Hey there folks, and welcome to the seventh and final part of My End of 2017 Awards, my own personal take on the Game of the Year tradition. If you're just joining the festivities at this point, then you've missed a whole host of individual awards distributed over the last week. If you're interested in these tailored acknowledgements of the best and worst aspects of every game I played this year, then you can use the links in the table below to navigate through the individual awards - be warned though, there are forty-two of them, so it may take you a little while!

Today marks the reveal of my Top Ten, the ten video games that stand above all the others to define my 2017. Before I tell you all which titles made the cut, I need to explain how this list will differ from most of the Top Tens you'll see this year. For a start, every game that I've played this year is eligible for inclusion, regardless of when it was released. My reasoning for this is that I tend to play a lot of old games rather than current releases. Even in 2017, a year in which I played a whopping fifty games, only six of those could legitimately be considered 2017 releases. Doing things this way feels better than creating a shorter list, or populating it with games I didn't actually play, and it ensures the list is an accurate reflection of the time I spent playing games this year.

It's also important to note that this list isn't in a hierarchical order. More power to those who are able to rank their lists from 10 to 1, but I just can't bring myself to do it. While I could probably choose my top three without too much trouble, it gets a lot harder to separate the games from each other at the lower end of the scale, to the point where it feels more like splitting hairs than anything meaningful. A ranked order also implies that these are categorically the best games that I played this year, and while a lot of the games below are undeniably fantastic, some of them earn their places on the list for the impact they had on me rather than their outright quality. As in previous years, I'll be presenting my Top Ten in alphabetical order instead.

With fifty titles to choose from, this year's Top Ten has proven harder to narrow down than ever before. I've given this a lot of time and thought, and the list went through several iterations before I settled on the ten games below. I played a lot of fantastic video games these past twelve months, but these are the ones that defined this year for me - My Top Ten Games of 2017!

Beyond Good & Evil HD

(Ubisoft - XBLA - 2011)

I went into Beyond Good & Evil with rather high expectations, given its reputation as a cult classic among the gaming community. It met those expectations in a lot of ways, delivering an experience that must have been pioneering back in 2003 and still feels fresh now. It presents a wide variety of gameplay styles with impressive competence, including open-world exploration, tense stealth sequences, environmental puzzle solving, arcade racing, and even photography, constantly mixing things up to ensure the experience never grows repetitive or boring. Where it exceeded my expectations, and elevated itself beyond a lot of the other games I played this year, was in its cast of characters, its story and world-building. Beyond Good & Evil’s fantasy setting of Hillys belies its exploration of real-world issues including government oppression, political corruption, industrialisation and conservation. Following Jade and Pey'j’s quest across this alien landscape reminded me a lot of the Oddworld franchise, which deals with similar themes and which has long been one of my favourite game series. All these features combine to create a truly unique experience – one that defined my year in gaming, and one that I won’t soon forget.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

(Vicarious Visions - PS4 - 2017)

N. Sane Trilogy is one of the finest examples of remastering that I’ve ever played. Taking the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy from the first PlayStation and rebuilding them from the ground up for the PlayStation 4, Vicarious Visions have crafted an experience that’s not only faithful to its source material, but actually improves on it in almost every way. Seeing the characters and levels that defined my childhood rendered in full high-definition had me grinning from ear to ear as I jumped, span and belly-flopped my way through Crash Bandicoot, Cortex Strikes Back and Warped one after the other. The games feel authentic too, introducing a unified physics model across all three games that, in my opinion, feels faithful to the original games, but somehow better than they ever did. N. Sane Trilogy balances the games’ acute level of challenge with a host of quality-of-life improvements, including the introduction of a new save system to the first game that’s closer to its sequels, retro-fitting the Time Trial Relics from Warped into the first two games, and full Trophy support for all three games. I devoted two months of the year to wringing every last drop of content out of this fantastic collection, earning full completion and Platinum Trophies across all three titles. It’s a lovingly crafted tribute to some of the most important games from my formative years, and the definitive way to play Crash Bandicoot in 2017.

Cuphead

(Studio MDHR - XONE - 2017)

It’s easy to reduce any description of Cuphead to its visuals, something that even I’m guilty of doing earlier in this sequence of awards. Its 1930s Fleischer-inspired aesthetics have drawn a great deal of attention and set it apart as something wholly unique within the medium. But what a purely visual analysis of Cuphead overlooks is the fact that beneath that gorgeous retro exterior beats the heart of a fiendishly challenging and thoroughly rewarding action game that encourages patience, persistence, and the pursuit of perfection. Its army of excellently-designed boss characters all present unique, interesting multi-phase challenges, forcing the player to read tells and memorise patterns in order to achieve victory. This mentality is supported by controls that are responsive, accurate, and highly customisable in terms of both button layout and character loadout. Cuphead is a very challenging game, but it presents its challenges in such a way that they never feel insurmountable, and that’s why it’s so intensely rewarding every time that “It’s A Knock-Out!!” message fills the screen. Cuphead isn’t just one of the best-looking games of this year - it’s one of the best games of this year, period.

