I’ve seen a lot of discussion about whether or not it’s been a “good” year for video games, but 2019 turned out to be a fantastic one for my personal tastes. And look, I get the reasons why it felt… different. With new consoles on the very near horizon, there were fewer marquee AAA titles or big-budget sequels, and the kinds of games that usual clean up awards were nowhere to be found. In its place, however, seemed like a never-ending supply of smaller, independent games, and maybe more importantly, easier access to actually play them. Even though I cut this list down to 10, I could have easily included a number of games on Xbox’s Game Pass that I enjoyed enough to finish. Untitled Goose Game is a charming and genuinely funny couple of hours. My Friend Pedro is a fun take on if John Wick was a platform game. Slay the Spire and Void Bastards are both well-made roguelikes that I could see myself getting lost in if I wasn’t still about that Dead Cells life (which released some excellent free DLC this year and is also available on Game Pass). Even the larger scale The Outer Worlds was enjoyable enough for me to finish, even if the vast majority of the game failed to live up its incredible opening hours. More than I ever I felt surrounded by quality games, and below are the 10 I enjoyed the most:

10. A Short Hike

This is a delightful little game that snuck onto my list at the end of the year. It’s a bite-sized game about exploring a peaceful, child-like world with the aesthetics of an Animal Crossing or even a My Neighbor Totoro, only pixelated down to look like a cross between a SNES and N64 game. It’s gorgeous to look at, controls shockingly well, and tells a beautiful story in its brief 90 minutes that put a smile on my face.

9. Baba Is You

I will never beat Baba is You. I get that and I accept it. But despite how often it made me question my own intelligence, I can’t stop myself from loving it. The core mechanic of manipulating the rules of the puzzle itself is nothing short of ingenious and felt oh so satisfying to solve. It’s the kind of game that I thought about even when I wasn’t playing, and I would come back to my Switch with 6 or 7 different solutions to try. And on the rare occasion when one of those worked, I felt as elated as I ever have with a puzzle game.

8. Devil May Cry V

I rarely ever like hack-n-slash games, but for whatever reason, the Devil May Cry series has always been a major exception. There’s something about the way this combat system works that just feels natural to me. I never feel like I’m button mashing, nor do I ever feel like I need to study a complex combo system and think deeply about what I’m doing. Everything just controls exactly like my brain wants it to, even as the game has you alternating between multiple characters that all play meaningfully different. Those three distinct characters, a diverse upgrade tree, and wild boss fights all contribute to making the campaign seem far more varied than I expected, especially for something that is still a PS2-era action game at its core. If you haven’t liked the previous games, I doubt this one will change your mind, but it’s also about as good as a Devil May Cry game could possibly be in 2019.

7. Life is Strange 2

Despite its outdated episodic structure, I greatly appreciated the risks Dontnod took with a sequel to their breakout hit. The dialogue sounds far more natural than in the previous games, and while I understand the desire for more Max and Chloe moments, Life is Strange 2 is better for telling its own story and not relishing in fan service. Sean and Daniel Diaz are more than worthy protagonists, and their story doesn’t shy away from the systemic and personal racism faced by Hispanic Americans. There are gut wrenching moments here that feel earned through its writing and characterization, and it’s one of the better examples I’ve seen of small choices feeling meaningful. You can’t turn either brother into entirely different characters, but the choices you make feel impactful nonetheless. The writing is sharp enough that most of the options feel like realistically tough decisions for Sean that will have consequences but feel within his character, and it sticks the landing in a way that previous Life is Strange games haven’t. Now that all the episodes are out (and on Game Pass), I sincerely hope this finds a larger audience.

6. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Fire Emblem may be more well known as a tactics series, but the real treat of Three Houses is that it doubles as a visual novel, and a surprising great one at that. The main loop of this game involves building relationships with and between different characters and seeing how their stories and interactions play out. It’s like if the social link system from Persona could go between your party members as well, and there were an entire school of anime teenagers to choose from. What’s most impressive, however, is that the character work in this game feels meaningful. Characters start out feeling like tropes but go into surprising directions. Even the students I didn’t end up liking still had enough going on to feel worth exploring their stories and how they all came together throughout its lengthy campaign. I went deep into recruiting students from different houses, drafting lesson plans to mold each character into the fighter I wanted, and putting them in activities or battle configurations together to see the stories I was most interested in. And while I'm not going pretend that this is the deepest strategy game around, I enjoyed seeing how the units played off of each other and how the different classes changed as my characters leveled up.

