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 - April 2017

For the first few months of the year I tried to focus on playing one game at a time. Everything was going well, but then 2017 showed me that it had no intention of slowing down. Tons of good games are coming out at a rapid pace and now I have buried myself alive in video games. Right now I have started six different games, and finished none of them. Now I don't really know what to do. A few of them I'm not particularly fond of, but I find myself not wanting to really drop anything. It's quite the dilemma.

Today I am here to tell you about two of those six games, and one of the rare few games I have actually finished this year. Surprisingly it was a 96 hour journey that I managed to finish...

Other than spending a ludicrous amount of time on Persona I played a little bit of Flinthook and Yooka-Laylee as well. 

Flinthook

I feel like I've been seeing GIFs of Flinthook forever, but it only just came out a few weeks ago. It's a rogue-like in which you play as a little pirate man with a grappling hook. You run around pirate ships in space and shoot a ton of enemies. It's a very familiar game, except that you can use a sweet grappling hook. This is the "hook" of the game. The ships are split up into rooms, and each room is filled up with a bunch of grappling points. It's hard to describe, but the grappling hook is just straight up fun to use. It feels good to hook onto things. Everything is so fluid, and just feels right. I often find myself getting into a flow of grappling around and shooting.

Grappling hooks have never felt this good!

Like most modern rogue-likes you gain things that carry over after each run. In this you level up and get booster packs. Instead of cards they net you a bunch of powerups that you can equip to help you out. It works very well to keep you going. The powerups help, but so far I haven't found anything that negates the fact that you need to be good at the game. Like most games of this style it is quite difficult, but that's what makes them appealing to most people.

Yooka-Laylee

As a kid I was a big fan of Banjo-Kazooie. It's one of the few demos I remember playing as a kid at Target and being absolutely blown away. I managed to play through most of it again within recent years with the release of the Rare Replay Collection on the Xbox One. It's a whimsical platformer where you control the animal duo of Banjo the Bear and Kazooie the Bird. They worked in tandem to do cool moves and collect a whole lot of stuff. In recent years games like Banjo-Kazooie have become known as collect-athon games. It's an apt title, because you're really just collecting a whole bunch of stuff. In the years following the games release many other people partook in the genre, but it eventually faded out. However, now here we are many years later with a new one called Yooka-Laylee.

It sure looks a lot like Banjo-Kazooie...

If you're thinking that Yooka-Laylee looks and sounds similar to Banjo-Kazooie, you're absolutely right. Some of the original developers who worked at Rare on the original Banjo got together to make their own studio called Playtonic games. Their goal was to make a new collect-athon game in the vein of Banjo. They took to Kickstarter and the game was funded. It's out now and they certainly delivered on their promise of a Banjo-like game, but I'm personally not feeling it. It's one thing to pay homage to something you love, but it's another thing entirely to try and literally be what you love. Yooka-Laylee is trying to be Banjo-Kazooie in almost every way, but the downside is that it's not as good.

I don't want to say that our new Chameleon and Bat combo aren't fun to play as, but they're just not as fun as the Bear and Bird duo of yesteryear. It's a bummer, because I often find myself frustrated in this new game. The camera isn't great, the controls aren't tight enough, and the level design is so open that I often get lost. It's a game trying to be Banjo-Kazooie, but I feel like it doesn't have the same charm. I played Banjo within the past year and it still made me feel good. This game does not. It certainly delivered on its premise of being a new game in the collect-athon pantheon, but it's just not doing it for me at all.

Persona 5

Turn based RPGs are my jam, and it's not so often that they come around anymore. It's even more rare that they have a huge budget to work with, but that's what we got with Persona 5. Originally the game was slated for a Winter 2014 release in Japan, but a shift to the PS4 caused quite a few delays. Normally excessive delays cause me to worry, but with Persona I knew that I would be happy with the final product regardless of how long it took. This was one of the rare cases where I saw the original trailer and instantly knew that I was getting exactly what I wanted. I waited patiently until April 4th, and then pretty much just played the game for 96 hours. Sure, that was over the course of three weeks, but I did little else with my time. My takeaway from my time with Persona 5 is that I absolutely love it.

This game has a ridiculous amount of style.

The Persona series started as a spin-off of the Shin Megami Tensei series. It focused on high school kids who were given the ability to summon their true selves from within, otherwise known as Personas. With that power they took on evil demons and saved the world. It was a traditional turn based RPG, but in the third game it morphed into something a little more. It was still a turn based game, but it added in social elements as well. This formula carried over to Persona 4 and 5 as well. Now you go into dungeons and fight monsters, but afterwards you can hang out with your friends and get to know them on a much deeper level. On the surface it sounds simple, but the game revolves around you doing a multitude of different tasks while on a time constraint. There's only so much you can do in a day, so you have to choose how you spend your time very wisely. It's stressful at first, but very rewarding in the end.

Persona 5 focuses once again on a group of high school students, but this time they're a group of thieves. They call themselves the Phantom Thieves, and their goal is to steal the twisted desires of adults and make them atone for their crimes. They do this by using a special phone app to enter a person's mind, where they will steal their most prized treasure. It's definitely a weird concept, but one that the Persona team pulls off with a ridiculous amount of style. Persona is known for its stylish nature, but Persona 5 takes that style to a whole new level. If you're interested in hearing a bit more about my time with Persona, then you'll want to check out this month's podcast, which you can find here.

2B or not 2B

Instead of digging into my stupidly large backlog I decided to start Nier: Automata. So now I am playing through that and having a blast. Having played the original Nier I kind of knew what to expect, but man is Automata a weird game. The director Yoko Taro somehow manages to out crazy himself with this one. Also you have to play through it like five times to see the whole story, which is extra insane.

Lucky for me the only new game I'll be getting in May is Injustice 2, so maybe I can catch up on my backlog. So next month I'll definitely talk about Nier, and Injustice 2. See you then!

Podcast Episode 26 - Persona 5

After taking a month off from Podcasting I have returned to bring you this episode about Persona 5. This is a game I've been looking forward to for years, and I have quite a bit to say about it!