2017 huh. I honestly don’t want to think about all the shit that happened during 2017 (both personally and worldly) any more than I have to. Video games are great though, and they were even greater than normal in 2017 (some say “it’s the best time to be playing video games“), so lets get to some good video games:
Games that probably would have fleshed this out to a top 10 list had I finished/played them in time:
Blue Reflection:
I’ll be honest, I know nothing about this game, but the soundtrack is just so beautiful that it makes me want to play it. If a song like this or this (both are variations of the same song but hey, it’s good) doesn’t make you want to play it, I don’t know what to say.
NieR:Automata:
I know next to nothing about Nier, but the little bits I’ve heard make me think I’d probably like it a lot.
Night in the Woods:
The same thing as Nier. Know very little, but the little I do know sounds like my type of game.
Super Mario Odyssey:
I like games that just let the player explore and find all the Easter eggs strewn about the world. I’ve heard this is what Odyssey is in a nutshell which makes me think it could be up there as one of my favorites of the generation had I played it. I also heard something about meat.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
As stated with Odyssey, I like exploration, and Breath of the Wild seems to be all about that, so I’d probably enjoy this a lot too. I’ve been known to lose dozens of hours in games of BotW’s genre already.
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia:
Probably some of the funnest times I’ve had with a Fire Emblem game have been with Echoes. It just dropped at a time where I was personally burnt out on strategy games, so I never got very far.
Horizon Zero Dawn:
Horizon is a really good game, but also very large. The only reason I’m not playing it right now is that I’m currently writing this list. I’ll probably have to report back on this one in my 2018 list.
Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy:
This game reminds me of Curious Village and I love it for that. While I was still in love with Layton by the end of Azran Legacy, having a fresh set of characters (and with the main character being a female this time) really helped give this game its own identity apart from “we heard you like Layton so we made more Layton.”
Honorable mentions because they don’t fit in or because I don’t want an oddly numbered list:
Tokyo Dark:
I was super into everything about Tokyo Dark’s story, setting and style, but the game is the most dreadful thing to actually play. As with a lot of games of its genre, the game features multiple endings, each fleshing out a bit of the story (with one ending I’m assuming being the “true” ending), but the act of having to get all those endings just turned me off of the game. Maybe some day I’ll work up the willpower to actually finish all the endings as everything besides the gameplay is superb and right up my alley. Also, this game lets you make the main character go insane, which is always fun.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus:
I didn’t play Wolfenstein II myself, I watched someone else play it, and talk about a ride. This might be one of the most insane games ever released. Absolutely no punches are held back during its entire run while unapologetically murdering the shit out of Nazis and their robot counterparts who’ve taken over America. The fact that 2017 makes this game feel sweeter is a sad state of affairs, but that still doesn’t sour the sweetness this game extrudes around every corner.
The Witness:
The Witness is a thing.
It’s calming. It’s eerie. It’s frustrating. It’s intriguing. It’s mind-blowing. It’s simple. It’s tiring. It’s satisfying. And it’s a masterpiece of game design.
It also came out in 2016 so that’s why it’s here and not at probably number one on my actual list (kind of the biggest reason I came up with this honorable mentions section).
Doki Doki Literature Club:
(This game is actually number six on my list but five is a much prettier number to have for a list).
I feel like I shouldn’t say anything about Doki Doki Literature Club, but it’s not like anyone hasn’t heard about this game by now. It’s a game best served cold. If you haven’t heard about it yet, download it (it’s free!), play it and don’t stop until you get to the credits.
Here’s the actual top five games list:
#5 – A Hat in Time:
I went into A Hat in Time with all the wrong expectations. I had the impression it was trying to be like Banjo Kazooie at first and hated my time with it because I thought it was just bad at doing that, but the first time I entered a time rift, it completely changed how I looked at the game: I realized it was trying to be like Super Mario Sunshine. When I made that connection, I literally couldn’t put the game down and just had the dumbest smile on my face the whole time I was playing. A Hat in Time is a love letter to the Gamecube and its era of video games, which means it is also a love letter to me. I get feelings of Mario Sunshine from it obviously. but also of Psychonauts, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Luigi’s Mansion, a little bit of Zelda: The Wind Waker and even Banjo Kazooie still. While the next game on this list I think is the better game with nostalgia plastered all over it, A Hat in Time feels like a game made specifically for me, and my childhood self and I wouldn’t trade the time we spent together with it for anything.
(And if you want to talk about the best moment in a video game in 2017, how about when this song kicked in out of nowhere; I was losing my goddamned mind over how unexpectedly epic the whole thing was.)
#4 – Sonic Mania:
As I said in my review of this game, Sonic Mania is “pure nostalgic ecstasy” which I still think is the most apt description for it. Even if I had seen what the game had to offer in only a few short hours, that didn’t stop me from replaying 100% multiple times because this game is just straight up a fun time. In a year where the harshness of the world shone through the most, having something like Mania really squashed those feelings and was something I could just lose myself in as I remembered that the world wasn’t always 2017. While Sega went in the exact opposite direction in every way with Forces, I hope Mania will be something that keeps shining for many years, as Sonic, and probably the world in the next few years, really need more things like it.
