So it's game of the year time again, and despite all they have said about what a great year this is for games, the gaming press has a nearly unanimous choice for 2017's best game: Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's won from IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, etc, etc; nothing else is remotely close. Games like Mario, Horizon, PUBG, and such don't have many GOTY awards yet, though I'm sure they will get them from somewhere. (Giant Bomb hasn't announced their winner yet, but for some time now PUBG has been the one they're most likely to have picked. I guess we'll see though...)
As for me though, while BotW is a pretty good game, it's certainly not one of my favorites. Sure it's good, and you can do some pretty interesting things as you explore around the world, but the open-world nature of the game loses me. I've never liked open world games much, pretty much ever, and while even I did find wandering around looking for stuff fun for a little while, the game didn't keep me coming back and I haven't played it in months now.
Despite that though, this year, for the first time in a long time, I actually played a lot of modern games. Oh, I still love and played a lot of older games, but I got a new PC, a Wii U, and an Xbox One (S) this year, and played lots of games on them, and on my (New) 3DS as well. Indeed, when I looked at the list of games I have that released in 2017, the 3DS dominates the list as far as quality goes. It's not quite as great as the original DS, but still the 3DS is amazing and one of the best handhelds ever.
That said, I've got two lists this year, one for my favorite games I played that released in 2017, and a second for my favorite games that I bought in 2017 but are older. Neither is really finished yet, but the year isn't over yet so there's still more time to decide!
My Favorite Games of 2017 That Released In 2017 (Preliminary?)
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1. Starcraft Remastered (PC)
2. Yooka-Laylee (PC)
3?. Etrian Odyssey V (3DS)
4?. Ever Oasis (3DS)
5?. Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Honorable Mentions: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U), For Honor (Xbox One), Chicken Wiggle (3DS)
I Also Liked: Snake Pass (PC), Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon (3DS)
Second, while it's not a finished list, here are all of the older games that I bought in 2017 and I liked enough to mention. These are all games I think of as being probably at least worth an A- grade, though I have finished few so I wouldn't formally score them of course.
Note: these are not in order at all. Additionally, I do not count games which I bought for one system but previously owned for another platform unless the two games are actually different.
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Color Zen (3DS)
Shantae (3DS VC - GBC)
R-Type Dimensions (PS3)
Dark Lord (Famicom)* [Game is only good with translation patch though since I don't read Japanese]
Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U)
Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)
Super Mario Maker (Wii U)
Splatoon (Wii U)
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Wii U)
Kid Icarus Uprising (3DS)
Garou: Mark of the Wolves (360 - Neo-Geo rerelease)
Picross 3D Round 2 (3DS)
Rosenkreuzstillette (PC)
Dishonored 2 (PC)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (Wii U)
Meteos: Disney Magic (DS)
Puzzle Quest 2 (DS)
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Wii U)
Overwatch (PC and Xbox One)
Gravitar (Atari 2600)
Professor Layton and the Last Spectre (DS)
Rare Replay (Xbox One)
TrackMania Turbo (Xbox One)
If I was also mentioning games I got for a system but previously owned for another, I'd mention Ikaruga, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, and Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition for the 360, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round and Diablo III for Xbox One, and Geometry Wars 3 for PC and Xbox One, certainly.
Seriously, who is this game FOR? Shut-in MRAs? That's who it's for, isn't it? Why would the giant Furby be sexually attracted to humans? Is that furby a deviant of his species? Also, I'm pretty sure that robot is built like a child, so, pedophile. This game is intentionally trying to appeal to pedophiles.
There's a LOT of groups handing out awards, but what makes this one stand out? Who are they? What are they? What makes them so "The" that they don't even need a name? Did the king of video games crown them?
(This is definitely not a review, I'm still early in the game. I just want to write about it because it's good!)
So, of the games I've gotten in the past few weeks, the one I've played the most of is probably this one, Ever Oasis for 3DS. Published by Nintendo, produced by Koichi Ishii, creator of the Mana franchise, and his studio Grezzo, the team behind the two N64-to-3DS Zelda ports of OoT and MM, this game should have been a much bigger deal than it seems to be. The quality is there, but the people aren't, unfortunately. Apparently most people don't care about the 3DS anymore, Pokemon perhaps excepted, so this really good 2017 release and new IP got overlooked. The game has gotten mixed but some good reviews -- the game got an 8.9 from IGN, for example -- but I haven't seen it talked about nearly as much as it should. New IPs are hard to sell indeed; with the Mana name I'm sure this would have gotten more attention.
Anyway, Ever Oasis is a third-person action-RPG with two elements, adventuring in an Arabian desert-themed environment and building the town in your oasis. You are a special Seedling, and can partner with an oasis water spirit to build a small town around the waterhole in this dry expanse. Your goal is to try to stop the monsters which have destroyed all of the other oasises, including the one you are from.
Now, in the games' box and packaging, they only show and mention the male playable character, but in the actual game you can play as either a male or female character. I have no idea why they hid the female character option, but it's there. You can't customize your character choice beyond choosing your gender, and both characters are cute little semi-human things, but it works in the games' nice, cartoony art style.
