Bottled Fuchsiacast

This week on the Fuchsiacast, Nanners doesn’t actually play the most amount of games and instead just plays Sea of Thieves Royale . Conman plays Battlet ech Royale with his turn based mechs. Brady gets into Assassin’s Creed Royale and laments the lost chance at making it GOTY 2017. Kitty shared with as an old-new adventure game Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers Royale. Kay actually hates the Wolfenstein II DLC: Royale Harder.

We’re in the calm before the E3 storm of announcements. Everyone is staying the course. Kay goes to war in PUBG. Jon tries to explain the opening of Ni No Kuni II. Brady becomes an Immortal Redneck. Conman explains Hearts of Iron IV. Nanners’ VR Corner subject of the week is Rampage VR.

Be sure to check back next week for our GRAND rebranding! Maybe…

We’re maintaining the status quo this week. As the fiscal year ends, the games die down. The gang sounds off on their current feelings on Sea of Thieves. Warhammer: Vermintide 2 continues to hang tough as a co-op favorite. Jon revisits one of his favorite RPGs. Brady does some Switch stuff. Conman achievement hunts in WoW. Nanners plays with VR. Pretty standard stuff right?

We have a full house on in this episode of the Bottled Fuchsiacast. Which one of us is Uncle Jesse? Anyway… Kitty tries to save prisoners. Aaron battles fruit. Kay falls flat. Nanners wants to rob banks again. Brady and Jon do some rat and pirate stuff. Conman throws money at Blizzard.

This week we invent a new genre of games. Do you like rouge-likes? How bout l4d-likes? Good, cause we played a few of them. Also on the playlist is a bunch of early access shenanigans. We also kinda just played the same new hotness this week, so no individual lists. In Sea of Thieves (Early Access) we all learn the difference between port and starboard and use those words like a real pirate. In Deep Rock Galactic(Early Access) we dance as dwarves and mine some minerals with sketchy looking hands. The group also plays Vermintide 2 (Early Access, but out now!) from the Warhammer universe and kill some rats. Lastly the group plays an actually released game and takes some turns in Into the Breech.

This week we re-live our most fond moments with Ventrilo as we say good-bye to Conman’s vent server 2005 – 2018, RIP. In other news, Brady is back with a truly Nanners-level amount of games. Forza, Rainbow Six: Siege and Slay the Spire are all discussed. Oh, and Brady’s newest little bundle of joy arrives, a Switch. Conman plays Kingdom Come: Deliverance and possibly keeps his virginity while not playing his current guilty pleasure the not-battle-royale-version of Fornite. Nanners dances like a single lady with Jon and Aaron in Destiny. Bonus this week is we watch Kay have an existential crisis when she can’t find a game to play.

You’ve seen and heard our personal lists. Are you prepared for four hours of nonsense deciding the super official top 10 Games of 2017? Too bad. Welcome to Bottled Fuchsia: The List 2017.

Click play above to listen or subscribe and listen through your podcast provider of choice.

Join Jon as he leads Nanners, Conman, Kay, Aaron, and Brady in the list building, cutting, and ordering process. The audio is long, but worth listening if you want to hear about our favorite games in 2017 and how we arrived at these ten in this order.

If you want the spoilers, click the drop down below for the final list. Before you do that though. Are you sure you don’t want to listen to us discuss 2017’s best (and worst) games for four hours?

The Bottled Fuchsia crew would like to thank everyone for their support in 2017. This is one of our favorite things to do every year and we hope you enjoy it.

Click the official sign off from the Bottled Fuchsia team when you’re ready to see the list of the best 10 games of 2017. Repeat after us…

10. Horizon: Zero Dawn

09. Persona 5

08. Prey

07. Cuphead

06. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus

05. Divinity: Original Sin 2

04. Super Mario Odyssey

03. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

02. NieR: Automata

01. PLAYERUNKNOWN’S Battlegrounds

This week starts off weird and never really recovers. Kay records in the Brady spot possibly wearing an adult diaper. If you’re still with me after that sentence, we also talked about Dragon Ball and anime! Jon plays Dragon Ball FighterZ, and he bought some kai just like the teen in all of us would have wanted to do. Speaking of hot teen trends, Nanners dives back into Minecraft! Kitty trudges through Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door just to get it over with already and Kay needs therapy (for many reasons) after playing Night in the Woods. Finally, Conman challenges himself to die a lot in Celeste.

In the news this week we discuss Nintendo losing their GD minds and the value of cardboard.

There’s no denying that 2017 was a phenomenal year for video games. The Nintendo Switch debuted in March with one of the best Zelda games of all time as a launch title, and then one of the best 3D Mario games came out on the same system six months later.

Meanwhile, there were a ton of other big releases. Cuphead, Wolfenstien II, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Nier: Automata, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds… It’s crazy to think that those all came out in the same year, and there were still so many many more.

First up, the awards

On to the list!

