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gooniesfan176

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Gooniesfans Top 10 Games of 2017

Games were better in 2017 (for me) than any other year of my video gaming career and its not even particularly close. I made more of an effort to play as many games as I could this year, while maintaining a social life, than any year before and for that I have one thing to thank. The deletion of Dota 2 from my steam library. That game sucked up hours and days of my life that could've been used to do more productive things! Like play all of these games! . Oddly enough the top 5 of this list seemed relatively easy but these smaller games in the bottom half really took a lot of thinking. The games that aren't in the actual top 10 aren't really numbered or ordered but more of honorable mentions and I was too lazy to format them properly into an honorable mention category.

(List in reverse order because the formatting here is dumb and does 1 first)

List items

  • Less Honorable Mention:

    This game is just so fine and alright in every imaginable way. I really enjoyed my time with it but it's pretty hard to figure out just what about it I found enjoyable. The combat is fun and the powers interesting but theres something frustrating at most turns. The story is incredibly bland until the third act when I sort of love everything there.

  • Honorable Mention

    Sigh Persona 5 I really want to love and play you but you are just so impenetrable and sloggy sometimes. The stakes set in the first dungeon are so unbelievably high that the second dungeon and losing progress in it were so annoying that I just didn't want to return to playing it after 25+ hours invested. Someday I'll get back to this game and finish it.

  • Honorable Mention

    I played a fair amount of Splatoon 1 and enjoyed. Splatoon 2 is more of the same in many ways and frustrating in others. If they didnt make so many truly confounding decisions around playing the games and modes with others I think I would've enjoyed it far more. Partying up with people is an absolute chore and semiincoherent and you just cant play Salmon run sometimes which is a huge bummer. The actual game itself was great, though I didn't much care for the single player painting and splatting opponents and stopping salmon is as fun as ever.

  • Honorable Mention

    This game is so lovely top to bottom. I played through it in one emotion filled night shortly after it came out. While some of the vignettes in it maybe aren't as effective the cannery sequence in particular was so ridiculously relatable to anyone thats ever worked a shitty job or felt directionless. The fact that it plays out so spectacularly and is maybe the most depressing of all of them is such an interesting contrast that would've been super easy to fuck up. If this game maybe had a more cohesive message it could have maybe cracked the list but I truly enjoyed my time with it.

  • Honorable Mention

    I didn't know I wanted a remake of Metroid 2 but I wanted a remake of Metroid 2. The linear nature and cutting out a lot of the bullshit that comes with a metroid title was so appealing to me, no longer did I have to shoot every single tile and backtrack to places and probably forget which place is the right place to use the power bomb and wait was that door a missle door? All of those systems are modernized in a smart package that results in probably my favorite end boss fight in a Metroid game ever. As a send off for the 3DS this game was truly worthy.

  • Honorable Mention

    This game was such a nice little surprise on Switch. I've always been a fan of games where you sort of just dig down but never got around to the first SteamWorld Dig. Having this on the go for my commutes was such a nice way to pass the time and it just feels great to play! All of the upgrades change the way you navigate and think about digging in smart ways and jetpack is maybe my favorite jetpack in all of games.

  • Honorable Mention

    Cuphead is a very good game. Its challenging bosses and wonderfully unique design are great, but I secretly could not stand the platforming levels for the life of me. Cuphead controls fine and feels great but something about doing a Megaman style platforming level in that game just turned me off so much that I stopped doing them entirely by the time I had the coins for the upgrades I wanted.

  • 10.

    I didn't play this game until the very end of 2017 and it was a very nice way to send the year out. I havent quite finished it yet but feel very comfortable putting it right where it is on this list, right there at the bottom sitting above a ton of my other favorite games of the year... The world building and style of this game from the cast of characters to the cosmic bible that is outlawed because reading is illegal are top notch. Archetypes like strong silent type are made so appealing in a way I didn't think was possible for me anymore. I rolled my eyes when the strong demon lady was stoic and quiet but she grew into one of my favorite characters through her skills on the court and interactions with the other colorful cast of characters. Theres not any aspect of Pyre I can really put down and if I had finished it it may even be higher.

  • 9.

    Wolfenstein II as a game is a very uneven package. On one hand (INCREDIBLY MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD TURN BACK IF YOU DONT WANT TO BE SPOILED SPOILER TEXT DOES NOT APPEAR TO WORK ON THESE INDIVIDUAL LIST ENTRIES WHICH IS ANNOYING) You fucking get your head cutoff in first person, an evil nazi lady holds it aloft for all of the Washington Mall and nation to see, she throws it in a fire, and your Jewish scientist cohort arranges for a drone to fucking catch it and reattach it to your brand new Nazi super soldier body. Moments like that are fantastic and are what led to Giantbomb having to breakout the game into its own damn category. On the otherhand its a singleplayer fps that is made by Bethesda and doesn't play anywhere NEAR as well as DOOM. Hit registration on yourself and enemies doesn't feel good and many of the guns I just flat out ignored because they weren't as effective as dual wielding shotguns or they just flat out felt bad. If this game had DOOMs level of gameplay polish it would be much higher.

