I usually do a top 5 DLC’s/expansions and a top 10 games of the year. This year, my gaming time was consumed by a few outstanding games and some amazing games from years prior, so I only landed on 5 games. I still have more to play and my list is open to be edited in the future once I’ve played them. For now, this is where I’m at:
Best Games
5. Mass Effect Andromeda
Disappointing games can still be incredibly fun to play, as Andromeda was for me. Most of its disappointment lies in its technical inadequacies and overall story. The former I can overlook if the game is fun to play and the latter I generally do not care about. I’m a gameplay kind of guy and this is the best Mass Effect has ever played. In addition, it facilitates exploration which made me wonder about the stars more than any of the procedurally generated space games of years past have managed to accomplish. Even overlooking the technical side and narrative, it has its shortcomings, but not enough to sway me from putting over 100 hours into it before setting it aside.
4. Absolver
The concept around the game might be borrowed from a handful of games, but in that it creates something unique with a certain depth that begs to be mastered. While I love the PvP side of this game a lot, I secretly hope they do add more PvE stuff to the game over time. This can be so much more than a fighting game. It can be a world. As it stands, it is one of the better playing games and interesting ones of 2017.
3. Nioh
It shows that Souls games can work in different templates and adds to the central formula of the game while it’s at it. Nioh is not just one of the best Souls games to come out in recent memory, it showed it is the best when it bested Dark Souls III handily in creativity, innovation and just plain fun. It may not sit at the top of my best Souls games list, but it is definitely among them.
2. Destiny 2
It may lack an interesting endgame and it may attempt to persuade players into spending money in a handful ways too many, but the fact remains that Destiny 2 is just tremendously fun to play. It makes a lot of changes for the better (and some changes for the worse) and somehow managed to launch with a surprisingly good first Raid that was unique in its approach and design. While I have countless suggestions to make the game better, I cannot be honest with myself and deny that I am still looking forward to Raids, Lairs and other activities; and looking back on them, I remember having so much fun with them for months now.
1. Prey
The aesthetic, interface and UI all scream Arkane Studios created this game, but while playing it I kept being surprised by that fact. I always liked the afore mentioned aspects of Arkane’s games, but they seemed to have trouble finding a good progression in their games and handcuff the player from interacting with the possibility space of their gameplay sandbox. Prey has a fantastic progression that facilitates the many approaches you can take, and it allows you to take any of them without artificial repercussions.
It is appropriately atmospheric and puts a lot of emphasis on the contents of its environments both in threats that may be hidden within them and the possibility space it offers. It may be a stroke of dumb luck, but it otherwise seems Prey is very aware of certain mechanics or encounters getting stale and changes things up repeatedly. Whereas enemies could have been hiding in the environment, you gain a piece of gear that allows you to see them beforehand. Whereas you’d had to be careful taking down some of the tougher enemies using the environment in clever ways, you can now just use sheer force to overpower them. I bet that on paper these changes would seem like bad decisions, yet in practice they work out perfectly. Which makes it all the more baffling to me Arkane is responsible for this one.
This game is crafted so well and does what it does so well, it will undoubtedly get multiple playthroughs from me over the next couple of years. Which is all the more exciting because Prey handles its various endings and the implications thereof extraordinarily well.
Best DLC
5. Knights of the Frozen Throne – Hearthstone
While I like every Hearthstone expansion to a certain extent, they are all very predictable in what they give you that they don’t usually make my list. Knights of the Frozen Throne however, adds new hero cards which change up your hero power in a more meaningful way than Justicar did and allow various new archetypes to spawn from them. They are generally such strong cards that they fit in most decks. Coupled with various new cards, this expansion gave me a lot of reason to just have fun with whacky decks. Moreso than usual.
4. Defiant Honor – Nioh
It adds the tonfa as a weapon. Also, same moveset as in Ninja Gaiden II. That is reason enough by itself. I'm not even joking: it led to some of the most fun I've had this year.
3. The Crimson Court – Darkest Dungeon
When you add small but smart additions to an already highly replayable game, it makes it that much more engaging to play again. It bolsters Darkest Dungeon’s replay value by a significant amount.
2. Curse of Osiris – Destiny 2
The bulk of the content found in this DLC is ironically the opposite of bulky. In some cases it does 95% of the work on a new activity, only to omit to adding that last 5% that would have made it near-infinitely replayable and rewarding. It seems like Bungie is having a hard time deciding if they want their game to be a one-and-done type experience or a mastered replayable live game. Their language seems to suggest the latter, but most of Curse of Osiris’ content is operating in favor of the former. That said, one crucial part of it, the first Raid Lair, is such a good and well crafted challenge that it instantly shot up to #2 on my list of favorite Raids. It pretty much single handedly made me come back week after week.
