2017 Game of the Year Day 4

Welcome back! I'm back after a 3-day break to bring you day 4 of my game of the year awards. On this penultimate day, we run down the games with the best stories and gameplay after discussing some things that need to please stop.

WITH TODAY’S CATEGORIES, THERE WILL BE MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

The "Shipping Broke-Ass Games" award for things that need to Please Stop:

• Abusing the early access model
• Open world games
• Loot boxes
• Games being maliciously designed to push toward microtransactions
• Dan Ryckert

Runners-Up:

Open world games: It was during my time with Horizon that I started feeling major fatigue with open world games. The reason I bounced off of Assassin's Creed Origins is that by the time I played it, I was done with open world games. Maybe they don't need to stop, but they should probably slow down.

Dan Ryckert: Every day I'm more convinced that this is Dan's world and we're just living in it. He got married in a Taco Bell, continued his perpetual twitter feud with Jose Conseco, had an hour and a half long conversation about what wheat does, and too many other things to remember. However, Dirty Dan is a danger to us all. This monster brought the intro of The Pest into the lives of many innocent people. It was this that made me realize that he must be stopped before he decides to run for office. Although he may be an improvement in that regard. Either way, him and his amiibo army must be dealt with.

Winner:

Games being maliciously designed to push toward microtransactions- There are too many recent examples of this name. You can probably come up with many of them on your own, but one I want to bring attention to is probably the most egregious example, GTA Online. Over the past few years every single aspect of this game has gotten so expensive that if you don’t want to spend dozens upon dozens of hours grinding mission and heists, you can pay $100 to get about 8 million GTA$. The things is that now, 8 million GTA$ will get you enough to buy the bare minimum it takes to experience the new major features they’ve added since release. If you don’t want that, you can buy a flying car that cost GTA$ 3 million. This would take hours of serious, job-like grinding, multiple days or weeks of casual play, or 50 REAL WORLD DOLLARS. $50, for one thing, in a video game. Battlefront 2’s issues were rightfully called out and were changed, but GTA Online shows that this method is still incredibly viable. If this trend doesn’t stop and games keep being designed with microtransactions in mind, Battlefront 2 is only the beginning.

Best Story/storytelling:

• Jeff Gerstmann’s HQ head cannon
• Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
• Horizon: Zero Dawn
• Life is Strange: Before the Storm
• Nier: Automata
• Pyre
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
• What Remains of Edith Finch
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
• Yakuza 0

Honorable Mention:

Jeff Gerstmann’s HQ head cannon/HQ creators interview- Scott from HQ has been brought up multiple times over this year's awards, but Jeff's head cannon about the real goings on behind the game is one of the best stories of the year. I am thoroughly convinced that Scott may be cattle prodded in a cage while being on the verge of being fired thanks to Jeff's narrative. This all became all the more likely after this insane email interaction with the Daily Beast. This story is one of the most entertaining and surprising things of the year. #FreeScott

Runners-Up:

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice: Hellblade may not have the best story, l but I firmly believe it is the best-told story in games this year. Its portrayals of mental illness are extremely effective, and they make it easy to empathize with Senua as well as real people with mental health issues. The story it tells is good in its own right, but the ways they tell that story are some of the best uses of the medium I've seen all year.

Horizon: Zero Dawn: When I first saw Horizon: Zero Dawn, I was blown away by the possibilities of the gameplay. Despite this, everything I saw about the story before release made me worry. When I started the game, I had no idea that what I was about to play would be one of the best stories of the year. Obviously, the main questions are why the world is full of mechanical animals and why the inhabitants have separated themselves into tribes as opposed to reforming the civilizations of the past. The story drops some great hints along the way, but about halfway through the game, it starts dropping reveals left and right and these moments are what elevate the narrative above most other stories in games. Humanity was threatened by an army of robots that glitched out and began devouring all organic life on the planet. Humanity was forced to come up with a plan to avoid extinction so Elisabet Sobeck came up with Project Zero Dawn. Extinction, however, was unavoidable. This project was a series of AI programs that would essentially rebuild the planet from scratch in an attempt to preserve the future. The programs created all of the robot animals to repair all of the elements that make life possible, but a failsafe called Hades was implemented in case the attempts failed. Over Aloy's journey, she discovers that not only is a cult being manipulated by Hades, but she is the only one who can stop it. All of these reveals build to an ending that is incredibly resonant and sets Horizon: Zero Dawn's story above most of the others listed. The only reason it is a runner-up is that I really don't like that most of the story is told through cutscenes and audio diaries that require the player to stand there and listen for minutes at a time without being able to move very far away. Despite that, Horizon: Zero Dawn tells an incredible story that stands among the best of the year.

Winner:

Nier Automata: Talking about Nier: Automata, let alone giving it the award for best story, is weird because I only finished route A. As much as I didn't care for the way this game played, it was hard to ignore how much I enjoyed 2B's character arc. I wanted to see where the story went, but I bounced off early in route B, so I decided to look into the story. It's hard for me to do it justice, but everything I've heard about the story sounds amazing. Instead of me talking about themes of a game I played about 20% of, I'll link some good breakdowns of the game's ruminations on what it means to be human. Super Bunnyhop video, Giant Bomb best story conversation, Giant bomb best moment conversation,

Best Gameplay:

• Destiny 2
• Disc Jam
• Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
• Horizon: Zero Dawn
• Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Mass Effect Andromeda
• Nioh
• Pyre
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
• Yakuza 0

Runners-Up:

Yakuza 0: Yakuza 0's gameplay is absurdly fun and even includes a breakdancing fight style that is incredibly overpowered. Not every game allows you to beat up a bunch of dudes with a motorcycle.

Pyre: Half the reason I enjoyed Pyre as much as I did is the game's take on sports. The rites are a mystical game played between two teams as a way for players to regain their freedom to live in the capital city of the game's fictional world. The game is played by rules similar to that of the original rules of Basketball where only the player holding the celestial orb can move. They can then pass or move as wanted in order to either dunk or shoot the orb into the opponents pyre. you win when you have fully extinguished the other team's pyre. On top of this, the game mode has an incredible balance to it. Any player that dunks is banished until a team scores, but any player who shoots isn't, but the amount of damage they do is based on a power meter. You can also temporarily banish opposing players by shooting your player's aura at them. Each character has their own unique stats and abilities that create a ton of different combinations for each playstyle.

Winner:

Horizon: Zero Dawn: There's a lot to be said about how a game feels. I enjoyed the simple act of shooting a bow in Horizon that it became the first game I ever kept coming back to long after I finished the main story. Whether it was completing side missions or fighting massive thunderjaws, the gameplay kept me coming back to the world of Horizon: Zero Dawn long after the credits, and will keep me coming back to it for years to come.

And that does it for day #4. On day #5, we end the year on a high note by recounting the year's best including; Best New Japan Pro Wrestling match, Krewella presents 2017's Wettest Beat, and finally The top 10 games of 2017. Thanks for reading!

You can follow me on Twitter @_CJ_Pricefield