For those that hid in a bunker all year to try and wait out the insanity of the world these days, I have some news for you:

2017 was one of the greatest years in gaming history.

The most impressive thing about 2017 is that not only did it produce some of the best games of all time, it also had a massive variety of great games. There really was something for everyone, which really made it feel almost unanimous that this year was so special. I don’t want to dwell too much on what I loved in 2017 so I’ll give a quick bullet-point that may or may not be in order of personal preference and you can tell me how wrong I am:

-Persona 5

-Nier: Automata

-The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

–Doki Doki Literature Club J̷̞͍̲̞̞̣̞̝͔͇͂̈́̐̌̅̍͐̈̚̕͠͝ͅŲ̸̨̫̜͖͎̠͔͚̠͓͉̘̈́̽͂̽̃̒Ş̴̡̛͉̝̺͔̹̝̜̰̅͊̾̀̀̅̋̌̀̈́̒͝͠T̶̨̧̨͔̮͕̮̱̪̬͔̈́̅_MỎ̴͙̱̥̻̭̆͛̉̀͐̐̑͋͠Ń̸̹̻̜̺̼́͌͗͘͜I̷̥͎̯̍͒̒̐͗̒͛͆̿̉̏̇͛͝ͅC̵̗͎̆̉̈̍̅̚Ā̸̬͉͐̅͆͛͌̿̑̽̚̚

-Tales of Berseria

-A Hat in Time

-Mario Odyssey

-Sonic Mania

-Emily is Away Too

-L.A. Noir Remastered

-Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite -Undertale (PS4)

-Pokemon Ultra Sun/Moon

-Fortnite (Please forgive me, I’m more of a console guy)

-ARMS

For me personally, I can see at least 4 or 5 of those fitting into my personal Top 10 games of All Time. But it’s not about what I did play this year…it’s about what I didn’t.

I recently completed Tales of Berseria, a game that game out in the beginning of 2017, and the story may be one of the strongest and most meaningful to me in all of gaming. I couldn’t believe that I chose to play some other games before this one. If you thought the list of games I did play was long, let me just mention a couple that I’ve yet to get to/respect as a great game of 2017:

-Cuphead

-PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds

-Horizon Zero Dawn

-Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

-Splatoon 2

-Nioh

-Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

-Metroid: Samus Returns

-Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Next on my backlog)

-Pyre

-The Evil Within 2

-Gravity Rush 2

-Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy

-Assassin’s Creed Origins

-What Remains of Edith Finch

-Okami (PS4)
-Destiny 2

-Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

-Prey

-Resident Evil 7

-many many more…

Yeah.

So here we are. It’s 2018 and it seems like a lot of
e its 2017. “Backlog” has become a part of most gamers’ vocabulary. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I will be playing 2017 games well into 2018.

So the question posed is this: Was 2017 “Too much of a good thing”?

With the massive amount of incredible games released last year, some games ended up cannibalizing one another. Gamers begrudgingly had to make sacrifices with the large number of forces at play, the most obvious being Time and Money. Simply put, no matter how bad we wanted to, a lot of gamers simply did not have the time or the money to commit to every single game that caught their eye. This problem in turn ripples into several more. Every game you picked to play came with the opportunity cost of another game that could be even more fantastic.

The most obvious instance of compromise from 2017 came from the dual release of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn in March. Most that chose Zelda also bought a Switch to play it on, making a quick $360+ dent in their wallet. The game had a ton of content and replay value so you would spend a lot of time in Hyrule. But throwing another $60 game in Horizon, which while completely its own thing did share the open-world adventure aspect with Zelda, would have you spending over $400 in a very short span. Big name games tended to overshadow newcomers or returning vets. A Hat in Time went severely under-appreciated due to its close release to Mario Odyssey (a much more well known platformer franchise). The list goes on, Wolfenstein, Nioh and Hellblade all were worthy Game of the Year candidates and yet it felt that they didn’t get near enough the mention they deserved.

So with 2018 in full swing, are we in store for another jam-packed year? And if we are, do we want to be? More great games is never a bad thing and the great thing about games is that you can play them whenever you want. Like the many overlooked classics of the PS1, PS2 and Gamecube era, I predict that in a few years we’ll be seeing a good amount of these 2017 games on list beside them.

But that’s just me. Thoughts? Excited for 2018? Let me know in the comments!