Merry Christmas folks, and welcome to the inaugural chapter of My End of 2017 Awards. As in previous years, I present these multi-part awards celebrating the games that I've played over the course of the previous twelve months, working towards one of those Top Ten Games of the Year lists that seem to be all the rage around these parts this time of year.

This year has been unparalleled for me in terms of finishing games. Over the course of 2017 I saw credits roll on an astonishing fifty titles, a new record that smashes my previous personal best of thirty-five and puts last year's meagre total of twelve to shame. Despite being a huge personal achievement for me, it's made putting together this year's awards more challenging and time-consuming than ever before. It's a challenge that I've hopefully risen to, though, as My End of 2017 Awards promises to be the biggest and best blog-based awards ceremony I've ever constructed.

As always, I'll begin with a series of individual awards, named after some of my favourite songs, that celebrate the best (and worst) aspects of every single game I've finished in the last twelve months. Due to some games belonging to the same franchise or collection, and in the interest of making things slightly briefer, I've opted to group some of the more similar titles together for these individual awards. Even so, I'll be dishing out a whopping forty-two of them, at a rate of seven per day over the next six days. Once every last game I've played this year has been honoured, I'll be bringing My End of 2017 Awards to a triumphant close by revealing my personal top ten games of the year on New Year's Eve.

If you're joining the party late, here's a helpful table of contents that I'll populate with hyperlinks as the week's festivities progress:

With those plans laid out, let's begin with the first round of awards, shall we?

Pick It Up Award for Best Collect-a-thon

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

My 2017 began the same way 2016 ended – in a charming plastic rendition of a galaxy far far away. I may have seen the credits roll on LEGO Star Wars: TCS last year, but I felt compelled to keep playing it through January in pursuit of 100% completion and a full 1000 Gamerscore from its Achievements. Retreading familiar ground with different characters to find hidden secrets was made incredibly rewarding thanks to the percentage marker that gradually ticked up every time I returned to the cantina hub. If anything, the game probably boasts a few too many collectibles – I definitely could have done without the blue minikit canister hunting – but the steady stream of rewards kept me hooked right through to that hallowed S-rank.

Tell Me Ten Words Award for Best Dialogue

Oxenfree

While I loved Oxenfree’s world, story and art style, the most memorable thing about it for me was the way it handled dialogue between its characters. Its central cast are all performed believably by their respective voice actors, transforming from teen drama archetypes to surprisingly complex individuals over the course of its chilling narrative. Where Oxenfree really subverted my expectations was how it broke genre conventions and made the timing of my dialogue choices just as important as their content, giving me the option to interrupt other characters mid-stream if I wanted to. It’s a design choice that made the game’s core mechanic feel much more dynamic, and one I hope other dialogue-heavy adventure games will adopt going forward.

Now The Action Is On Fire! Award for Most Impressive Set Pieces

Tomb Raider

Replaying Crystal Dynamics’ 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise this year, one of the most memorable aspects of my playthrough was its incredible use of high-action set pieces throughout. The game is absolutely packed with adrenaline-pumping sequences – the tense cavern exploration of its opening minutes; the exhilarating downhill river slide sequence; escaping an ancient monastery as a sandstorm tears it to pieces around you; navigating a burning building while explosions rip through the walls; fleeing from the sinking wreck of the ship you arrived on. These are just a handful of Tomb Raider’s best moments, made all the more impressive by the level of agency the player has during them. Uncharted may have pioneered these kinds of gameplay sequences, but TR2013 is the finest example of them I’ve yet seen.

With A Little Help From My Friends Award for Best Online Co-operative Experience

Borderlands

While I’m predominantly a single-player kind of gamer, the last few years have seen me gravitating towards sharing video game experiences with those close to me. One example of this has been my co-operative playthroughs of several first-person shooters with my buddy Duncan. Initially a means of socialising over great distances while we lived in separate countries, the tradition was upheld when he moved closer to home. In February of this year we completed a lengthy playthrough of the original Borderlands, taking my Siren and his Hunter through the wastes of Pandora in pursuit of ever-bigger and ever-better guns. It was a really fun co-op experience, and I hope we can continue with Borderlands 2 some time in 2018.

Going Underground Award for Best Subterranean Exploration

Rise of the Tomb Raider

One of my main criticisms of the Tomb Raider reboot was its disappointing challenge tombs, which were both few in number and rather simple to solve. Rise of the Tomb Raider does a fantastic job of addressing this, offering up a lot more opportunities to go spelunking for spoils over the course of Lara’s latest adventure. Not only are there more of these optional tombs, but they’re also larger in scope and much more challenging (and rewarding) to solve, often featuring multiple micro-puzzles that contribute towards solving a much larger puzzle. Some of them even have their own unique histories, explained through diary logs written by the architects and slaves who built them. All of these things contribute to elevating Rise’s challenge tombs above anything in TR2013.

Power Of The People Award for Best Character Development

Grandia

I spent two months playing through Grandia at the start of 2017, and in that time I witnessed what should have been a run-of-the-mill Japanese RPG transform into something rather special. Part of that is down to its battle mechanics – in Grandia, weapon and skill proficiencies have their own experience gauges which level up with repeated use, encouraging the player to use a variety of different attacks and magic to ensure all their characters level up evenly. But it’s not just the mechanics of character development that made Grandia so memorable. It’s their narrative development too – protagonist Justin’s evolution from obnoxious urchin to bona fide hero and the interplay between (and revelations around) sisters Feena and Leen being my personal highlights.

Wrote A Song For Everyone Award for Best Ensemble Cast

Banjo-Kazooie

A good platformer is invariably only as strong as its characters. It’s why historically, console mascots have tended to be platforming protagonists – Mario, Sonic, Crash, Spyro, and of course, Banjo and Kazooie. Replaying their original Nintendo 64 outing, this time as part of the Rare Replay collection on Xbox One, reminded me that the game’s charm extends way beyond the eponymous bear and bird. From Bottles the mole and Mumbo Jumbo to Gruntilda and Klungo, every level is jam-packed with memorable faces, almost always sporting a trademark pair of googly eyes. Hopefully next year I’ll get around to sampling Banjo-Tooie and meeting even more awesome characters.

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Seven awards down, thirty-five to go. Join me again tomorrow when I'll be handing out another septet of accolades to the games that made my year. Thanks very much for reading folks. Enjoy what remains of your Christmas Day, take care, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Pokémon Ultra Sun (3DS)