"2017 has been one of the best gaming years" - Yay or nay?

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Tekken 7

How do you defend Tekken 7 against its SHIT DLC's, MISSING game modes and CHARACTERS and GARBAGE "character episodes"? The fighting mechanics alone cover it all?

OT: 07 was the best. It was the best year in every other thing too. I miss 2007. I'll miss it until I die.

The Fighting Mechanics alone covers it all.

I hate the story mode, but I hate all story modes where they want to tell a story through all other characters... I don't like all other characters. I like my characters. I hate it in MK, I hate it in Injustice, I hate it anywhere it is implemented.

The DLC is no different than Injustice 2, SFV, MK XL, KoF XIV, GG Rev 2... Buy characters, buy clothing, repeat.

Never a fan of Tekken Force or stuff like that. I think the only game of that sort I liked was Volleyball back in 3.

More over, I don't have to defend. It's my opinion. I understand if these things didn't suit you, but just the fucking thrill I've had playing these matches are the very thing I paid my money for. I never played Tekken for the extra modes, just perfecting my character and my game.

 

[Rangaman]

Yay*. Let me explain:

It was a year in which many great games came out (particularly from the Japanese). Nintendo recovered from their long-running unlucky streak, there were some good indies, Capcom finally made a Resi game that wasn't complete garbage, SEGA pumped out a good Sonic game, apparently Persona 5 was good (you can only play/sample so many games) which makes it the first tolerable JRPG in...well, forever and Horizon: Zero Dawn was awesome.

But...

But this year wasn't perfect. For a start, too many Western devs sucked this year. Of course the elephant in the room is EA and the BF2 debacle. Which apparently made everyone forget about ME:A and CoD: WII. And while I don't have the same hatred (or, at least, mild dislike) of AC: Origins and Wolfenstien II that everyone else does, I can admit that they weren't really amazing. And then there was everyone getting burned by Yooka-Laylee. And SEGA decided to immediately sully any goodwill they had earned from Sonic Mania by putting out Sonic Forces.

And it seems like industry practices hit rock bottom this year. Though that's not meant to be taken as a fucking challenge EA. Hopefully the backlash will show publishers that we don't want this shit. Key word is "hopefully".

So was this a good year for gaming? If you're talking about games alone, yes. We only had one major dumpster fire early in the year by my count. Everything else was at least competent. Industry wise, no. It felt like publishers decided to drop the pretense of caring once and for all this year.

 

[Ravenbom]

This year is a standout for sure. If you didn't get a Switch and you like to hate on Nintendo because the of the Wii and the WiiU, then you're probably going to think there were a couple good games in the Spring and a couple in the Fall and it was an OK year.

I'd also like to point out that there was not only an overload of open world RPGs, Shadow of War, Assassin's Creed Origins, Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn, there was also an overload of anime bliss, Persona 5, Nier Automata, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Doki Doki Literature Club, Donganronpa 3 (plus 1&2 on PC), Disgaea 5...

And further: there was NBA Playgrounds and a couple other sport alternatives for the non-dormroom bros out there. AND what no one talks about: like 7 big racing games that all scored well across the board.
Not to mention a new Marvel vs Capcom (they lost me with shitty SFV, but it's still there for a small community)

There was really something for everybody and whenever I got bored of one type of gameplay I could move onto the next.


The only real disappointment was that with all those racing games, how many supported VR? Why is there no Eve Valkyrie like killer app when clearly space combat is the way to go with VR? Steam is telling me that the original Project Cars updated for VR support yet none (or few) of the new ones actually support VR?
I don't even like racing, but I need some reason to buy a VR headset for my new PC besides pron.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

Kinda yay? It wasn't THE BEST, but it was good, imho.

It made me think about owning a Nintendo console. And one with a dumb "portable" gimmick, at that. That alone tells this must've been a special year.

 

[McElroy]

Tekken 7

How do you defend Tekken 7 against its SHIT DLC's, MISSING game modes and CHARACTERS and GARBAGE "character episodes"? The fighting mechanics alone cover it all?

The Fighting Mechanics alone covers it all.

More over, I don't have to defend. It's my opinion. I understand if these things didn't suit you, but just the fucking thrill I've had playing these matches are the very thing I paid my money for. I never played Tekken for the extra modes, just perfecting my character and my game.

That's fair. Just expressing my disappointment a bit. However, I actually miss Time Attack, Survival, and Team Battle most.

