Your biggest gaming surprise so far this year

[The Wykydtron]

Persona 5 managed to surpass Persona 4 and then some which was ridiculously surprising to me as the biggest Persona 4 fan in the world. Like P5 is going to be GOTY for a huge amount of people including myself and gems like Automata came out this year too, it still manages to tower over every other release this year and the last.

Joker is the best protagonist out of any Persona game so far, possibly out of any JRPG ever. I love how they strayed away from the typical blank slate guy and gives you this beast of a man instead, people were already fanboying over him just in the opening 5 minutes! The smug ass look on his face the whole time was great! Giving him a history was a risk for sure but the whole criminal record thing paid off super well. I doubt anyone finds it hard to relate to the guy at all once his backstory was quickly revealed, which may have been a problem for some in previous games.

But I mean forget about all that gay character development shit, look at that damn costume! Look at all the damn costumes! HYPE!

Spoiler: S H O W I S O V E R B O I Z

 

[Blitsie]

Wildlands is mine too! Honestly the game reminds me exactly of Mercenaries 2

Yikes, really? if it's like Mercenaries 2 then that's enough to convince me never to set foot near that thing. I have no idea why people like Mercenaries 2- unless they've never tried the first Mercenaries, which was a goddamn masterpiece.

Guilty as charged haha, I unfortunately never had the chance to try the first one so that may be why I enjoyed it so. It was an objectively bad game though by all means, but I enjoyed the bit of mayhem it offered overall. Its a guilty pleasure of mine so to speak, much like Wildlands is becoming.

 

[Tarias]

I honestly cannot believe that a new Zelda game came out and it wasn't an incredibly frustrating to control rehash of the same exact formula. I genuinely did not believe that Nintendo had the ability to create a good open world, or engaging gameplay. I have never been more pleased to have been wrong in my life.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

The Switch in general. I didn't think Breath of the Wild was going to be such a great time but neither did anybody else other than the real fanchildren. Super Bomberman R is a solid C which is more than I expected from Konami but the DLC they just gave away is a downright "zuh!?" The Disney Afternoon Collection didn't happen on the Switch (though I'm sure it will within the next few months) even though all of the games on it were launched on the NES. Wonder Boy 3. It's really weird how there's no virtual console but between the NeoGeo classics and Wonder Boy 3 getting something like the Ducktales treatment, there are plenty of classics to download.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Wildlands is mine too! Honestly the game reminds me exactly of Mercenaries 2; its a flawed, buggy mess of a game sometimes but its just so gosh darn fun and has just enough personality to capture me.

My favorite part is by far the combat, to add with what you said about the weapon sounds, that "thump" sound they added when your bullet connects with the baddie makes sniping immensely satisfying. I also love the firefights overall, especially on the hardest difficulty, the AI is aggressive and flanks you while moving from cover to cover, you can suppress them with fire and send your unit to flank or you can even be suppressed and surrounded. I also personally love that they repopulate everything as its great fun revisting old military bases and conjuring up either different combat or stealth scenarios.

My favorite small-ish detail by far though is having outfit sets, so I've created a night outfit making me look like the SAS, and a whole bunch of region specific ones that just adds tons to the immersion for me as I power through the game's different biomes.

Its a pretty damn fantastic game really, I'm personally loving it warts and all so far. Even the wacky DLC everyone is currently hating is good fun for me so far, makes for a nice break when the constant serious military aspect gets tiring.

I fortunately haven't experienced the flawed, buggy mess parts yet *knocks on wood*, other than say the location for dropping off the money truck didn't show up one time.

What issues have you had?

 

[Squilookle]

Wildlands is mine too! Honestly the game reminds me exactly of Mercenaries 2

Yikes, really? if it's like Mercenaries 2 then that's enough to convince me never to set foot near that thing. I have no idea why people like Mercenaries 2- unless they've never tried the first Mercenaries, which was a goddamn masterpiece.

Guilty as charged haha, I unfortunately never had the chance to try the first one so that may be why I enjoyed it so. It was an objectively bad game though by all means, but I enjoyed the bit of mayhem it offered overall. Its a guilty pleasure of mine so to speak, much like Wildlands is becoming.

In that case, I highly recommend you pick a copy up- its gameplay has held up incredibly well!