5. Control

I’m going to be honest, my first few hours of Control were frustrating. I instantly loved the game’s weird, Lynchian atmosphere and wanted to know more about the bizarre characters and settings it presented, but I felt like I was fighting poor performance (even on an Xbox One X), unnecessarily punishing checkpoints, and extreme difficulty spikes at every turn. It’s a testament to how great the world building is that I pushed through one particularly annoying boss fight (and its awful checkpoint beforehand). I’m glad I did though because once you get your full array of psychic powers, Control becomes something special. The movement and combat feel fluid and the game’s latter half of full of trippy moments that play with audio and visual design in spectacular ways, making good on its premise in the process. It’s the kind of experience that sticks with you long after you’re done with it, as there just aren’t enough games like it. The more I thought about it in the months since I finished it, the easier it became for me to recommend and the higher it crawled on my list. Yes, it performs terribly on consoles, and no, I didn’t love every moment of it. But at the same time, Control is exceptional when everything is clicking, and it gave me an experience unlike anything else I’ve ever played. Oh, and it plays Porcupine Tree's "Fear of a Blank Planet" during the end credits, so it's automatically in my top 5.

4. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

What a bizarre video game. On the surface, Bloodstained is such an obvious spiritual successor to Symphony of the Night that it puts it openly in its title. At a time where a new indie Metroidvania is seemingly released every week, an oft-delayed Kickstarted tribute to a specific one from 1997 really has no business being good… at all. However, Bloodstained leans so far into its Kickstarter origins that it comes out feeling like the best kind of homage. As in one, that nails the look and feel of the original, and then takes in weird directions that a major studio never sign off on. The tone is a mix of Castlevania nostalgia and silly humor, and it couldn’t be more fun. Mixed in with its gothic monsters are pets from what I assume are backers of the game, and Castlevania’s portrait enemies are replaced with just pictures of seemingly random people (again, probably backers). That goofiness extends to the writing and gameplay, where there’s an overwhelming amount of powers, summons, recipes, and traversal options that all but break the game in interesting ways, while also giving the player far greater freedom about how to explore and fight than just about any other game of its kind. It’s a shockingly tremendous game, and one of my biggest surprises of 2019.

3. Apex Legends

As someone who grew up playing first-person shooters on controllers, Apex Legends is the battle royale I wanted when the genre broke out a few years ago. It’s a fun, fast-paced game that doesn’t feel as punishing or isolating as the tactical shooters the genre originally spun out of, and has a varied cast of characters with unique and meaningful special abilities. Most surprisingly, however, is how well Apex deals with communication among your teammates. My experience with multiplayer shooters is typically that I’ll play with friends until they fall off. Then I’ll play with strangers until the community proves toxic enough that it ruins my experience and I fall off (sorry Overwatch…). Apex feels like a revelation in this respect and and kept me playing long after my friends decided it wasn’t for them. It never bothered me that you had to play on a team, as the robust pinging system to highlight enemies, loot, or suggested directions to move allowed me to communicate strategically with strangers without ever having to hook up my mic or hears theirs. It reminded me of how fun multiplayer shooters can be, and I can’t wait to get back into it in 2020.

2. Disco Elysium

From its opening few hours, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like Disco Elysium. It's a cross between an old-school CRPG and point-and-click adventure game that presents a grimy, almost nihilistic aesthetic from the outset, and despite some silly touches, I feared it would lead to the type of cynical yet literary sounding writing I grew out of after high school. However, the more I unpacked of Disco Elysium’s world, exploring and making choices, letting the game roll dice for skill checks behind the scenes, the more I begin to see how the world reacted to literally everything. And I began to love it. There was a moment early on where the personified voices in my character's head, each one fully written and tied to its own skill and level, started arguing about how I should a respond to situation. I realized I wasn’t gaining an advantage by putting points into specific skills but creating the bias lens my character sees Disco Elysium through. It wasn’t just that my points in empathy allowed me to pass a skill check and gain more information, but that my character would start thinking about the world around through an emphatic perspective, and and that it would be up to me whether I cared enough to listen. Essentially, I was leveling up a series of untrusty narrators inside my own head. However, it’s not just that my character has its own biases, but that every other character you meet in this city block has their own sets of biases as well, and they’ll react to what you say and do based on each other's biases intersect. And if you know where to look at what to say, you’ll learn about where those biases come from and the politics that shaped Revachol. You see how these characters were shaped by recent history and why their conversations go a certain way, and it only helps that Disco Elysium wears politics boldly on its sleeve in a way few games have the courage or ability to. There are layers to the world building here rarely found in video games, and it’s not just that Disco Elysium feels adaptive, but lived in. It’s an impressive achievement in writing and game design, all told in the medium of a CRPG that completely eschews combat.

