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BusinessisBlooming

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Another Top 10 Games of 2017 List

I made a list of 10 games that I think are real cool. They may not have all come out in 2017, but I simply haven’t had the chance to play a lot of the new games that came out this year. I like to go through my backlog and clear something every now and then, so this list is half new-game, half old-game-I’d-like-to-recognize. That said, there’s a bunch of games that came out this year that I’ll have to save for another time. That list of shame includes: Assassin’s Creed Origins, Yakuza 0, Persona 5, A Night in the Woods, Pyre, Hollow Knight, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, SteamWorld Dig 2 and Tekken 7.

A quick shoutout to Fire Emblem Heroes, which I have been playing a lot of this year. I’m a huge FE fan, and this is a good fanservice game that has let me build mixed teams of my favorite and not so favorite characters across the franchise. As much as I love this game, I don’t know how to quantify it against the other games on this list, which don’t allow me to spend large sums of money to maybe get the character I want to summon, and lock some of the more interesting new skills behind that same paywall. I think that there are aspects of that system that they try to fix with things like the Sacred Seal system and the Weapon Refinery. They’ve also added a LOT more content since launch and have made feathers more attainable to upgrade your weaker heroes. The developers have shown that they care about this game and want to maintain good will with the community, and I will still continue to play that game for a while I think, but I have some inherent problems with the business model that I don’t think I can shake.

Lastly, I recommend reading the list from 10 to 1, as that’s the way I wrote it.

List items

  • NieR makes me feel the way towards Yoko Taro that I imagine hardcore Metal Gear fans feel about Hideo Kojima. It has ideas. Ideas wrapped around an anime-as-hell story and insane characters. But neat ideas. Yoko Taro probably isn’t the genius who came up with these ideas in the first place, and he does have an entire team behind him, but he has committed these ideas to a coherent narrative and imbued every character arc, side quest, piece of the soundtrack, etc. to that narrative.

    NieR had similar levels of sad thoughts attached to it like The Last of Us, but unlike The Last of Us, NieR is its own cure. NieR made me think about the pointlessness in the things we take seriously in life while also mocking itself in its same breath. The Last of Us plays itself fairly straight-faced, while NieR also has happy clown parades and the “This cannot continue” scene. NieR has a lot of thought provoking content, but also a lot of charm and quirkiness.

    NieR: Automata is also a Platinum game, meaning it’s a stylish character action game. This time, they mixed in some bullet-hell mechanics to vary up the character action. The Platinum name / that demo they launched in December 2016 are what got me interested in this game before it took off in popularity. It may not be Platinum’s finest character action system they have ever created, but it is completely serviceable. The combinations 2B could make between long, short, fist weapons and then some were cool if you bothered to search. My personal favorite was a pair of fists and buster sword because at the end of the combo, the character would throw a fist in the air, and then use the sword as a baseball bat to knock the fist at a group of enemies. This was timing-based, so you could miss it, but it was fun as hell even if it wasn’t the most effective way to do damage.

    Like Mario, my favorite parts of NieR are things I don’t want to spoil for everyone, but trust me when I say that NieR is worth playing through to the end. There are parts midway through the story where I question why the decision was to do this, or to do that. By the end, I the game fully justifies itself and I don’t know how I would make those sections better. It also gave me some level of admiration that the designers would be so bold as to make those sections go the way they do.

    I could gush about this game all day. The soundtrack is real good. The side-quests are meaningful, and this is coming from someone who believes The Witcher 3 side-quests are the new standard. Again, this game single handedly made me a Yoko Taro fan.

    Also, NieR doesn’t have motion controls in it, so it’s better than Mario ( \s, but not \s).

  • Mario Odyssey is a joy, start to finish. I don’t need to say any more than that, but I will anyway.

    I’ve wanted a follow-up to Super Mario 64/Sunshine for a long time now. 64 is a phenomenal game and Sunshine, for all its faults, is no slouch either when it comes to moving Mario. Controlling Mario is great in Odyssey. He’s got a lot of new tricks, and the hat brings a lot more to the table than you’d originally think. The captures are mostly neat. Some control better than others, but everything looks hilarious with the moustache and hat on it, and that’s the important part.