First up, the awards:

Most Feels: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I was absolutely wowed by this game. From the moment Link ran out of the Resurrection Shrine and I got my first look at the sprawling, gorgeous Hyrule built for Breath of the Wild, I was instilled with a sense of wonder and awe that stayed with me every time I played. The freedom of being able to climb almost any surface and sail across distances with the paraglider turned the land into a playground that was always a joy to explore. The game didn’t pull any punches in terms of difficulty; being unprepared for a particular situation or enemy would often get you killed, which made things legitimately tense at times. Meanwhile, finding unexpected ways to overcome obstacles and defeat camps of Bokoblins and Moblins always kept me smiling.

Biggest Disappointment: Mighty No. 9

Oh, Mighty No. 9, not only were you my biggest disappointment of 2015 and 2016, but also 2017. I thought I was done with this game after it finally released in June 2016 (on six of the nine platforms for which it’d been promised, anyway). It received mediocre reviews and thoroughly disappointed most of the people who had invested in it, so I was ready to forget it and move on. But then I started receiving emails about the remaining physical rewards from the Kickstarter campaign. I had foolishly backed it at a tier for which I was still due a physical box and printed manual. Actually, what the Kickstarter had promised was:

This will be shipped to you with the printed instruction manual (see the next entry below) already inside; it won’t have the game in it because you’re getting that via the download code, but hey, put whatever else you want in there. The Western-style box will be patterned after the NES game box dimensions and style, while the Japanese version will be Famicom-esque.

And so, about a year after the game’s release, I finally received the box and manual. The manual was not ‘already inside’ the box, as the reward description had promised, because the box wasn’t assembled. It arrived flattened out, and I had to bend and crease its edges in order to complete it. I had chosen the Western-style option, which featured what had to be the laziest cover art ever. In it, the game’s protagonist crouched in front of an incredibly bad looking fireball, from which the heads of the game’s other characters haphazardly poked out. The box was at least big enough for the black and white manual to fit inside of, which the much nicer-looking Japanese-style box was too small for. The whole ordeal was just salt in an old wound, and while I want to believe that I’m finally free from this disaster for good, I already know I’m going to be reminded of it when Mega Man 11 shows up looking to eat Mighty No. 9‘s already very, very cold lunch.

Funniest: Golf Story

Right from the start, characters’ quips in Golf Story made me smile. This game kept its tongue firmly planted in its cheek as it served up one absurd situation after another. I mentioned on the podcast that at one point a group of senior citizens got into a rap battle with a gang of young thugs over golf, which by itself was one of the most ridiculous things I saw in a game during 2017. A murder mystery broke out in the middle of one of the chapters, and was intertwined with a werewolf subplot that had a suitably silly resolution. In another chapter, I defeated an invading horde of undead monsters with golf balls. Even the minor characters all had distinct personalities and, often ludicrous, motivations.

Prettiest: Cuphead

The amount of care and amazing level of talent with which the art for Cuphead was produced simply cannot be topped. My childhood dream job was in animation, thanks in no small part to the steady diet of Warner Bros. and Disney cartoons on which I was raised, so I really appreciate classic production methods and styles. The game’s visuals were all created by hand using the same cell animation technique that brought to life the cartoons on which its look is based, and they were styled flawlessly after 1930s Max Fleischer shorts. It absolutely nailed the aesthetic, and was gorgeous to look at while the game handed me my ass again and again.

Most Addicting: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Every time I sat down to play this game, I knew I was going to lose hours to it. Once you settle on a destination in Breath of the Wild, you will find a hundred other things on the way there. Ruins of villages and temples, secret mazes, and enemy encampments are scattered everywhere across the country. Jon and I both managed to completely miss Lurelin Village until really late in our respective playthroughs, meanwhile I accidentally stumbled into the Shrouded Shrine just by seeing if I could use the paraglider to cross some water. My favorite moment had to be finding the Lord of the Mountain. I was out exploring one night, and noticed that the top of Satori Mountain was suddenly glowing. I decided to climb it and investigate, and found at its peak a small grove with a little pond surrounded by blupees. Standing in the water was a large, glowing, stag-like creature, which I later found out you can actually mount and ride. Things like that kept me coming back and getting so lost in the game’s world that I’d lose track of time altogether.

Best Early Access Game: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

I honestly only played PUBG a handful of times, but was immediately able to see what the big deal was. Matches are tense and exciting, oftentimes hilarious, and once in a while frustrating. The game’s brilliance is in the way it presents a simple scenario and leaves everything else up to the players. After 100 people drop onto an island full of randomly-placed weapon and armor caches, they must all move inward to remain within an ever-shrinking ‘safe zone’, killing or being killed on the way. The last one standing wins, but you can be in another match almost immediately if you’re killed. I’m looking forward to seeing how this game evolves, but I do think that they really rushed it to 1.0 status.

