What a year it has been for video games. Nintendo released a brand new console, the Switch, which everybody loves.
Also, Microsoft released a new console, the Xbox One X, and it's the most powerful gaming machine thus far. On top of all that, there are so many great game releases, from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey to Persona 5.
It can be argued that Nintendo has the most profound effect on the video game landscape this year. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild upended and completely rewrote the open world formula and Super Mario Odyssey made an iconic character novel, refreshing, and tremendously more complex than ever before.
There are also gems from other game developers like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, NieR: Automata, Night in the Woods, and so much more. Sure, they're not on this list, but they deserve special mentions for making this year's video game scene vast and diverse.
Without further ado, here are the top 7 video games of 2017:
7. Cuphead
Artfully unique, endlessly fun, and highly engaging, Cuphead is a platformer in the style of old-school animation. Think of Fleischer Studios in the 1930s particularly Betty Boop. It's exactly like that but interactive and in color. The game's art style alone is a compelling selling point and it's actually a great game, too.
It is impossible to play this game without thinking about how much effort was put into making every frame authentic and inspired. For that, it deserves to be in every best game of the year list.
6. Persona 5
The world is a mess. People are unjust, evil, unscrupulous. There is hope, however, and Persona 5 is all about that hope.
It lets players gather a pack of misfit friends to fight a morally decaying world and expose the adults that are making it worse. The structure and atmosphere of the game is its most notable aspect, syncing with the rhythm of teenage life and parsing cases episodically like a modern TV show.
5. What Remains of Edith Finch
In this game, a woman returns to her childhood home on a forgotten island. She is the lone living member of the most unfortunate family in America. Also, for some reason, she is within the walls of her past home, which comes littered with traps of agonizing memories.
Like the phenomenal Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch treats the house as a living, breathing character where players eventually discover relics amid the rubble of a time long past. The game is a nuanced depiction of how the past often poisons the present, and it is one of the best gaming experiences of the year.
4. Horizon Zero Dawn
Players step into the shoes of Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn, a skilled hunter and an outcast from her village. It has all the trappings of conventional open world concepts: a seemingly impossible quest, a unique, richly woven world, alone and almost anti-hero.
Even still, it's invigorated with startlingly fresh combinations — primitive creatures and robots, for instance — that are executed to great effect, making it one of this year's most compelling origin story. Plus, it's topped with phenomenal controls, topnotch voice acting, and gorgeous graphics.
3. Everything
Out of all the games in this list, Everything probably is the least played. That's understandable, though — Everything isn't really a game. It's not an interactive novel either, and certainly not something that entertains. If anything, it's an illuminating experience about living things as small as organisms or as big as the cosmos.
There's actually neither a sense of play here nor is there any action, conflict, or stakes. It offers, however, a sandbox playground of near-infinite exploration that while isn't entertaining , it is supremely bothersome, thought-provoking, and unforgettable.
2. Super Mario Odyssey
By now, there really shouldn't be any question. Nintendo makes some of the best games ever, period. That's an airtight fact. Super Mario Odyssey is yet another proof, surprising the longtime fans by reinvigorating the mustachioed mascot with a sentient hat that can possess enemies and acquire their powers like X-Men's Rogue.
There's really nothing else to be said about this game because it's all been stated already. It's genius, it's genius, it's genius. Every developer in the world who aims to make great games should be taking notes from Nintendo 24/7.
1. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
What else is there to describe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? It already won the Game of the Year at the Game Awards, so, putting it at the top of this list is a mere formality. Make no mistake, though as it is, indeed the best game of the year. Nintendo took some time, but it was well worth the wait.
Players got an amazing new Zelda game that turns the open world concept on its head. Instead of holding players' hands as they went through a gorgeous and expansive world, Nintendo pushed them completely off guard, like a mother bird would to a chick, letting it learn the ropes on its own.
Quite simply put, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece, a game that will most certainly be the shining bedrock of future open world games if it isn't already.
