Yakuza: Like a Dragon is 1b to Hades' 1a for me. Glad Brad is getting into it, a real joy all the way through, despite a couple grind walls in the mid-to-late game.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is the game we all deserve after the year that has been 2020. A true joy almost every moment I've played it thus far. Ichiban is already a classic character in the making.
Could not get into Sekiro. Played past several major boss encounters and the combat just felt like I was playing a version of quick-time events. It's an amazing game to watch and marvel at the action that is happening in front of you, but I felt less creative and "in control" of the encounters as Bloodborne, which is still the best version of this genre.
Coming from someone who isn't really even into the bug aesthetic much, Hollow Knight is the best Metroidvania ever created. The best boss fights and level design with just enough customization and ability options to make things interesting without overcomplicating things either. It's a complete masterpiece.
I’m a huge fan of the series but I found Hitman 2016 far too overwhelming. However, I’m really excited to give it a proper go with this new one because it looks so good.
I don’t like the idea of tracking all of the opportunities to the point where there’s just a marker on the screen but I don’t necessarily want to walk around aimlessly. What do people recommend? Should I track them at first when I go into a map and gradually turn that stuff off or should I just jump in at the deep end?
Everyone kind of has to find how they like to enjoy the game. Me personally, I like to go in completely blind with all the aids turned off and really immerse myself in the first run of a level. Often it'll take me hours. Subsequent plays of the level, I'll start turning on the opportunities and such to see the things I didn't find and play with the clockwork machinations.
I know people who do the complete opposite of that though.
@aben: The bugs can't always be countered because you can really get screwed if you position poorly for the following turn. In other words, I don't think the A.I. purposefully sets up puzzles each turn that can be solved every time. You have to make hard decisions sometimes.
On that note, getting movement upgrades is pretty much the best thing you can do in the early game.
@paulunga: The game kind of lets you have your cake and eat it too in that regard. What Alex was playing on Easy really doesn't require a ton of effort as you can mostly just make the obvious move and progress just fine. Normal and up can require some real lateral thinking though, often requiring setting up very precise combos of attacks, setting up for the next turn, and then just knowing how to mitigate your losses when some damage is unavoidable. It's pretty satisfying though when you stare at the board for 10 minutes thinking the situation is impossible and then stumble into the right set of moves that allows you to come out unscathed, but if that's not your bag, then Easy is definitely the way to go.
You can even "beat" the game after only finishing two of the four islands if you want (though there's achievements for going for 3 or 4). It's basically like giving you the ability to do Easy, Normal, or Hard difficulty with Short, Medium, and Long campaigns.
"It's their list," as usual, but I'm a little disappointed a site that often was one of the few that held games' feet to the fire for being plagued by bugs, performance issues, and some of the most prevalent cheating in an online game in recent memory would give PUBG its overall award. I understand having fun with a game, but at the end of the day it feels like the same people who have knocked so many games over the years like Fallout 4, Mortal Kombat 9, Far Cry 3 lost a little something in my eyes in excusing all the issues that game has.
Man, folks sure are salty about PUBG. I suppose if fit, finish and polish is super important to you, I can understand it. But I had a hell of a lot of fun with that game this year, jank and all. Also, cool to see Dream Daddy on the list. Not really my thing but it seems like a cool thing that deserved the recognition. One of the creators did an interview on Tone Control and she seemed like a great person.
It's not salt tbh. It's the fact that the game rushing to 1.0 status just so it could claim some awards when it's been plagued by so many issues was a dirty and transparent move, and if Bluehole was EA, I expect a lot more people would be up in arms about it.
It is salt though. Everyone who wants to ding PUBG for its issues as an argument for why it can't be GOTY, how about this.. Why don't we just go back to scoring games based on Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, Value, Tilt, then? If you scored PUBG like that, it probably deserves a 7 at best. You're making very "game reviews need to be objective" types of arguments when the fact is they simply had more fun playing PUBG than any other game this year and that's all that matters.
People want to punish PUBG for its technical issues and not give it enough credit for reinvigorating a genre (online shooter) that has quite frankly been stale since Modern Warfare.
This is a WIP draft of Brad's 2017 GOTY podcast filibuster.
2017 GOTY podcasts will be hours upon hours of headbutting filibusters between PUBG and Destiny 2, with Death of the Outsider, Prey, Divinity: Original Sin II, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Cuphead falling by the wayside.
And I can't wait to skip this years Hottest Mess, if it's anything like 2016.
Agree with you on this, and it's going to be heartbreaking to listen to the 2017 GOTY podcasts knowing that nobody on the staff will have even played Divinity: Original Sin II because from what I've played so far (end of Act 1), there exists no CRPG that is it's equal since the heyday of BioWare/Black Isle.
That alone should mean it has a top 5 spot locked up, even in a year as strong as 2017 is. It'll be lucky to be even mentioned.
I disagree with this completely, mostly because I've known SO many people who have had close people in their lives die prior to meeting them and it often took me YEARS to find out. It was 8 years into my marriage with my wife before I found out my father-in-law had a sister that died when he was young. He simply doesn't ever want to talk about it.
Like or dislike UC4's story all you want, but that isn't a disqualifier alone.
The whole premise of a lost brother not mentioned in any of the other Uncharted games means that Uncharted 4 cannot POSSIBLY be the best story. While I enjoyed the game well enough, in terms of story, it's no Last of Us.
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