For as good a year as 2017 was for video games, I also found it to be a year in which games are starting to overstay their welcome. Yes, we all want bigger games and being able to say a game is 30 hours rather than 8 is often a really good selling point. Unfortunately, I felt like too many of this year’s games tried to stretch their gameplay too far in order to add length to the game. There were many games this year that I liked but wished were shorter. Repetition of fun but basic gameplay mechanics can turn something from enjoyable to a slog in a matter of hours. At times it felt like too many games were taking too long to come to their conclusion. Long games are welcome when there is great character progression, and consistently new mechanics and challenges that add difficulty and interesting twists to the gameplay. If you can back all that up with an intriguing and narratively solid story, then the increased playtime deserves its length. Too many games this year felt like I was doing the same thing in hour 20 that I was doing in hour 2. Not to say that these games were bad, because I still enjoyed most of them. This was just the first year that I noticed a trend in games being much longer than they really needed to be. Sometimes a shorter, tighter experience is worth more than adding hours to the game.

Now for the good of 2017. Nintendo made a great console, with some great games on it. The Switch is the first Nintendo console I’ve owned since the 64 and, despite owning only 4 games for it I would already be willing to call it one of my favorite game consoles of all time. Being able to play Zelda and Mario as handheld games is so convenient and seamless. I really love the idea of the console and I can’t wait to see how Nintendo expands its catalog.

The top 3 games on my list also could be some of my three favorite games of not only 2017 but of all time.

Old Games

Starcraft II

The Cooperative mode is still incredibly fun and dipping back into the multiplayer from time to time is always a stressful high. Blizzard’s continued support of the game through warchests and announcers is awesome.

Overwatch

I played Overwatch off and on this year and while I really enjoy the game I don’t enjoy it as much as I want to. Playing competitive is often just a series of frustrations and the game still has serious problems with character and map balance.

Skyrim

Skyrim is still a pretty damn good game and it’s crazy to think its now 6 years old. I’m excited to see the DLC I never played.

Titanfall 2

My favorite game from 2016 that I played even more of in 2017, Titanfall 2 did everything right in terms of DLC content throughout the year. They added multiple game modes, including an entire horde mode with its own separate level progression and abilities, as well new weapons, maps, and a titan all for free. I was more than happy to pay money for new gun and titan skins because I wanted to support the great work Respawn did in keeping this game fun and exciting for over a year. I was pretty sad to hear EA bought Respawn, and hopefully Titanfall 3 isn’t ruined by their terrible business practices.

Games I didn’t get to play

Hollow Knight

I’ve heard the praise, but I restrained myself from purchasing it based on the fact that I always fall off playing Metroidvania type games.

Tacoma

I liked Gone Home, but never got around to playing this one.

Uncharted Lost Legacy

I decided to skip this because of how recently Uncharted 4 came out. I also thought that they couldn’t top Uncharted 4, but hearing all the praise for Lost Legacy makes me feel like I need to play this at some point.

Finding Paradise

I love To The Moon and this sequel came out of nowhere in mid-December. I will definitely be playing this in 2018

Elex

I’ve put 2 hours into Elex and it seems like a wacky bunch of fun. I’m hoping it will be what I was hoping Fallout 4 would be and that the bugs don’t ruin too much of the experience.

Games that were Disappointing

Mass Effect Andromeda

Decent premise, rich universe and lore, and surprisingly fun combat were not enough to stop the horror that is ME Andromeda. Absolutely horrible facial expressions, animations, and lip sync. The human characters look like they were molded in a lab by a scientist who only ever saw humans in fun-house mirrors. A weak plot that drags on. Embarrassing dialogue with annoying or just boring characters. Loads of meaningless side quests and collectibles. Overly complicated crafting mechanics. As buggy as an open world Bethesda game. The only thing that made this purchase not a total waste of money was the cooperative horde mode. It was nothing really new to the series, but I still enjoyed it. Even still, the character progression in that is mind numbingly slow, once again making you feel like EA was dangling loot boxes in your face as you suffered.