 

[Super Cyborg]

I don't keep track of what years I would consider the best, but in recent years this has been the best. There were bigger budget titles such as RE7 (the last two pieces of DLC just came out and both I loved), Persona 5 (I totally saw it coming!), Breath of the Wild (for all its flaws, still a game I enjoyed playing overall).

Then there were a lot of smaller games and niche games, such as Trails in the Sky third, Cuphead, Ys VIII, Zwei: The Illvard Insurrection, Metroid: Samus Returns, A Hat in Time, Hollow Knight, and Doki Doki Literature Club. Usually, I buy a select few new games, then usually go through my backlog or buy older games that went down in price. However, all the games I mentioned came out this year and I bought them mostly around launch day. So yeah, for me, been the best in a long time.

 

[stroopwafel]

Definitely one of the better ones, yeah. Also the year that Resident Evil totally redeemed itself imo. Kind of given up on the franchise after more than 12 years of disappointments but then came RE7 which was phenomenal. Really loved that game. Similarly, there is the Assassin's Creed franchise that I was always lukewarm about(loved the historic settings, everything else not so much) and then came AC Oranges that made me genuinely enjoy it like a properly good game. Then there is Nioh, Persona 5, Yakuza 0..lots of stellar titles. I didn't enjoy Horizon Zero Dawn and Nier Automata as much as I thought I would, though that is probably just due to personal taste.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Maybe I should've specified that AAA gaming is too fucking expensive. Evidently I'm the only one who thinks that 80 fucking dollars is outrageous.

I was talking about AAA gaming. You can buy Day 1 and sell after you finish the game. You can wait for sales. Divinity Original Sin 2 isn't AAA and costs $45 on Steam and you can't sell it either, that's more expensive than buying Mario or Zelda or Horizon and selling it when you're done. Plus, games were literally more expensive not even taking inflation into account when I was a kid as a game was $70, now they're $60. For the hours of entertainment you get per $1, gaming is probably the cheapest entertainment medium right now. You can game on the equivalent of a Netflix yearly subscription. Magic the Gathering cost more to play yearly on its own than video games. An Escape Room costs $50 per person for about an hour. Just about any board game cost more than any video game. How is video gaming expensive when compared to any other hobby? Sure, it's a luxury like any other entertainment or hobby, but you'd be hard pressed to find any other kind of entertainment/hobby cheaper than video games.

For the amount of entertainment you get per dollar I'd say gaming is the most overpriced entertainment medium around right now. At least in the AAA sector anyway. You're lucky you only have to pay $60 instead of $80. If I got to actually pay the amount of entertainment per dollar I thought I was getting I'd pay about 20 bucks for the hottest AAA release. And that's not even factoring in the microtransaction loot box bullshit. If you factored that in EA would have to pay me to play their games. Actually that's pretty much how it stands now.
The fact that you talk about flipping your games so quickly certainly doesn't imply that you are getting your money's worth.

 

[Zeraki]

Not sure about gaming as a whole since... lootboxes, but 2017 was the best year for Japanese games I've seen in a very long time. I've bought and finished more games this year than I did the last two combined. Coincidentally they were all either Japanese games (Persona, Nier, Gravity Rush 2, Zelda, Mario etc.) or indies.

 

[dscross]

It's been a good year for gaming, yeah (especially if you like retro-type games on consoles). I think people who disagree with this seem to be overly critical types of people in general.

 

[emissary666]

The year started strong, hit the usual mid-year slump, had a strong august, and then AAA began to shit itself around September and everything really began to fall apart in Q4.
On the bright side, we're getting some decent remakes and rereleases, which is always nice.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

For the amount of entertainment you get per dollar I'd say gaming is the most overpriced entertainment medium around right now. At least in the AAA sector anyway. You're lucky you only have to pay $60 instead of $80. If I got to actually pay the amount of entertainment per dollar I thought I was getting I'd pay about 20 bucks for the hottest AAA release. And that's not even factoring in the microtransaction loot box bullshit. If you factored that in EA would have to pay me to play their games. Actually that's pretty much how it stands now.
The fact that you talk about flipping your games so quickly certainly doesn't imply that you are getting your money's worth.