    They make it really satisfying to find the moons in Odyssey. It’s not like 64 where you load into a world to do a specific star. In Odyssey, they jam-pack like 30-80 moons in an average sized kingdom. While there are some moons that you practically trip over, and they do repeat the way you acquire some moons from kingdom to kingdom, moons are also well hidden, and reward exploration. While not every moon is going to be obvious to everyone, there are a lot of moons, (880 to be exact (Some Odyssey scholars believe there are 999 moons, and they might be right, but that’s not the fun part)), so odds are that you’ll feel clever for some of them. Like, I may not have thought to sit next to that guy at the bench, but I’m sure someone else did, and was rewarded for it. There’s also some real goofy ones that I don’t want to spoil, but I feel like I don’t need to make the point that a Mario game isn’t afraid to get wacky.

    Mario Odyssey was also just there for me. I was feeling kinda down around that time of the year. I was having some bad house stuff. Also, I was coming off of The Last of Us, and as much as I like that game, it left me thinking a lot, and it made me sad. Odyssey was a good pick me up. Complete a world and I forgot what I was even doing or thinking about before I started playing. It didn’t matter. I was in Mario-land, talking to skull people.

    There’s just so much to love. There’s a great moment at the end of one of the middle kingdoms that I think is one of the best moments in video games. Some of those cutscenes made me actually laugh. There was a post-game area that made me go “ohhh shit” out loud (in a good way). I have over 730 moons as of the time of me writing this, and I plan on going for the full 880. I try not to get hyped for games anymore, but I let myself be excited for Odyssey, and boy. Boy, am I glad this worked out better than expected.

  • I mentioned that Breath of the Wild was not the twist on the Zelda formula I was looking for. A Link Between Worlds is. The weird bunny man and his dumb bird come to your house and lend/sell you the dungeon items instead of getting them in the dungeon. Then, what you have in your inventory dictates what dungeons you can do and what puzzles in the world you can solve. This lets you tackle the dungeons in any order without explicitly stating that you should go one way or the other first.

    The ‘turn into a painting’ gimmick is great and really expands this 2D world into something greater. This is also one of the few 3DS games where the 3D is really cool in, and I would actually switch over to it every now and then. Then, it’s just a really good Zelda game with some great moments. The thief dungeon is really clever, and has one of the more interesting boss fights that I can think of in the franchise. The ending boss fight was a good way to cap out the game (I won with a quarter of a heart) and the final story bits caught me by surprise.

    This game is pretty high up my list. In fact, it’s the highest game on the list that did not release in 2017. I just don’t have any complaints about A Link Between Worlds. It’s just a tight Zelda game that does exactly what it wants to do. It might be my favorite 3DS game after Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is a tough nut to crack for me. A Link Between Worlds is a real good game. I feel confident saying that.

  • I think Uncharted games control weird. I’m overly cautious in stealth games to the point where I find it stressful in a not-always-fun way. And I think zombies are lame. It is amazing that I like this game as much as I do. I still don’t really like ‘playing’ The Last of Us for the same reason I don’t like playing a lot of stealth games. There’s a few nitpicky things, game play or story wise that may or may not matter as well. Like, how did Ellie get Joel back on the horse? Also, you’re really starved for resources in this game, but the game seems to think that an armed guard who I stealth killed wouldn’t drop more than a few pistol bullets, or that Joel wouldn’t bother to pick them up. It’s a problem a lot of games have, but there’s something about The Last of Us that makes you want to hold it to a higher standard, because it’s just so coherent. The narrative is just so compelling that I can forgive some minor contrivances and plot-holes.

    The not-zombie zombies aren’t there just for the sake of it. They are the means by which the world ended, and the game zeroes in on how people react in the face of a world that doesn’t want them in it anymore. The protagonists meet a diverse cast of characters along the way that portrays how people cling to what they have left, and their coping mechanism for when those things are taken away.

    Joel and Ellie play off of each other really well too. I never felt like I liked one over the other. Sometimes, Joel could come off as a grumpy old man who was more harsh on Ellie than she deserved, and other times, I thought Ellie was kidding around too much and wasn’t taking the situation seriously. I was constantly flipping between who I sided with and that led to me developing a strong relationship with both characters. Winter is the best part of the game, (aside from the infected swarm you have to fight off (you know the one)) and I needed to know what happened next at every point. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the ending of The Last of Us and how those final two scenes change the relationship of the main characters. I get the feeling that they become a part of the desperate clingy world as opposed to our vehicle to see it all.