Pyre

I absolutely love Bastion and Transistor and was eagerly awaiting Pyre. Unfortunately, Pyre didn’t hit the mark for me. The art is gorgeous and the unique “sport” gameplay is really cool in theory. I have to say in theory because while I could see the depth in the game, the ways in which a player could be amazing at Pyre, how it could be a truly competitive game to play against friends, it never clicked for me. I often just controlled one of my characters, juking around and cheesing the AI or just baiting them into a bad position, then passing the ball off and scoring with my wide-open teammate. I wanted to be good at Pyre, but I felt like it took too much effort. Everything boiled down to using fast characters to just go fast and jump far. Also, while I loved the idea that each time you win the rites you would have to choose one of your characters to be gone from the game forever, I never cared too much about any of the characters to miss them, especially from a gameplay perspective. Sir Gilman is the only one who stands out to me as an entertaining character. The rest of the story just didn’t have the same impact as Bastion or Transistor. It felt slow and predictable, especially with all the dialogue you have to read. After slogging through the rites one too many times I was relieved to see the credits roll. Even though this was a disappointing experience for me, I still applaud Supergiant Games for never making the same game twice. This mish mash of very different genres is still quite creative even if I didn’t enjoy it as much as their previous games.

Destiny 2

I think Destiny 2 is a good game. I had a lot of fun times playing it and it still had that same addictive quality as The Taken King. It also still had all the same issues as The Taken King. If the Taken King was Destiny 1.5 then Destiny 2 was Destiny 1.6. The patrol content is fun for about a week, then becomes lackluster. The loot is thrown at you so fast none of it matters. The story is terrible and the story missions are boring and uninspired. The multiplayer is slow, although when played with friends can be a fun time. But Destiny 2 just sealed the fact that Destiny is never going to be what most people want it to be. It’s never going to be as expansive, diverse, or filled with unique content as an mmo. People who are really into Destiny can see all the game has to offer within two weeks. I still enjoyed my time with the game, but I honestly thought that with the “2” in the title the game would be bigger and better than The Taken King. Instead it’s more of the same. And I actually think I liked The Taken King better.

Games I enjoyed that didn’t make the list

Everything

Everything is a really neat, relaxing experience. You can make a planet dance.

XCOM 2 War of the Chosen

War of the Chosen is a great expansion to XCOM 2. It changes the core XCOM game in a lot of interesting ways with the Chosen enemies and the new heroic classes. Overall, it is the best XCOM package ever. Stupidly I tried to play it on iron man and had too many unsuccessful runs that held me back from seeing more of the game.

Grim Dawn Ashes of Malmouth

Grim Dawn is still a really good ARPG for people who want to play an experience closer to Diablo 2 than Diablo 3. While I personally still don’t like it as much as Diablo 3, I am enjoying playing the new classes and seeing what the expansion has to offer.

Fortnite Battle Royale

Fortnite Battle Royale is a really cool take on the battle royale genre. While the tiered loot and the base building aren’t my favorite, the destructive environment is awesome and adds interesting gameplay situations that aren’t provided in games like Battlegrounds.

Divinity Original Sin II

Divinity is one of those rare games that actually makes good on its promise to allow the player to do anything. The character customization feels like it allows me to truly build my own unique character that plays in the specific way I wanted to play, rather than following a pre-set skill tree or a determined class type. You can handle every quest in a variety of ways and the way the environment can be interacted with is incredible. If you light a table on fire, everything on top of the table burns too. If one of those was a spell scroll or a book then it’s gone forever. You can kill any npc, even to the point of it changing how quests work or where and when you can get skills. As part of one quest I got into a fight with a guy and his allies, eventually killing them all. Turns out some of his allies were npcs that you could talk to or buy stuff from, including one that was my skill vendor. With her dead, I could no longer buy skills in that town. The game has so many mechanics that it can be hard to wrap your head around everything you can do and how it could change or affect the world. It is also backed up by good writing and world building. It would have been in my top 10 if I had played more of it, but after 20 hours I’m still in Act 1. The game moves slowly, but so far, the payoff is always worth it.

