was in ME2 and said “I want the opposite of that”
And I still play it because it is Mass Effect, and I love space opera, but I just can’t get over how unfinished the game feels. Patches and all, I still had no ground textures for the majority of the first mission.
EA royally fucked their fans with this one, and all to make Anthem : This is not Destiny.
I have no issues with total remakes, like Romancinf Saga 2, but stuff rereleased likeBayonetta or Okami HD feels like gaming the system a bit to me. Good luck setting up a limit which such subjective feelings!
Thinking about it, though, those rereleases are ways for the game to reach people who had no mean to play them before (just like me), so… I don’t know.
That was an interesting post: I’ll go grab a coffee before my next one.
I don’t entirely agree, but I won’t belabor the point. @Brooski spoke, and I defer to that – the Quarterlies are a “What did you like that came out this year” award, not a “what did you like this year, regardless of release date” award.
I can save my crusading for when we debate changing that. :)
I prefer it the way it’s done because it’s a non-arbitrary timeframe. Calendar year is just the best way to do this kind of thing IMO. It’s our own fault if we don’t play stuff til the next year. :)
There’s lots I haen’t played that might have a chance on this list, notably XCOM2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Pyre, Star Trek Bridge Crew, What Remains of Edith Finch, Dominions 5(!), and Nier Automata.
Divinity Original Sin 2 - Larian’s masterpiece. This is by far my favorite game of the year.
The Elder Scrolls Skyrim: VR. or just Skyrim VR . I may be the only person who picks this, and it has lots of issues - I still need to get a control scheme and headset setup that I’m comfortable with, and I can only play it in small doses - but it’s a dream come true. I always imagined traveling to a world like this and just living in it.
Horizon Zero Dawn . Gorgeous game with good combat and far better world building than I initially thought. Great use of collectibles (and not overwhelming with them - just the right number to make them special and contribute to lore meaningfully).
Prey. I love Arkane. Even when they score a double instead of a home run (and I haven’t yet concluded which this is), I enjoy their creativity and story-telling. It also made me wish for more space/sci-fi setting RPGs (or other genres that feature narratives), ideally with less horror/shooting and more exploration/interactivity and wonder.
Uncharted Lost Legacy Naughty Dog is really unchallenged when it comes to shooter/adventure/story-telling. I mainly have such tremendous respect for the story-telling, even though the technical expertise is also incredibly impressive, in all of Naughty Dog’s games, especially since Last of Us. Games by this developer always feel like major Hollywood blockbusters, only the stories make sense and everyone can act.
