My personal GOTY list doubles as all the games I played, period.
- Persona 5
- XCOM 2: War of the Chosen
- Dream Daddy
But actually? My #1 is Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father (20th Anniversary edition) (2014), sorry 2017.
I haven’t been ready for a game of the year since last decade.
2017 being the best year for games in both breadth and depth of quality since at least 2004 doesn’t help.
Here are some games that I’d consider for a GOTY list, but I won’t say are my list because I have literally 100+ games I still want to play from this year.
Literally more than a hundred. I keep track of em.
2017 was wild.
Anyway, these are good vidjas
- Persona 5
- Super Mario Odyssey
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Etrian Odyssey V
- Fire Emblem: Heroes
- Sonic Mania
- Stardew Valley (Switch port)
- Disgaea 5 (Switch port)
- Cuphead
- Tekken 7
I’ve heard too many good things about the Xcom 2 expansion to let it slide.
I still think Zelda will be number 1 by a country mile. Mario Odyssey is great, but is it wrong for me to think that the game is a little lacking in end game content? I have 500 moons, and there are more moons to get but I was hoping they were going to add more levels rather than just add to what was already there. Am I being selfish? It felt as if there was more stuff to actually see with 3D World, the game kept opening up and serving more and more levels that were more challenging. I was still playing that for months, whereas with Odyssey - I think I’m about done… Some of the levels are fantastic, New Donk City being the best, packed with things to do, but others are a little lack lustre, like the whole Dark Souls esque level or the cloud level?
On its face, I think that Horizon should be at least a candidate for GOTY. It is a gorgeous open-world with some really cool world-building, intricate systems that are fun to play with and you get to fight g.d. robot dinosaurs! But there are just a lot of things that rub me the wrong way, and the more I played, the longer the list grew.
Let’s start with a very small thing: I dislike Aloy’s name so, so much, and it is emblematic that Horizon gets a lot of the big stuff right while either being tone-deaf or being too much by the book on everything else
This is all to say that at a base level, I don’t find the majority of the game fun to play or interesting to see. At its best, you are walking through graveyards of human civilization, discovering how the world came to its current form or skulking through the brush, stealthily picking off enemies one by one with what are still frustratingly shallow stealth mechanics. But for the rest of it, you’re either taking part in the now standard open-world tasks of completing side-quests, revealing more and more of the map via ‘towers’, taking part in sort of mediocre combat, or going through the main campaign that is kind of meh outside lore Guerilla Games has crafted and the robots; and make no mistake, the design (visual and sound) of the robots is really cool.
I know that calling the combat mediocre may set off some anger, but let me explain. It is not really the basic mechanics of it, I like the idea of fighting these high-tech machines with bows, spears, etc.; I think that for the most part, it works, especially in the smaller encounters where you are given the ability to strategically take out one enemy after another through a mix of setting traps, stealth and strategically using weaknesses to inflict max damage. Unfortunately, in larger encounters and the game’s boss battles, this system completely breaks down and turns into a cycle of getting a few shots in, running, healing, and repeat. It just is not fun, and on harder difficulties turns into more of a chore than it is worth.
And all of this is not even to say how lazy a lot of the trappings are in the game. First, and perhaps foremost, it is super weird to me how the player-character is a white woman in a clan, the Nora, (even if you have only been allowed to join through a trial) made of predominantly white people, and you’re basically parading around in faux Indigenous attire. Side Note: I am a white cis man who has no ties to any indigenous people in North America or abroad, so take this for what it is worth (pretty much nothing). Then it goes further, Aloy and ‘her people’ are classified as savages. The game itself essentially makes you (again, a white woman) the ‘Noble Savage’! Like, just, please stop it. Obviously, I am nowhere near equipped to dive into this subject matter. I’d suggest reading @dialacina as a start for that.
Overall, I think that Horizon: Zero Dawn is beautiful game falls into the worst trappings of AAA game design, it seems to think that the number of things to do on a map can be equated with worthwhile things to do, the combat scenarios is more a hindrance than something enjoyable, and it does not have the courage to just end (instead leaving it very open for a sequel).
(Sorry if this post rambly/not on topic, there was just a lot that I wanted to say; and I didn’t say nearly half of it)
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I feel so torn on Horizon.
I never truly understood why humanity had reverted to a tribal state either… At what point did the people go, "nope, world’s fucked, we have to go the Native American route? I know it’s not part of our heritage, but I fashioned this really cool tribal look out of some robot parts.
As much as I like Alloy as a character, the name does suck, but it does come from a word literally meaning a transfusion of metals. She is the symbiosis ending of Mass Effect 3 as a character.
Horizon is easily one of the best looking games of the year. Even on a normal PS4 it looks amazing. Even when you open up the map menu to check off all the map markers it looks amazing. The combat is great, but only when you’re fighting the robots, the human on human combat was weak.
And fuck everything about the apoca-shit storm dude. Go on a massive epic hike up some high altitude vista, everything goes quiet as you observe the world around you from above. Everything maybe ruined, but everything is so very beautiful, and then you have to listen to his gruff voice wax lyrical about how we fucked everything up. Apoca-shit storm whatever day it is - couldn’t stand that part of the game. It’s just the phrase - Apoca-shit storm. Just euhhh… massive eye roll.
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I played a lot of games this year, but after finishing it all the way, it’s undeniably Nier Automata for me. On a thematic level it might be the best game I’ve ever played. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I finished it. The true ending is so uplifting.