#3 – Pyre:
I really don’t remember my time with Pyre all too well, but I think that fits with the theme of this celestial basketball visual novel. The whole game feels like an urban legend to me now, a serious of muddled events that tell a story of a previous era; while that is obviously not true at all, it’s the impression I have on the game thanks to the way it builds its world.
Pyre is such a strange game. I never personally enjoyed the previous Supergiant games, but Pyre struck a cord with me when Bastion and Transistor didn’t. It’s an absurd amalgamation of many things, but somehow they all fit together and complement each other really well and provide a story and cast of characters that feel real. Some of the choices I had to make felt like they weighed on my soul, and even if I won all the battles, it felt like a loss when there was a part of me rooting for the other team in a genuine way. I wanted my ragtag team to better the world, but it felt like a case of saving the masses over the other individuals trying to get to a better place in their lives.
I remember my time with Pyre fondly. Maybe some day down the road, I’ll load it back up again and play through this urban legend again, but I kind of like the idea of keeping the game fuzzy in my mind.
#2 – Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
Number two is probably higher on this list than this game deserves. When my first draft of this list had The Witness here instead, I felt okay with Danganronpa V3 sitting at the number three slot but now it’s been bumped up. This game could’ve easily been a contender for the number one slot, but it so barely misses the mark due to it tripping over itself at the end in some sort of attempt to please the masses, making its message to the world feel hollow and not worth the time I spent with the series.
Many took offense with the ending to the game, feeling like it was a personal attack on fans of the series; I never personally took the ending that way. V3 has things it wants to say about the nature of fiction, which I found to be pretty powerful even if the game basically went back on it. When people took it as a slap in the face, I took it to be a very powerful message that, even if something is fiction (not real per se), if it affected you, it is real. Even if the entire Danganronpa series (or any other game series and beyond) is just a work of fiction, it’s not just a work of fiction if it impacted you and changed your life in some way. The characters in fiction aren’t fake if they inspire you in some way, those characters live in the real world through you. The whole ending message was incredibly powerful, making the idea that the entire Danganronpa was literally always just a work of fiction perfectly palatable to me (even if the game goes back on it), because it wasn’t just a work of fiction to me, it helped change me and will stick with me.
Continuing the franchise beyond this point seems to be antithesis to part of what V3 was trying to say, making the game seem like a pointless attempt at doing something controversial without the bark to back it up. My overall feelings on the game will ultimately be left up to whether the series continues or not, and if it does continue, I probably won’t be staying along for the ride. This is where the series should end and if it doesn’t end here, there will be literally no power behind V3’s message, even if that message still has its merits.
#1 – Persona 5:
In a year filled with so much hardship as 2017 has been for me, Persona 5 was a thing I could just lose myself in. I had tried to figure out whether Persona 5 or Danganronpa V3 was my number one pick (before I had fully fleshed out my thoughts on DRV3), and after literally two seconds of thought, I picked Persona 5.
Persona 5 came at a weird time in my life, and it left at one of the hardest times of my life. It came out at the tail end of my first semester of college, which, in multiple ways, shook up my life in a way I didn’t anticipate. And, I don’t believe I ever mentioned this anywhere online, at the end of April (literally the day before I finished Persona 5), our family had to have our dog of nearly 15 years put to sleep.
I guess Persona 5 is sort of symbolic of a switch in how my life was gonna be from that point forward, before I had to become an “adult,” or leave whatever past life I had behind. It was the last time I could feel like I had for the last 19 years. I had been waiting for it to release for nearly half of that time, and when I finally had finished the game, the thing that had been with me for all of my living memory was also gone. In a sense, it’s not quite accurate to say that Persona 5 is my game of the year, more so that my whole life prior was, and Persona 5 just personified it (pun intentional). I think this is also why no other game in existence has stuck with me in a “man, I really wish I was still playing that game” way; I still even now want to load it up and play through it all over again, and I’d happily spend another 90 hours with it.
Not to say Persona 5 isn’t an incredible game by itself; It probably would’ve made number one on this list regardless of how it paralleled my life. It was difficult to live up to the expectations that both Persona 3 and Persona 4 set, but Persona 5 managed to eek its way into doing so. While many common complaints people have about the game are legitimate, I don’t think they stand against all the things the game got right, and considering the expectations that were thrust upon it, I think Persona 5 did a fine job taking it in stride.
The ending to this game was also the most emotional I’ve gotten with a game ever. The way the ending to that game also paralleled with my life hit me so hard, and when the game did the reversal shortly after, I straight up cried.
2017 has been a major shift in my life, one that didn’t come easy, but I honestly feel better off for it, and have hopes to use everything this year to have a good 2018. This is becoming less about Persona 5 now, so I should probably end it here.