Star Wars Battlefront II

The Battlefront II campaign is bad. The multiplayer progression is even worse. Still, I really enjoyed this game. It looks amazing, feels amazing, and most importantly sounds amazing. The space battles felt exactly like how I would want a Star Wars space battle game to feel. While not really a good game divorced from the Star Wars license, if you want to play a very faithful looking and sounding Star Wars game, this is it.

Nioh

Nioh is a game that I greatly enjoyed, but also fell away from because of its repetitiveness. I think Nioh is one of the perfect examples of my issue this year with games over staying their welcome. The setting in the game is awesome, the armor looks cool, the combat is fast and snappy and satisfying, and the loot is fun to collect. Early on the game is very challenging and feels like it took Dark Souls and did something new with that gameplay formula. I really enjoyed the first 30 hours or so with the game, but then I grew tired of it. Eventually the loot just becomes overwhelming and unnecessary as tons of weapons and armor just repeatedly drop for no reason other then to sell. The interesting level design starts to run out of ideas and becomes extremely limited, either feeling too similar to previous levels or too restrictive. The worst part is you fight the same enemies with the same attack patterns throughout the majority of the game. Eventually you can just out level the content too, and the game slowly starts to become easier and easier as you repeatedly level way more than the challenges the game offers. I think Nioh is a good game that needed to be scaled down to a shorter experience.

Persona 5

Persona 5 is a game that I half enjoyed, half disliked. For everything good it does, it takes away from it by doing something annoying or just plain bad. The art design and music are fantastic and some of the characters have really great story arcs, but the actual design of some of the dungeons are awful. The story has some really great moments, but I didn’t feel like the end justified playing the game for 100 hours. The worst part of the game though, is its treatment of women. While a lot of games have issues with over sexualizing women and not giving them good characterization, Persona 5 feels like it was made for teenage boys to indulge in some weird fantasies. The game spends 10 hours having you fight against a teacher who is sexually abusing his students, and then spends the rest of the game using women as sex jokes. Ann’s entire character arc is the classic “I’m pretty but it’s so hard to be me” trope and they constantly use her to poke fun. The main characters even have her pretend she will allow another character to paint her naked so they can sneak into his home without him knowing. Even stuff like your teaching being your “maid” and having her call you “master” felt very creepy. The game felt even creepier when you remember that a lot of the girls in this game are 16 and 17 years old. The entire point of the main plot of the game is to treat people equally and care about everyone, and then the game actively pushes back against its own ideals. Also, the combat gets incredibly boring after 100 hours.

Splatoon 2

I thought that Splatoon 2 would be on my top 10 for the first 15 hours or so that I played it, but once the new game high wore off I saw all the mistakes Nintendo made with this game. The gameplay itself is fun and feels fresh compared to the majority of other shooters on the market and the horde mode “Salmon Run” is a blast, but a lot of things around the gameplay ruin the experience. The Salmon Run mode being on a timer is awful. There were multiple times I turned the game on to play that mode and I could not play it because it wasn’t open. Also, the map rotation doesn’t make any sense and made me get sick of the maps much faster than I would have otherwise. I also don’t like the motion controls, but if you don’t use them the aiming feels clunky. I like a lot of things about Splatoon 2, but so much of the design around the game made me stop playing it a lot sooner than I thought I would.

What Remains of Edith Finch

Edith Finch was an interesting short story that had some really neat vignettes about members of the Finch family. It was really heartfelt and well made, but nothing about it stood out to me and the ending did nothing for me.

Night in the Woods

Night in the Woods is a very well written story about returning home, the struggles of becoming an adult, dealing with responsibilities, and small-town life. It has some great jokes, and some really fun characters. While I didn’t enjoy walking around Possum Springs as much as I liked talking to its inhabitants, I still think the game looks good and evokes a great sense of place and time. I also really enjoyed hanging out with Gregg and Bea and seeing Mae rebuild her friendships with them. My favorite part of the game was the journal Mae keeps that logs all her activities and then the reveal for why she keeps that journal was really interesting. The repeated “Gregg rules OK” line always made me laugh, and the drawings are really fun to look at. Unfortunately, the game started to fall apart for me around the last 90 minutes or so. Once the secret gets unveiled the game goes off the rails in ways that I didn’t appreciate. I enjoyed the game because of its grounded, realistic feeling and to have the story go where it goes was way too ridiculous for me. The whole thing made the game last far too long and it leaves too many unanswered questions. I understand a lot of the ending is metaphorical and intentional, but I thought the whole thing shifted too far away from the characters and their real life problems into the supernatural and the game didn’t need a fantasy hook tacked on to make me enjoy it.

Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice

Hellblade gives the player an incredibly powerful and emotional story, with an absolutely stunning performance by Melina Juergens as Senua. The sound design and performance capture really felt like the next level for video games in a lot of ways, and as an art piece this game is stunning. As a game however, it drags. The combat is extremely one-note and the puzzles feel like annoying busy work. If the game had been shorter I could have felt better about the simplistic gameplay, but the fact that Ninja Theory felt the need to throw enemy after enemy in your face for hours really detracted from the experience.

Middle Earth Shadow of War

I really enjoyed Shadow of War because it still provides an experience no other game can match through the nemesis system. The ways they expand upon that system in this sequel bring so many more interactions and options that I enjoyed just trying to find as many different orcs as I could to build and strengthen my forts. Everything about the combat and the traversal feels smooth and the game moves quickly so you spend less time traveling and more time hearing orcs shout ridiculous things at you. Unfortunately, the main story missions are awful and unexplainably so. When you have a system as unique and creative as the nemesis system, how do you decide to barely incorporate it in any of your story missions? The missions are all generic busy work and the grind at the end of the game is pretty ridiculous. I still really loved the ways they enhanced the nemesis system for this sequel, but even more now than ever before do I hope another developer takes the ideas from the Middle-Earth games and puts them into a new game.

Resident Evil 7

My experience with the Resident Evil series is a bit all over the place. I’ve played 1 and Code Veronica and enjoyed them but never finished them. 4 is one of my all-time favorite games, but I really disliked what I played of 5. With 7 I think Capcom struck a great balance between the old pacing, combat, and puzzle solving of the first few games, while adding new modern-day mechanics to it that make the series feel fun and exciting again. This game is scary and tense unlike any other single player game this year and they use that tension in a variety of ways. Whether being chased through a house, creeping around corners waiting for monsters to jump out and attack, or fighting off a disgusting spider lady, the game keeps you on the edge of your seat like any good horror game should. The story dangles its multiple mysteries in front of you well enough to make you interested in the characters and the world. If I had time to finish the game it probably would have made my top 10.

Now onto the top 10

10. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

I struggled to find my number 10 game this year because so many of the games I played felt too long, too repetitive, or I was unable to finish them. For as many good games as there were this year, I struggled to find games that I didn’t have huge issues with near the bottom of my list. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe wins out for two reasons; it’s still an enjoyable easy and quick to play Mario Kart, and it is one of the very few games my girlfriend enjoys playing. Some of my favorite moments in gaming this year were hearing my girlfriend yell at Peach and Mario to get out of her way as she crashed into them trying to take over first place. The game does a great job at easing in new players and is still simple enough that it would be hard to find someone that wouldn’t have a good time racing against their friends. This game also marked the first time my girlfriend ever played a game online before and I had a blast seeing her react to beating real people. While I didn’t absolutely love Mario Kart 8 myself, the fun I had playing it with my girlfriend puts it above so many other experiences I had this year.

9. Life is Strange Before the Storm

I absolutely loved the original Life is Strange. That game tackled so many issues that other games seem to be afraid to, and had some really memorable characters. When they announced this prequel I was disappointed, and then when they said the original voice actors would not be involved because of the strike I thought this game would be a disaster. Thankfully, it is a really good game. While I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the original and the ending has some really horrible problems, I was happy to be back in the world of Life is Strange. The music is once again perfect, the voice actors do a great job of capturing the original feel for the characters laid out by the previous actors, and the story allows us to see the beginnings of the bond between Chole and Rachel Amber.

I think the main way Before the Storm succeeds is in how happy it is. The original game is sad, then gets sadder, and then somehow gets even more sad and while I loved it for what it did, it felt really good to play a new Life is Strange game that embraced happiness, love, and friendship so much. The game does an excellent job of portraying what it is like to have someone in your life that actively makes your life better, especially when you are going through tough times. The gameplay and story telling also work out better than expected even without time travel powers, as it still retains tough decision making and fun interactive mechanics through Chole’s “backtalk” ability.

I really enjoyed the first two episodes and the first half of episode 3, but then the end of the game goes off the rails in ways that make the original games ending seem like the best ending ever written. Even with all of the missteps in the last hour of the game, the final montage the players get to witness of Chole and Rachel’s relationship as it grows over the years feels great to see. You as the player already know all the horrible things that will happen in the future, but for that moment you only get to see the characters be happy and it was exciting. Unfortunately Deck Nine decided to “tie” the end of Before the Storm to the original game in a very dark depressing way that just absolutely crushed the happiness of the end of Before the Storm. It was really disturbing and off putting in a way that I was not expecting, and actually made me disappointed. While I don’t think Deck Nine had bad intentions by doing this, I just wish they had thought through a lot of the decisions they made to close out this prequel. Even still it was the most surprising game for me this year because I expected it to be a cheap money grab off of the first games success, but instead it was a heartfelt story of friendship.

8. Wolfenstein II The New Colossus

The act of playing Wolfenstein II is not very fun. Dual wielding shotguns while blasting Nazi’s in the face should be amazing, but somehow this game just feels bland to play. There’s weird difficulty spikes, poor player feedback, and some awful level design. I constantly ran the wrong way and I died from things I didn’t even know were shooting me more times than I can count. After DOOM had such great success allowing players to be constantly running around in the action, I was hoping Wolfenstein would do more than have you run and hide behind cover. It’s incredibly stale gameplay, and completely at odds with how wacky and exciting the rest of the game is. While I enjoyed the characters and story in the first game, this one out does itself. There are at least five huge, crazy moments in the game where I could not believe what was happening. It’s also funny, smart, and the actors all give tremendous performances. There’s also a lot of quiet moments and some really heartfelt stories wrapped around the craziness. The backstory of BJ’s childhood, and what results from it are so well done that I was shocked at how good it was. This is a game about killing Nazi’s by the hundreds, in a world where they apparently invented a silly giant one wheeled motorcycle, and yet its just as good at being emotional and serious as most other games that came out this year. I can’t say enough about how incredible so many of the moments are in this game, I just wish more of those moments involved me actually playing the game.

7. Super Mario Odyssey

Multiple times while I was playing Super Mario Odyssey I kept thinking to myself, “this is joyful”. The word joy just stuck in my head the entire time I played the game. If anyone is looking for a game that is just pure fun and happiness, this is it. The game as a lot of really excellent moments and continues to find new ways to surprise the player again and again. In a lot of ways this game felt like an Uncharted game to me because it had so many amazing set pieces that looked stunning and felt incredible to watch, even though the gameplay wasn’t very deep or challenging. Every world has its own twist on the formula and the game is paced so that you are always on the move and finding new things to do around every turn. It had some of the tightest, best controls in any video game ever. The platforming feels phenomenal and the ways in which you go about platforming through the use of the capture mechanic is incredibly creative and keeps the gameplay fresh and unique even when compared to previous Mario games.

This is the type of game you play as a kid and it becomes one of your all time greatest most memorable games, similar to how I feel about Super Mario 64. And while I will definitely remember a lot of the incredible moments Odyssey provides (particularly the ending) I kept feeling like the game was missing the challenge I was looking for. A lot of the moons I found I purchased, or butt stomped the ground, or broke something open. At times the game felt like it was hanging moons in front of my face and then rushing me off to the next environment. Even when it was giving me some good platforming to do, none of that platforming ever felt challenging in anyway. I have heard that some of the later game stuff increases the difficulty, but I hate the fact that you have to play the game for hours and collect a bunch of very simple to get moons in order to see the best gameplay in the game. At times this game felt less like a platformer and more like a puzzle/exploration game as many of the moons require you to search the environment and use the capture mechanic to solve problems rather than just have traditional platforming levels to take part in. Also, I really thought the boss fights were lackluster. Even so, I still love Odyssey and I will continue to play it in 2018 as I am still eager to see more of what that game has to offer. And I want to collect all the outfits.