1. Outer Wilds

How do I even describe a game like Outer Wilds? Seriously, I’m asking for help here. You can pitch it as some combination of the exploration and emergent storytelling of Breath of the Wild, the space travel of No Man’s Sky, the logic puzzle structure of Return of the Obra Dinn, the time loop of Majora’s Mask, the environment puzzles of The Witness, and the non-linear narrative of Gone Home, but not only is that hypothetical game all but impossible to picture, it doesn’t tell the story of why Outer Wilds is so special. And as I’ve found many times through trying and pleading to recommend this game to anyone who will listen over the latter half of 2019, it’s a game that I want so badly to explain all of the amazing moments packed into it, but I also don’t want these moments to be spoiled.

The thing is, so much of what I love about Outer Wilds is in the joy of discovery, and how it understands that better than just about any of game I’ve ever played. It tells a complex, nuanced story that can pieced together in whatever order the player finds it, and while it gives you tools to help draw through lines to help connect everything, it leaves it up to you to think critically about the world around you. And no, Outer Wilds is not a “narrative” game in the traditional sense. This story, while intricately layered and deeply moving, is told primary through translated writing left behind and connects directly to the gameplay. Nothing ever unlocks or upgrades, and there is no combat to speak of, but the knowledge you as the player gain by exploring allows you to solve environmental puzzles and explore areas you didn’t even know existed. Essentially, this is a game about exploring to collect information, and using that information to find more information, and so on, until you have enough information to fit together a beautifully written narrative wrapped inside the most satisfying logic puzzle imaginable.

To put in it perspective, Outer Wilds is not just an easy choice for my favorite game of the year. It’s also my favorite game of the decade, and even after just 6 months away from it, and I’m comfortable in calling it my favorite game of all-time. It’s not just that it’s that good, but that I don’t know if I’ve ever played a game that was more perfectly aligned with the way my brain operates. And I’m not sure I’ve ever played a better example of what I love about video games, both as a form of entertainment and as a medium for art. It contains some of the greatest moments I’ve experienced in a video game, and sticks the landing in a profound way that I desperately want to discuss, but can’t. Play this game. Please. I can’t guarantee that you will love it as much as I did, but I can assure it’s unlike anything you’ve ever played.

Yes, I'm publishing my Game of the Year list in January for the second year in a row. Considering how much I do with my end of year music list, however, I'm going to give myself a pass for being slightly late. And while I echo the chorus that 2018 wasn't the all-time year for video games that 2017 was, I still found a number of gaming experiences (specifically 10 I suppose) that resonated enough with me throughout the last 12 months to inspire another list.

But first, some housekeeping:

Honorable Mentions:

Night in the Woods: Technically a 2017 game, but I played the Switch version that came out in February. That’s not enough for me to count it as a 2018 game, but I wanted to include it here to simply say it would have made last year’s list if I had played it in time and that it pulls off a sort of conversational tone in its dialogue that is hard to pull out off in any medium, but is unheard of in video games.

Warhammer Vermintide 2: The gameplay loop of Vermintide 2 scratches an itch for Left 4 Dead that I didn’t know I had, and the sheer variety and intuitiveness of the combat made smashing rats extremely satisfying. The clunky menus and lack of support throughout the year kept me from coming back, but I enjoyed my time with it a lot more than I expected to.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: The shockingly detailed “World of Light” campaign has received a lot of attention, and rightly so, but my biggest surprise with this Smash is how much I’ve enjoyed all of the weird multiplayer modes Nintendo has thrown in. From “Smashdown,” where you go through the whole roster with each character only allowed to be picked once, to 3v3 and 5v5 team modes, there’s a lot of options here that makes this more than just another Smash Bros. game.

