Top Ten Games of 2017

I can say without any hesitation that 2017 was one of the best years of all time in terms of video game releases. What makes it even better is that the real world events of 2017 were depressing to say the least, so it was nice to look to my hobby for new levels of happiness and quality. Video games rule, and I'm glad.

As usual I will be listing my top ten games of the year in descending order. Please keep in mind that these are my opinions based on games I personally completed in 2017.


10. Digimon World: Next Order

The original Digimon World was ahead of its time, and was truly a one of a kind game. Raising Digimon in an open world didn't happen again until now.

Next Order brings back the city building and Digimon raising that I love, but this time you raise TWO at the same time. I lost countless hours of sleep to this game, and I hope they continue using this formula.





9. Gravity Rush 2

Gravity Rush got its start on the Vita, which means it was pretty much DOA. Despite a rough start the game garnered enough of a following to garner a sequel that improves upon the original in almost every way.

Once again you control Kat, the Gravity Queen as you fly through the air using your magical Gravity powers. The world is larger, and the mechanics work a lot better than before. Sadly the story is wrapped up, so we might not get to see another.




8. Hollow Knight

Metroidvania games have been wearing out their welcome for me recently, but Hollow Knight pulled me right back in. Team Cherry has manages to create a beautifully bleak world that's surprisingly fun to explore.

You play a little bug knight with a nail as you explore a long abandoned kingdom. The combat initially seems a bit mashy, but I eventually got into a rhythm and enjoyed it a lot.




7. Nier: Automata

I feel like I'm one of the few people who played the original Nier, and am one of the even fewer people who actually liked it. Due to that fact I put off playing Automata for a lot longer than I should have, because I was worried that the hype would fall flat for me. It didn't.

While the combat wasn't the best, it was serviceable. What drew me in was the crazy existentialist story of a few androids. The themes and questions that Automata bring up are absolutely crazy.




6. Yakuza 0

I fell into the Yakuza franchise during its third entry and I have loved it ever since. What's crazy to me is that this is the entry when the series finally blew up in the West. The story goes back to the 1980's when the Japanese real-estate market was blowing up, and a young Kazuma Kiryu is just starting his Yakuza career.

You get to see characters you've known for years in a brand new context. On top of that it introduces many new combat styles to keep it feeling fresh.




5. Pyre

What I like about SuperGiant games is that each one of their games have been different. Bastion was an action game, Transistor was turn based strategy, and now Pyre is a visual novel mixed with a weird fantasy sport.

I thoroughly enjoyed dunking my way across the Downside in an attempt to rescue my fellow teammates from their banishment. I'd give more context, but it would ruin the experience for you. Just know that it's a well developed world, and the part where you play a sport is fun.



4. Super Mario Odyssey

Mario is the first video game I ever owned, which is why I think Odyssey is so special. To me it feels like the culmination of everything Nintendo has been working towards with Mario since its inception. It manages to be an excellent new adventure while paying homage to the days of old. I teared up a few times.

It feels like you want a Mario game to feel, and it's so awesome that you can possess enemies with your magical hat. Odyssey rules.




3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Breath of the Wild is a reinvention of the classic Zelda formula that still manages to hold onto what makes people consider something to be a Zelda game. The open world is immense and filled with a lot to see.

What's amazing is that it made exploring an open world fun for me again. It's not overly concerned in funneling you towards all the coolest content, and lets you discover the secrets the world has to offer on your own. Even more importantly is that it proves Nintendo can renew their old formulas.



2. Persona 5

Persona 5 is exactly the JRPG I wanted it to be. Even though people seemed to turn on it relatively quickly I still think it's great. I like the characters, world, and story. Don't even get me started on how amazing the music is.

Yes, it should have come out in Winter of 2014. However, the game we got was well worth the wait.




1. Night in the Woods

I found out about this game from a random ad on the PS4 store and I'm so glad I did. It's an adventure game about a cat named Mae who has dropped out of college and returned to her home town. She realizes that everything is both simultaneously the same and very different. Something strange is going on and it's up to you to figure it out. All I can say is that you should probably play this game.