6. Cuphead

When I first saw Cuphead years ago it looked so cool that I just assumed the game would be bad. How could something that looked that incredible be anything other than a gimmick? Fortunately, Cuphead is an absolute blast to play. Not only is the presentation outstanding in every aspect, but the gameplay itself provides some of the most challenging, rewarding moments in any game this year. Some of the bosses are intensely hard and are so much more than trial and error tests. Each one has its own mechanics and have so many layers to them that you could fight a boss ten times and not see every attack pattern. I know it’s a meme to compare everything to Dark Souls, but man did a lot of these fights feel like Dark Souls boss fights. Hoping that the one attack you absolutely hate doesn’t happen before you get that last hit in. The nervousness and the anxiety of even trying to land that last hit. Seeing a boss for the first time and getting absolutely destroyed as you try to figure out the mechanics. That satisfying sense of relief and accomplishment when you finally defeat the boss that’s been beating you down over and over again. It all feels incredible. Yes, the art is amazing, the animation is incredible, the soundtrack is wonderful, but I think the highest compliment I could give Cuphead is that even if it didn’t have its unique style, it would still be a really fun game.

5. Nier Automata

There is too much to say about Nier Automata. At times I thought it was my game of the year. Other times I wasn’t even sure if I liked the game that much. Everything about it feels crazy in a way that no other game I’ve played before has felt. As someone who has no experience with Drakengard or the original Nier I had never witnessed the multiple endings/playthroughs that this series provides. The entire idea of replaying the game again but as another character is so interesting and also so insane. But this game constantly does things that seem absolutely ridiculous and yet somehow still work. So many games try to make a big statement about life or the human condition, or even just try to make characters that feel like real people. Nier does all these things with a cast of androids and robots. Robots that look like trashcans no less. The struggle of these androids and robots as they evolve over the course of the story is something that everyone has seen before, but somehow manages to be its own unique thing in the world of Nier. It feels like taking the humans out of a story about humanity was the best thing Nier does from a story telling perspective. Pascal and his village of peaceful, nonviolent robots is perhaps the greatest storyline in the game, but each area of the world has its own tragic twist. There are so many different character arcs that even some of the smaller side quest characters get some really impactful stories. Then as the game goes on and you play it multiple times you get to witness these events and characters from a different point of view and learn even more about the world. Even removed from all the absolute madness that encompasses a lot of the story, this stuff is done really well.

The part where you play Nier however is incredibly hit or miss. While the combat is certainly stylish and flashy, its very simple and becomes mind numbing after fighting the same enemies repeatedly. There are a lot of weapons that give some new animation and combos, but even switching weapons in and out doesn’t do enough to alleviate the boredom that starts to overtake the action. I really do like the way the game transitions into a bullet hell game from the top down and third person perspectives, and the hacking mini games are also a cool touch. Once I was deep into the second playthrough however, I was absolutely sick of all of it and was coasting through any gameplay portion just so I could see the story. It also doesn’t help that the world is so small, ugly, and a pain to get around. A lot of this made the game feel like a drag and at times I struggled with playing it even when I was deep into uncovering the mysteries of the world and discovering what would happen to all these really cool characters. The soundtrack certainly helped me push through, as it is easily one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time, especially with the way it is used in the game. Also, without a doubt it has the best end credits in any video game ever. I think the best part about Nier is that in a time where people find it a lot easier to be mean to each other for no reason, it reminds people that being nice and caring about others feels a lot better. It's hard being a human.

4. Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon doesn’t do anything really new when it comes to open world games. It has a lot of icons on a big map, a lot of side quests, and a lot of things to collect and upgrade. Where Horizon out does most of those other open world games is in its story, its enemy design, and its combat. A lot of times I feel like I am enjoying open world games because something in my brain loves the idea of running around and turning a messy filled map into a completed, checked off one. With Horizon I loved engaging in its combat. The different weapons and damage types combine with the different enemy types in a way that encourages experimentation and weapon swapping. Sure, you could stick with one or two weapons for the majority of the game and you could succeed, but Horizon gives you the tools to find ways to exploit the enemy weaknesses and defeat enemies in the most efficient way possible. Most importantly, breaking off pieces of the robots changes the fight in drastic ways. If you knock off certain parts a robot can’t perform the same attacks that it was using. You can even use its own parts against it, like knocking off a giant gun from a robot T-Rex and picking it up to shoot it. A lot of games this year left me bored with their combat. I constantly felt like I was button mashing and repeating the same fights over and over. With Horizon I felt like every fight was interesting and unique depending on the type of ammunition I had, the combination of enemies I was facing, and how I decided to handle it. Also, I loved the enemy design and it helped the combat that there were so many different types of robots. It’s also why it’s a shame that the human enemies are the exact opposite of everything I just said and feel like a poor attempt at a Far Cry game. Snipe from far away, sit and a bush and whistle, bad guys dead. That is definitely the low point of this game.

The world is fantastic and the story pushes you forward at a good pace, giving you hints and pieces about what happened to the world and about what is going on with the robots. I thought the reveals were a great payoff and their answers for everything felt like a fun, new take on a classic story. I just wish the world itself had more life in it, but also it makes a lot of sense as to why it doesn’t. I just wanted there to be even more to see and do than there was. I feel like a lot of games have trouble combining great story and great gameplay. Sometimes it feels like one has to be had at the expense of the other, but Horizon nails both and is one of my all time favorite open world games.

3. Gwent the Witcher Card Game

Even though the game is still in Beta, Gwent is my all time favorite card game. The deck building and strategy feel like they take more skill than other card games and even the best deck in the hands of a bad player won’t be an easy win. It feels so rewarding to rank up and learn strategy when playing this game. The one card per turn as well as the best two out of three round mechanics give this game such a different feel than the plethora of Magic The Gathering clones that are out there. Sure, the game is about building a deck that has a win condition and then playing to pull off that win condition, but the real strategy comes into adapting when your opponent nullifies your win condition. When you play your cards and why you play them feels like it carries more weight than in other card games. It also helps that I absolutely love the world of the Witcher, and being able to see all those characters and concepts from that trilogy of games put into a card game format feels really cool, especially when the card abilities match the lore, such as wild hunt hounds being able to play frost to damage enemies. Also, CDPR is incredibly generous with their free to play model, easily allowing players to earn at least one pack (keg) of cards a day and with a ton of really awesome season ending rewards.

The only downside to it is that CDPR is new to multiplayer games and it has often felt like they are unsure where the game is headed. Their latest big patch was not received very well by the community and the game can still be quite buggy even though it has been in beta for over a year. Sometimes it seems like they aren’t learning from there mistakes and that the game is headed down the wrong path in terms of balance and card design. Hopefully that is not the case because I absolutely love Gwent and I think it has limitless potential in terms of being a more strategic card game than many of its competitors. The game is scheduled to come out of open beta this year with a story based campaign and a draft mode which I am looking forward to. I hope Gwent succeeds because I want to keep playing it (and I do keep playing it even when I have a bunch of other games I want to play).

2. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

I hope Breath of the Wild sparks huge change in the way other developers create their open world games. Something I never thought about when playing open world games until I played Breath of the Wild is that, in so many games you are going to a place on the map because you know what is going to be there. You have a goal to either check something off your list or to obtain something because the game has already marked it on the map and will even plot your course there for you. In Breath of the Wild, you are so often going to a place because you don’t know what’s going to be there and you certainly don’t know what you will run into along the way or how you will even get there. The adventure is the discovery of the world and its secrets.

The world starts to feel like its own character because of the design. When you start to see how important the shape of a particular mountain is, how the height of the hills affects where you can glide to, the way you can only see certain areas if you are standing in certain spots, you start to understand how much effort and detail went into creating Hyrule. The land is not just there to run from point A to point B, its there to hide secrets, to be its own puzzle. Rather than just being the place the game is set in, traversing the world and solving its mysteries is the game. The environmental puzzle solving in this game changed my entire view on how open worlds should be built. For as much as I adored Horizon Zero Dawn this year a lot of the design of the world, beyond the aesthetics, felt meaningless. There was space they created to look nice, but there was no real reason to interact with it or even any option to interact with it. Zelda makes the landscape matter in ways that no other open world game has.

