Keel's Favorite Games of 2017
2017 was a great year for games. I'm going to be catching up with a few into 2018 (Pyre, Yakuza, and who knows what else.) This is a list of my favorites for the year.
List items
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Number 1 with a bullet. This game plays great, it looks great, and the story is incredibly good. It's damn near perfect. I am very excited to dive into the DLC in the near future.
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I think I have skipped just enough of the AC series to never hit the fatigue that some people seem to feel. I really liked Syndicate and would have happily played another game that felt similar. However, Ubisoft decreed it was time for a refresh, and so we got Origins. I don't know that I love some of the changes, like a Destiny-style menu and loot drops, but they do make it work. What definitely works is Bayek as a character. Warm, paternal, funny, driven, confused, he is probably the roundest character Assassin's Creed has produced. This is a game where you hold hands with your wife more than once, a strangely absent thing from most everything else I've ever played. Then you go murder a bunch of bandits and Greeks, because we are still playing the #1 historical murder sim.
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I'm an OG Nier apologist. I think that game has a few unfortunate sidequests, middling combat, but a great story and music. I actually still rate the Nier story higher than Automata. Everything else is an upgrade though. Combat feels good, the music is incredible, and the quests are a bit better, though some are still a bit grindy or obtuse. If you like androids and want to feel despair tinged with hope, play this game.
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I have liked all the Bioshock games and all the Deus Ex games. I tried to get into System Shock 2 but I came to it too late, it was frustrating. This is the game I wanted it to be. A great game for sneaking around and reading people's emails, but also for formulating strategies for getting through a space with guns, Psi-powers, and stealth wrenches to the back of the head. One of my favorite games to play around in in a while.
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The list entry for this has the box art next to it while I write. Which just underlines what this game has: style. Everything has infused with it. Even the menus are cool! Music and art are also top notch. It's a little too long, and sometimes the translation went a little wonky but I really enjoyed my 100+ hours with this game.
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Shoot Nazis in the face. Play this game.
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Most of the other games on this list are 30, 50 or 100 hours long. Edith Finch doesn't break 3. But it was exactly the small bite I needed after a year of sumptuous feasts. Games do magic well, obviously. And some of them do realism, or at least they claim to. This is the first game I've played to give magical realism a go. Each Finch's story is a lovely little vignette that has its own flavor. My particular favorites were the bathtub and the cannery. And the swing is somehow one of the most exhilarating sequences I've ever played. Play this game for a taste of something different.
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I wrapped up the first game on my iPad earlier this year after playing on and off for years. I really like the iPad for these games, the tactile experience of tapping and swiping works for cooking, unlike so many other games that try and make the transition to touchscreens. I wanted to wait for an iPad release of this game too, but I was too impatient. And it is still very good on PC. It induces a flow state like few other games. And eventually as the Rush Hours get rushier, it all falls apart and you burn the pizzas, omelets, and hamburgers while letting the rats go untrapped. A great, frantic, experience.
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I kickstarted this game years ago, during the height of Kickstarting old franchises mania. Many years later, they delivered this game. It's not really a whole lot like Planescape: Torment. And I think that's mostly a good thing. You can get through this game without any fighting, and that's not an exaggeration nor does it require a weird playstyle, it's just possible, and very satisfying to do. This was my first experience with the world of Numenera. It's not something I would have picked for the next Torment game, but again it actually works. I liked the idea that this was the 9th world, and that we are living on the ruins of the 8 before, and their maybe magic/maybe technology wonders and horrors.
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Richard Scarry's Rust Belt Mystery. A 2017 game that felt very 2017, it centered labor and depression (personal and community) despite the plot focusing on spookiness. The spookiness was good, but the feeling of struggling to put your life together was what stuck with me.
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I know this game is on a lot of people's worst lists. And I'm not disputing their experience. But I came to the game a little later, after some of the gaping technical issued had been addressed, and basically had only small ones. With the technical side sewn up, this becomes a competent game. It's probably still the worst Mass Effect game, but a bad Mass Effect is still a decent game. The actual combat was good and the story is ok. There's too much to do, just like Dragon Age Inquisition, and I hope Bioware scales back their next games. I hope this isn't the game that kills Mass Effect. C-Sec Stories Bioware, do it!
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Another great exploration of a space (and outer space) from the folks behind Gone Home. Piecing together the minutiae of some working-class spacepeople was never so gratifying.
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