Best of 2017

This year's list can be broken down into 3 main groups. The first 4 games are in a tier of their own. Mario went so far above and beyond what I was expecting and really brought it with the variety of fun things to do.

Persona 5, BotW, and Prey are all very close to Mario and each other.

Persona had a tough time living up to 4 but it came incredibly close and was still fantastic.

BotW is truly a revolutionary game, I think the main thing holding it back for me is the lack of true dungeons. I kept thinking, how rad would it be if I just stumbled upon something like the Forest Temple out in some random forest. The fact that almost ALL of the secrets you found were "just" shrines took a bit of the shine off for me. If they can some how follow this up and make some improvements were talking possible best game ever territory.

Prey has been criminally ignored during most game of the year discussions. I think that game is a better ending away from being a #1 candidate. I was ok with the "Simulation" twist, I just felt that the choices on the space station were not handled well. (I decided to destroy the alien and not the station and that was somehow the "bad" choice???)

The next tier of Mario + Rabbids through What Remains of Edith Finch are all very close. Nier and Pyre are great for reasons that are mostly known already. I thought Mario + Rabbids was a huge pleasant surprise. Mario X-Com worked so well. Hope they get a chance to do more. Edith Finch was another great surprise for me. I felt like that game was the perfect length and gave you just enough time to linger on each family member before moving on. Also a gorgeous game.

The last two spots were the most contentious and I may write up another small list of the games that were in consideration in this amazing year for video games. I ended up going with Horizon and Hellblade. I think Horizon is the best looking game I have ever seen and that is only reinforced by seeing it in person at 4k with HDR. That game is a technical marvel. I loved the characters and story a ton and the combat was fun (although it could devolve into spamming fire arrows a bunch). My biggest issue with the game is that the amazing world that Guerrilla created ultimately ended up feeling empty, not that there weren't collectibles, but the collectibles themselves didn't really encourage me to do the exploring that I so desperately wanted an excuse to do.

Hellblade probably resonated more with me than others because I bought in to the