It is also incredibly important to the design that it gives you all of your tools up front. There’s no seeing a door or a mountain or a tunnel and thinking “I’ll have to come back here later because I don’t have the item I need to get there yet.” Everything is immediately at your disposal and the tools they give you to manipulate and play with the world are fascinating. And sure, after a while all the searching and discovery just repeatedly leads you to a new shrine or a new korok seed, but that searching and discovery is some of the best in any game ever. Even after 70+ hours of playing the game I don’t even have 90 korok seeds yet and there are 900 in the game. Where did they hide them all and how the hell did they do it? Imagine 900 of a collectible in any other open world game. You would be picking them up in the middle of fields and on the side of the road. Somehow Zelda keeps them hidden.

The shrines are also really fun and have a wide range of difficulty and creativity, although some are certainly better than others. Anything with motion control is terrible, and the combat shrines are very one-note. I have enjoyed the three dungeons I’ve completed so far and I’m even enjoying the flashback cutscenes. I think Zelda’s character is really well written and as someone who hasn’t played much Zelda or known about the lore in the previous games, it’s cool to see Zelda interact with Link in some quiet story focused scenes. I also love trying to collect all the armor sets (the DLC sets are really cool). Yes, the rain is awful. Yes, the inventory limit is annoying, even when you expand it. Yes, weapons breaking can be a pain, especially when they are really good ones. Yes, cooking is slow and tedious. Even with all the small missteps I still think Breath of the Wild can move game design in a new direction. Get rid of the icons on the map and encourage the player to mark areas. Build on the feeling of exploration and adventure rather than a checklist of items. Create a solid set of systems and mechanics that have fun ways of interacting with each other. Let the player use these systems to discover things for themselves. Breath of the Wild trusts its players and through that trust gives tons of amazing gameplay and surprising moments.

1. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds

Battlegrounds is unlike any other multiplayer shooter I have ever played. Even after nearly 300 hundred hours with the game I still find myself getting nervous when it comes down to the final 10 players alive. The game is one-part survival, one-part tactical shooter, and one-part horror game. I remember my first time making it to the top 10. I ran into a house terrified and hid in a corner, thinking I was safe and hoping the circle would favor me. It didn’t. I drank some energy drinks and went to move when all of a sudden, the door across the hall from me opened with a player crouched there blasting me with a shotgun. I freaked out and flung my mouse around the screen, eventually aiming at the ceiling and then dying because of this horrific jump scare another player pulled on me. One of the best parts about this is thinking on it after the fact, that person must have been scared too. They had heard me come in and possibly waited, hoping I hadn’t heard them, hoping I would leave. I didn’t and they made a move to kill me.

Every match in Battlegrounds has a story attached to it. You want to talk about every kill, you want to say how you survived sprinting across the street to get into the circle, you want to tell people that you won and exactly how you won. How you sniped someone from two hundred meters or crawled in the grass as people ran past you. And the game can be played in so many different ways. You can land in highly populated areas and go for lots of kills, you can try to find a car and drive away from the plane path and look for top loot before you engage enemies, you can set loot traps and wait for someone to try to come pick them up while you hide in the corner just waiting to blast them, you can run around and hide with no weapons at all trying to outlast the other players in a battle of “blue” damage. Even though you go to the same cities, see the same sites, use the same weapons, drive the same vehicles, none of it ever feels old or boring. Every match something new happens to make it different from the other matches you’ve played. The game also makes sound design much more important than any other shooter. The fact that when you kill a player you are not eliminating them from the round or sending them back to respawn, you are removing them from the match entirely adds such a layer of intensity and tenseness to all your actions. The game is brutal, but that makes the feeling of winning even more satisfying. The first time you and/or your teammates outlast 95 or more other players in the match feels incredible. Not only is the game a great competitive game, but its also a fun game to just mess around in with your friends and to witness the ridiculous things that can and will happen. This is bad to say, but even with all the bugs and the cheaters and the server issues, this game still was my game of the year and when it comes down to it is one of my favorite multiplayer games of all time.