Laser League: One of the more fun and novel multiplayer experiences of the year. Unfortunately, no one played it, so I don’t think I was ever able to get a full match in without at least one bot.

Now, the top actual 10 top:

10. Into the Breach

Into the Breach is a puzzle game hidden inside a tactics game. Instead of your typical loop of making a move and seeing how the enemy reacts, Into the Breach puts you in situations where you see how the enemies will move ahead of time and challenges you to protect your own units and the buildings around you. The matches are nicely bite-sized and the game’s pixelated mechs look outstanding, but I also found myself enjoying it more in spite of its "roguelike" mechanics than because of it, as I rarely found the motivation to experiment with new mechs or unlockable powers due to having to restart with every death. Still, there’s something to Into the Breach, particularly with its aesthetic and unique approach to a tactics genre that rarely feels innovative.

9. Forza Horizon 4

I fully admit that a lot of what I like about Forza Horizon 4 has probably been in other games in the series. However, as a newcomer to the franchise’s arcade spinoffs and as someone who generally isn’t huge into driving games, this one instantly hit me with a sense of speed I haven’t experienced since the glory days of Burnout. There is just something that feels so satisfying about whisking by the world around you a split second away from a possible crash at any moment, but Forza integrates the right amount of finesse as well. Each small difficulty bump forces you to think about your turning and set ups more and up, and the handling changes just enough with each change in season that it nudged me towards trying different cars and experimenting. It’s the kind of game I never would have tried if not for Xbox’s fantastic Game Pass service, and even if I didn’t stick with the weekly challenges, I really enjoyed my time with it.

8. Dragon Ball FighterZ

As someone with nostalgia for all things Dragon Ball and Marvel vs. Capcom, the makers of Guilty Gear devolving a 3v3 tag team fighter based on the popular anime was a shoo-in for my list. I wish there was more (or really better) single player content, as I wasted a great deal of time in the horribly repetitive story mode just to unlock a single character, but the actual fighting part of FighterZ looks stunning and plays even better. Purely as a fighting game, it hits a rare balance between technical and accessible, as auto combos make the basic mechanics easier to grasp and immediately feel fluid to play, but there’s a great deal of depth lurking beneath. But just as importantly, there's an obvious love and admiration for Dragon Ball here that puts it over the top. The way specific characters will interact if they are on the same team or against each other, or how specific animations and finishers will trigger only if you match how that battle went in the anime gives it a charming and ultimately rewarding level of fan service that only adds to an already fantastic game.

7. Monster Hunter: World

I really didn’t think I would like Monster Hunter: World. I know the story is the same for so many others, as Monster Hunter has been a notoriously difficult franchise to get into over the years, but even as I was playing World, I still didn’t think I would ever turn a corner. The opening missions took forever, since I didn’t have a great understanding of how I should be approaching these giant monster battles, and playing with friends (the whole reason I was even trying it to begin with) was needlessly obtuse. The moment the game told me I needed to watch a cut scene to even play co-operatively was the moment I felt was done with Monster Hunter forever. But I stayed with it. I started to figure out weaknesses and strengths, weapon and armor builds, and took lessons from every battle. I never actually became “good” at Monster Hunter, but I became good enough to have fun and find my own loop of going out and getting the parts I needed and checking in with friends in our guild about who needs what drops. It quickly turned from an impenetrable puzzle to a fun, communal experience, and something I’m really glad I stuck with.

6. Out of the Park Baseball 19

Yes, I put a text-based baseball simulator on my game of the year list, and one in a yearly franchise at that! Hear me out though. If you take out the actual baseball parts of Out of the Park, you’re left with a deep and engaging strategy game with a monumental amount of stats and customization. That’s always been what Out of the Park is about, and it’s never been better. However, this year’s edition adds actual moving players that you can see in your games. No, it’s not The Show or anywhere near that level of graphical detail, but just the visualization of every hit not only makes strategic moments easier, but adds a level of immersion that makes the game more exciting and rewarding. It made me feel all the more elated to turn my poor Seattle Mariners into World Series champions, and all the more sad when I remembered it’s never going to happen in real life.