1. War of the Chosen – XCOM 2
The developers of my favorite game of all time started work on DLC, quickly realized the volume of their work was too ambitious for a DLC pack and were told they should’ve used it as the basis for XCOM 3, then decided that it was more important to them to support the game they had already put out and released it as DLC anyway. Against all present-day logic of videogame development and the cost thereof. Not only is that super cool, but XCOM 2 just became cemented into my favorite game of all time with the additions War of the Chosen has brought.
Categories
Best Story
Prey
Runner up: -
Featuring a fantastic intro, Prey sets up its narrative rather well. It has interesting small side stories to explore and ends in a somewhat predictable manner of choice. But then a surprising epilogue retroactively puts context to the entire game’s events and circumstances that manages to not feel cheap, but rather eye-opening and very inviting to multiple playthroughs. The narrative is fused with Prey’s gameplay loop which makes it all the more impressive.
There weren’t any other worthwhile stories I have experienced this year other than that.
Best Soundtrack
Destiny 2
Runner up: Mass Effect Andromeda
Destiny always had a good score, but in Destiny 2 it has crossed the border to being great. It also helps that the soundtrack features more prominently on the foreground than it has done in the past. It delivers on chills to your bones.
In Andromeda, the score does a pretty great job of inciting curiousness to what might be out there and underscores the mysterious nature of the galaxy you are in. It is touching in similar ways as Destiny’s score, though a bit less present and there isn’t as much of it.
Best Looking Game
Destiny 2
Runner up: Cuphead
What can I say other than it shows that Bungie has 400 people working exclusively on the art. The game looks incredibly from an artistic standpoint. Better in some parts than others, but I found the whole to be relatively consistent.
I did not play Cuphead as I know it is not my type of game, but I did go out of my way to look at people playing Cuphead more than a few times. Not necessarily because it looked so much fun, but because it just looks so damn good.
Best Use of Difficulty
Prey
Runner up: Nioh
Prey truly is something else, whether in a circumstance of luck or just designer expertise, but its difficulty is one of the things that should not sound as good on paper as it does in practice. There is an arc to Prey’s difficulty, you start out weak and having to use the environment or stealth, gradually scaling so you can devastate anything that is stupid enough to stand in your path. It allows a lot of variance for build styles to tackle problems in so many different ways and has underlying mechanics that change up the difficulty based on various choices you make. I found Prey to be challenging, scary, inviting catiousness and rewarding boldness all in one playthrough at different stages.
Nioh is basically cheating by being a well designed Souls game, which are by very nature leaning on a proper difficulty design. Nevertheless, it was one of the games I could boot up that came out this year that required me to master it in order to play it well.
Best Surprise
Prey
Runner up: Absolver
I have already talked about what I find so surprising about Prey in other parts of this write up, but it boils down to where it came from, what I expected from it versus how much I liked it and how well it executes on all its features and how they cross over.
I never really expected to see anything like Absolver which makes it surprising by default. It just so happens that what it does do, has a lot of potential and begs to be explored further.
Most Disappointing
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Runner up: Mass Effect Andromeda
What happened to Wolfenstein? The New Order had well-crafted levels with some manner of depth to facilitate the various approaches the player could take. It was up there with Rage and Destiny as one of the shooters that had guns that actually felt great to fire. It allowed different approaches to combat and its sandbox thereof was realized reasonably well. The New Colossus bafflingly has none of this. The level design, especially from a gameplay standpoint is superficial and boring, the combat sandbox is a tedious mess compared to the previous game or any other proper shooter, really. Then somehow even firing the guns feels worse than before. All they had to do was copy and paste the previous game to be somewhat entertaining. Instead they went this way, having the only meaningful addition here be its cutscenes. Which are admittedly amazingly hilarious, but I guarantee you I had more fun watching them on YouTube after refunding the game, than I would have by struggling to play through it. What it all boils down to is if you remove the cutscenes, The New Order was an interesting, well playing game that encouraged diverse gameplay with a lot of potential for a sequel. Do the same with The New Colossus and you are left with a bad game. It certainly has amazing moments and highlights, but none of them require you to own or play the game in any capacity.
I probably don’t have to say why Andromeda is a disappointing game, but I will say more than any technical hiccup or story inconsistency, I was most bummed by the lack of new and old aliens to discover. It’s bad enough having only one real new species in this game, but having over half the species from previous games not in here is the most disappointing thing about it.
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