Game Time - January 2017

2016 was a pretty good year for video games, but 2017 is going to be off the chain! Most of the time January is a slow month in terms of releases. Usually I would use the two months to catch up on my backlog, or go back to games I had missed from the previous year. This year I didn't get a lot of time to do that, because the releases are coming fast and furious already!

To kick off the new year I went on a trip to a fighting game tournament. Due to being on a plane I busted out my Vita and tried to see if I could finish Danganronpa 2. I started it when it came out years ago, but for some reason or another I didn't get very far. Upon returning from the trip I played it to completion. I don't think it's as good as the original, but it's still a decent product.

Halfway through the month, the new games started to flow. Gravity Rush 2 was the first one I picked up. It's a lot like the original, but better in almost every facet. The jump to PS4 did the game justice and it's doubly cool because now it will reach a wider audience. Sadly I have not finished it yet, because there is so much content and I have a problem where I need to complete every sidequest.

Yakuza 0 came out shortly after and it's just what you'd expect. It's a Yakuza game, but set in the 80's. All the goofy side missions and deathly serious Yakuza drama are back! I've had very little time to play it so far, but I have enjoyed myself so far. I set it aside to play Digimon World: Next Order, but that's a story for next month!

I've been buried in games, and I need to talk about them. However, this month I am going to try and keep each game to around three paragraphs. While I normally try and talk about each game for around sic or seven that can get a bit too wordy. I think I'll enjoy writing these a lot more when they're shorter, but we'll see!

Danganronpa 2

The original Danganronpa wasn't even on my radar when it released a few years ago. Mainly because I didn't know what it was. The cover had the franchise mascot Monokuma on the cover art. So seeing a weird looking anime bear I wrote it off as a bad game and didn't look up anything about it. Somehow I stumbled across video of it and ordered it immediately. It's a visual novel, so there's a lot of text. However, you can walk around the map freely as opposed to moving through menus. The concept is that children are being held captive in an area and if they want to leave their captor says they must kill each other. So inevitably murders occur and then you have to have a trial in order to figure out who the murderer was. This is where it turns into a more frantic version of Ace Attorney with a bunch of weird mini-games.

The first game takes place in a school, while the second takes place on an island. Danganronpa 2 is a direct sequel. At first it doesn't seem like it, but by the end there's so much about the first game they assume you know I don't know if you'd understand anything without playing it. To me, that's a bummer because I really didn't like the overarching plot of the first game. So when it carried all of that baggage over I was a bit bummed out. The part about Danganronpa I like is getting to know all of the characters and seeing their interactions. The class trials are great too. Solving the murders feels good, with the exception of a few frustrating mini-games. So when the plot dealing with the world outside the murders comes in I can't help but roll my eyes. The last chapter of Danganronpa 2 gets so far up its own ass that half the dialogue is intelligible to the average human.

Who's going to get murdered!?

If the last chapter of the game didn't exist I would recommend it to anyone wholeheartedly. However, now I have to tell people about it with the caveat that the plot falls apart at the end. I absolutely love the core of the franchise, and am glad that it is continuing into a third game. What gives me hope about the third game is that it drops all of the plot from the first two games and is a completely different things. There is still going to be kids murdering each other, and I honestly hope that's all.

Gravity Rush 2

As you may have seen I beat the original Gravity Rush in December. Gravity Rush 2 is obviously a direct sequel that takes place shortly after the events of the original. The gravity controlling girl Kat and her police officer friend Syd were caught in a gravity storm and taken far away from their home in Hecksville. Initially you don't have control over gravity, but after a lengthy intro sequence Kat is able to do almost everything she was before. I've seen a lot of people criticizing the opening, but I personally didn't really mind it. Walking around the mining town without gravity powers makes them feel all the more special when you do get them back. As the game goes on you receive two more styles that change how your powers work. I only got the lunar style, which allows you to jump ridiculously high and fly at ridiculous speeds. It's a fun addition.