The One That Got Away: Nier: Automata

I really tried to make time for this one, but just couldn’t fit it in anywhere. After watching Conman demo the game at this year’s Extra Life marathon, and hearing him, Brady, Jon, Nanners and Kay talk about it on so many podcasts, I was really excited to find out what all the fuss was about. I’ll need to sneak it into my schedule at some point this year. At the very least, I want to find out why one of the main androids runs around in so much lingerie.

Of Course I’ll Rebuy That!: Full Throttle Remastered

Another one of my favorite LucasArts point and click adventure games got a remake this year, and as with Day of the Tentacle Remastered, I was overjoyed. The art had been cleaned up and, from what I could tell, re-drawn in a lot of places, and it looked fantastic. Music was a big part of this game; it had been performed by biker band The Gone Jackals, and Remastered delivered a newly cleaned-up mix of it that sounded much better than the original release. The option to swap between the old and new presentations on the fly was carried over from DOTTR, so you could compare the two at any time. I don’t suppose they could go back and redo the HD versions of the Monkey Island games next, could they? And then maybe make Ron Gilbert’s Monkey Island 3?

Shame: Magikarp Jump

While in Los Angeles for E3 and with days full of standing in long lines ahead of me, I welcomed distractions. Jon introduced me to Magikarp Jump, in which you must train a Magikarp to compete in jumping contests, of all things. Your Magikarp gets stronger through being fed and by playing very simple minigames, then goes head-to-head with AI opponents along a gym circuit. Once your Magikarp can no longer defeat its opponents, it retires, and you start over training the next generation to be marginally stronger. I ended up playing Magikarp Jump far more than I should have, between waiting for events and just lying in bed. I’m still amused by the fact that you can lose your Magikarp to random luck draws in the game, which forces you to start over with your next generation. I played it until I reached a gym that required several generations of Magikarp to complete, which was finally enough to make me lose interest.

That Beat Tho’: Cuphead

The reason this game was so successful at emulating the cartoons of the 1930s is because Studio MDHR employed the same old-fashioned production techniques of the time. In my opinion, it would have been a miss if they’d gone to all the trouble of hand-drawing the art but then used digital instruments for the soundtrack. Fortunately, they must have felt the same, and had a live band record the music. The songs are catchy and don’t feel too repetitive, which is a good thing given how many times you’ll be hearing each one due to Cuphead‘s difficulty.

Best Multitask Game: Golf Story

Golf Story‘s golf-based gameplay, combined with the Nintendo Switch’s portable nature, made it great for multitasking. Since the most frequent action you take is swinging a club, you can really play it at your own pace. I would pop the Switch out of its dock and keep at it while watching TV with my wife, and even managed to get in a few more rounds and sidequests while laying in bed at night.

The Future is Bright: Death Stranding

I think the Penny Arcade comic really nailed it when it comes to Death Stranding. Even after two previews, I still have absolutely no idea what it’s going to be about. I can’t wait to find out, even though I’m positive that I’m still not going to understand whatsoever it after it’s released.

On to the list!

As I said on the podcast, I really loved the idea of putting a game from 1996 on a Game of the Year list in 2017. Canceled prior to its scheduled release and thought to be lost forever, all we really saw of Star Fox 2 over the past 22 years were prototype ROMs. Some of its gameplay elements did show up in Star Fox Command on the DS in 2006, and Star Fox Zero on the Wii U debuted the Arwing’s ‘walker mode’, for better or worse. When Nintendo announced that the game would come loaded on the SNES Classic, it was a shock to everyone — including the game’s development team, who finally got to celebrate its release.

Star Fox 2 was full of ambitious ideas. Argonaut Software could have just swapped out planets and enemies from the first game and kept everything else the same, but instead opted to overhaul its entire structure. Rather than a linear path of rail shooter levels through the Lylat System, players were allowed to move freely about the galactic map. Missiles and fighter squadrons would launch from Andross’ bases, and had to be intercepted in real time before they hit planet Corneria and increased its planetary damage score. Too much damage to the planet would result in a Game Over, while clearing the system of hostile forces would earn the Star Fox squadron a run at the enemy home base. Star Fox 2 alternated between first person arena shooting stages for squadron and missile interceptions, and third person flying/running sequences when attacking ground bases. The game suffers from serious dips in framerate, but I’m positive it still would have been a hit if it’d been released in 1996 (and the N64 hadn’t just come out).

The concept of Snipperclips was simple: players had to alter the shape of their characters, little beings made out of paper, to solve puzzles. Solutions involved fitting these papyrine people into oddly-shaped outlines, forming them into ramps or cups to transport objects from one side of a board to the other, and cutting them into implements for hooking or poking other targets. There was a good variety of challenges, and many of them could be solved in different ways.