I’ve named about 3 games to my friends for my potential GOTY, but it turns out most of the ones I’m thinking of didn’t come out this year, and since I didn’t play a lot to completion, FFXIV: Stormblood it is!
Oh shit! That’s right, Slime Rancher actually released this year. Monument Valley 2 came out for Android too. Night in the Woods was great. What Remains of Edith Finch was phenomenal.
I guess for my list, it’s just going to be leaned away from AAA titles.
I’m a big fan of the “Whatever I played this year counts and you can’t stop me” method of GOTY lists. SMT nocturne was pretty high on my list last year
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hi im hideo kojima and “game/film/album of the year” is a big bunch of bullshit. no please do not ask me to qualify this statement
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I’ve got 2 days of professional exams at the end of November and then it is media catch up month.
I plan on playing through Nier, Wolf 2, and hopefully taking a big chunk out of Nioh.
My list in no particular order is BOTW, Odyssey, Dead Cells Total Warhammer 2. That’s all I’ve played this year.
Shout outs to Puyo Puyo Tetris for being the best couch competitive game I’ve played in literally years. My wife and I have had HOURS of fun with it.
dear mr hideo kojima,
please disqualify this statement.
ty
Question, OKAMI HD comes out on PC on Dec 12. Can it run for GotY?
I always say if its your GOTY, you make the rules.
2016 was more my year. But I did like these 2017’ers:
Pyre
Torment: Tides of Numenera
And am I a bad person if, after a year of patches and updates, I say:
No Man’s Sky?
I’m probably a bad person.
Free yourself from the tyranny of only putting new games on your GOTY list and put Tyranny on your 2017 list! Be free!
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This is a weird year for me. I’m technically “behind” on nearly every big game (Nier, Mario, Zelda, Yakuza, Wolfenstein, Resident Evil, Horizon, Mario and Rabbids, Destiny, Persona, and there’s like a ton more). My only new AAA game I can think of from this calendar year was Prey, which I like and also love. The things is I don’t feel like I need to play any of those big games. Usually if I’ve missed out on a game for GOTY time I’ll try to catch up real fast so I can be part of the conversation. This time around I’m just shrugging. I’m sure I would enjoy a few of those games, but most of them are from genres I don’t care about and a few of them I kind of despise. It’s a strange feeling because I’m usually so enthusiastic about the big games and GOTY in general.
My list is almost entirely indie this year with Cuphead, Pyre, Heat Signature, and Steamworld Dig 2 all in pretty tight contention for the top spot. I’m going to revisit each of them for about an hour a piece at some point to really figure it out. Also man I really need to play Night in the Woods.
I’m gonna go and be a bit cliche and say Breath of the Wild for me. But for real, playing that game reawakened a sense of wonder and amazement I haven’t felt in any game since I was a child. Frankly, I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel so excited to explore a game anymore. Zelda really opened my eyes and once again got me excited for what games can do.
This year has been shit but the games have been lit.
- Nier Automata
- Persona 5
- Doki Doki Literature Club
- Breath of the Wild
- Tales of Berseria
- Yakuza 0
- Pyre
- Steamworld Dig 2
- Steven Universe: Save the Light
- Possibly Xenoblade 2
- Etrian Odyssey V
Life is a garbage pit that I can’t dig a reason for existence out of but at least I can keep filling the hole where my soul is supposed to be with g a e m s yay
I’m not sure people are too excited for Remasters around this time of year, but if you haven’t tried Wipeout HD/2048 before the Wipeout Omega Collection released this year is atleast to me probably the best racing game ever made.
Hell, even if like me you’ve played it before, give it a shot. It’s a wonderful remaster!
(apologies up front if others have expressed this opinion many times now, it’s a long thread and I haven’t read much yet)
I realized this year that I don’t have to participate in GOTY stuff, and I feel so liberated. Last year, I crammed in a bunch of games in November and December trying to play a bunch of contenders before it was “too late”. And in a way that was a lot of fun: I spent most of December playing DOOM, Quadrilateral Cowboy, Hyper Light Drifter, Hitman and other games I loved. 2016 was a really good year for games, and catching up on what i missed was a great time.
However, this year, I realized it does not matter. At all. I’m not a games journalist. No one is paying me for my opinions on the best games of the year. No one cares if I don’t get to Night in the Woods until next February. This realization is taking a lot of weight off my shoulders, and it feels good. Right now my top 10 of 2017 is Nier, PUBG, Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire, and Tacoma. Those might be the only 4 games from 2017 I’ve played so far. And that’s fine. I do have a list of things I would like to play, but the list is for me now, not because I have an obligation to participate in GOTY talks. Right now I’m playing Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, and I’m thinking of either doing Night in the Woods or replaying Monkey Island next.
4 little small notes I couldn’t form into complete thoughts
- This is obviously the POV of a person who is not in the games press, and I totally understand and respect the pressure Danielle feels.
- I’m also not a person who minds spoilers, which is another thing that takes the pressure off me in many ways. I can still listen to the Giant Bomb podcasts and have a good time. I recognize that this is not a thing many others feel, and I don’t want to like guilt people who feel pressured to finish things so that they won’t get spoiled.
- I also don’t want to come off shaming non-games press people who crunch for GOTY stuff. Like I say, I did it last year and had a ton of fun. We talk about how good 2017 has been for games, and I would argue that 2016 was as good or nearly as good.
- Honestly, I would probly feel very different if I had a switch. If I had a switch, I would be churning through Zelda, Mario, and Rabbids.
