Hey now everybody, hope you're doing well, and welcome to my Best Of 2017 year in review, part 3! This past year has been an exceptional time for games, and every month that went by gave us another incredible title to get lost in. Usually there are some months where nothing good comes out for awhile, sometimes the entire summer goes by without anything at all to play and my consoles just collect dust. But this year, not only was there a continuous stream of quality games month after month, there were so many that I still haven't had time to play all of them. Now with the new year just over the horizon, who knows what new and exciting things lie in store for us. Until then, let's continue a look back at all the amazing games that 2017 gave us, in part 3 of my Best Of List.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - August 8, 2017
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice is a PS4 exclusive game, that I wish had gotten a physical release, but was only available to purchase digitally. This was a beautiful and unique experience, that focused on a girl who suffered from psychosis, frequently heard voices in her head, and hallucinated things that weren't really there. It was made by a small team of about twenty people, and has been dubbed a "AAA indie game", meaning it has the same quality of any AAA title, but shorter and made on a smaller budget. I can say that after playing it for myself, I would agree on that definition of Hellblade. The graphics were amazing, the gameplay and combat were excellent, and the voice acting, as well as the overall narrative was top notch.
The entire game is steeped in Norse Mythology and Celtic culture, as it follows Senua on her mission to reach the Norse version of Hell, Helheim. She comes from a tribe that was completely wiped out by marauding vikings, now she carries the head of her dead lover to try and reach her destination and free his soul. Along the way you must explore each new area and try to figure out puzzles that block your way, but there's also a lot of combat at times where you go up against evil looking viking warriors. It's unclear how much of what you're seeing and doing is merely a hallucination, or reality, but either way it made for a very memorable experience. Hellblade is such a well done game, made by a small group of hard working people, and a worthy addition to the list.
Sonic Mania - August 15, 2017
Sonic games have been around almost as long as Super Mario Bros, and back in the early days of the first few releases they were fantastic platforming titles that would end up as classics. But then somewhere along the lines the Sonic series lost it's magic, and the games became worse and worse until people just stopped caring about the little blue hedgehog. Then along comes some amateur programmer who has a passion for Sonic, and he manages to make not only an oldschool style game, but a really good one. This is basically a return to form for the series bringing it back to basics, and doing what the game did right in the first place. You have a platformer that is fast paced, 2d side scrolling, and it looks and feels like the classic games for the original Sega system.
This features Sonic the Hedgehog, and his companions Tails and Knuckles, as they try to take down their old nemesis Doctor Eggman, and his robotic henchmen. It was released for all major consoles, Xbox One, PS4, and The Switch, but sadly only received a digital version. I wish we could have gotten a physical copy, because I like to collect games and having something physical is always better in my opinion, but it's not a big deal. Sonic Mania features redesigned versions of levels from the original classic games, as well as brand new ones specially made for this. It's so nice to see a well received Sonic game that people are enjoying, and I'm happy to include it on this list.
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - August 22, 2017
I was a little late to the party with the Uncharted series, since I didn't own a PS3 I never got a chance to play the first three games. But then the Uncharted Collection was released for PS4 and I finally got to play them. I'd always heard that they were amazing games, and after seeing for myself I have to agree that they set a pretty high bar as far as graphics, voice acting, and a character driven story go. Nathan Drake was very likable and kind of similar to a modern day Indiana Jones, going on adventures to far off lands looking for lost treasures. Now his time has come to an end, and Uncharted Lost Legacy is the first game to not feature the well known protagonist. Instead this time we get Chloe and Nadine, two side characters from previous games, that go on an adventure of their own.
I was worried that without Drake to lead the way the game might lose some of it's magic, but honestly once it got going I didn't miss him a bit. Chloe and Nadine have very good chemistry together, their small talk was very believable and funny, and they filled the shoes of Nathan as well as anybody could have. This isn't a full fledged game, so it's not quite as long as your typical Uncharted title, but for $40 it was well worth the price of admission. You follow the two female leads as they trek all over the globe, climbing, swinging, and shooting their way towards the treasure in usual Uncharted fashion. Anybody who's a fan of the series would be doing themselves a disservice if they didn't check out Lost Legacy. It's right on par with any other game from the franchise and definitely deserves to make the list.
Cuphead - September 29, 2017
2017 was kind of a rough year for the Xbox at first, they weren't seeing the sales numbers they would have liked, and a main reason for that was the fact that they didn't have any big exclusive games to win people over and convince them to make the purchase. Then towards the last quarter of the year a long awaited title came out that really got people talking about Xbox again, and a buzz started to form around the game Cuphead. This was something that was shown off at E3 a couple years ago and it finally saw the light of day in late September. The game is notoriously difficult, but also extremely fun and a joy just to look at. It's a side scrolling shooter, very similar to Contra from the NES days, and that's fine with me because I love those types of games and you don't see many of them anymore.
Not only is the game known for being extremely tough, but more importantly it's known for it's beautiful art style. It looks like something straight out of a 1930's Disney cartoon with the hand drawn grainy graphics, and it even shares the same way of talking and storytelling. Most of the levels are boss battles where you must try and take down a very tough enemy, but they always have multiple stages where they transform a few times before actually dying. There's also some stages where it's more like a platforming game, in those you go through an entire level instead of just a boss battle. This game did wonders for Xbox's momentum in the later half of the year, and it was really exciting to see something so original and fun that's exclusive to Xbox. Hopefully we'll see more stuff like this in the year to come because Cuphead was certainly a high point in gaming for a lot of people this year, and earns it's spot on the list.
Super Nintendo Classic Mini - September 29, 2017
Not only did Nintendo release a brand new console with the Switch, but they kept the train of Mini consoles coming this year as well. I'm a huge fan of good retro games, they bring me back to when I was a kid playing my Super Nintendo with my Brother so the Nostalgia factor is definitely in play here. But most of these games still hold up just fine, and after receiving my SNES Classic from Amazon I didn't stop playing the thing for weeks. Just like the NES Classic that came out last year, these were incredibly hard to find and most people didn't get a chance to pick one up. I'm not sure if they're more readily available now or not, but I ended up paying a little extra and getting one online. I just couldn't resist the temptation of having some of the best Super Nintendo games on a nice little collectible console.
This thing comes with 21 awesome games programmed right onto the hardware with two full sized Super Nintendo controllers. Everything from Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Earthbound, Secret of Mana, Star Fox, Castlevania 4, Super Metroid, Zelda A Link to the Past and more. These are all excellent games that I had a ton of fun going back and replaying for the first time in over a decade. A lot of these titles would cost you quite a bit of money nowadays if you were to go and try to get the actual game carts at a retro game vendor. Just Earthbound alone would set you back over $100 to get the actual game. So to have all these heavy hitters all together in a neat little package, and the added feature of being able to save literally anywhere in the game at any time, was worth it for me. I love these things, I hope we see more of them in the future, and I couldn't help but put it on the list of Best Of 2017.
Thanks for checking out part 3 of my year in review for games in 2017, I hope you enjoyed it!
This has been an amazing job abaout all year videogames, wich one has been your favourite one of all this year ? Answer me here if it is not a problem https://steemit.com/videogame/@saymton/which-has-been-your-favourite-videogame
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