~_~

I've been thinking Hollow Knight was that other game - Salt and Sanctuary - for the longest time. Turns out I've never looked at it before. This is coming to switch right? Looks amazing. Also, did anyone play Salt and Sanctuary? Might pick it up...

It’s too dark too.

Hollow Knight for me.
Not a groundbreaking game but so polished you can see your face in it.

Right said.

tigerswiftly wrote:

What a ludicrously good profitable year for Nintendo it has been.

The WiiU was really quite brilliant btw unless you're from Nintendo. Then it was shit but what do they know?

I've bought Nier and Lost Legacy in the Black Friday Sale!

Xbox lol.

Both will feature on my list...

BUT IN WHAT ORDER!?

JRPC wrote:

I've bought Nier and Lost Legacy in the Black Friday Sale! Xbox lol. Both will feature on my list... BUT IN WHAT ORDER!?

No contest really. NieR is leagues ahead. Lost Legacy is just more Uncharted although ima having fun so far.

I really need to play it, I was shocked that P5 wasn't your GOTY although I haven't been in that thread. @cinty

It’s so good that it kept me away from Mario, and I’m a Nintard! And I’m still musing whyher even after Mario “opens up”, it’ll actually make me think about NieR’s number 2 position on my GotY.

Yeah.

Forget my placement of Nier at Number 1, Dan. The ultimate testament to the quality of Nier is that on Elf’s list he doesn’t know whether it’s 2nd instead of Mario Odyssey. A game that can hold its own again against the best Nintendo has to offer has to be up to scratch.

Thematic depth. ‘Nuff said. And it’s all very well told.

Gameplay picks up later when you have more chips to go with your fish, and enemies are harder. No Bayonetta (what is?), but I still enjoyed it.

The themes are amazing in it. Far beyond what most games do and it keeps adding to them for 30+ hours. The soundtrack is fantastic. 

There is a lot of tedious running back and forth though, and the combat really doesn't go anywhere. Not enough types of enemies and not enough challenge. Don't think I died at all after the opening hours and hardly had to think about what weapons/chips to use. It's a shame because I think a tighter game could've added even more to the themes - if it was more entertaining and exciting some of the ways it makes you reflect on your actions would've been even more interesting.

Insofar as one is a thousand times better than the other, yes!

Hello all - Gav alerted me to the GOTY thread so I thought I'd drop in. This is the same post I'm going to be putting on my blog, so apologies for the CTRL+V. Not sure when / if I'll be back, as the terrifying numbers next to threads suggest drama, but I hope you've all been keeping well. 
Without futher ado - 


My top 10 games of the year comes with several caveats. I have yet to play games I know are going to have an impact on me, notably Pyre, Night In The Woods (although that may be last year?) Wolfenstein 2, and What Remains of Edith Finch. That being said, I'm fairly confident of two things. 
1) This has been a banner year for Nintendo. Yes, I am guilty of a real affection towards them, and they have formed such a large part of my childhood that I am loathe to let them go - sticking in even through the dark WiiU days. Thankfully being in the UK, I avoided the dark Virtual Boy days, although they are now being relived with the shoddy equipment I bought in Japan.
2) Xbox has disappointed. I kept my subscription going to Live this year for the simple fact that I play with friends I know very well on that system. Whilst the Games With Gold service has, on the whole, delivered games I want to play, Xbox hasn't. They have a software problem, and all the listing of multiplatform games does nothing to placate the fact that I have an X equivalent PC also hooked up to my TV. In fact, the one game on my list that is semi-Xbox exclusive (for now) is one I played on PC, and a third party effort. They have to raise their game next year - Playstation and Nintendo are not getting the better of them because of hardware, but because of software. I would like an X, but if I can play Assassin's Creed identically on my PC, I fail to see the point. 

Those caveats aside, let us dive in.

10) Player Unknown's Battlegrounds
Now, admittedly I have put nowhere near the hours needed to get reeeaaall good at this as others have, however I have played 30+ matches, and between the chaos of car chases, bathtub discoveries, and flat up landing in the wrong place, I have developed a really strong affinity for this game. It's unfinished, sure, but the core of something special is there. In my work, I speak to a lot of young people who are adoring the Fortnite similar mode - because it is free - but very few who know of PUBG. If the latter went f2p, I think it would explode in a way reminiscent of very few games. All that being said, this is a jolly fun and silly journey through the odds of survival. 
And no, I have not earned a chicken dinner yet.