This was a perfect early title for the Nintendo Switch that helped to show off some its promise. It could be played alone, but really shined in cooperative mode, with each player taking a Joy-Con in exactly the way Nintendo had advertised how multiplayer could work on their new system. I would actually break out Snipperclips at restaurants and hand my wife a controller while we waited for our food. It wasn’t quite a rooftop party, but it proved the system’s portable multiplayer potential for us. There were thankfully no unnecessary motion controls or forced reliance on any of the fancier tech packed into the Joy-Cons, like HD rumble, for this game. The puzzles never got terribly difficult, and players had the ability to both undo their last cut and fully reset their forms, making it impossible to fail a challenge. It was a little on the short side, but some very welcome DLC released in November added thirty new levels and several additional game modes.

Born from Brendan Greene’s battle royale mods for DayZ, Arma 3, and H1Z1, part of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds‘ success comes from its balance between simulation and deathmatch shooter . There were multiple tiers of armor and plenty of attachments and upgrades for weapons, but having the superior kit in no way guaranteed victory. You could have a tense fight on your hands if another player got the drop on you, even if all they were armed with was a frying pan.

The game’s potential for randomness like that was really what made it so addicting. The maps were completely open, with sparsely scattered buildings throughout varying environments (none of which had a particular tactical advantage over any of the others). The central point to which the safe zone would shrink was moved every round, so there could never be the development of a ‘default strategy’ in terms of landing, going to point X for gear Y, then proceeding to point Z by way of some regular, known path. The only recurring strategy is to simply survive, and the means by which I’d accomplish that were always changing. Every round of this game gave me a completely different experience, and to get that much variety and fun out of a title is pretty special. It still could use boatloads of polish, though; I feel like they rushed it to 1.0 status, and while it sounds like a lot of the early issues have been cleared up, it has some way to go.

I was a Nintendo kid, and Sega was, of course, my sworn enemy. Looking back, I can see that was entirely the product of marketing that was the genesis (no pun intended) of the unfortunate institution known as the Console Wars. I had a terrible secret, though: I received a Game Gear one year for Christmas. Even worse, I had asked for it. I was perfectly happy with my Game Boy, but I was just so impressed by the Game Gear’s little color screen that I couldn’t resist. Plus, Price Club (now Costco) had a pretty sweet combo set on sale that year, so it was an easy idea to sell to my parents.

The Sonic games I spent the most time with were Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Sonic Chaos for the Game Gear. I had also played the first two mainline games on several toy store demo kiosks for the Sega Genesis, but had never gotten very far into them. As an adult, I ironically revisited those first two Sonic games for the Genesis on Nintendo’s Virtual Console, and in their 3D remakes on the 3DS. To this day, I’ve only ever finished the Genesis and Game Gear versions of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Sonic Chaos (but never with any more than three chaos emeralds). Sonic just didn’t seem to be my thing, and I had a hard time understanding people who viewed that series as being on par with the Super Mario Bros. games. The promise in Sonic games was always speed, but getting up to speed could be a tedious chore, and you always risked losing all of your rings at any moment if you didn’t have the current level fully memorized. Each stage had multiple, branching paths, which would have been great for exploration if there had been no timer. And the water levels were the absolute worst. I felt like the Mario games were the superior platformers.

Sonic Mania absolutely blew me away, because it was something that I wasn’t used to Sonic games being: fun. It featured both remixes of levels from previous games as well as completely new stages, and they were all fine-tuned to minimize on the tedious elements and maximize on allowing the player to just have fun zipping along courses and buzz-sawing through enemies. There were still branching paths, but it felt like they were easier and more rewarding to explore. Eventual memorization of the levels helped with locating entrances to special stages where you could find Chaos Emeralds, and I felt more inclined to seek them out because I was actually enjoying myself while doing so. It’s really too bad that Sega squandered all of Mania‘s goodwill with Sonic Forces.

The 2013 Kickstarter campaign for A Hat in Time advertised the game as ‘a 3D collect-a-thon platformer in the spirit of the beloved Nintendo and Rare games from the Nintendo 64 era’, and likened it to a combination of Banjo-Kazooie, The Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario 64. I’d argue that it wasn’t quite as much of a collect-a-thon as Rare games of that era (which isn’t a bad thing, either), but it did fully capture the spirit and fun of 3D platfomers of the past twenty years. I don’t think I ever really use the word ‘zany’, but it’s unavoidable, here. Hat Girl must collect magic timepieces to power her spaceship, so she can make her way home. The timepieces fell onto a planet when her ship broke down, and the planet’s crazy assortment of citizens are running amok with them. To get them back, she must fight a town full of Russian-accented mafia thugs, help filmmaker birds try to outdo each other’s movies, complete contracts for a ghost in order to win back her soul, and zipline between the peaks of mountains inhabited by giant, enlightenment-seeking goats.