Spoiler

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Resident evil 7.

Even though there's women in it?

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I have to wonder on what basis some of the low critiques were made...

The hardcore Ghost Recon fans probably hate it for being "casualized"...

Character movement feels a bit stiffer than I'd like, but that's somewhat understandable for a TPS...Gunplay and aiming feels pretty butter-smooth though; not quite to Horizon: Zero Dawn's level of buttery in terms of aiming, but sufficient.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier did everything better than Wildlands, much better IMO. Future Soldier already kinda "casualized" the franchise by making the game much more fast-paced. However, it still was able to innovate the TPS genre. The cover swap mechanic allowed cover to be used not just defensively but to be used in a very aggressive and offensive manner like you can see here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgrbDF032LQ]. The cover swap system, in a sense, allowed for moves to be strung together much like a combo system. The controls of Wildlands make for a "bland" TPS with nothing but the most basic of TPS functions, there's not even the dive roll anymore. Uncharted has more to its controls than Wildlands. Future Soldier is arguably the smoothest controlling TPS (especially in movement), much smoother than Horizon. I played the beta for Wildlands and I deleted it after an hour, it was a below average TPS for me.

I've read that quite a bit has been cleaned up since the beta with a patch or two. Not sure what or how much though since I only started playing a bit over a week ago.

GR: FS looks kinda clunky from the video. The camera seems to be wobbling around as much as the player, though that may just be a variable setting adjustment. I'm not sure what to think of cover shooting in a game like this, especially when it looks so janky, like @ 5:50 [https://youtu.be/ZgrbDF032LQ?t=350]. Wildlands is far more open-ended by contrast, and really doesn't miss a cover system imo.

Horizon Zero Dawn is mine so far - went in only knowing that it was a AAA game being sold on it's cutting-edge graphics and robot dinosaurs, ended up loving the story, characters, gameplay and well-designed sandbox. Plus it's one of the few cutting-edge graphics games that actually made me go 'damn this is actually really pretty'.

Horizon Zero Dawn:
Wait...the people who did all those 'Halo-BWAHAAHAHAHHAAHA-killer' games made an open-world action RPG with a female lead set in a robots rule the world setting?!?!?!
Wait...and it's actually GOOD?!!?!?!?!??!

Horizon for me as well. It's the first open world game that I've really really liked in I don't know how long. The open world actually serves the core gameplay and enhances it vs diluting the core gameplay like most open world games. Plus, Horizon is all about quality first over quantity; the world itself isn't that big while being dense and varied, there's not hundreds of quests, there's less collectibles than a freaking Uncharted game. I did have high hopes for Horizon after the reveal but I still wasn't sure how the moment-to-moment gameplay would be, I knew the game would have its great moments but what about the in-between.

Horizon would've probably been mine as well, but I was expecting it to at least look and play well. The rest of the game being good - especially pulling off a fun open world - was icing on the cake.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I've read that quite a bit has been cleaned up since the beta with a patch or two. Not sure what or how much though since I only started playing a bit over a week ago.

GR: FS looks kinda clunky from the video. The camera seems to be wobbling around as much as the player, though that may just be a variable setting adjustment. I'm not sure what to think of cover shooting in a game like this, especially when it looks so janky, like @ 5:50 [https://youtu.be/ZgrbDF032LQ?t=350]. Wildlands is far more open-ended by contrast, and really doesn't miss a cover system imo.

I made that video with the best I had at the time capturing gameplay with an ATi All-in-wonder video card and XviD4PSP as a makeshift video editor. That clip you pointed out had a framerate conversion issue for some reason and it didn't come out smooth at all. This video starting at 3:30 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fpcMZDWAkI&feature=youtu.be&t=210] made by a really good Xbox player is a tutorial on how to do all the moves as people called him a hacker; BTW I don't claw the controller to do the most advanced cover swap moves like he does. The player is completely in control of the camera so any camera movement is the player doing it. The problem with Wildlands is that there's no skillgap between players outside of aiming skill. Even Horizon has a fun and extremely useful sliding mechanic to it. The controls are good enough against AI, but Wildlands is getting or has already gotten a PvP mode and the controls aren't good enough for the level of precision needed for human opponents. Contextual (soft) cover systems have no place in PvP and only get you killed because it puts you in cover when you don't want to and vice verse. What are you going to if someone is in cover outside of chucking an explosive at them or just out-shooting them? In Future Soldier, I can cover swap them to get a shot on them. Or I can intentionally or unintentionally bait players into throwing a grenade or noobtubing as they think I'm using cover for defense vs using it for arguably the most aggressive play in the game just like that clip you pointed out where I cover swapped up to a rifleman throwing a nade at me to knife him not even having to fire a bullet and using nothing but movement to take him out. I enjoy shooters that have dynamic gunfights vs just out-shooting everyone, which I'm very good at myself and just find boring over time.