Lunar Style lets you go stupidly fast.

The remaster of the original looked fine, but having 2 be developed from the ground up on the PS4 did a lot for it. Now there is much more to the world, and a whole lot more people roaming around on the streets. The new town introduced early in the game feels very lively, and looks beautiful. As with the remaster you no longer have to control anything with the gyro in the controller. You can still move the camera that way, but it would often make me spin out of control. I turned all gyro off as soon as I could in the menu.

With that said I think that the game feels better as a whole. Now that it isn't designed around a Vita specific feature it's much better off. The game seems better as a whole outside of control as well. It characterizes all of the characters worlds better than the original, and actually tackles classism in a tactful manner. I've already played it for a long time, and I don't think I've even halfway. Whether or not the game can continue to hold my attention until the end remains to be seen. The developer said that this game would end Kat's story and as of right now I don't have any idea how they can do that. I guess a lot more has to happen in the story still. I just hope they don't cram it all in very poorly at the end. Video games tend to do that.

Yakuza 0

Yakuza has always been a niche franchise and I don't really know why. Yes, it's very Japanese, but it has a lot of things that popular western developed games have. It's one of the earliest open world franchises I can think of. I mean, sure, the world is just a sub-section of a city, but it's still open. It took me until Yakuza 3 to get on the train, but ever since then I've been singing the praises of Yakuza everywhere I can. So I find it very odd that now that this entry is being widely praised here in the U.S. Perhaps it's because it's a prequel? I guess coming into a franchise five or six entries deep is a bit daunting, but the gameplay stays largely the same between them all. Regardless of how it happened I'm not complaining, because maybe now we won't have to wait years for each new entry to be localized.

I was going to pass on Yakuza 0 until I say this image. No joke.

So now you're saying what is Yakuza all about? Well, it's about Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. They're tough guys who take no guff and have tattoos that cover most of their body. You play as Kazuma Kiryu in all of them, however in Yakuza 0 you also play as Majima Goro (Another series regular). Yakuza is essentially the evolution of old school beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage. You get into a fight and just beat the living hell out of your opponents. You can grab weapons and your opponents with them, or just throw a flurry of blows and grapples. Eventually your character have blue flames emanating off them, which allows you to push triangle for a heat action. These actions are brutal finishers that do a ton of damage. They're all over the top and a pleasure to see every time. The combat has been largely the same for a majority of the franchise so its refreshing to see Kiryu get some different styles to use. It seems that there are four styles and I've gotten one that allows me to punch people so many times they can no longer block. It's awesome.

I'm only around 2 hours in, but this feels like some Yakuza ass Yakuza. I have seen a lot of melodrama, and even a few men take off their shirts before challenging me to a fight. It's all happened before, but it's still fun. The fact that it's set before all the other games during an economic boom is Japan is really cool. Everyone has a ton of money and is trying to make their mark on the city. So far everything has been pretty tame by Yakuza standards, but I'm sure it'll ramp up as I get farther in. I guess what I'm saying is that you should really check out Yakuza. There's never been a better time to get in on the action.

All I can see are Digimon

On the last day of January Digimon World: Next Order came out and It's pretty much all I've been playing since then. Something about it grabbed me in a way that I could not shake off. Following its release I had two days off and I completely destroyed my sleep schedule by staying up until 7 AM two consecutive days. So next month you can look forward to me spouting off all about what a wonderful game it is.

Other than that the only other game due out in February is Horizon Zero Dawn, the much lauded robot animal hunting game from Guerilla games. It's nice to see them making something that isn't Killzone for once, especially something that looks really cool.

I'm sure something else will pop up for me to talk about, but I'll have to wait and see. I've had a fun time chatting, but it's time for me to get back to Digimon now...

What I Watched: Gravity Rush Overture

What I Watched is a series where I tell you about the video game related things I have been watching. This covers everything from documentaries to anime. 

