I think Has-Been Heroes is this year’s most underrated game. At first I thought it would be The Long Journey Home, but that game has a metascore of 68, and Has-Been Heroes has a fabulous 63! ;) Nice to see it on a best-of-anything list, for a change.
is this the antihero you refer to? if so the song for the trailer is cool
Antihero hasn’t been officially released yet (later this month, I think), but don’t be surprised to see it on end-of-the-year lists.
1.Prey
Didn’t play anything else from this year.
Prey is fantastic though.
Started Horizon,we’ll see.Graphics is impressive.
If games from 2016, then Deus Ex MD and Uncharted 4 follow Prey.
For me, it has to be Nier: Manamana. No game ending has stuck with me that much since The Witcher 3. I was getting teary-eyed when listening to the choral version of the ending song for days afterwards.
I just don’t understand what’s to like about Pathfinder.
Definitely Nier: Automata for me. I haven’t played another one from this year that’s even close.
I’d have to say Monster Slayers, Age of Rivals, Rogue Wizards, and (this is embarrassing) a silly f2p vehicle battling game on iOS called Crash Arena Turbo Stars (or C.A.T.S.)
For me the best game of 2017 so far has been il2 sturmovik, battle of Moscow in VR. Still thrilling the fuck out of me every time I get to fire it up. By far the best VR experience in my steam library.
- Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Zelda: Breath of the Wild
It’s basically the only game I’ve played all year, but I’ve played it more than any other game in many years.
Horizon Zero Dawn literally because it’s the only 2017 game I’ve played. Also, I like it.
As best I can tell, the games I have played that were released this year were: Thimbleweed Park, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Voodoo Vince Remastered. So there you go, my top games of 2017.
I always loves Tom’s initial teaser shots for these best of articles.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the best game I’ve played in years, though Witcher 3 is a close second for very different reasons. The world just offers so much to discover (I find that I’m frequently surprised by new enemy behaviors, weather effects, weapon combinations) and the gameplay systems are rich enough to support outrageous forms of experimentation. The amount of love that went into small details, like how the soundtrack changes based on the time of day and your condition, feels unprecedented. What makes it my favorite game of the past decade, is that the whole world is supported by the most detailed physics system ever in an open-world title. It’s one of only a handful of games that really provide the player a true sense of adventure.
I’ll have to check out Pathfinder Adventures. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it, as I typically follow Obsidian stuff quite closely.
You know, I bounced off Pathfinder HARD on iOS. By which I mean, I played the intro, bought the 25 dollar iap with the whole Runelords unlock, then don’t think I ever played it again. That’s just…awful. I should probably try to get into it, but I don’t know…something about when they started going on about special dice and stuff just really turned me off.
I haven’t played many of the big releases for 2017, but here is the ranking for my 2017 releases I have played.
- Prey - I haven’t gotten far, but I like what I’ve seen so far. I’ve been taking my time reading everything and trying to explore my surroundings.
- DiRT 4 - Rally isn’t my favorite type of racing, but Dirt Rally and Dirt 4 have been fun bounding down their tight courses.
- Monster Slayers - I sunk a lot of hours into this before I had my fill, around 100. It was fun to see what each class had to offer. I’ve gotten into more simple games lately…
- Pathfinder Adventures: … which explains why I like Pathfinder Adventures. I’s basically a series of decisions to mitigate risk and decide when you want to use of some resources (cards) at your disposal. Sometimes it’s best to lose an encounter and keep that card for something for important.
- Race For the Galaxy: I’m not an expert at this game. My wife doesn’t like to play competitive games so it’s nice to have this on the computer. I’ve only played the tutorial and games against the AI. I won one on easy and 1 on normal. Lets see if I can do this consistently before maybe dipping my toes in with Qt3 humanoids.
- Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade / Endless Space 2 / Stars in Shadow: I can’t decide what is the best out of these. On the surface I should like ES2 the most. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense but I just find keeping track of which planets would benefit from which improvements a pain in the ass. I don’t like having to click on the systems to look at the planets. Maybe time would fix this issue. I’ve always enjoyed their faction design (except for the Cravers.)
GC3: Crusades exceeded my expectations a bit. I still don’t like the manual movement across hexes instead of the node based movement on ES2 / MOO etc. It didn’t bother me in GalCiv 1 and 2, but I guess my tastes have changed. I do find planetary development better in Gal Civ 3 than ES2, but it does lack that special something the ES 2 factions have.
Stars in Shadow is much simpler than the 2 and I haven’t played it since they reworked how the tech choices are presented. It seemed like a solid but not exactly revolutionary game. It did play out faster than the ES2 and GC3.
- Age of Rivals I haven’t played against people but it seemed to play like similar board / card games I like. I’ve only played a couple hours.
40% of Tom’s list is under 20 bucks.
Aaero - $10.04
Monster Slayers - $6.02
Has Been Heroes - $9.99
Pathfinders Adventures - $18.74
Don’t feel bad, I bounced off it as well. It seemed like the kind of thing I would love but in practice it just sort of fell flat for me.
My only real complaint with Pathfinder: Adventures is that you have to beat scenarios on Normal before you can play them on the higher difficulties. Once I figured out everything that was going on and started to make optimal decisions, Normal became… not super fun. The higher difficulties are still quite enjoyable, with the extra challenge to add that necessary possibility of losing. But the inability to go straight for one of them feels a bit like a gamer tax. Still love it, though.
Persona 5 is probably my GOTY, but I totally get not having the time to get into it. I started a New Game + recently and had forgotten how ludicrously long it takes before you’re really playing the game. It’s worth the payoff, but it’s still way too long.
Now I need to figure out whether having Has Been Heroes on the Switch (portable! in bed!) is worth paying twice as much as having it on Steam.
If you figure that out let me know I’m dealing with the same decision.