The end of the year is finally upon us and with the end of the year comes a WHOLLLLLLE bunch of Top 10’s! Here’s my Top 10 Games of 2017!
10) Shadow Of War
For AGES during Shadow of War (which I only recently got around too) this was up at number 1 on my list of top 10 games for the whole year. I was loving everything about this game, from the intense and incredibly fun fighting system right through to the addictive army building and fort ransacking. I couldn’t understand why this game was getting so much gip, so much anger… Then I reached Act IV and I understood… suddenly I was faced with a ridiculous difficulty curve in order to promote microtransactions and force me to buy orcs for my army and just like that this game dropped to the bottom of my list. HOWEVER Unlike many I refuse to drop it off the list completely because before this section I had SOOOOO much fun for a solid 30-40 hours.
9) Wolfenstein 2
I liked the first of this generations Wolfenstein games more than I liked Doom. THAT is how excited I was for this game – the incredible gunplay and intense, yet still funny, story telling that dealt with some really dark issues had me hooked in the from the very beginning. So I was SOOO stoked to find that all of this was here in the sequel… PLUS the ability to dual wield 2 different guns had me stoked.
8) The Surge
“Oh no, here they go trying to rip off Souls again with a generic and badly made game” was something I heard many times over the course of The Surge’s development but when I finally got my hands on it, it was just so much more than that. Punishing difficulty yes. But a battle system that promoted you to hack off specific limbs in order to build up your character was a really unique take on the genre and I fucking loved every punishing minute with it.
7) Nioh
Onimusha Souls. But legit take Onimusha style fighting and story telling with huge level design and crippling difficulty and you have Nioh. Much like the Series, Nioh was one of those games where as soon as I finished I started to make my way through the second playthrough.
6) Tekken 7
The pinnacle of fighting games received a new entry this year with a few balancing tweaks and a story (apparently, I didn’t play the story at all) so I spent a lot of time re learning Jin and getting my head kicked in online.
5) The Evil Within 2
ALMOST THE best Horror game on this list, Bethesda’s Evil Within 2 had taken everything that was wrong about the first game and fixed it completely making a more solid horror experience. If you are a fan of old school survival horror games you could do much worse than The Evil Within 2.
Also, I bloody LOVE Sebastian.
4) Cuphead
So earlier in this list you probably noticed that I like games with punishing difficulty and that is what first drew me to Cuphead – That and it’s sweet style!
The game is rad, super hard platforming harking back to the old days of platformers with boss rush style gameplay, no game has ever before or since filled me with so much joy and heartache at the same time. If you haven’t yet – go and pick up Cuphead, you seriously won’t be disappointed.
3) Resident Evil 7
And onto the best horror game of the year. Resident Evil 7 changed everything that had come before. I was so dubious about the game going first person, I felt as though it was just going to try and rip off PT but instead it did it’s own thing and made what was potentially the greatest horror experience in decades as well as the single greatest game on PSVR.
2) Yakuza 0
Holy hell, Yakuza 0. This was my first foray into the Yakuza series which I had always believed was just a simple beat em up similar to Square’s “The Bouncer” from the PS2 era but instead I found a deep fighting RPG based in two small towns with 2 of the greatest video game characters I have EVER had the pleasure of playing as.
Goro Majima is bae forever.
1) NieR Automata
I put this game off for so long as everyone I knew kept telling me that when I came to it I would need to beat this JRPG in order to fully experience in and foolishly I didn’t believe I would actually want to play the game that many times. Right up to the first 10 hours of the game I was telling everyone I won’t be playing this game for multiple playthroughs… That was until I finished it and started again… Then i beat it again and started again for the post game stories and holy shit I was hooked.
No game has ever given me such post game depression and sadness about the fact that I will never get to experience it for the first time again.
So there you go, my favourite games of 2017 – I am sure this list would be a bit different had I sucked it up and bought a Switch this year but as it stands this is my list of games that really stuck with me this year.
So what are your favourite games this year? Let us know on social media and in the comments below!