5. Destiny 2: Forsaken

I debated whether to even include this, as it’s an expansion to a 2017 game, but Forsaken is such a massive improvement from the base version of Destiny 2 that it deserves its own place. It would be easy to say that Forsaken does for Destiny 2 what “The Taken King” did for Destiny 1, but even that isn’t 100% accurate. The Taken King fleshed out Destiny in a way the game badly needed, but Forsaken is the first time the Destiny franchise actually feels like a “games as a service,” or at least something whose content I actually wanted to repeat. Nearly every bit of repeatable content, from the excellent new Gambit multiplayer mode to strikes to all of the mysterious challenges in the Dreaming City (one of two new planets and easily the most beautiful looking and fully featured in series history) reward you with something tangible while also progressing larger quests. I felt like Destiny 2 valued my time in a way the franchise never had and gave me reasons to keep playing. And when the shooting feels this good, that’s really all I ever needed.

4. Red Dead Redemption II

Red Dead Redemption II is not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a fascinating one. It’s a world rendered in such extraordinary detail that asks (or really forces) you to play at such a meticulous pace that it creates a type of atmosphere that few blockbuster games attempt, let alone achieve. It’s certainly not without its problems, as the guns don’t feel great, the movement is clunky, and the main story missions are too often unclear about what causes a fail state, but I learned to roll with Read Dead and enjoy its pace. I entered this world for long stretches at a time, riding to my eventual destination and getting side tracked along the way with all sorts of side missions and interactions with characters that felt like they lived and breathed in the world independent of my actions. Arthur's journey is full of memorable individuals, from your increasingly desperate gang leader Dutch van der Linde to the young John Marston, whose maturation throughout the story is important without always being a central focus, and returning to your camp after a long journey and hearing how your crew interacts creates a feeling of home that I rarely ever see in games. But even with its individual highs and lows, the thing about Red Dead that I will take with me is Arthur Morgan himself, as he’s a strong, nuanced protagonist who is given the time and space to grow throughout the course of the game. There are just so many stand out scenes and moments from my time with Arthur that struck me in a way video game stories and performances rarely do, that I found myself role playing his character with my choices in the open world and feeling a level of tension I never get with video game narratives.

3. Return of the Obra Dinn

This was a late entry for me, but I’m really glad I snuck Obra Dinn in before the end of the year. Not only is this a fantastic game and a lot more fun to actually play than Lucas Pope’s debut, Papers Please, but Return of the Obra Dinn feels unique as a gaming experience. It’s a logic puzzle at its core, as you play as an insurance adjuster tasked with finding the names and cause of death for all 60 passengers on the Obra Dinn, a wrecked ship from the early 1800s. You see each passengers’ final moments, largely in reverse order, and are tasked with piecing things together from there. It’s the type of game that inspired me to break out my notebook and write down clues and small details in a way that I hadn’t seen since games like “Her Story” and “The Witness.” However, it’s not just that Obra Dinn is novel, as it’s so well put together as a puzzle game and the structure largely prevents brute forcing your way through answers. If you get three passengers’ fates correct, you’ll be rewarded with a satisfying music cue that made me feel on top of the world. In fact, I was so gripped by figuring out all of the details of the Obra Dinn that if silly things like work and food and life weren’t in the way, I would have played this in one 10 hour sitting. I couldn’t get it out of my head, and I need something else like it. Please make another one of these. Someone!

2. Dead Cells

I remember my first major run of Dead Cells. I had finally cleared the first three levels and earned the right to fight the first boss. As you might expect, it kicked my ass, sending me right back to the game’s beginning. A few runs later, I crawled back, rolled away from the boss as I saw his attacks coming, set up traps, and found my way past it by the skin of my teeth. A few hours later and I could get past that boss my sleep, using it as a way to test new weapons and builds.