DOOM

(id Software - PS4 - 2016)

I enjoy playing first-person shooter campaigns, but the ones that really, really impress me are pretty few and far between. DOOM is the first time since 2013’s BioShock Infinite that I’ve felt like I’m playing an FPS that redefines the genre in a meaningful way. Where that game took world-building and story to new heights, id Software’s 2016 reboot of their flagship franchise instead focuses on delivering a fast, frenetic, visceral experience that bottles the spirit of the original DOOM and catapults it into the current generation. It achieves this by finding exciting ways to plug any potential gaps in the action, like completely stripping out the genre mainstay of reloading to ensure the assault never stops, or implementing the fantastic Glory Kill mechanic to keep the player in the eye of the storm by letting them get up close and personal with the enemy. This break-neck pacing is housed within a package that oozes atmosphere, with impressive graphics locked at a slick sixty frames per second, and an industrial metal soundtrack that perfectly complements the ultra-violent action unfolding on the screen at any given moment. Add to this some modern quality-of-life improvements such as armour and weapon upgrades, and maps full of nooks and crannies to explore hunting for various collectibles, and DOOM supports its feature-set with a longevity and replayability that most FPS campaigns can only dream of. I haven’t touched the multiplayer aspect of DOOM, but I don’t need feel like I need to because the single-player component is worth the price of admission alone. DOOM is one of the best first-person shooters I’ve played in a long time, and a much-needed antidote to the realistic modern-military shooters that have saturated the market for so long. Say it with me now: “Rip and tear...”

Grandia

(Game Arts - PS1 - 1999)

Sometimes games make these end-of-year lists not because of how great they are, but simply because the experience of playing them comes to define the year for me. Grandia is one of those games. On paper it’s a charming, competent, but pretty by-the-numbers Japanese RPG. It boasts a fairly generic art style, a typical ‘ragtag band of kids and adventurers save the world’ story, and a cool turn-based battle system that encourages experimentation by feeding back into character development in some really interesting ways. But that’s not why I’ll remember Grandia for years to come. I’ll remember it partly because of the way its characters grow as people over the course of its surprisingly lengthy playtime, shedding their archetypes and becoming more rounded individuals as the events that unfold around them start to impact on their world-view. It’s why I love characters like Vivi in Final Fantasy IX, and it’s why Justin, Sue, Feena, and especially Leen have stayed with me long after I stopped playing. But I’ll also remember Grandia for being the game that I lost myself in to cope with the distressing experience of nearly losing my mother in a hospital operating theatre back in February. It was really touch-and-go at times, but thankfully she pulled through. I pulled through too, and Grandia played a big role in helping me to do that.

Horizon Zero Dawn

(Guerrilla - PS4 - 2017)

While I always say that I don’t approve of ranking these kinds of lists, there’s usually one game that stands head and shoulders above the others such that if you demanded a definitive ‘Game of the Year’ from me, I could give you one without too much thought. Two years ago it was Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, last year it was Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, and this year it’s definitely Horizon Zero Dawn. Guerrilla Games’ first foray into the open-world action RPG genre is a near-flawless triumph that consumed over sixty hours of my life this year. It’s tough to break that experience down into its constituent parts, but I’ll try. It’s one of the best-looking games I’ve ever played, combining incredible graphical fidelity with a varied, vibrant colour palette and some incredible animation work. Every component of the gameplay, from the exploration and traversal, to the insanely deep and strategic combat against the machines, to the loot gathering and crafting, felt fully realised and more polished than anything I’ve ever seen come before it. The sci-fi story tying everything together goes to some really interesting places and asks some pretty pertinent questions about artificial intelligence, as well as our society as a whole. I spent an entire month lost in the wilderness of post-apocalyptic Colorado, loving almost every second, and I intend to jump right back in in early 2018 to sample the Frozen Wilds DLC expansion. Horizon Zero Dawn isn’t just my favourite game from this year, it’s easily become one of my favourite games of all time.

