GrizzlyButts

Pillars of Eternity and Metro Redux for me, $42 after tax.

I couldn’t agree more with OP. There is some seriously slimy hypocrisy in naming PUBG goty and no real justification for backpedaling other than “Well we had fun together, it got a lot of views”. I can see why it’d win for best multiplayer but no idea why such a broken unfinished mess of a game would get the editors endorsement. It’s a shitty arma asset flip of a mod of a mod that was a hot trend that continues to be broken. lol such a garbage fire year for Giant Bomb goty

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, should be disappointing but I’ll play the crap out of it.

Dragons Crown HD, already an obsession of mine and I’ll replay it many times on PS4.

Far Cry 5, because I skipped 4 and like the potential skewering the story will give to middle America.

Ni No Kuni 2, the pikmin stuff doesn’t appeal to me. Might be getting too old to play 40 hours of a weird Japanese anime for kids. One the fence until I see more.

God of War, depends entirely upon its RPG elements. Not interested in a 6-8 hour button masher. If it’s all spectacle and no exploration I’ll just watch it on some idiots Twitch.

Blasphemous, a kickstarter game set to release in 2019 but backers are supposed to get a demo build in 2018.

Lost Sphear, same guys who made I Am Setsuna making a similar game.

Secret of Mana, low expectations for this 3D remake but I’ll buy it and beat it.

System Shock, although I think the reboot of Prey already was the reboot of system shock, this one is in capable hands.

Spider-man, this is more than likely going to be good even if it ends up being Arkham city with Spider-Man.

Shadow of the Colossus, but this depends on if they’ve fixed the floppy unruly controls and updated the platforming.

From Software have made it clear they're not personally making or remaking anything Dark Souls related. Highly doubt it will be a remake of any Souls game.

I could see an HD remaster of Demon's Souls (not Dark Souls, why would they run concurrent servers for both versions?) being outsourced to a studio like Virtuos (they did FFXII and Batman: Return to Arkham).

@dray2k: Yeah Nioh goes above and beyond a 'souls-like' game and also perfects what they were trying to do with the last gen Ninja Gaiden games, basically turning those aesthetics into an action RPG with endless depth and gameplay that feels pretty amazing. They also put out a huge amount of DLC for just one year: Three big expansions, fully functional PvP, a 'clan' system that gives extra incentive to play, three additional difficulty levels, and that's only half the list of Team Ninja's support for this game. The fact that they did all of this without microtransactions or sketchy game balancing is amazing.

Persona 5 for sure, though it will get mentioned.

Nioh will be overlooked but likely briefly mentioned, though it is my personal GOTY I understand why it is a lot to take in at first.

The most disappointing oversight will be Prey. The crew's issues with the shooting and combat are unfounded, you have to spec towards these things in a game designed to give you choices.

The Surge wasn't completed by anyone on staff as far as I know. Sure, it isn't a "masterpiece" but they delivered on the mecha-Dark Souls thing in a great way.

Critiquing (ranking) unfinished games is mildly stupid though I suppose what is absurd isn’t necessarily unethical. I look to journalists and video producers for examination of products with integrity, which I guess is not cynical enough in 2017. Whether or not you consider yourself a consumer advocate, a shit-poster, or anything in between PUBG can totally wait to be included the same way DOTA 2 and countless other games have. There is no reason to include a game that you ‘can’t’ review.

Honestly the conversation surrounding the game’s rushed inclusion really speaks to the fact that the game doesn’t have legs and it isn’t a confident, shipped product: It will suck with a controller on Xbox, it will remain massively unpolished, and there are tons of better games waiting to replace it as PUBG takes forever to improve. The larger conversation about PUBG generally dies with 2017.

I get the argument that games seem like they’re never finished. Games like Nioh, Dying Light, RS: Siege, and For Honor are far better products today than they were when shipped because of steadfast developer support but unlike PUBG they -officially- released and survived under the test of official release.

So, publish a review of the unfinished game. Then it’ll make sense to include it. Otherwise it can wait.

Dishonored 2 $15

Wolfenstein II: $25

Still eyeing:

AC: Origins $40

Fallout 4 GOTY $30

More HZD is a good thing, although I would say a lot of it felt oddly out of place with the rest of the game's narrative. If I hadn't already scoured this game of all of it's secrets and narrative side-quests this might have had more impact as a random wandering discovery. But I felt the same about all Dark Souls 3 DLC as well, it is a nice excuse to fight new enemies and try new weapons even if that one set of armor still makes the game quite easy.

I feel like I wrote a huge blog on this topic this summer and the general community response was “don’t like it? Then ignore it” :) but now that Shadow of War has been offensive and Activision’s patents were noticed, folks are coming around on consumer exploitation and the need for regulation/corporate transparency.