Game of the Year 20lateteen(17)

Hello there, it's been a while, and I made a list of games I played that weren't so hot to me in the year of games 2017. While normally I try to make lists for these things and usually have them on the dot before the turn of the year. It took me a bit to realize the other things I wanted to shout out are not good to put in a list format, so a blog post will have to do. These are games I didn't want to put on an ordered list, or categories ala the GB's GOTY stuff that I felt like needed to be addressed. 2017 was a hectic year for me, I ended up cowering in a japanese browser game for most of it, bought more games than I could finish or feel good about, and worst of it all didn't even play Nier: Automata, the one game I looked forward to the most next to Splatoon 2 and Danganronpa V3. I still managed to play enough games in 2017 to compile maybe a list of great games but in the end I should have done more. So, here's my categories, I hope you enjoy, find them funny, or get insulted (not really that last part but you know, opinions they be a different sometimes)

OLD GAME OF THE YEAR (GAME OF THE "YEAR") :

GRANBLUE FANTASY

Granblue has all but taken over my life, even more so than any MMO has ever done. One could call Granblue the ultimate MMO honestly, its not a traditional MMO by any means but has the trappings of all of them in one convenient package. From capping a currency to trade in for better gear to slowly leveling up said gear to compete in high level raids, its the distilled essence of all of that brought to a format that doesn't actually take up a ton of your time if you choose to let it not to. There's the mobile parts of the game that "try" to gate your overall playtime but in the end the developers at one point will just hand you a bunch of items to bypass it.

Honestly Granblue gets a lot right about japanese mobile games that a ton of others just don't. You have the option to just let it consume you at any point. Granblue is also considered one of the most generous of the "gacha" style games that are popular in japan, often giving its gigantic playerbase a heap of free stuff every month or two. If you told me two years ago when this game was pretty much fresh out of the oven that it would be something I care deeply about, I would have dismissed it as some shitty mobile game. Yet Granblue Fantasy pulled me in, and honestly I don't think I'll ever get out.

Hottest Tracks (Music):

PERSONA 5

Again, I totally didn't play Nier: Automata, and I think the original Nier's three second loops of overworld music are some of the best things ever done. Persona 5 pretty much ran unopposed for me the entire year for this category. I have serious issues with this game yes but out of all of them the music isn't one of them. Right where 4 left off nearly 10 years ago the people behind some of the hottest tracks in JRPG's hadn't missed a beat (granted they got alot of work inbetween these two games) but the style, and swagger of the overall soundtrack for 5 cannot be triumphed over. The song that plays when you start the game up, blazing. The song that plays when you're completing the final day of the dungeons, heartpounding. The track that plays when you're just idling in the town, just leave it on forever. I was left whistling the main theme at work for most of the year:

I don't think I need to say anymore about this, I strongly feel that this set of music will rank among the highest in my personal lists for a long time to come.

The "I wish I got to it sooner" award presented by Nier: Automata

Horizon: Zero Dawn

(This is the last time I mention Nier for the entire list) So, Horizon is a lot better than I was expecting. Honestly after all I was hearing about it, and my big distaste for Ubisoft open world games as of late, I decided to hold off on the jump to this one. Instead I invested in Zelda, like most people did and were (well mostly) satisfied with our open world fill for the next few months (or maybe years at this point). When the game went on sale on Black Friday for 20 dollars I decided to give in to my curiosity, and right now would probably place this game "higher" than Breath of the Wild.

Where I was expecting the bland and unnecessary feature bloat that was Far Cry, I got the more meaningful evolution of new Tomb Raider. Almost everything about this game feels good, aside from random arrow shots just going where they "feel like it man" and the bullshit accuracy of some of the mechanical robots (actually upon writing this sentence I'm starting to suspect that if I were to stand still the robots would miss most of the time as if they try to predict what direction you're going beforehand and shoot crooked on purpose, which in that case I'm actually impressed). I'm invested into putting the time into this game to finish it and see how humanity got here, and whats up with Aloy's presence in all of this. Unlike the game that is presenting this award though, I actually got to playing this game, albiet way too late for it to be on a year list, so, this will have to do. Sorry Horizon, we all make mistakes sometimes.

The "Don't make another one of these" award presented by Bioshock 2:

Danganronpa

At this point, for me, cause I fell on the side of "This game ruins the series" side of the fence, for me to accept another Dangan game, it would have to do what this game almost did(?) and actually make the clean break from the originals. OR, better yet, reboot the whole thing. The things that V3 does not only confounds me but at the same time makes me feel like the characters from previous games that I fell in love with were wasted effort. Yes, video games aren't real, yet the fiction that we all crave (atleast for me) we want it to be cohesive, and respect the characters they decided to make. At this point, I don't actually want another one of these games, V3 jumped the shark in a way that I don't really care how they write another scenario. V3 is basically the Indie 4 or this series, I just don't want to talk about it.

Best Surprise:

PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS

I was convinced to buy this game by a Blizzard employee. I expected this game to sizzle out like the other popular "flavor of the month" games before it. Yet here we are 86 hours later of playtime and multiple squad chickens consumed I think this game caught me off guard the most. I spent alot of time so far playing only squads and duos as solo play... just doesn't do it for me. Yet I don't feel like (except for maybe like 6 hours of that total playtime) were not enjoyed. Besides when I die I can just play Granblue until the squad dies and we start a fresh game, it's a semi enabler if you will. While I still like this game despite my feelings on where they are going to take it I don' think they can fully destroy the experience. I'm looking forward to more squad sessions for sure.

