Ah, 2017.
Well, first to get the elephant out of the room. It's no secret what I think of BotW. When it it was announced, I had such high hopes for it. I'm not 3D Zelda hater, I actually enjoy them cause I always liked puzzles in games, but Aonuma eventually ran it into the ground with completely unbalancing 2D Zeldas' overworld vs dungeon exploration and puzzles vs combat, so BotW came as a long overdue change. Unfortunately, while I didn't mind that it was essentially combination of FarCry 2/3 and Portal/Talos Principle, and I enjoyed exploring this rendition of Hyrule quite a bit, I found its core gameplay loop to be, more or less, quite broken and thus, after a while, playing it become a chore (and I came to pity folks at Monolith who created topography for BotW, just to see it ruined with that gameloop). Aonuma et al. made new formula, but this one was as unbalanced as the old one, just in different direction. Still, it was important title since it reminded audience that open world games don't need to hold your hand, with a million markers popping up everywhere (you know, like the games in that "genre" used to be once upon a time, before AAA got their hands on them), but eventually it failed to go back to, what was advertised as, original LoZ concept, where exploration of gated open world and dungeons worked great together.
Another game that I had...well, solid, not high...hopes for was Asassin's Creed: Origins. I stopped playing AC after Black Flag, but this being "new formula" (Witcher 3 happened) and being set in ancient Egypt (which I'm sucker for) was a no-brainer for me. And yet again, my sentiment after a while was that I pity all those artists that made it so spectacularly gorgeous and vivid, and then someone slapped that gameplay onto it and ruined it. Not a bad game, but not that good either.
I didn't expect much from Horizon Zero Dawn, so I was not surprised that I didn't enjoy it much. It was run-of-the-mill Ubisoft alike open world experience, that tried to copy some things from Witcher 3, but ultimately, while being enjoyable world to explore, I remember it as fairly bland experience overall.
Both NieR:Automata and Nioh are in my backlog, and seem like something really good, but can't really comment on them.
Super Mario Odyssey knocked it out of the park. I pretty much stopped playing platformers decades ago, but occasionally there is a game that still gets my attention. This was one.
Mario and Rabbids meet XCOM in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle...what's not tot love about that. Really solid game.
I watched my son play Xenoblade Chronicels 2, and he enjoyed it a lot. Not my cup of tea, but it seems like really good game.
Cuphead is one of the best games of that year IMO. With old school gameplay and Betty Boop inspired artstyle, it oozed with charm. Really liked it.
Sniper Elite 4 was a worthy successor in the franchise, that improved in pretty much every aspect upon previous titles.
Indie games kept going strong with Little Nightmares, Hollow Knight, Night in the Woods and West of Loathing(that one being one of the favourites of mine).
One P&C adventure game stood out that year, Thimbleweed Park, made by some of the key folks from early LucasArts golden P&C adventure days.
CRPGs had very solid year as well with Divinity: Original Sin II and Torment: Tides of Numenera. As usual, Larian game had interesting gameplay, but so-so story and characters, and Numenera had so-so gameplay, but great setting and wordbuilding (which is no surprise, being based on TTRPG IP). ELEX was supposed to be something that I should love, being developed by Piranha Bytes (Gothic, Risen), but, while I liked gameplay a lot (being Gothic advanced), the setting kinda killed it for me.
Two VR games stood out for me that year - Lone Echo, space adventure for my inner astronaut dream come through, and Star Trek: Bridge Crew - this is pretty much for ST fans only, but messing around the bridge with other people on a mission...yeah, geeks only.
My favourite game from that year is PREY. I'm a fan of original Prey from 2006. One where you play as Cherokee guy, who, after being abducted by alien spaceship/entity (The Sphere) that sucks organic and non organic material from Earth in order to sustain itself, tries to defeat it. One where you can leave your body as a spirit and roam around for a bit, trying to solve a puzzle or defeat enemy that way. One that had portals (albeit fixed).
PREY (2017) is nothing like that and apart from some extremely loose connections, it is completely unrelated to original, so there was really no need to actually call it PREY, and honestly, I consider it completely different IP. As that, it is FPS/immersive-sim/stealth game set on space station, that draws a lot of influence from System Shock (which draw influence from Ultima Underworld), giving you lot of options how to solve problems and progress the game, and being developed by Arkane, from their first game Arx Fatalis (which was homage to Ultima Underworld - to paraphrase a wise man (that being Sean Malstrom), everything eventually comes back to Ultima). Not a prefect game by any means, but really enjoyable and fairly unique in this day and age.
I will be abstaining this year from giving my vote for GotY. Game (from those that I played) that I think is most polished and does the most what it set to do is Super Mario Odyssey. The game that shook up stale AAA industry the most is probably BotW. THE game that killed it in sales and established a new (sub)genre is PUBG (not Fortnite, though that one is most popular with kids).
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