    Also, it’s worth noting that I played this game in a post-The-Last-of-Us-Part-II-announcement-world. This game totally could have survived as just a singular self-contained story about loss and acceptance. Some of the trailers and developer comments about the new game makes it appear that the following entry will be a world of hate. I don’t think that it’s incompatible with what The Last of Us is about, but it does change my opinion of the nature of that world a great deal. That said, I’m excited to find out where Naughty Dog takes this world.

  • When Pyre came out this year, I thought to myself, “man, I still haven’t played Transistor yet,” so I played this instead of Pyre. I played Bastion for the first time 2 years ago, and Supergiant Games makes a new game roughly every 3 years, so I figure by the time their fifth game comes out, I’ll actually play it at launch.

    Now, to describe Transistor. It’s a cyber future action game where the combat consists of switching between real time and a paused tactical menu where you can stop for a moment and chain abilities together to greatly increase the impact of said abilities. That all sounds like a description of Mass Effect 2 (my favorite game), so I’m all in on what Transistors got goin’ on.

    The combat is great, the visuals have style, and the soundtrack really drives home the aesthetic. The lore is tied into the abilities you acquire, so it encourages switching your moves up frequently in order to get the full backstories on the characters your abilities are tied to. I think that once you have all those backstories though, you can settle into a rhythm of using the same overpowered combo to get you through the entirety of New Game+, even with a large amount of limiters in place. For that reason, I felt like beating the game twice was not as rewarding as I was led to believe. The subtleties of the story were a bit beyond my grasp to make New Game+ worth it on that end either.

    It is the exploration of how vast the combat system is that really makes Transistor shine. The combat trials were very worth my time, as they both encouraged me to examine every ability and the multitude of ways they can be used. They also showed me ways to use abilities that I would not have thought of on my own, so that I could go back to the main game and look forward to stringing those abilities together. Lastly, the final boss fight (and the combat trials it spawned) really surprised me and brought the game and its robust systems full circle for me.

  • It took me a while to like Breath of the Wild. I think that the small amount of hearts he starts with and just how fragile Link is for a bit really discouraged me from truly exploring Hyrule, because I knew I’d get decked immediately. Plus, it rained while I was trying to link the blue flame to Purah’s house early on, and that soured me. So, I rushed the main story for a bit. I restored 2 Divine Beasts and had 7 or 8 hearts and a little more stamina. This is the point where I started to venture off the beaten path. I looked around for some Shrines and started to have a little more fun, but I wasn’t sold. Then, I climbed a far off tower and activated it. As I looked up, I saw a huge green dragon and that was the point where this big world with a lot to discover finally clicked.

    When I later found the green dragon in the south of the map, he flew much closer to where I could get to him. I was obsessed with making contact with what I thought would be my dragon friend. As it turns out, that dragon was not my friend. I got near him, and he shot a blast of electricity at me. When Link came to, (which took a while. Link likes to roll a lot when he gets knocked down.) I feverishly fired arrows at the dragon, as he had betrayed my trust. The dragon eventually soared back into the sky and vanished, but noticed something glimmering in the water nearby. Curious, I swam over to get the video game shiny thing and realized I’d shot down a scale from the guy. But what do I do with that?

    My point is, this is a wonderful game. I mean, Hyrule is filled with wonders, just waiting to be explored. This isn’t exactly the twist on the Zelda formula I was looking for. It’s the twist on open world games that I didn’t know I was looking for.

  • 3 or 4 years ago, I embarked on a journey to play all of the mainline Ace Attorney games. This year, I caught up when I finished Spirit of Justice, the sixth game. (Though, I still have to play Investigations 1 if you’re counting spin-offs.) And what a journey it’s been. If you care how I rank it among the rest so far, from best to worst, I go AA3 ≥ AA1 > AA5 > AA6 > AA4 >>> AA2, but I suppose that doesn’t matter in the context of a game of the year list where this is the only Ace Attorney game I played this year.