This game would have been higher on my list, if not for some fairly rough edges. When you think about it, the 3D platformers that have endured over the years came from the top studios, most notably Nintendo. They were heavily polished affairs, and I realized after playing A Hat In Time just how much I’d taken that for granted. What Gears For Breakfast has accomplished so far with its indie game is very impressive, but it lacks a bit in terms of consistent direction. In the very first level, Hat Girl dropped into Mafia Town and spotted Mustache Girl, and the level ended with the two deciding to team up. In the very next level, Hat Girl found Mustache Girl being held by the Mafia, and upon freeing her the two decide… to team up. Again. I was confused if I’d just seen these two characters have two separate meeting origins told back to back. Then, there was the hat and badge system. It seemed like gameplay mechanics, like making bombs and doing an ice stomp move that could activate springboards, were supposed to be tied to the different hats you could wear. Badges, meanwhile, were enhancements on mechanics and other game elements, like preventing fall damage, adding a projectile to your attacks, and reducing the cooldown on your hat powers. But then, the grappling hook, a gameplay mechanic, was tied to a badge (and essentially permanently tied up one badge spot, since you needed it frequently). It might have made more sense to make the grappling hook a hat, give Hat Girl a regular stomp move, and add a badge that turned the stomp move into the ice-based one necessary to activate springboards. Aside from that, there are other technical issues that I had. I absolutely fought with the camera’s auto-assist mode, and still had trouble after disabling it. The controls were somewhat floaty, and I struggled with Hat Girl taking an odd extra step sometimes after jumps that would cause her to walk off of platforms on which I was trying to land.

Nitpicks aside, the game is great, and absolutely worth playing. The level design improved a lot by the last chapter, which made me excited for the additional two stretch goal chapters still on the way. It has wonderful music, and a charming art style. The fact that it remains so memorable in a year when one of the best 3D Mario games was released is definitely a testament to how good it is, flaws and all.

I’ve avoided Metroidvania games at times in the past because I tend to be bad at their core concept. They feature large maps that are broken into sections that require the use of new powers or weapons to access. You spend much of these games passing by gates and not knowing what you need in order to open them, with the idea that you’ll backtrack once you’ve picked up the necessary key. My issue is that I never remember where to go once I’ve gotten something new. This was unfortunately how my time with Hollow Knight ended, but I did stick with it for much longer than similar games in the past.

Part of the reason for that was just how well produced the game was. The fluidly-animated characters and absolutely gorgeous backgrounds were so visually appealing that being lost wasn’t so bad most of the time. I was really impressed by the use of such muted, somber color palettes, which really helped to make each area of the map feel unique. It paired really well with the sound design, and it all came together to create the feeling of being underground. Gameplay was pretty similar to other games of the genre; walking became dashing, jumping became double jumping, and projectile attacks got bigger. The map system wasn’t as helpful as I wished it had been, even after acquiring all available upgrades for it. It was still compelling to explore, and I enjoyed finding the other characters and secrets, but eventually I hit a wall where I needed a particular upgrade and had failed to find the necessary shop for it over several hours of hunting. I would like to return to it, though, particularly since several free DLC packs were released for it last year.

I really didn’t know what to expect from this game. I like golf and golf games, but never expected for an RPG in which the player character’s actions would all be golf-based. The closest comparable game I can think of is Mario Golf: Advance Tour, which did have a story mode, but in it you mostly ran around and talked to characters inbetween rounds of golf. You could find items inside barrels and other containers that you could use to increase your stats, but ultimately it was a golf game with dialogue inbetween rounds. Golf Story was an RPG with rounds of golf inbetween (and oftentimes as) sidequests. You could drop golf balls anywhere in the game’s world and hit them at anything, which was the key to getting bonus experience points and solving puzzles. 

Your character had given up everything for one last shot at golf glory. They started out at the local course (called ‘Wellworn Grove’, in a pun indicative of the game’s unrelenting humor), and had to convince the coach there to take them under his wing. The characters don’t take themselves too seriously, the scenarios that occur are often silly (see my Funniest award), and the game made interesting use of HD rumble where it created actual sound effects for dialogue bubbles. Although not an industry-revolutionizing feature, it was a neat touch. Otherwise, Golf Story is a decent and fun golf game. Its 2D presentation meant that shots are were all performed by aiming, choosing the impact point on the ball, and then pressing a button in time with a meter to lock in distance and power. In addition to the usual sand and water traps, courses featured unique hazards like molerats and birds who would move balls that landed too close to them, and turtles that would pop out of the water and bounce approaching balls forward. Now that I’ve finished the game, I can still boot it up to play any of the courses, or its ridiculous ‘Galf’ minigame (although a bug prevents me from ever being able to exit that).

When we previewed Super Mario Odyssey at E3 last year, Nintendo’s booth was a madhouse. So many people were excited to play the plumber’s latest adventure that they had to wrap the lines to the demo units around the show floor and into an additional queue at the back of the expo hall. My brief couple of minutes with the game took place under the supervision of a Nintendo handler while Jump Up, Superstar! played on loop overhead. I chose to explore New Donk City, and knew that the game was going to be a hit immediately afterward. Mario controlled tightly, the visuals were bright and exciting, and I kept thinking about how I’d be able to play the game on the road thanks to the Switch’s portability.