That’s the beauty of Dead Cells. It’s not just a "roguelike" where you use your currency (cells) to unlock new weapons, methods of traversal, and modifiers, but a game that just feels so damn good to play that every death feels like your own fault and the tools to learn from your mistakes are right in front of you. It would be easy to find a play style and stick with it, but Dead Cells rewards you for experimenting and going out of your comfort zone. If you had told me early on I would eventually find success with arrows and shields, completing forgoing any melee weapons, I would never have believed you. It’s just that every aspect of Dead Cells feels so well put together, from the fluid animation, to the way you can cancel out of moves, to the oh so satisfying roll dodge, that even the vastly different weapon types all felt natural to use. There are a lot of games like this, but none are as tense, exhilarating, and rewarding as what Motion Twin has crafted, and it achieves a type of “one more run” addictiveness that supersedes the fact that these runs can actually get pretty long after a while. It isn’t just “another one of these,” but a game that’s progression and moment to moment action feels so perfect that it completely revolutionizes the genres its building from.

1. Celeste

Celeste is a game that came out at the perfect time. After an especially rough December where I felt out of control of my mental health in a way I hadn’t in nearly a decade, I never could have imagined how much solace I would find in a tiny indie platformer. The thing is, I knew I was probably going to enjoy Celeste on some level. It’s reminiscent of Super Meat Boy in terms of its tight controls and quick resets after each of your many deaths, and that’s very much my kind of game. What I didn’t expect, however, is how emotionally invested I ended up getting in Celeste’s story and how Madeline’s journey connected to both the gameplay and my own struggles with depression. Celeste is a game about a young girl climbing a mountain, but the very act of playing Celeste is itself a mountain, and the game encourages you through it. It’s the rare game of its kind that feels accepting of its player base and isn’t there to laugh at your failure. This positivity ranges from its deep accessibility options to its gorgeous soundtrack to simply reminding you to relax during its loading screens. And even as someone who loves these kinds of games and actively wanted a platforming challenge, I needed the encouragement. Not just because of the game itself, but because I found myself thinking so much about my own mental health while playing, relating more than I ever wanted to admit to character who is literally running from her inner demons. It’s not a game about getting over depression, but a game about coming to terms with who you are and learning to love yourself. And Celeste reminded me that it’s OK. And that I’m OK.

2017 was the year I truly gained a passion for video games. It's not that I didn't have some sort of a passion before, but this was a year that took gaming to more than just a hobby I enjoyed and into something that I felt much stronger about. At just about any point in 2017, I was in the progress of playing a video game, and while I've certainly been engaged with gaming news and streaming websites like Giant Bomb, I've never really been able to put together a true end of year top 10 list before. Hell, I think the first time I've actually written about video games in over a decade.

I bought and played more new releases than I have in any other year, and saw gaming go in so many new and ambitious directions in so many different genres. This includes a new and ambitious console from Nintendo, which changed the way I experienced video games. The Switch allowed me to take my games on the bus during my long commutes and return to them on my TV or couch and at any point when I got home. As someone who has always been a terrible offender of buying Steam games and never playing them, the Switch gave me the kind of flexibility I needed to engage with gaming on my terms, both with expansive big console titles and bite size indie games.

So without further ado, here are some of my favorite games I played in 2017.

Honorable Mentions:

Destiny 2: I have some major issues with the way Destiny 2 handles post-story content, as none of the events, crucible, or its raid did much for me at all. However, it did provide a much stronger campaign than the vanilla game or even The Taken King, and was still a fun social hub to hang out with friends during my time with it.

Puyo Puyo Tetris: Puyo Puyo Tetris technically came out in Japan in 2014, but was finally ported over to the States this year. It has some of the worst visual novel story bits I’ve ever seen, but otherwise is an ingenious puzzle game that was both a fun time at parties and a good way to kill time on my commutes.

Pyre: I absolutely love the way Pyre looks and sounds, and I thoroughly enjoy the way its cosmic basketball/hockey/sports ball thing segments play. Even its visual novel aspects bring something new to the table, as the ability to hover over words for a reminder of what they mean in its fantasy universe is something that similar games should be utilizing from this point forward. However, I still haven’t finished it, and despite loving nearly every individual part, I’ve found some of the dialogue to be a little dry and long winded. I like the game and plan to finish it, and it wouldn’t shock me if by the end I regret not putting Pyre in my top 10 for the year, but I just can't yet.

Tekken 7: I don’t consider myself a Tekken fan at all, but the small chunks I’ve played of Tekken 7 make me want to include it here. I actually find it fun to play, and if you had told me that in a year with a new Marvel vs. Capcom and Injustice game I would rather play Tekken, I never would have believed you.