 

[Imre Csete]

The Surge has an interesting concept, we'll see how that turns out.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I wish I could say Horizon Zero Dawn, but I already expected great things from it and I haven't played it yet.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Horizon Zero Dawn:
Wait...the people who did all those 'Halo-BWAHAAHAHAHHAAHA-killer' games made an open-world action RPG with a female lead set in a robots rule the world setting?!?!?!
Wait...and it's actually GOOD?!!?!?!?!??!

It helps when you get the guy who was the lead writer for Fallout: New Vegas, which was excellent.

Granted, he probably had to work backwards from "Robot dinosaurs! Make it work!", but it didn't seem to handicap him too much.

 

[Blitsie]

What issues have you had?

Nothing game breaking at least! I've been stuck in the landscape a few times, seen dead bodies get suspended high in the air, jumping out of helicopters sometimes result in them spinning off into the clouds like a free bird, and I've had vehicles catapult themselves in the air due to the physics engine having a stroke (that was really hilarious though, the one truck ended up crash landing in a base and killing a few people).

None of them were frustrating though, if anything most of my laughs came from my game periodically losing its shit before recomposing itself again like nothing just happened.

In that case, I highly recommend you pick a copy up- its gameplay has held up incredibly well!

Spoiler

I definitely will! My PS2 still works and the local pawn shop may just have a copy of it, I'm an absolute nut for wacky destructive open world games hahaha.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

^^ I've had a spawn vehicle land on me a couple times. It's pretty funny when he starts talking about requesting the drop and then mid-sentence it lands right on my head. Outright killed me once and got a revive the second time.

 

[balladbird]

Unfortunately, for me, it's been a bad year for surprises...

Don't get me wrong, this year has been awesome. Too awesome, in fact.

Generally, surprises come when you buy a game on a lark not expecting anything from it, and it turns out to blow you away.

Sadly, this year has been so utterly jam-packed with games I had at least some strong interest in that I haven't had the chance to try a game I was only passingly interested in. >.< If only I were richer.

Glad to see some titles I was considering being listed, though

 

[Zaltys]

Angels With Scaly Wings.
Visual novel about dragons. Bought it because of the weirdly high 98% overall Steam score. I expected it to be either a cringe-worthy fetish bait, or so bad that it's good. What I got was a hybrid of 999 (minus puzzles) and Hatoful Boyfriend, with some Steins;Gate mixed in. Still fetish-bait, but I can live with that.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Battle Brothers, for me.

I'm still not sure why I bought it. It was a whim thing after seeing TotalBiscuit's stream of it on YouTube. Damn well sunk 4 hours into it right after I bought it, that almost never happens. I took it hook, line and sinker.

Resident evil 7.

Even though there's women in it?

You cheeky lad.

 

[st-pro]

My friends bought me Overwatch, haha

 

[CaitSeith]

Angels With Scaly Wings.
Visual novel about dragons. Bought it because of the weirdly high 98% overall Steam score. I expected it to be either a cringe-worthy fetish bait, or so bad that it's good. What I got was a hybrid of 999 (minus puzzles) and Hatoful Boyfriend, with some Steins;Gate mixed in. Still fetish-bait, but I can live with that.

I second this one. I was going to make a joke post about it, and mention Breath of the Wild; but the former was definitely more of a surprise. I still consider Hatoful Boyfriend better though.

 

[CaitSeith]

Wait! I changed my mind.

Spoiler: This is the biggest gaming surprise I had so far this year

Playing Night Trap in 2017 on a PS4... WTF!