The final game combined the best elements of many of its predecessors. Moons were the MacGuffin this time around, having replaced Stars and Shines. Whereas in previous games you would choose a particular variation of an obstacle course to load in order to hunt specific trophies, Odyssey packed most of the Moons into a single instance of its sprawling sandbox kingdoms, and allowed players continue rounding them up as long as there were any left to be found. Mario’s cap-enhanced moves let him make extra-high and/or long jumps, which really opened up movement for gamers who mastered them. The big new ability that allowed for the possession of enemies made for some of the goofiest fun I’ve had in a Mario game in years. My only complaint was in the art direction; while I thought New Donk City was great, the Cascade and Ruined Kingdoms were also far more realistic than Mario games tend to look. Compared to Super Mario 3D World, it was as if Nintendo decided not to strictly adhere to the ‘Mario look’ for this title. It’s a nitpick at best, and the obvious counterargument is that such different aesthetics only enhance the idea that Mario’s on a grand odyssey across truly exotic kingdoms, so I’m not too hung up on it.

The winner of my Prettiest and That Beat Tho’ awards, Cuphead was an absolute masterpiece of production. Its hand-drawn cell animation and musical score that was performed by a live jazz band created an exact emulation of 1930s Max Fleischer cartoons that was just a joy to behold. With all of the hype that built around the game after its brief debut at the Xbox E3 conference back in 2014, it could have ended up being a pretty-looking flop. Studio MDHR really put in the time and effort, and built an amazing game that deserves every bit of the praise it received.

I enjoy challenging games, particularly platformers. I’ve spent hundreds of hours with the likes of Super Meat Boy, the Mega Man series, Shovel Knight, and so forth. I will make a thousand attempts at them, if that’s what it takes to succeed. My wife isn’t quite on the same page as far as these kinds of games are concerned, so I really have to give her credit when it comes to Cuphead. We tackled it in co-op mode, which increased every enemy’s health in an already super hard game. She held her own through every crazy fight, be it with anthropomorphic vegetables or shape-shifting magic genies. Our eventual triumph over the Devil took months, but we had so much fun along the way.

There was a while where this game and Super Mario Odyssey were in direct competition for my personal number one spot. Ultimately, I realized that Breath of the Wild captured my imagination in a way that no other game had this year. The feeling of discovery and open freedom of exploration in this game is really on par with the original The Legend of Zelda on the NES, and it made the whole thing so special to me. The series had developed a reliance on guiding the player through what was ultimately a linear path in the world, with a particular order to dungeons and for item acquisition. Breath of the Wild gave you a smaller (yet still spacious) starting area in which to learn the game’s basic systems, and afterward the entirety of Hyrule was opened up. You could run straight to the end at Hyrule Castle from there, if you wanted, but there’s so much to see and do that you could instead end up completely forgetting that goal over the course of a couple hundred hours.

While I did miss larger, more traditional dungeons, I did really appreciate how the small shrines complemented the open world. There were so many things to find and do, so many enemies to fight, puzzles to solve, and upgrades to find that I would get lost in the game for entire evenings. In the months that I played it, I clocked over half the number of hours that I spent in three years of Destiny. Breath of the Wild also delivered impressive visuals for Nintendo’s new (and still only modestly-powered) console, using a combination of the cell shading techniques they developed back in The Wind Waker with environment designs that reminded me of Skyward Sword. I really liked the music, which was a controversial topic; I felt like it mirrored the sparse, broken land of Hyrule in which the game was set. The two packs of DLC added a few more difficult challenges, and although I was disappointed that The Champions’ Ballad didn’t add much more to the story, I did really enjoy the Master Cycle Zero motorcycle. Still, though, why does the Master Sword need a nap, even after I completed its trials?

Welcome everyone to the List… of Conman.

With all due respect to Chris Jericho, this is the list that you want to be on.   Play it on, maaan.

Awards

Most Feels:  Nier: Automata

****

This game maaaaay come up a few times here.  Possibly.  Maybe.

Biggest Disappointment:  The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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I’m sure cautiously optimistic that this game gets fun at some point.  I just don’t know when that happens.  I ran around having all of my weapons break on me in the middle of battles and freezing to death.  It felt like all of the game mechanics were actively trying to make things difficult for me.  Perhaps it’s an okay game, but I don’t think that I was looking to play Ark: Survival Zelda when I fired it up.   I’ve played much more engaging open world games and ultimately wasn’t enjoying myself  – and didn’t foresee that changing any time soon.

Funniest: Crop Duster Supreme

Silent but Funny

This is just a game about farts.  The whole idea is to run around and to fart on as many people as possible in order to make them run away.  And also to eat burritos to refill your fart meter so you can run around and fart on more people.  There’s like, 10 levels of this. Farts.  I am 13.

Prettiest: Nier: Automata

DLC Butts

Two Words: Android Butts.