10. Sonic Mania

Sonic Mania was a huge surprise for me, in part because of Sonic’s notorious recent history, but also because I’ve truthfully never really enjoyed 2D Sonic much at all. Yes, that even includes the classic Genesis games. However, Sonic Mania is the best type of retro game, as it plays like how you remember the classics, not like they actually played. That leaves Sonic Mania feeling like both a loving tribute to the early platformers, but also a cleaned up modernization that translates Sonic’s sense of speed and open level design to a game that looks, sounds, and plays beautifully in 2017.

9. Splatoon 2

Splatoon 2 is a lot like the original Splatoon, but having never owned a Wii U, this was my first time getting hooked on Nintendo’s light shooter. And despite some unforgivable limitations in multiplayer options for a 2017 game, I really did get hooked. The basic gameplay loop of covering as much of each map with as much paint as you can simply infectious and presents a unique take on both the traditional shooter gameplay and aesthetic. The matches are quick, making it my go to game to play on the couch between watching UFC fights, and Nintendo has kept the game fresh by periodically adding new maps and weapons.

8. Doki Doki Literature Club

I don’t want to say too much about Doki Doki Literature Club, as it's best to go in as blind as possible. It pretends to be a horny visual novel and turns out to be a game that challenges the notion of how interactive storytelling can work. I found that it took a little took long to get where it wanted to go, even in a 3-4 hour run time, but the last half makes the tedious first hour worth it. I’m not going to say any more. It's free, so just go play it.

7. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

For all of its many problems, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds feels like a revolutionary shooter. It’s certainly far from the first battle royale style game, but it’s the first that makes the tension, precise shooting, and rush of even getting one kill accessible to the masses. I’m terrible at it, but I’ve still had a ton of fun playing it with friends, seeing the crazy moments that transpire and trying to stay calm and strategize as we get into the top 20, 10, 5, and in that moment where it’s just me (or one of my squadmates) against one other player. I haven’t wanted to play it over and over again like some have, but it’s simultaneously home to some of my tensest and funniest moments of gaming in 2017.

6. Persona 5

To put it simply, Persona 4 is a game that, on most days, I consider my favorite game of all-time. That left Persona 5 with a lot to live up to it, and while I would admit that parts of it really disappointed me (after all, it’s not my GOTY or even in my top 5), I still found it to be a mostly great JRPG that improved on quite a few elements of the Persona franchise. In particular, the visual novel segments where you move around the city and spend time with your “confidants” is far more expansive than its ever been in a Persona game, and everything from the menus to the music are oozing with style. The dungeons have become much more involved as well, which is great when it works, and far less great towards the end when it introduces annoying gameplay mechanics that start to make progressing a chore. Still, the story and characters mostly worked for me, even if doesn’t reach the heights of Persona 4, and as a whole Atlus has managed to make a JRPG that feels relevant in 2017.

5. SteamWorld Dig 2

Out of all of the games on this list, SteamWorld Dig 2 might be the most pleasant to play. The core gameplay loop of digging through mines, collecting gems, and bringing them back to town to sell for new upgrades made hour long commutes feel like 10 minutes. Each of the many upgrades you encounter feel meaningful, and the game allows you to respec any time you are in the main town to better explore new areas. It’s one of the most fun and purely addicting “Metroidvania” style games I’ve played, and while I’m mostly thankful it chose that style of exploration instead of a procedural generated Spelunky-like loop, I loved it so much that wished it had something more to keep me playing for longer than its 6-7 hour story.

4. Cuphead

Just look at Cuphead. This is one of the most gorgeous games I have ever seen, with art and music that seem straight out of a 1930s cartoon. Even years after its initial announcement and after hours of playing, I’m still struck every time I see the way this game moves. It’s something special. The good news is that playing Cuphead is also incredibly fun, and in a way I didn’t expect. I’ve never been a huge fan of Contra, Metal Slug, or tough as nails style side scrolling shooters (Super Meat Boy type platformers on the other hand…), but Cuphead mixes things up in intelligent ways. Most of the game focuses on bite size boss battles that are generally very difficult, but easy to restart, learn patterns, and allow you to get better at the more you play. There are also platforming and aerial levels that are fun in their right and provide a different type of challenge. Whether playing solo or co-op, I’ve had a great time with Cuphead, and hopefully I’ll get good enough at it to finally finish it in 2018.

3. Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey is an exercise in constant gratification. While its newest gameplay mechanic is “capturing” different objects and creatures to use them to platform and solve puzzles, its real hook is how every inch of space in each of varied worlds is there for a reason. Whether it’s sitting in plain sight, hidden behind an elaborate puzzle, or a reward for completing increasingly difficult platforming sections, there are moons to collect all over Super Mario Odyssey, and the game constantly rewards your creativity and exploration. Combine that with touching moments of nostalgia, a wide variety of ways to interact with each world, and some of the most elaborate post-credits gameplay I’ve ever seen in a video game, and you have what is easily my favorite 3D Mario game to date. It also so happens just happens to be the weirdest.

2. Nier: Automata

Nier: Automata is a game that means a great deal to me. From the outset, it routinely references philosophers and presents fairly common questions about what makes a human being, whether machines can be human, and that type of thing, but it’s not until hours later when you start to see the layers of Nier’s own philosophy come to the surface. This is a game about what it means to connect to human beings, to be part of a culture of violence, and to do “human” things that none of us really understand. It’s a game about how we as people can never really connect to each other, as much as we try, and experiencing that story while interacting in that world, slaughtering countless “machines” when you start the see the real devastation of continuing a cycle of violence in that world and peeling back the layers over multiple playthroughs is something remarkable that can only work in a video game.

Nier has its problems from a gameplay perspective, although I do think it is fun to play, but its combination of hack and slash JRPG, platformer, and bullet hell shooter has a way of feeling like something completely new for gaming and like the creators haven’t played a video game since the PS2 days. Parts of it are repetitive and the open world is full of invisible walls, but some of its shoddier elements are more than made up for by its narrative and a soundtrack that is simply second to none among video games I’ve played. And even when the gameplay on its own falters at times, what I interacted with always connected the narrative and world that Nier created. I had an emotional reaction to both the decisions I was making in a more traditional storytelling sense and the things I had to do from a gameplay perspective. No game I’ve ever played has managed to merge those two things in quite the same way Nier does, and it does so with moments that left me completely amazed and utterly broken. This is one the strongest and most ambitious narrative focused games I’ve ever played, and Nier: Automata is an experience I will never forgot.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Every so often, I become completely consumed by a game. As in, for an extended period of time I want to spend every bit of time I can experiencing that world, discovering every bit of it I can. Persona 4 was like that for me. The Witcher 3 was like that for me. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was like that for me, and I look back upon my time in this amazing universe as one of my favorite months and change playing video games.

I’m far from the first to mention that Nintendo turning one of its flagship franchises into an open world survival game was a shocking and ambitious move, but more than anything the reason I love Breath of the Wild is how it rewards the player for thinking creatively. All of its gameplay mechanics work together and create a sense of immersion rarely found in games, and no point does it force the player to solve a puzzle, fight an enemy, or complete a challenge in one specific way. It’s a giant sandbox full of rewards, and even after 100 hours of playing, I never got tired of exploring and finding new things. This is a game where simply wandering in one direction will eventually lead you to something amazing, or at worst a couple of shrines (essentially puzzle rooms that have loot inside) along the way. It values your time and rewards exploration in a way few games do, and despite being a single player narrative game, how you interact with the world along your journey feels like a very personal story in and of itself.

I was awe-inspired the first time I scaled a giant mountain, discovered a shrine from new my vantage point, and paraglided down to it. I was awe-inspired the first time I knocked a weapon out of an enemy’s hands at the same time mine broke, with both us running towards the flung club trying to grab it first. I was awe-inspired the first time I encountered a dragon, shot it down, and used its scale to solve a puzzle for a shrine I had no idea was even there. I could go on for about 100 more sentences, and I haven’t even mentioned its wacky sense of humor, Miyazaki-esque love of nature, and the fact that its lack of RPG progression keep it from ever feeling like a grind. I love this game and all of the amazing moments I had with it, and in a few years it would not surprise me if I look back upon The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and think of it as my favorite game of all-time.