2017, Game of the Year

[S.Peelman]

This was a good year, the best in a very long while. Still, the choice here is easy, and I suppose it won't be too difficult to guess which game wins this year for me. From the poll I played, Zelda Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey. From the other list I played Metroid Samus Returns, Cuphead (though not until it came to Switch) and Uncharted The Lost Legacy. Besides those, this year I also played Rime and of course the excellent Switch port of Mario Kart 8, but that doesn't count.

Metroid Samus Returns was fun, a great return to 2D Metroid and because I never played the original on GameBoy, even the premise was new to me. Cuphead is absolutely gorgeous, but to be honest I expected a bit more "Mega Man", instead of just a lot of bosses. Uncharted Lost Legacy was okay, a nice side-game but overal forgettable. Rime though was quite surprising. I only played it because I got a Switch, it was new, and I wanted some things to play. I liked the stylish look, the imaginary story and the way it's portrayed. It is sad though, and gameplay is light, so it's more of an 'experience'.

The main course for me this year was Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild. Mario Odyssey was basically what I wanted ever since Mario 64 came out in (for me) 1997. A big Mario collect-a-thon wide huge courses to explore. Really it only missed a nice hub-world, but it has everything else, plus a cool gimmick in Cappy, which enables some unique gameplay. Everything would pale against the big monolith that is Zelda Breath of the Wild though. The game that would suck up all my gaming time like a supermassive black hole. Nothing escapes, I even left the PC evergreens I had been playing for up to two decades at this point.

I was anticipating this game for a while now, ever since we saw that first picture behind Aonuma back in 2014, and then the trailers that followed up to what might be the greatest trailer ever right before release. I followed the rumours, trying to keep myself from being spoiled, and I was into it even if it was rumoured to be a big departure from the earlier 3D games. Turned out it was, but it is still unmistakably a Zelda game. One of the greatest in fact, who could have expected such a thing. It was a very solid start for the Switch, especially together with those other games, and it would delay my current decline in interest for new games. Obviously, my vote is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.