Most Addicting:  Divinity: Original Sin 2

I have a bucket for a helmet

Divinity really has that Civilization “One More Turn” kind of feel to it.  You always want to explore a little bit further, get into one more battle, solve one more puzzle.  There is just so much to uncover in an incredibly deep world, and you want to see what you can find next.  In one town you may find yourself having a conversation with the ghost of an overweight bird that died while trying to eat a severed hand whole; and then stumbling upon a plot to murder the entire city with poison gas.    I spent over 70 hours in my play through of the game and felt like I’d barely scratched the surface on things; forcing myself to finish just so I could play some of the other games on this list.

Best Early Access Game: Pit People

Is that a banana in your.. store?

Pit People hit Early access in January of 2017 and I’d hoped all year that it would finish on time so I could include it on the main list.  Alas, it got pushed back to early this year.  Developer The Behemoth  continues to nail the humor and art style they are known for in this mostly turn based game in the Advance Wars mold.  At one point I was fighting a battle on the outside of a space shuttle being propelled through space by the hand of the giant bear god ..thing. – and that was maybe 45 minutes into it all.  Looking forward for the full story to drop and suspect that this will be be on my 2018 list.

The One That Got Away: All of Them

Please save me

Kind of a cop-out, but too bad.  I could literally make an entire other list about games that I wanted to play but never got around to for whatever reason.  When do you people sleep?

Of Course I’ll Rebuy That!: Mutant Football League

You probably don’t want to see this too often

Mutant Football League is the modern day, spiritual successor to the acclaimed 16-bit era Mutant League Football. MFL was a Kickstarter baby headed up the original creator of the SNES and Genesis games, Michael Mendheim.  It even includes commentary work by Tim Kitzrow of NBA Jam fame. As soon as I fired up a game, went to my dirty tricks playbook, and bribed the ref it hit me right in the nostalgia.  It does a fine job of bringing the old concept to up to date with fast, hard hitting action, and plenty of slaughter.   The developers are still updating things as of this writing, with a dynasty mode in the works in a free future update.  If you can’t beat em, kill em.

Shame: WWE2k18

Make Virtual Roman Strong

To say that I played too much of this is to say that I played any at all.  I really enjoyed WWE2k17 for what it was last year, so I was hoping for at minimum of more of the same.  I tried my best in order to justify to myself my Pre-order, but man did 2K drop the ball with this one.  The story mode is laughably bad and somehow makes less sense than the actual WWE storylines.  If you can imagine that.  On top of that the loading times are atrocious, to the point where you spend more time loading than you do actually playing anything. And it’s filled with lootboxes!  Which you can’t actually purchase with real money. Right now. But sure does build the frame work for 2k19.  I can smell what 2K is cooking, and it stinks.

That Beat Tho’: Nier: Automata

She sings. Sort of

With all due respect to Cuphead, which has a wonderful soundtrack in it’s own right, Nier’s is simply a step above.  As I was with pretty much everything in Nier, I was simply blown away by the soundtrack.  It’s two and a half hours of sheer audio joy.  Each area in the game has it’s own track, and it manages to nail everything just so perfectly in order to increase the immersion.  There hasn’t been a game since Final Fantasy VI that I’ve gone out of my way to listen to, on repeat.  It’s haunting when it needs to be, dramatic during moments of high tension, but still kicks into full gear when the action gets hot and heavy, without missing a literal beat.  There’s really no let up as each song lends itself to the worlds atmosphere in way that keeps you fully engaged.  Even the humorous bits will end up stuck in your head. Just take gander here at Emil’s Theme! (Why does he even need money?) I’m going to put it on and listen again right now.

Best Multitask Game: Divinity: Original Sin 2

I’m playing Marvel Puzzle Quest on my phone while this is happening

Divinity is basically D&D in the sense that you often have a lot of time where you don’t actually have anything to do.  There were plenty of instances where I end my turn and then walk away as the AI cycles through all of its units. Or give a move order to the other side of town and the check my phone.  This is further exacerbated in Multiplayer sessions when you find find yourself waiting around for everyone else to make their turns.   Much like Brady mentioned in his awards, having extra monitors was clutch.

The Future is Bright: Battletech

Battlebots!

Turn based tactical combat with giant Mechs?  Shut up and take all of my money.

Now, for the thing that you’re actually here for.  My 2017 GOTY list.  Which is the correct list out of all the other lists. It’s the good stuff, really.

The List!