PLEASE STOP:

TURNING SINGLEPLAYER GAMES INTO JAPANESE GACHA (putting lootboxes that don't do anything for the experience)

This seriously needs to stop, moreso than multiplayer lootboxes. Not only is it a terrible practice on paper, it also causes unneeded controversy for games that don't warrant it. I had a ton of people ask me about Shadow of War and where the lootboxes play into it and I kept telling them I hadn't ran into it yet. Going through the entire game, I came to the conclusion of "Oh damn, you never need to actually buy one of these things" because in truth, you don't. Shadow of War ended up generating alot of hate for a feature that actually didn't hurt or help the game and how it plays. Shadow of War with its recent updates seems to be trying to make some sort of "infinite game service" thing, in a game that even though I'm sure people play everyday (like i don't know how but im sure some "community" exists), it doesn't have the legs for it. We could have had a game that ended when it supposed to and maybe be considered for better things even despite its massive story failings and terrible quests.

When the lootboxes actually... disrupt the way these games are being made, then we have a serious problem on our hands. Its one thing to just tack on these buyable things that dispense goodies in a game that isn't at its core designed to be like a service, but to design the game, like Battlefront 2, where the only way you upgrade IS through these boxes, how long until that seeps into single player games? I hope it doesn't but does that mean single player games on the AAA scale are on the way out? Only time will tell, and as of late its telling us "maybe?"

Best New Character:

Futaba Sakura (Persona 5)

Out of the entire P5 cast (aside from maybe Yusuke), Futaba is the one I latched onto most. She was the most relatable, heartwarming, and lovable character, out of a cast of women that was EXTREMELY heated in terms of likability. Persona 5 had a lot of good girls, which is the most I can say about the cast overall. Some shined in the overall story, some shined in their social links. Yet none of them managed to shine in both quite like Futaba, in both the story and her social link, she felt like a meaningful character that warrants you to invest your time into getting to know her. She even manages to have one of the best moment for video games this year in my book at the end of it all.

Best Moment:

Telling Futaba that you love her

Her shocked expression, her empty dialog box for 9 full responses. I hadn't laughed harder at something so cute since Undertale managed to do it in 2015.

Best Multiplayer:

Splatoon 2

I usually base my enjoyment off of multiplayer games I enjoy doing the most playing solo, which is weird considering even though PLAYERUNKNOWN should be in this spot I can't put it here. I don't like playing it alone, where I don't enjoy it in that, I could play Splatoon 2 all day by myself. With the new additions such as the Salmon Run, and the continued updates and support that the game has been getting, it's picking up where the first game left off and doing a faithful recreation of it. Luckily there's just more people playing it than the first one. If only there were a better way to play with friends.

Game of the Year 2017 presented by Granblue Fantasy:

Super Mario Odyssey

Honestly I didn't think we'd ever end up in this situation again. Where I feel so strongly about a 3D Mario platformer being the best game of the year. Up until October I was almost for sure that Persona 5 would have taken the top spot warts and all. Yet here we are, with a Mario game. The controls feel amazing, the movement options are dynamite, the gimmick is slick and doesn't just make Mario platform better than he ever has but also get around the world in more imaginative ways that I didn't think were possible. The possessions are all fantastic and have their moments. This game from top to bottom is a magnificent piece of work.

You can criticize that there is a ton of barf in this game, the overabundance of Moons and how some of them are trivial to get, I would argue only help enhance the sense of exploration of the levels themselves. Yes there are some ones that are going to be like "Why" and "This is stupid", but in the end the game managed to convince me that moons out in the open mean... well shit these things can be anywhere. They help branch out the worlds, even the smaller ones to such a degree that I felt each level had its own meaningful impact. I am one of those people who enjoyed every world you went to in the game, there was never a spot where I was like "Okay let me get out of this hellhole", I went "Wait let me see if I can find this last moon before I go". Yet the open worlds and the ability to just world hop whenever you want made it so I didn't feel trapped. Above all else, the endgame challenges, when you thought this game was just a cakewalk to the end, rewards players who were looking for something more, and I think that the something more it gives delivers in a way most games did not this year. I will probably be hopping back into this game throughout 2018, its the perfect game to just pick up and play for thirty minutes at a time, for the perfect console to pick up and play anything for just thirty minutes.

The End (For Now)

2017 will not be a strong year in games for myself personally, yet for me it wasn't all negative by a longshot. It was a return for form for Nintendo as a game developer. It was the next evolution in First Person Shooters, for the genre stuck in the Call of Duty mud for so long. JRPG's are still alive and kicking, and I learned to love the mobile game market in ways I never thought I would before (even though Granblue is a browser game at heart, its opened me up to other games of the same ilk). I have come to accept, I probably will never be able to keep up with all the games of the year like I was accustomed to years ago, but its fine. It gives me a perspective on games that I never had before, it lets me value the time I have with the ones I got a chance to play, rather than it just becoming the rat race of absorbing all experiences at the same time. I will probably go back and try to play some games I missed this year... but then again Monster Hunter comes out in a couple of weeks... I'll figure it out and get back to you guys eventually. For now, have a good one, and maybe I write more in the future.