  • 8.

    onics back! Ignore Sonic Forces! Sega please give Christian Whitehead even more money to make more Sonic games! Leading up to this games release I was brushing it off as nothing more than another 2d Sonic game how could that be any good I've played all of those and liked them for what they were in the 90s. Boy was I wrong about how you could design a Sonic level in 2017 to make it compelling in a way that I didn't know was possible. The way the game eases you into its new style is fantastic with some familiar levels from Green Hill Zone and Chemical Plant Zone. It says hey heres what you remember from the 90s in the first level of a zone, then completely improves on those levels in every way of level 2 with a new remixed version with new mechanics and it only gets better from there. They made Oil Ocean zone good!

  • 7.

    PUBG is an exilerating experience that has been written about to death. Its relatively low on my list because until recently I had fallen off the game. I found the solo game to be pulse pounding and exhilerating until I frankly, got a little better and those moments started to be rote. Putting it down for a few months was probably for the best because I've found the game so much more compelling in its 1.0 state now than back in May when I stopped. The jankiness is lessened and the new maps weapons and balance makes the game feel so much more fun to play.

  • 6.

    Is this cheating? I dont care because I played this game this year. I've always had a fairly casual interest in fighting games my entire life, never really attempting to play competitively outside of battling my friends or occasionally getting my ass handed to me online. There was always an impentrable barrier to frame traps and combo strings that I thought would always be impossible. Killer Instincts dojo makes all of that much more easy to grasp in a way I didn't think possible along with a fighting system that isn't quite as reliant on absolutely perfect inputs to play at a semi competitive level. I was able to get out 60% damage plus combos and play mind games all at once! I can go online and not get destroyed quite as hard as every other fighting game on the market! This was all a revelation. The cast of characters is so ridiculously unique in a way that is incredibly smart. The inputs dont vary much from quarter circles and dragon punches for everyone but the toolsets and way those moves work make such a unique cast that is super easy to learn a new character if you think they look cool. Killer Instinct is simply the most fun I've ever had with a fighting game period.

  • 5.

    Senua and her journey were both beautiful and haunting in a way that I didn't really think was possible in this medium. Heres this poor young woman suffering severe psychosis in a world that truly has no understanding for mental illness or disease, all in game form. From the opening moments paddling down a river with voices undermining your every thought to yelling at Hella defiantly in her chambers Senua proved to me shes the most interesting protagonist in a game that I've played. Throughout the experience the voices progressively become more confident and brazen about the journey and Senuas upbringing and their arc is your own.

  • 4.

    Mario Odyssey is maybe my favorite Mario game of all time and its 4th on this list, 2017 ya'll. Controlling Mario is tighter in the 3d realm than its ever been and Cappy adds both a fantastic gimmick in Capture and Marios best platforming tool EVER. I went into the game expecting to be all about being Goombas or Bowser and left wanting to run around and wall jump and hat bounce and ground pound jump into hat throw into dive into hat bounce into hat throw into dive.

  • 3.

    God this game. It was the first game I really dove into after playing Zelda and it seemed like such a slog to me. Sure there were fantastic moments in playthrough A: the intro and first boss fight, taking down the giant sea beast guy, this cannot continue, and we are become gods, but was this it? After I finished the game It wasnt until July or so that I decided to pick it up and give it another go. I'd ignore the sidequests and just play through this game to see this fantastic story everyone talks about. Somewhere along the way the game just clicked for me. I was now invested in the characters and story in a way that I wasnt before. Maybe it was the revelations of what was going on with some of the prior fights like the opera singer and maybe it was the added variety to the combat with hacking but by the time I finished B I instantly jumped into C and could play nothing else from then on. By the time I got to the FINAL credits screen I couldn't believe how invested and frankly emotional I was over what happens during E. If this game didn't have so many weird flaws and frankly boring combat it would easily have been my GOTY. As a big fan of platinumgames its odd but it seems they really dropped their half of the ball with the gameplay while Yoko Taro delivered a masterfully crafted narrative that shows the power of the medium of games to tell a story.

  • 2.

    I know that Destiny is filled with flaws and holes and nitpicks enough to sink a battleship but frankly I don't care. If it weren't for DOOM (2015) I'd say this is the best feeling and playing shooter I've played since probably ever. Every single gun feels so fantastic and satisfying in a way thats really difficult to describe without playing it. Theres always going to be the best guns and the guns you chase, (Uriels gift you really held out on me dawg), but everytime I find something unique or interesting I at the very least try shooting it at some aliens. After watching the Giantbomb stream of the raid I was absolutely terrified of what that really was and very afraid of actually doing the same myself. But with the help of my clan memebers I discovered that raiding would be one of my absolute favorite experiences and activities in a game in awhile. While the game might be in a bad state at the moment my time with Destiny, namely the first 60 or so hours, was like nothing else and solidifies it as my second favorite game of the year.

  • 1.

    Until this year I was absolutely sure that I was incredibly tired and over big open world games that take hours upon hours to finish. An exhausting amount of icons on the map (looking at you question marks in Witcher 3) huge spans of nothingness, and a less tightly designed gameworld and experience that allowed developers to get lazy with narratives. Breath of the Wild changed all of that while also shattering my sky high expectations. This is the game that I bought a WiiU for back in 2014 when it was scheduled for 2015. I played the game on my WiiU partially because I didn't want to buy a $300 Zelda machine in March but also out of some sense of duty to the console, Zelda just doesn't respect sending systems out with a bang! (Twilight Princess). There's really not much to be said about this game that hasn't been said but the lovingly crafted experience in every corner of this version of Hyrule was a complete joy from start to finish and resulted in one of my favorite games of all time. As a brief aside Nintendo please let me move my save data now so I can give you 80 more dollars.
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