    It’s another great Ace Attorney story. I think the Divination Séance complicates the courtrooms more than necessary (as you now have to guess the right evidence piece at the right page in the testimony at the right page of the séance). But beyond that mechanic, the way that they split the story between Phoenix’s vacation in Khura’in and Apollo and Athena’s story back at the agency and have them tie into each other at different intervals is fascinating. The game really raises the stakes for every turnabout compared to most previous games due in large part to the bizarre legal state of Khura’in. Also, the characters you meet are pretty good, but that’s not news. All Ace Attorney games have dope characters.

    Apollo also really comes into his own as a character in this game, making me think that this is actually the end of a second trilogy because of how huge he has been since his debut in the fourth game. He steals the spotlight for me in a way that I didn’t expect going in, and because of the conclusion to this game, I am excited to see where they take Ace Attorney from here.

  • I am specifically referring to the Blood and Wine expansion

    Where Hearts of Stone attempts to deliver a well-crafted story, Blood and Wine brings an entire new area for Geralt to slay monsters in. It’s basically just more Witcher. And that’s a great thing in my book. It didn’t matter much to me that the XP you get from finishing side quests was underwhelming compared to main story quests in both Wild Hunt and Blood and Wine. I just wanted to see every single tale that that game could spin.

    I investigated a case where a man died via a cow falling from on high, in the middle of nowhere. I reenacted a play to draw out some vengeful wraiths that were unhappy with the previous actors rendition. I found a man who stole the god-blessed testicles of a public statue and it made him real good at getting laid. I then let him borrow those stones a little longer. And I liked hanging out with Regis in the main story, which also takes you through a variety of side stories on your way to saving Beauclair. Witcher 3 is a great game with great DLCs and I can’t wait to forget the entirety of it so that I can play it all again and have it be a fresh, if nostalgic, experience again.

  • This game has not gotten anywhere near the attention it deserves. This prequel to Shovel Knight (now subtitled ‘Shovel of Hope’), is every bit as charming and clever as the original, with more of a focus on narrative as you follow Specter Knight on his quest to form the Order of no Quarter (the bad guys from the original). There’s more going on with Specter Knight, and the payoff with him at the end is pretty good. The castle that acts as Specter’s home base is also filled with character, and the quirkiness that you get from the NPCs are just as good as that of Shovel Knight, like Specter’s bumbling guard in the Lich Yard or that skeleton lady who spends the game practicing her kiss of death technique. Unfortunately, there’s no disappointed frog man that you can tell dad jokes to in Specter of Torment.

    If you pressed me to pick a favorite between Shovel of Hope and Specter of Torment, I’d probably still say the original game is better. (And not just because of the absense of the frog man.) There is a beautiful simplicity to the original game that gelled really well with me. But, Specter of Torment gets points for the inventiveness of how Specter Knight moves, and how far they go with it. They didn’t just stop at his diagonal scythe dashes. He can skateboard on his scythe and do kickflips off it. With a particular Curio, He can ride his scythe through parts of the level and allow you to skip parts of it because he just phases right through it. You acquire a skill called ‘Cold Shoulder’ which makes Specter Knight cross his arms with his cape blowing in the wind. In other words, there’s a ‘be cool’ button.

    https://smashpad.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/review-2-1024x576.jpg

    Also, Hidden By Night is a great remix of the Shovel Knight version of the Lich Yard:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTtrxKMF3Yc

  • Shadows of Valentia gave me the best story in a Fire Emblem game since Radiant Dawn. That said, I think the game is kind of weak on the gameplay front. The game is a faithful remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden which came out in 1992, and I appreciate that the game is very faithful. That said, there is a lack of depth to the gameplay when compared to more modern Fire Emblems like Fates. There is a lack of character classes, ways to build characters, and ways to tackle maps. The game also relies on a new dungeon crawling mechanic that subtracts more than it adds, and the later the game gets, the more the game relies on the dungeon crawling.

    That said, the presentation in this game is top notch. The character art is the best in the series. The soundtrack is a great orchestration of the original games chiptune soundtrack, with some worthwhile additions. Thanks to the full voice acting, the characters really pop in this game in a way that they have not before, and future Fire Emblem installments would be remiss to not include a similar or greater scope of voice work. In a similar vein, the turnwheel (the ability to rewind in a tactics game) is an inclusion that should be in every Fire Emblem game. Even the old ones. I don’t know that I’ll ever replay this game the way I have Awakening, Fates, Shadow Dragon, Blazing Sword, Path of-you know what, any of them. But I am glad that I played this game.
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