9) Horizon Zero Dawn
I guess I need to caveat this by saying I have not yet hit the 'moment' or the point where the reason for the world being in this state is so apparent. That being said, I have found the character of Aloy engaging and, more importantly, endearing, and I am really enjoying mixing up the combat - although I am also aware this can be one-note if one chooses not to engage with all options available. It is an absolutely gorgeous world to get lost in and to discover, and I look forward not only to finishing it, but also to the DLC. I have it marked down as my Christmas game, as I know that my brother-in-law will also want a shot of it. It's not perfect, but it's different, fun and engaging; those concepts alone stand it in good stead. 

Mario and Rabbids: Kingdom Battle
The Rabbids. The fucking Rabbids. On launch day of the Wii I purchased the Rabbids game, and it served as a functional, if relatively annoying way of demonstrating the way in which the Wii controller can operate. To a certain extent, the Rabbids have always been tied to Nintendo, however they have certainly not always been appreciated (often for good measure.) In a post Guillamot (Minions) world, their position seems a lot more secure, and Kingdom Battle, aside from conflict, keeps them at arm's length; they are something to be looked at (Mulvey's gaze?) rather than interacted with. Thus we gain bizarre asides, often involving pants or toilets (ah, c'est Francais) rather than anything more in-depth. However, somewhat banal (yet oddly involving) puzzles aside, the core of the game is the best entry-to-XCom you've ever seen. The core characters are so uniquely defined that I found myself  revisiting encounters to try another approach - whether Luigi's distance-sniping, or Rabbid Mario's get-up-close-and-rek-it. It's a curio, yet one that retains a lot of charm. Another string to the Switch's first year. Speaking of....

7) ARMS
Bonkers and bizarre, it can only have come from Nintendo of Japan - specifically the Splatoon 1 team. I had real doubts and scepticism about this game - Nintendo and fighting games (aside from SF2) don't fare well, going back to Mortal Kombat days, so it was bizarre that in January I was given two nunchuck and told to fight. Yet ARMS has all of the charm and personality of Splatoon, and thankfully seems that it is being supported in the same way. The recent 4.0 patch brought in a set of achievement-like-badges, and the fighting online appears to be becoming more and more technical. I will profess to a real affinity towards bog-standard Spring Man, although Master Mummy, and his healing powers become more and more appealing each time I play it. I expect that ARMS will eventually hit the  DeviantArt heights of Splatoon 1, but at the moment it is a fun, approachable and exciting game. Everyone should play ARMS is the TL;DR here.

6) Persona 5
I feel like a hypocrite putting it here. The Investigation Team are my best friends of all time. I know them, I've fought with them, I've taken them dancing, to dungeons, and to a full blown Arc Systems Tournament. And yes, I love Joker and the gang. Their soundtrack is jazzy, rolling, and raucous. The dungeon system with the deeper levels of the metro is a great addition. The character dungeons themselves are wonderfully deeper, and related to the characters, but... just... something isn't quite there. Maybe it's the fact that the home life seems to be far more distant, or not quite as homely as the first title, but I can't quite gel with it as strongly as the first. Another aspect of this is the fact that your mission is involving criminals, not just people who have become to a certain extent disenfranchised. The people you affect are going to prison, and there is no hope of redemption for them. It's lovely, and so much time has been spent in it, but the overall message is one of negativity rather than positivity. 
That seems like a dunk on the game, but I guess it's worth putting into perspective that the previous one was a top 5 of all time game for me, and this is still an excellent follow up. Still recommended. 

5) Yakuza 0
Yes. It's the boy. And I feel terrible about putting it so low on this list, but the fact of the matter is that the games above it are simply incredible. I cannot underestimate the power of Yakuza, however. It's a game where I stopped a panty-raider, met the unbelievable Mr. Libido, and played a rhythm game involving answering telephones. All those aside, the running of a hostess club become about 20-25 of my 70-odd hour playtime. It was all consuming. The music, the Sunshine Fever, the act of playing as a character I knew from my Yakuza past was a 'baddun'. It's a remarkable game, and one that re-frames the whole game series in a whole new light. The upgrade to PS4 is incredibly noticeable, and even the gross-er elements, such as watching some sexy ladies do gyrations in FMV, are made mockery of with the response of the main character. It's evocative, and from my own experience, reflects a lot of Japanese society. I love these games for the mixture of old 16-bit mechanics, as well as the strength of emotions they manage to pull from me. It's a wonderful title, and specifically to people who have never played a Yakuza title - get involved.

4) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild
Yes, a transformative game, and a game that re-invigrotated my love of Zelda. And influential! So why is this GOTY candidate sitting at number 4? To be frankly honest, there is only the simple reason that personally I loved the games ahead of it personally more. If I was looking objectively at games that are going to influence the industry, then this is the clear number one. 
So, I am not in any way ragging on an incredible achievement by Nintendo. Let's talk about what I love. I love the systems of the game, and most of my playtime has been seeing how things interact with each other. It's a beautiful cavalcade of chaos. I love the way the game's puzzles are beautifully obscure - there's often no direct correlation between the clue and the solution. Making gamers think is a lost are in 2017, and Zelda operates this wonderfully. I love the aesthetic, I love the heroes, and most specifically, I love this asshole version of Link, constantly scolded by Zelda. It's a powerhouse, and it's only kept from the top place by 3 games that, in my opinion, are best in class, not only this year, but maybe ever.

3) Splatoon 2
Here I am, the opinion haver, telling you all about Splatoon 2. As I write this, the biggest update to Splatoon 2 is about to drop, and I feel like dropping knowledge on everyone towards the fact of 'I told you all'. Those people who played through two years of the first game, saw a transformation from 5 (!) initial maps to something absolutely unrecognisable, and Splatoon 2 is going through the same chrysalis moment. Nintendo was never going to make its biggest Japanese game (in terms of publicity, love, and forward-facing-merchness) flounder, and they seem to be doing that again. The core mechanic of Splatting-dat-floor still remains, but the ways in which they are both expanding the game (I look forward to my first game of Clam Blitz) as well as seemingly subsuming the entirety of the first game (Hello Arowana Mall) to the second seem to suggest that they have long term plans for the sequel. 
Here's the other thing. This game is fun as hell. You can be an active participant without having to kill a single person. The skill ceiling is both rock bottom and incredibly high. Granted, the party play is still nowhere near where it should be, but Nintendo's glacial pace is at least moving forward. Either way, Splatoon 2 is a game I will be playing long into 2018. 

2) Nier: Automota
There's not a game, I think ever, that has ever made me feel the ways that Nier has felt. I'm going to start with the soundtrack, because to unpack everything that Nier has to offer will be too tricky otherwise. I purchased the three disc edition of this, and unfortunately whilst it does not have the 'Factory - Gods' track on it (which I expect players of the game will easily recognise), it does have the wonderful fairground theme, which I think perfectly encapsulates the game. 
The song itself is based around a simple merry-go-round melody. Think of this as the game's mechanics. Despite being a Platinum game, it has nowhere near the same depth as a Bayonetta (and it seems to be the better for it - easier to make your way through everything). Yet the discordant notes and other instruments that sit around that basic melody serve to demonstrate the depth of the game. This is not simply a game about two automatons saving the planet, but a rumination on what it means to be human, with all the messy, ill-fitting moments that come along with it. Not ever story in the game is resolved satisfyingly, because, well, not every moment in life is done so either. Yet what is in place is an exceptional piece, not only for videogames, but for all people to consume (telling that there is a 'very easy' mode where combat takes care of itself) that comments upon what we are as an evolved society, and how easy it is for us to revert (as we often do) to our atavistic, primitive urges. It is nothing less than essential. 


1) Super Mario Odyssey

So how do you top the game that questions the nature of humanity and our purpose on earth? By delivering a game that is focused solely around the entire reasons that videogames exist - pure Play. That capital P is important in the last sentence, as part of our development as children is the sense of exploration and discovery. Mario Odyssey, to get to the 'end', is not a hard game, nor is it meant to be. To criticise the title on that front is to miss the point of the title entirely. It is an exploration into the concept of player interaction - the basic concept of 'what happens if I do X' to a world. The reward of the moon is the sense that you have done something the game-makers have planned. There's even more sense of this when you think you are breaking the game - one some of the most obscure, highest-to-reach places, the staff at Nintendo have placed some sense of reward. It's as if, following the Zelda mantra, they've adopted the 'have a go' attitude and considered every possible outcome. It's a game about unadulterated glee, and fie the comparisons to Mario 64 - this is a game that stands a testament to the world we are in now, where speed-runs, glitches, and youtube videos permeate our lives. Nintendo have predicted everything we may consider, and there's something to admire about that. In Mario 64, the game could be broken in any number of ways, and that often resulted in amusing outcomes. It's more impressive to see that the game-makers have predicted this. I refute the suggestions that it is in any sense 'easy' either. When has discovery been an 'easy' thing to do? Have you seen the post-game challenges? They follow the path that 3D World and their like have trod, letting everyone feel the sense of accomplishment by seeing the credits, but hiding the best stuff till way later. 
It's a remarkable game, and I love the fact that EAD are now dared to do something to surpass it. In a year of absolutely unbelievable games, the fact that Mario dares to put that concept of Play (there it is again) paramount beyond story or theme is daring and wonderful. Nothing comes close.




There we go. Hope you all are doing well, see you in the cyberspace.