I missed this thread. I am the Thread Misser.
Talking about games I remember playing in 2017, in no particular order:
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is pretty bad by most criteria, but I have a vulnerability to games with a very limited lifespan. It’s only been out a couple of months, yet the progression of seasonal holidays/weather and the periodic updates have given this a strong sense of time and place, much like other AC games. Joking with Julie about this mobile time-waster has made it all worthwhile.
Speaking of Julie, the games she has most enjoyed playing are things like GTA and Saints Row, so I got us Watch Dogs 2 back at the start of the year. She bounced off of the combat immediately, but I wound up playing through it all. For being a completely by-the-numbers open-world game, I had fun. It kind of reminded me of Saints Row 2 in that the tone went all over the place but was still an improvement over the first installment.
I liked NieR: Automata a great deal. I can’t disagree with arguments that the game is more interested in structural tricks than in respecting the player’s time; both the sidequests and the A/B loops set expectations deliberately low so that they can then surprise the player with unexpectedly important quests, dynamic character switching, and other startling developments. Personally, I loved this and am more than willing to forgive the game some low-key monotony in service of the goals it’s pursuing.
Night in the Woods is triple jumps: the adventure game. I agree with what everybody else has said about this so far, so I’ll just mention a little thing I liked: it turns out that one of those nameless folk you eavesdrop on by the bar disappears after the story climax. I thought that was a nice and spooky touch.
Watching Joseph Anderson play through Super Mario Odyssey and then exhaustively categorize the available moons to explain why he disliked the game makes me think history may not be kind to Mario’s newest outing. The game will always have its fans, and I am among them, but I expect more pushback to appear from players who miss the more demanding challenge and platforming complexity of levels like Tick-Tock Clock and the Fluddless challenge rooms of Sunshine. I have to agree that Toadette’s achievement moons are similarly pretty indefensible. I still had a blast.
Hearthstone is the game I played more than any other, but it’s difficult to justify any recommendation for it.
I can’t wait to talk about Breath of the Wild in the 2018 thread!