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2017 Year in Review

I haven't posted a lot on here, because frankly, games have been sucking a lot less lately. 2017 has proven to be a banner year for video games. In my opinion, it rivals even auspicious years such as 2004 and 2007. Where do I even begin?

How about at the beginning, idiot.

This generation of video games has been an unending AAA garbage fire of half-assed remastered rehash and microtransaction-rich, but feature-poor, releases.

2017 has arrived to change all of that!

The first quarter of 2017 is just insane. After a generation literally flooded in garbage hardware and software releases, Q1 2017 is almost enough to redeem all of it, whether it was the PS4's complete and total lack of games until 2015 (ERMAHGERD BLERDBERNE) or the Xbone's hilariously tragic launch (followed up in 2017 by its slow slide into complete irrelevance).

In the space of like 4-5 weeks we had the following releases

  • Yakuza 0
  • Nioh
  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • The Nintendo Switch
  • Nier: Automata
  • Halo Wars 2

Haha just kidding, nobody gives a crap about Halo Wars.

2017 didn't stop there... ho boy get ready for Q2!

  • Persona 5
  • Prey
  • Tekken 7
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

Incredible! And despite attempts from EA to ruin everything with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Star Wars: Battlefront II, there have been just way too many good games this year!

Even Ubisoft made some key contributions. Assassin's Creed: Origins is one of the most playable and interesting offerings in the series, at least since IV, and it turns out that Ghost Recon Wildlands, while not ushering in a golden age of open world military shooters, turned out to be a decently fun romp through the War on Drugs.

Ubisoft also released one of the breakout successes on Nintendo's new platform, Mario + Rabbids, which is probably a better designed game than Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

I was going to write about how great the new Zelda was, but my keyboard broke for no good reason. Here, I'll just use this one--oops broken again. I was just getting to like that one! Well, here, I'll use this rusty keyboard I picked up off some moblin...

Despite Breath of the Wild's problems, the Switch has had a good run, so far. I could grumble extensively about the poor build quality, but despite that, the games have been ridiculously good. Except for Arms and Splatoon 2, which, turns out are actually overpriced garbage.

There have been a lot of other good titles but too many to name all of them in one low-effort blog post.

Yeah, what a great year. I was really optimistic about how good video games were getting.

Nothing like a harsh dose of reality to quell any hope or positivity. Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Star Wars Battlefront II. Destiny 2. Call of Duty: WWII. And so on... the trash-alanche from AAA publishers continues, but with a special bonus layer of offal in the form of loot boxes.

I won't rehash the whole loot box drama here, but it's gotten really bad, and people exceeded my extremely low expectations by actually gathering up enough gumption to get mad about this. Good job, people!

Well, this post has made me tired. See ya next year! (maybe)