Again, how? Name any other form of entertainment that's cheaper than video gaming. Even TV is more expensive from paying for streaming services or cable/satellite TV is more expensive yearly than gaming. Going to a movie is around $10 for 2 hours, even a matinee is $6. My cell phone service at a measly $30/month is more expensive. Even just going out to the bar once a week with friends is more expensive. I detailed how it's pretty easy to pay $20 for any game, you can even buy Day 1 and only spend that. You're already behind in gaming as you say you don't have a PS4 or Switch so you can buy a PS4 and buy all those games that you wanted to play that are years old now and super cheap. That's an easy way to make gaming cheap, just stay a year behind everything (or wait for a great sale) and games can be had for $20-$30 easy (even less) if you don't like selling games to recoup money. There's of course PC gaming where you can probably finagle even cheaper hardware costs than a console especially if you already need a PC just for normal life, add in $100 for a video card to a PC you already need and it becomes a gaming PC. I have never purchased a loot box in my life, and the 3 games you stated you want to play (Zelda/Mario/Horizon) don't have loot boxes; all the 2017 games I've played don't have any loot boxes either. It's pretty easy to avoid loot boxes especially if you're not a multiplayer gamer and even then very rarely is any game ever pay2win (obviously Battlefront 2 WAS going to be). Very few games I replay or go back to because it's quite a time commitment to just play the damn thing a lot of times yet alone to replay it; it's sorta like why movies are more rewatchable than TV shows as one is about 2 hours long while the other can easily get to 100+ hours. I put in over 24 hours before I even beat the story mode for Wolfenstein because I take my time with games, and then I did all the "sidequests" and I was getting bored with the game before I even completed all the content so I'm not only done with the core game, I don't even have interest in the DLC either as the game ran its course and I don't really want anymore of it until an actual sequel in a few years. And I'll actually end up making money because I will get over $25 for Wolfenstein. Why would I keep something I'm done with and just have it collecting dust instead of getting some decent money for it?

 

[Canadamus Prime]

For the amount of entertainment you get per dollar I'd say gaming is the most overpriced entertainment medium around right now. At least in the AAA sector anyway. You're lucky you only have to pay $60 instead of $80. If I got to actually pay the amount of entertainment per dollar I thought I was getting I'd pay about 20 bucks for the hottest AAA release. And that's not even factoring in the microtransaction loot box bullshit. If you factored that in EA would have to pay me to play their games. Actually that's pretty much how it stands now.
The fact that you talk about flipping your games so quickly certainly doesn't imply that you are getting your money's worth.

Again, how? Name any other form of entertainment that's cheaper than video gaming. Even TV is more expensive from paying for streaming services or cable/satellite TV is more expensive yearly than gaming. Going to a movie is around $10 for 2 hours, even a matinee is $6. My cell phone service at a measly $30/month is more expensive. Even just going out to the bar once a week with friends is more expensive. I detailed how it's pretty easy to pay $20 for any game, you can even buy Day 1 and only spend that. You're already behind in gaming as you say you don't have a PS4 or Switch so you can buy a PS4 and buy all those games that you wanted to play that are years old now and super cheap. That's an easy way to make gaming cheap, just stay a year behind everything (or wait for a great sale) and games can be had for $20-$30 easy (even less) if you don't like selling games to recoup money. There's of course PC gaming where you can probably finagle even cheaper hardware costs than a console especially if you already need a PC just for normal life, add in $100 for a video card to a PC you already need and it becomes a gaming PC. I have never purchased a loot box in my life, and the 3 games you stated you want to play (Zelda/Mario/Horizon) don't have loot boxes; all the 2017 games I've played don't have any loot boxes either. It's pretty easy to avoid loot boxes especially if you're not a multiplayer gamer and even then very rarely is any game ever pay2win (obviously Battlefront 2 WAS going to be). Very few games I replay or go back to because it's quite a time commitment to just play the damn thing a lot of times yet alone to replay it; it's sorta like why movies are more rewatchable than TV shows as one is about 2 hours long while the other can easily get to 100+ hours. I put in over 24 hours before I even beat the story mode for Wolfenstein because I take my time with games, and then I did all the "sidequests" and I was getting bored with the game before I even completed all the content so I'm not only done with the core game, I don't even have interest in the DLC either as the game ran its course and I don't really want anymore of it until an actual sequel in a few years. And I'll actually end up making money because I will get over $25 for Wolfenstein. Why would I keep something I'm done with and just have it collecting dust instead of getting some decent money for it?

This time I didn't say "expensive", I said "overpriced". Maybe other forms of entertainment are just as expensive. Of course I don't have Cable/Satellite because that's also overpriced as fuck and not worth it.
So maybe I'm a little off the mark, but it doesn't change the fact that I hate that big AAA releases retail at $80 (CND). If I could pay what I thought those games were worth I sure as hell wouldn't pay that and I won't. Esp. since I only have a temp part time job right now.