Pokémon Ultra Sun

(Game Freak - 3DS - 2017)

It wouldn’t be an end-of-year top ten list from me if I didn’t include a Pokémon game. I played two of them this year, both set in the beautiful Hawaii-inspired Alola region, but when it came to picking one over the other the choice was simple. Acting as one of this generation’s enhanced versions in the mould of Yellow, Crystal, Emerald and Platinum, Pokémon Ultra Sun feels like the game that its disappointing predecessor should have been all along. The individual enhancements might seem minor to a series outsider, but cumulatively they turn Ultra Sun into a vastly improved retelling of the story first told by Sun and Moon last year. The enhanced roster of available Pokémon shifts focus away from the series’ first-generation poster-children and gives players a lot more team-building options. It also offers a much harder challenge with tougher opponent movesets and more sophisticated AI trainer behaviour, actually causing this series stalwart to white-out for the first time since the fourth generation. Game Freak have explicitly stated that Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon will be the core series’ final appearance on the 3DS, and while I’m very excited to see what the move to Switch will bring, I can’t deny that Ultra Sun is a fitting swansong for the franchise in its current form. I’m sure I will be spending plenty of time in Alola in early 2018 as I endeavour once again to complete my National Pokédex.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead (All Seasons)

(Telltale - PS3/PS4 - 2012-17)

When selecting my top ten games for this year, I knew that Telltale’s The Walking Dead would need to feature in some form. Over the course of 2017, my girlfriend Alice and I played through nineteen episodes across three seasons and a spin-off, creating a shared gaming experience that came to define the year for me. But with four titles up for consideration, how would I separate them and pick one above all the others? Would I pick the first season, because it was my favourite? Would I opt for the second, because it was Alice’s? Would I choose the Michonne mini-series, for showcasing Alice’s favourite character from the TWD universe in a different light? Or would I triumph A New Frontier as the most recent instalment? In the end I decided to stop splitting hairs and feature all of them. It’s not the strengths of one specific title over another that caused The Walking Dead to feature on this list, but the experience of sharing a developing and evolving story with one of the most important people in my life. The Walking Dead became “our thing”, something I haven’t had with a partner and a video game for a very long time.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

(Naughty Dog/Bluepoint - PS4 - 2016)

It feels unfair handing out three of these Top Ten podiums to collections of games rather than individual titles, but that’s just the way this year has gone – my most memorable gaming experiences have been associated more strongly with franchises than with single titles. Uncharted is one such series, as I worked my way through the remastered PlayStation 4 versions of the first three games through the autumn months. Much like The Walking Dead, playing them in such close proximity makes it difficult to separate one game from another. All three titles in the Nathan Drake Collection offer gorgeous environments to explore, intense shoot-outs, mind-blowing interactive action set-pieces and some of the finest character acting in the entire medium, with the quality so consistently high across them that it’s been impossible for me to pick a favourite. Another notable feature of my experience with the Nathan Drake Collection is that I played through all three games on Crushing difficulty, a step above the level of challenge that I usually opt for in games like these. Overcoming these fantastic games on what was originally their highest difficulty setting filled me with an enormous sense of pride and achievement, and I believe that justifies their inclusion on this list just as much as the quality of the games themselves.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

(CD Projekt RED - PC - 2008)

2017 wasn’t my first time trying to play through The Witcher. Coming back to it after a false start last year, I decided to start over rather than try to pick up the myriad story threads where I left off. I think that was undoubtedly the best decision I could have made – not only was I able to follow the story from beginning to end, but already having a firm grasp on the gameplay mechanics meant I was able to pay greater attention to what was going on with Geralt himself. As a result, I got lost far deeper into the plot and world of The Witcher than I was ever able to before. It’s a story full of political intrigue and moral grey areas, set in a world so squalid and corrupt that it feels refreshing compared to the usual, idyllic high fantasy tropes used in so many western RPGs. The gameplay facilitates exploration of this world, with fantastic quest design and a host of support systems that elevate a simple click-to-swing combat system into something requiring a great deal of strategy and preparation. Some of my most satisfying moments in The Witcher came from accepting a monster contract, seeking out the appropriate book to read up on its weaknesses, preparing the relevant potions to improve my odds in battle, and then witnessing all my careful planning pay off. These emergent moments were as much a part of my experience as the main story, and played a big part in making The Witcher so memorable for me. It goes without saying that The Witcher 2 is one of my top gaming priorities for 2018.

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There you have it folks, my Top Ten based on the games that I played this year. It's been a ton of fun putting together these awards over the last week, and I hope you've all enjoyed reading them as much as I have writing them. The community Game of the Year stuff has been fantastic this year, and I have a ton of blogs and lists bookmarked and waiting to read. I'll be resuming normal blogging duties one day next week, with a 'New Year's Resolution'-style post laying out some of my plans (both within and outside of video games) for 2018. Until then, thanks very much for reading. I hope 2017 treated you well, and I hope 2018 treats you even better. Take care folks, a very happy New Year to everyone, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Pokémon Ultra Sun (3DS)