Welcome to Go! Go! GOTY! 2017

Hey there gents of the year and gals of the year to Game of the Year revision time. For those of you unacquainted with this series, every December I take stock of all the smaller unplayed games I have sitting in my Steam and PSN libraries that were launched earlier that same year. I then blitz through them all, or at least as many as possible, in preparation for the GOTY material I create towards the end of the month, which usually coincides with Giant Bomb's own GOTY output during the holidays.

Despite being far more Indie-centric this year with the weekly Indie Game of the Week feature, I've still managed to accrue half a dozen 2017 games I'm eager to try out before I'm prepared to start putting together a top ten and the various end-of-year awards. Naturally, I have some larger 2017 games to delve into also, but I'm not sure I'll have the time to finish Nioh or Ys VIII (which, honestly, it sounds like I'd be better off putting away until that localization fix transpires) before December's done. The only other outstanding game is Prey, which will be bringing up the rear if I make good time as a decidedly un-Indie bonus item. Fortunately, if I'm unable to find anything to excite and entice in next couple of weeks, I'll still have a top ten list for 2017 that I'm reasonably happy enough with. Nothing wrong with seeking some last minute tweaks, though.

Speaking of tweaks, the rules for this year's Go! Go! GOTY! are going to be slightly more loose to accommodate the rest of my busy blogging schedule. For comparison's sake, you can find the rules (and games) for prior seasons of Go! Go! GOTY! here: 2014, 2015 and 2016. This year, the rules are:

• Instead of a daily update schedule, I'm only going to be posting G!G!GOTY! blogs once I've completed the games they pertain to. A new entry will show up anywhere between 24 hours to a few days after the previous, though I am still maintaining the three day rule - if a game takes longer than that, I'm writing something up, tossing it to the back of the queue, and moving onto the next.
• I'll try to finish every game I start, unless they really don't agree with me or they aren't the sort of games with obvious completion states. For the latter, I'll try and see a decent slice of the content. (All these damn roguelikes this year, I swear.)
• The cut-off this year will be the 18th of December again, but I can't imagine I'll need that much time unless I suddenly get a bunch of last minute additions from a Humble Bundle or PSN sale or some profoundly generous gift-givers. I mean, if anyone has codes for Hollow Knight or SteamWorld Dig 2 just sitting around... (yeah, I feel gross, let's move on.)
• As for my other blogging series: The Top Shelf and All-New Saturday Summaries will continue as standard on Tuesdays and Saturdays, but Indie Game of the Week is taking a fortnight off. These Go! Go! GOTY! blogs are already covering Indie games in a similar scored review format, so I don't see the need to double up. It'll come back for the last two Thursdays of 2017, i.e. the 21st and the 28th, for a nice round fifty episodes for the year.

Be sure to check the table of contents below for links and new updates: