by criacow
The 5th Annual Cow's Game of the Year List. Five years! And an excellent year in games. I'm still amazed, after Horizon was my number one all year long, that something topped it at the end.
This got wordy on a couple of them, especially HZD, where I had a piece in my head a friend kept encouraging me to write but I never did -- sorry, friend, but here's a version of it.
As always, I've got some honourable mentions of games that I really wanted to fit in here but just couldn't:
Cook Serve Delicious 2: I picked this up just this week, and boy howdy it's more Cook Serve Delicious. It's also really good. I don't feel right ranking it because, well, I'm an hour in, but I already love it.
Kingsway: The Windows 95 Desktop as RPG Interface aesthetic works really well, and this game was fun for a few runs, but didn't really stick with me beyond that. The spam emails are such a beautiful touch, though.
Strikey Sisters: This is just cute. Arkanoid with magic, kinda like Wizorb but with more of a plot. It's a fun game to pick up for a few minutes here and there, and then suddenly realize that over the course of 'a few minutes here and there' times several weeks you're ten hours in. A solid challenge, too.
The Shrouded Isle: So much style, such great art and music, but...yeah, the game itself didn't really stick with me, especially after the free DLC update that made a run even longer and harder. What a neat thing, though.
...and with that, let's do this!
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In a year of games with excellent writing, Night in the Woods stands head and shoulders above them, then waves its arms in a happy dance. Very rarely are teenagers/young adults written this well; not just in games, but in other media, too. The way the friendly banter continues even as things get dark, where someone will be terrified but still make a corny joke, is exactly how friends interact, especially at that age. Even more than that, it touches on some truly intense topics -- mental illness, breakdown, an inability to tell nightmare from reality, parental abuse and its lasting effects -- but also, first true love, feeling swept off your feet, or even just going back home and trying to re-engage with your friends. And in all of these, it shines. For most of the year, Horizon Zero Dawn has been my number one by far, and I couldn't imagine anything reaching it. The scene with Angus, when you go to the state park and hike together, changed that. So many things this year have hit me hard, but nothing like that. That was so powerful, so difficult, so well-written, but also so well earned. Many times in life I've caught myself judging someone without really knowing them, and then felt guilty when I found out the truth about why they are who they are. I don't think I've ever had that embarrassment about a video game character, though. I'm sorry, Angus. Mae is a fallible character, and no matter what I as the player want, this isn't a story of redemption. The best that can be said is that, by the end, she acknowledges her struggle and might begin to work through it. Bea's life isn't magically fixed, and she doesn't get her dreams, but that's the rust belt world she lives in; she can run away and start over or accept what she has. Mae chose the first, Bea chose the second, and neither got what they wanted. That's reality, and that's powerful fiction. All of this is tied together by beautiful art, music so good (especially in the nightmare scenes) I would sometimes just set the controller down and listen for several minutes at a time, and a world that invites you to poke into every corner every day in the hopes that Selmers might drop a hot new jam or someone will come visit you while you're sitting on the bridge staring off into eternity. My only regret about Night in the Woods is that there isn't more of it.
I've been working on technology since I was 17, and tinkered with it since my dad got a computer when I was 4. My specialty is systems automation, making computers do things for me so I don't have to. There's a real joy to this, but there's also a darkness. I feel like, over the last few years, we've gotten more and more to that dark place. The things we've made to make our lives easier and better also come with that darkness. Everyone's carrying around an amazing camera and can post photos from anywhere! But...everyone's...carrying around an amazing camera that can be accessed from Outside Forces. AI's getting better and can help us do more things! But...who knows how well any of that actually works, and when it might get out of hand? Horizon Zero Dawn is my nightmare scenario. I fell in love with this game long before its release--that first reveal trailer, watching Aloy roll around with her bow and take on robot dinosaurs, hooked me immediately. The first half of this game, I was having a good time exploring the world and getting better at the combat, plus deeply engaged by the story and wanting to know where it went. Then I saw where it went. And for eight months, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. This game and NieR: Automata, I feel, traverse some similar grounds; NieR approaches it more in the abstract, with androids struggling with their humanity, with a cycle of violence no one understands. Horizon approaches it more directly, with the last descendants of humanity struggling to figure out who and what they are after the human race destroyed itself and had to be rebuilt. Both are powerful, and both are stories I can't stop thinking about. The difference for me is that I also couldn't get enough of Horizon's gameplay; even after beating the game, I was still having enough fun that I went and did the trials and all the optional stuff. Horizon is the sort of science fiction that serves as both a story and a warning. As someone with 15 years' experience in the very field that warning applies to, I regret to inform you that we won't heed that warning.
Damien is the Dad of the Year, don't @ me I'm lucky enough to live in what's possibly the most progressive city in the world, especially on queer issues, but even I wish we could have the utopian cul-de-sac of Dream Daddy. Everyone is just themselves and that's cool, we can all hang out and barbecue and be dads. Whether you're perfect or make a fool of yourself, no one truly judges you. Even when you choose a dad to date, the others are supportive, not sad or jealous. And when it turns out one of them has a deep, dark secret, it's...that they volunteer at a dog shelter and aren't a spooky vampire 24/7. Dream Daddy is this year's warm blanket to curl up in and dream of a better world.
I have the weirdest relationship in my head with Supergiant Games. Their games come out to such great critical reception, and they're talked about to death before they even release, such that when they finally do come out, I'm like, mehhhh. But then Bastion was amazing. And Transistor was so good I got the platinum. From the minute I finally gave in and launched Pyre, I was hooked. The hand-painted art grabs you, and the writing seals the deal. These weird masked and robed people leave you to die, but you don't, and now what are you going to do? The story starts out intriguing and only gets better as the true nature of the Rites and the choices you have to make reveal themselves. The space basketball turned out to be more fun than I expected, and the dunking animations were so rewarding I had to get good. I not only cared about the members of my own little theatre troupe, I began to care about our opponents. But when I purposely lost a Rite, I knew this game was truly something wonderful.
Holy cow, I hated playing NieR. Nothing about the controls, the gameplay, or the mechanics was fun. Eventually I set it to easy, turned on auto everything, and sat back for the experience. And I'm so glad I did. The characters of NieR are some of the best I can remember. Pascal's story arc alone...I can't remember seeing something that well-realized, that well-written in games, or even in most fiction. The game's careful exploration of the never-ending cycle of human violence--our gift to these androids--and how it engulfs us all is incredibly powerful, but then filled in by all the touching little moments and spaces that we carve out inside that narrative. And the fourth-wall breaking aspects, like the resistance member who just sells you trophy unlocks or the thing it does at the very end are cute but also back up a game whose game-y elements are all just part of the android's minds. In a way, NieR redefines what a video game is: it tells a story that can only be told through the personal control and interactive nature of gaming, while also casting the traditional video-gamey aspects to the side. I love a future of games with less mindless shooting and more emotional, intelligent stories and moments. I hope it's a future we get.
This game probably gave me the most mixed feelings of anything this year -- high highs, low lows. I loved the world, wandering around it, exploring it. I spent hours--*days*--poking around in random corners, finding what there was to find, and always having a good time. I got all 120 shrines because I just kept wanting to explore. I got all the ancient armour fully upgraded because I had wandered enough to find the parts. I wanted to talk to everyone, to experience what the world had to offer. And how can we forget trans girl Link?! But I never enjoyed the dungeons, and I still haven't actually finished the game. A great send-off to the Wii U, and a game I won't soon forget.
Wow, this one hit me like wildfire. I'm not normally one for sports games, but enough people recommended it, and as soon as I downloaded it I was hooked. It was all I played. I loved the premise--that they loved golf so much, they just wanted to share it with you--and it shows, as it's probably the most fun I've had with golf since Spheda in Dark Cloud 2. The sunny, lovely days on the golf course contrasted so well with sad cold weather here. I loved the paper doll aspect, unlocking costumes and making your perfect avatar. I *uploaded videos of me sinking hole in ones to Twitter*. And then...I got my fill, and haven't touched it since. I might find myself back at golf island someday, though.
2017's Clicky Thing of the Year. An Artifex-Mundi-published joint, a hidden object game set deep in the mystical forest, where tiny people fly on birds and ride on rabbits. You're solving a mystery and saving a kingdom, and while it offers basically nothing new in terms of mechanics in the genre, it's an incredibly charming story and world. It's absolutely One of Those Games, but it's a good one, and the best one I played this year.
A Normal Lost Phone was my favourite tiny indie experience of the year. It tells a simple story through a neat mechanic--you find a lost phone and it's out of minutes so you can't just call contacts, so instead you break in and poke around to find out who it belongs to and what happened to it. And the story it tells is one about finding yourself and your identity, and all the good warm queer feelings that entails. It's not perfect--the translation is rough in spots, and there's not a lot to it, but I liked what it did with what was there.
Nioh is a game I wish I were better at, and a game that makes me want to get better at it. I love the world, the feeling of the action, sneaking amongst the buildings in villages or along the riverbanks or through the samurai palaces. I love feeling my brain draw a map of the space, learning where to go and what to do. But I don't find the boss fights fun, and eventually reached a point where I just didn't care to keep banging my head against them to progress. The levels are fantastic, but the endings aren't.