 

[juanstrong]

I went through a list of my most memorable favorite games, and found that it ranged from 1998 to 2007.

The year with the most number of games:
2003, with such gems as Beyond Good & Evil, Freelancer, Harbinger, Master of Orion III and Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic.
Followed by 2001 with Anachronox, Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and Startopia.

Granted, this was only from direct memory and I may have forgotten some titles.
I do find that most of my games can be found within the '95 to '05 decade.
After those years it becomes increasingly harder to find a good game and nowadays I'm lucky to even find one every other year.
I'm reduced to only looking at Indie games and alpha/betas as it is.

So. Nay. Not a single 2017 game got my attention.

Not a *single* game? Not Mario Odyssey, or Cuphead, or Horizon Dawn?

 

[retsupurae yahtsee]

I admit that Persona 5, Mario Odyssey and Rabbids, Splatoon 2, Resident Evil 7, Horizon, Cuphead were excellent, Neir Automata was interesting despite its flaws and Zelda, A Hat and in time and Hollow Knight sound great. Hellblade and Shadows of War, however were terrible.

There are better years, though:

1996: SNES War of the Gems, Daggerfall, Duke Nukem 3D, Mario 64, Donkey kong Country 3, Crash Bandicoot, Bad Mojo, Discworld 2, Leisure Suit Larry 7, Rama, Spycraft, Puzzle Bubble 2 and 3, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, Wing Commander 4, Terra Nova, Sexy Parodius, Metal Slug, Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen, Milon's Doremi Fantasy.

1994: Super Metroid, Final Fantasy 6, Earthbound, Donkey Kong Country, Arena, Puzzle Bubble, Breath of Fire 2, Under a Killing Moon, Dynamite Headdy, Mega Man X 1 and 2, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Doom 2, Castlevania Bloodlines, Contra: Hard Corps, The Firemen, Policenauts, Primal Rage, Sparkster, Super Punch Out, Super Return of the Jedi, Tinstar

1991: Willy Beamish, Avenging Spirit, Final Fantasy 4, Heart of China, Joe and Mac, Kid Icarus, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Zelda: A Link to the Past, Leisure Suit Larry remake, Martian Memorandum, Metal Max, Monkey Island 2, Parasol Stars, Popful Mail, Space Quest remake and 4, Sunset Riders, Super Castlevania 4, Vice Project Doom, Wing Commander 2

1990: Countdown, Conquest of the Crystal Palace, Gun Nac, Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu, Kabuki Quantum Fighter, Little Nemo, Loom, Low G Man, GLOC, Mega Man 3, Magic Sword, New Ghostbusters 2, Red Baron, Rise of the Dragon, Super Mario World, Spellcasting 101, Wing Commander, Zombie Nation

1988: Bionic Commando, Bloody Wolf, Double Dragon 2, Ghouls and Ghosts, The Guardian Legend, Mega Man 2, Ninja Gaiden, Narc, Super Mario 2, Super Contra, Superman, Xexys

1986: Bubble Bobble, Castlevania, Gumshoe, Kid Icarus, King Kong 2, Zelda, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Metroid, Mappy Land, Moero Twinbee, Out Run, Space Quest, Trojan, Murasame no Nazo Jo, Fantasy Zone, Jackal

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

2016 was better imo.

mainly because of Doom and Hitman.

 

[dscross]

NO.

Didn't finish Nioh.
Didn't finish RE7.
Didn't finish Cuphead.
Didn't finish The Evil Within 2.
Didn't finish Hollow Knight.
Sonic Mania was kind of a letdown.
Nier: Automata wasn't great.
Liked Echo, but could have been better.
Vanquish was mediocre and a drag.
Bayonetta was okay.
Hellblade was BAD.
Quite enjoyed Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment

A bad year. Granted, I haven't played the exclusives held hostage on the consoles. But very few of them interest me anyway.

What was a good year for gaming for you?

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Overall since my play time on games is measured in Horizon Zero Dawn, Life is Strange and World of Warcraft - then no I'd go so far as to say it was a pretty shitty year for games overall, and that's before you get into the industry level fucking nonsense that occurred.

Nope, 2017 was a year of bollocks and (with apologies to Jim Sterling) The year of the Fucking Lootbox.

 

[Fijiman]

Well I'm inclined to disagree since I have niether played nor been interested in almost any of the games in that list. It doesn't help that many of those were exclusive to platforms I don't have and that I've been broke most of the year, but even then I'm not interested I most of these anyway.