Conquering the Unconquerable Year of 2017

Hey friends. As you probably know, this year's been a bummer. A bummer for a great many reasons, but for the sake of our purposes here I'm specifically referring to the relative lack of new game releases and events, many of which were delayed or cancelled due to the Covid outbreak. September looks to start picking up the slack, and we're back to some state of normalcy across most of the world (the US and UK still sadly excluded), but 2020's going to be a light one either way, as will no doubt be attested to by the thoroughly reasonable lengths of the Giant Bomb GOTY podcasts this year.

As such, I've used this quarantime to fill some game-playing gaps in the previous few years of prestigious release cycles, and no one year more represents Vinny's oft-stated mantra of "there's never been a better time for games" than 2017. Despite being the first full year of what future historians will call the Oh Fucking Goddammit Why era of American presidential history, 2017 proved itself an incredible time for games of all stripes. As such, I've started anthropomorphizing the year's output as some sort of mighty mammoth or massive Megalodon; a beast utterly indomitable and almost too impressive to fully comprehend, yet one that could still be worn down slowly and surely by arrows and spears tipped with Mountain Dew and Cheeto dust in the manner of the hunter/gamers of old.

In much fewer words: The 2017 release library is my white whale, and I'm over here living in Hell's heart (2020) trying to stab away at it.

Down to Brass Tacks

This blog is constructed of two halves:

• The first half will be a chart of 2017 games with their release dates and my current status with them: whether I've played them yet, what my thoughts on them were, and whether they're worth revisiting some three-plus years later as we sit on the cusp of a new generation of consoles.
• The second half is where I open the floor to comments and suggestions on 2017 bangers, incorporating them into the chart or letting them stand as possible alternatives vouched for by the Giant Bomb community.

This won't be a fully comprehensive list of everything that came out in 2017 - I'm not interested in at least a third of it, and there's way too much to name regardless - but I want this to be a fairly comprehensive stock of the year's best games, a document I can refer back to for new backlog ideas if the well for 2018-202x is running dry, and maybe a handy guide for others also since I can occasionally poke my head out of my solipsistic bubble to recognize other video game playing folks exist.

Why 2017 specifically? Because the large number of well-discussed highlights have rendered the many excellent but not nearly as high-profile games, especially Indies, a little more invisible as a result. Therefore, even though we're a few years out now, I believe that 2017 still has something to offer even the most meticulous of us. Many somethings, as the case may be.

The List So Far

(NB: I've made this a Google spreadsheet to make it easier to navigate (sort A-Z by individual column, etc.).)

The Indomitable 2017

Some notes:

• Inclusion requires a 2017 North American debut release. I've not included ports, unless that port was the first to receive an English localization, but I have included remakes and remasters if enough work has been done.
• "My GOTY" ranking is based on my 2017 GOTY (Adjusted) list, which I edit and reorder every year with all the 2017 games I've since played.
• This list incorporates (but has trouble ordering, for some reason) the fifty top 2017 games voted for by the Giant Bomb community as of the results of the site's annual community GOTY poll. Those are the only "Not Interested"s I was bothered to include for the time being, but they're clearly games to pay attention to otherwise.
• If it wasn't clear: "Backlogged" means I own it but haven't played it, while "Wishlisted" means I've yet to own it but intend to. "Incomplete" are games that either can't be completed or... I... don't want to.
• There's a whole mess of JRPGs, visual novels, and Indies that have yet to be added. I've not had the chance to go through them all yet, but feel free to recommend any good ones not presently included.

Granted, this whole exercise was mostly for my own benefit; I'm rolling around the idea a 2017-centric blog catch-up feature in the near future, just because I've become weirdly fixated on that wonderful twelve-month period for games. We all need lockdown hobbies I suppose. Even so, I plan to keep this public document updated with review scores and notes in the off-chance it proves useful to anyone else.