I've been on a bit of a Gravity Rush tear over the past two months. I played all the way through the remaster of the original, and now I'm working my way through the newly released second game in the series. Last month I was loosely aware of the fact that Sony was producing an anime short about the franchise, but I paid it no mind. It turns out that I should have, because it covers the gap between the first game and the second.

It was released in two parts. Overture Face A, and Overture Face B. The first part was around seven minutes long, while the second part was around nine. The animation is very odd. It does what a lot of new anime does, where the art style looks almost CG as opposed to being drawn. Since I'm not anime art expert it could be completely CG for all I know. It looks really good in motion, but there are times where it looks really stilted. Almost as if it was meant for 60 frames a second viewing, but it was being output at 30. However, I am led to believe that it is a stylistic choice, because they use it for some visual gags in the opening of Face A.

As I said previously the purpose of these two short animations is to bridge the gap between the first and second game in the series. For those who are unaware the second game begins in an entirely different place from the first, with little to no explanation. Kat and her police officer friend Syd have found themselves in a mining settlement working to earn their keep. I am close to halfway through the game, which is roughly where Face A takes place.

Face A

There's not a lot to Face A, other than to show that Gravity Rush would make a super cool anime. For some odd reason it begins around  quarter of the way through Gravity Rush 2. It starts off like most anime comic relief where Kat is trying to get some food. She is offered a meat skewer for half price and she takes it. Just then the evil monsters of the world called Nevi attack and her food is taken from her. She then fights them in spectacular gravity defying action to try and save her food. The other gravity shifter Raven shows up as well as Syd. Together they defeat the Nevi menace and reflect back on what brought them to the city of Jirga Para Lhoa.

Face B

Face B takes place very shortly after the original Gravity Rush ends. Kat and Raven are chilling in their sweet pipe room and eating a ton of pretzels. They lament over the fact that many of the orphans they saved have been disappearing without a trace. A gravity storm alert goes off and the two go to check it out. When they arrive they come across some powerful new enemies. In the end they win, but a gravity storm appears and separates them.

Overall

I apologize for pretty much describing the entire plot, but there wasn't a whole lot to it. In fact I was kind of disappointed with the whole thing. When I realized there was some story in between the two games I wan't expecting that half of the thing describing it would be about a skewer of meat. Then the part about the extra story is so think that there's almost nothing to it.

The music is ripped straight from the games, so that's great. The animation is top notch as well, and proves that Gravity Rush could stand on its own if it was made into a full fledged anime. In the end though, I just found myself wanting to play Gravity Rush 2 in order to get the story. One of the coolest thing about it is that it doesn't have actual voice, and still uses the French inspired gibberish of the games.

While I do think that Gravity Rush Overture has merit, I don't really understand why it was produced in the first place. I guess it drove awareness for Gravity Rush 2, but it's not the companion piece it could have been. On the plus side it's very easy to watch, because it's right on YouTube.

Memorable Melodies: Gravity Daze from Gravity Rush

Song: Gravity Daze

Composer: Kohei Tanaka

Games: Gravity Rush 1 and 2

Over the past few months I have been playing a whole lot of Gravity Rush. When I initially got a Vita I tried my best to play it, but controlling the main character Kat in the air with the system's gyro was not my style. During a sweet PSN holiday sale I picked up the HD remaster for PS4 and got hooked. One of the things that drew me in was the catchy tunes on the soundtrack.

I am now playing the second game, and some of the tunes from the original return. The one I chose for this week's memorable melody is the main theme of the game. On the soundtrack it is called Gravity Daze, which is the Japanese name of the franchise. It plays on the main menu of both the first and second games and it always gets me pumped to mess around with Gravity.

It starts off as a sweeping symphony, and then turns into an almost reggae-like mellow jam before returning to its original form. It's a bit all over the place, but so is the game. You're controlling gravity in order to "fall" into the sky. It's all a bit weird, but that's what I love so much about it.