Indeed, the graphics in general here are really nice, particularly in 3D. This game fully supports 3d, and as someone who always uses their 3DS with the 3d slider set to maximum, that's awesome. The 3d effect is really nice and adds to the already good graphics.
As for the gameplay, the Zelda influence is clear. You wander around, attack enemies with your weapon, and such. Enemies and plants will drop materials, which you can use to fulfill quests for people in your town, to build new buildings in town, and more. There are also dungeon areas underneath the overworld, as you might expect. By doing quests for visitors in your town you can get them to stay permanently, so that encourages you to explore. This isn't really a crafting game though, I don't think, you just collect stuff and return it to people. I believe the world is semi-randomized, and dungeons certainly are, so this isn't quite on Zelda's level as dungeons probably will feel similar due to the random generation. There are puzzles
As you progress you will get more party members too, and you can switch between them. Each one has a different weapon and ability too. I haven't gotten to that part yet, but it is in the demo.
So yeah, I'm still fairly early in this game but I'm quite liking it and I hope that more people play the game, it's well worth it. The 3DS is still a great system and while next year might not have much releasing for it (we'll see), 2017 was a good year for the platform and it's got some pretty good games, this one included.
Is the best Pixar movie. Up had the audience in tears in 10 minutes, but the rest of the movie (though good!) didn't ever quite reach those heights again. Inside Out was extremely good, but a few narrative choices (sight gags with the parent's minds that undermined the premise of the movie for example) kept it from being perfect.
I can't find a single fault in Coco though. IN Coco. There's a half hour Olaf Christmas Special you have to sit through (cute on it's own but too long to work as a "short"), but this movie? It starts out good and just gets better, ending on a powerful moment instead of starting with one and never undermining itself (it even takes time to answer geeky "wait what if?" questions about how the world works that not only make sense but are touching all by themselves). I had to sit through the credits, and I recommend you do, because they'll turn on the waterworks one more time at the very end (with the credits themselves, not a post-credit scene). The villain only appears near the very end, and yet already tops it as the best villain in a Pixar movie. Most of the time, Pixar movie villains exist purely because "kids movies need villains, don't they?" (which is something Ghibli movies tend to respond with "No, just something to overcome or learn is enough"), but this villain works, I mean WORKS so well in what he brings that I can say the movie doesn't work as well without him.
They were not invented this year, and were popularized at least by last year as you see with games like Overwatch, but the gaming trend of the year is the loot box. This exploitative idea takes the collectible card pack and brings it to the world of videogames, so instead of just getting items, or being able to buy them, you have the "privilege" of spending money on random chances for the item! Joy! You might get what you want, but you're far more likely to just be throwing your money away on nothing of note. It's bad stuff, but it has become popular because it works brilliantly. Some publishers have recently announced that look boxes make them more money than game sales, in fact, and given their exploding popularity this isn't too surprising.
So, seeing the potential money they can extract from their customers, the way every game implements loot boxes is different, but what most major game releases this year have in common is having a loot box system of some kind. Sometimes the boxes only contain cosmetic items, but sometimes they also contain items which directly affect play. Sometimes you can only get the boxes with real-money purchases, sometimes you can buy them or get them ingame... though they're almost always designed to make you want to spend that money, of course, and not rely only on the free ones. Etc.
There has been criticism of loot boxes from many gamers, though, for how they exploit people to get money out of them, for how they are basically gambling in that you spend money without knowing what you're getting for it, how they don't usually tell you the likelihood of getting any one particular reward and the good ones drop quite rarely, and more. These criticisms are, I would say, largely very accurate. Apart from the baseball cards I bought as a kid I've generally stayed away from random-draw gaming stuff myself, and playing Overwatch now has made me think about how this fundamentally really good game is being held back by its annoying loot box system. Why can't you just get money, to get the things you want with? I know, the answer is "because it makes Activision-Blizzard more money this way", but that does not make it okay or good game design! "Here's cool looking stuff, but you only have any chance of getting it if you throw a lot of money at us" is REALLY obnoxious game design and it hurts the game, as fun as it is to play. And this stuff is apparently in almost EVERYTHING now, Nintendo console games excepted... though with how they've now adopted microtransactions otherwise, I expect to see them soon in Nintendo games as well I imagine. Ugh.
On that note, I have been disappointed to see how enthusiastically Nintendo has gone for microtransactions. Oh, things like DLC addons to games are just fine, but then you have pure money-sinks like the Badge Arcade for 3DS... ugh! That thing exists just to take your money and give you nothing of note, because those badges sure aren't useful. I haven't spent anything in the Badge Arcade myself, but I'm sure many people have because of how few free plays you get, and that's too bad. At one point Nintendo was better than this, but not anymore sadly. Too bad.
A Hat in Time? GET OUTTA HERE! We don't love you any more. Super Mario Odyssey is the one true god of 3D exploration based platformers. Yes, you can become just about anything. You can be a fish. You can be a tree. You can be a goombas (sic). Never mind that though, because Mario controls like fine silk, if silk was a liquid you could control with your mind, via your arms attached to controllers. There's so many ways to keep your momentum going. You can use so many unintended (or maybe they were intended) solutions to getting to various places, and it feels great doing it!
Play this as soon as you can. Switches are a lot easier to find now, so hop to it!
