Happy New Year! Thought I would try to gather my thoughts on my favorite games of 2017. So here goes:

5) Life is Strange: Before the Storm

This game had a lot going against it. It was a prequel no one asked for. Ashly Burch wasn’t going to be returning as Chloe due to the voice actor’s strike. The original development team wouldn’t be the primary studio working on it. The main mechanic of the first game (rewinding time) wouldn’t be returning. Despite all these potential issues, Before the Storm exceeded expectations and found a way to tell an engaging story, and once again, I found myself lost in the world of Blackwell Academy and Arcadia Bay. While it doesn’t hit the high emotional points of the first game, it still has some amazing stand-out moments, like playing Dungeons & Dragons with classmates for 20 minutes in one episode (which I actually think is maybe the best attempt any video game has ever done in trying to capture the appeal of tabletop games like D&D). I left this game feeling it was absolutely essential for fans of the first game, as it made me see characters from a whole new perspective and made the events of the first game feel that much more tragic.

4) Cuphead

When playing games as a kid, this was basically my vision of the future. 3D games were non-existent in my mind when playing NES and SNES, so I thought the natural evolution of games would be that they’d end up looking like playable cartoons. This game is that. Not only does the game successfully capture the animation style of the 1930’s flawlessly (well, thankfully, minus a lot of the racism), but it merges that with music and text that could also be stripped directly out of that era. Probably one of the most stylistically cohesive packages I’ve ever played. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a blast to play!

3) NieR: Automata

NieR: Automata can be tedious to play (I dropped it for several months before returning to it), the combat can feel braindead on normal difficulty, but too punishing on the harder mode, and it has some sexist stuff that’s just plain gross (yes, there’s a trophy for trying to look up the main character’s skirt). I look at that list of negatives, and ask myself how I can justify putting it on my top 3. I’m still conflicted about putting it here. But at the end of day, NieR made one of the biggest impressions on me out of all the games that released in 2017.

At first glance, a lot of the themes and story of NieR come across as cliff-notes from a freshmen college philosophy course, especially with the game’s main themes of existence and free-will (hell, one of the main character’s names is 2B), but as you continue scratching at the surface, you quickly realize how every single character, every single line of dialogue, and every quest is an extension of those themes. We watch as these androids and robots try everything from pacifism to anarchy and observe how the world reacts and changes. It’s a game that will have game critics and writers analyzing its content for years to come, and unlike games like Wolfenstein, the most memorable moments aren’t typically found in cutscenes or pre-rendered cinematics. NieR tries to take full advantage of the interactive arts and video games as a medium to emphasize and illustrate its points. From messing with menu systems to deleting save files, NieR is not afraid to break the fourth wall, but in ways that make sense to the world and the player.

Since games are made by such large teams, it can be hard to see a director’s personal touch or vision. I can watch a David Fincher movie, and know “Hey, David Fincher directed this,” just by the color choices and shot composition. In games, that’s a lot rarer. One of the few examples I can think of is the Metal Gear series by Hideo Kojima. NieR feels a lot like Metal Gear; you can see the director’s influence within every inch of the game world. It dares to do so much more than most games out there. But ultimately, just like Metal Gear, it can be hard to fully support and recommend due to some baffling gameplay choices, and an adherence to pervy, fan-service. It’s one of the most ambitious games I’ve ever played, and if it could just address those complaints, it would be in masterpiece territory.

2) Super Mario Odyssey

It sounds so cliché, but Mario Odyssey is just a joy to play. From the beginning world, to the end credits, no game put a smile on my face more than Mario. When a lot of games try to capture nostalgia, it can come across as “here’s a reference to this thing you loved.” Odyssey accomplishes the harder feat of making it seem like a tribute as opposed to a reference. But nostalgia isn’t the only thing that makes Mario great. It continues to be the best platformer on the market. It looks great, it plays great, and it sounds great. In a year filled with anxiety, conflict, and divisiveness, it was wonderful to just be able to escape for a while in the positivity and light-heartedness the Mushroom Kingdom provides. No other game this year kept me smiling as much as Super Mario Odyssey.

1) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

For years, people have been complaining (myself included) that recent Zelda games have had too much hand-holding and don’t allow you to explore on your own. This entry in the series addresses that criticism head-on by allowing the player to go anywhere from the start. Want to go to Hyrule Castle and take Ganon on? Go ahead; just be prepared for an almost impossible, but doable, fight. Want to spend 40 hours just roaming hillsides and exploring shrines to power up? Sure; have fun.

Zelda puts faith in the player and subtly guides them through the world via color, geography and architecture, while trying to not intrude on their adventure. Obstacles can be tackled in a variety of ways due to the complexity of elemental systems in the game. Everything just works the way you think it should. Heat cooks food, metal conducts electricity, water unfortunately makes things slippery. They all sound so simple, but when you layer all these mechanics on top of each other, the game should be a broken, unplayable mess. But it isn’t. So much care went into crafting each system to feel natural, and when something unexpected does happen, you stop and think, “Well, yeah, of course that would happen.” It all abides to the established rules of the world; it’s usually either something you assumed couldn’t happen because it’s a game, or plain forgot about.

On top of that, the world is full of mysteries and secrets to discover, so your journey never goes too long without a little surprise or reward. The amount of work that must have gone into designing such an intricate and populated world is baffling to the mind. Even just cutting out a small swatch of land in that game, you have to think that it not only works from a topographical perspective (if you zoom out to the map, areas are quickly recognizable), but those spaces are then built out into 3D seamlessly, with recognizable physical landmarks. Not only that, but these landmarks need to be seen from a distance and compensate for verticality and visibility, as Link should be able to discover them when standing on top a large tower. Again, I can’t even fathom how much work must have gone into making this world work in all the ways it does.

While there are a handful of issues with the game, like performance issues and a frustrating inventory system, the ambition and high points of this game easily outweigh any negatives. It’s a full realization of the promise of the very first Legend of Zelda game, a world full of discovery, and a stunning example of what video games can do. Exploring the world of Breath of the Wild gave me a sense of wonder that I haven’t felt while playing a game since childhood, and for that, it was my favorite game of 2017.