10. Middle Earth: Shadow of War

Please take your forts back

There was a lot of lootbox based controversy with this one, but I still enjoyed enough of it for long enough that I’m giving it the pity pick at the 10 slot.  The follow up to the 2014 hit success Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, the majority of this game did not deviate from the formula that made its predecessor a success.  If you enjoyed the original, it’s basically all of the same, but more.  I was excited to find that my strongest nemesis from the first game imported himself in to Shadow of War, and then tracked me down across multiple zones.  That orc was a fucker.   The story wasn’t the best but it kept my attention long enough to be interested beyond mindless orc shenanigans.  This one was really all about the interplay between Talion and Celebrimbor as you try to work your way through figuring out what the sexy spider lady was up to.  And maybe wondering why there was a sexy spider lady in the first place.  There’s collectibles a plenty with frequent named Orc encounters to break up any sense of monotony.  For most of the game I had even expected this title to slot higher up on the list, as the lootbox thing was just a thing that I was able to ignore.  And then you finish Act 3.  Act 4 is nothing more than a grind that was shoe-horned in as a reason to incentivize buying Orcs in boxes.  It the idea that I can just spend some currency virtual or otherwise and buy some legendary orcs really undercuts the whole point of the experience. What’s worse, that grind had no payoff at all.  I was hoping at least for some super secret last mission or boss fight when all was said and done.  But nope.  I’ll probably go back and check out some DLC when it goes on sale, but for now, this one left a sour taste in my mouth.  If you plan on checking this one out; put the game down when you finish Act 3, go YouTube the so called “real” ending post Act 4, and then come back and thank me for time saved.

9. Total War: WARHAMMER 2

That’s a Big’un

Total Warhammer 2, as I like to call it; is another case of everything you liked about the first game but just more of it.  If you’ve ever played any of the Total War games in the past, it doesn’t stray too far from that formula.  The fantasy element of TW2 really comes into play however, when you bring units into the mix with greatly differing size scales.  There’s something oddly satisfying about a giant troll lumbering about as it attempts to crush a group of dwarves underfoot.  Despite the unusually large units for a TW game, it does it’s typical fine job of rendering chaotic battles that just have a shitton of units running about.  In addition to the grand conquest from the original, this one brings in a new campaign with a different set of win conditions and previously unplayable races.  I’m looking forward to spending some time with the Lizardmen myself to go forth and crush some elves.   It does lose some points in my world for being released so relatively soon after the original, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the majority of my DLC from the first carried over into this version.  They did such a good job, I hope one day a similar Total War treatment can be given to Warhammer 40k.

8. Hob

Teleporters, Weeeee

Hob is a wonderful puzzle-platformer that I discovered far too late into the year.  Developed by now-defunct Runic Games, Hob shares the same gorgeous visual style made famous in their previous Torchlight series.  The interesting thing about this little gem is that there is no actual dialog – I know I need to go somewhere, I’ve got an idea how I’m supposed to get there, but I don’t actually know why I’m going or what I’ll find.  Hob is set in a world of seemingly ancient machinery where you’ll often come across fantastic vistas of far off areas.  These lands though, are closer than they seem, as in the push of a button, the gears start grinding and the landscape rearranges itself to open up new places to explore, bringing that distant vista to your doorstep. None of the puzzles are particularly obtuse, lending itself a clear path of progression in most instances and the ever present feeling of accomplishment.  As you unlock new areas and gain new abilities there’s also reason to go back and revisit previous places to get into spaces that you couldn’t previously.  Combat is enjoyable for the most part, and mistakes are never punished too harshly as respawn points are plentiful. This may have actually placed higher, if not for the fact that as of this writing I’ve not yet actually finished it. I will say that I’m looking forward to finding out where my path eventually leads.

7. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

No Jokes here – Go see a professional if needed.

So let’s talk about Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.  Hellblade opens with the Title Character rowing a makeshift boat toward the start of her journey, which is to literally enter the gates of hell to save the soul of her dead lover… whose head she carries with her, wrapped up and tied hanging from her waist.  Accompanying her on this quest, are the literal voices in her head and a disembodied spirit guide portrayed by live action clips that overlay the game itself.  Frankly, none of what I just described there really does the game justice.  Ostensibly, the story follows Senua on her path to hell; but in reality the game follows her struggle with metal illness, particularly schizophrenia.  It’s actually an amazingly well done dynamic, as your voices (recorded using binaural microphones for maximum impact) will both guide you and attempt to lead you astray.  The conflict is an interesting dynamic as opening a door forward will often prompt one voice to usher you forward, while another whispers “turn around, you’re not strong enough“.  It becomes such a part of the experience – there is a certain sequence where the voices stop speaking, and I found the silence quite jarring.

6. Cuphead

I got further than the tutorial at least.

I suspect the rest of the Bottled Fuchsia will speak more about Cuphead.  It’s superbly well done.  But holy shit does it make me uncontrollably angry.  I got so furious that I wanted to throw the controller… but then 15 minutes later I’d load it up and try again. That’s the hallmark of doing something right.  The aesthetic is done to a T, with the art and music being high on everyone’s list.  I personally compared this to Super Meat Boy of a few years back, in that it’s very good, but also very, very hard. But also like SMB, none of the levels are too long.  I finally had to put it down, for the sake of my blood pressure.

5. The Sexy Brutale

If I could tuuuuuurn back time… Oh wait, I can.

In The Sexy Brutale you have all of the time in the world.  But also none of it.  You, as Lafcadio Boone find yourself mysteriously responsible for solving, and then using the power of time travel to ultimately prevent the grisly deaths of all of the guests attending a fancy party at the Sexy Brutale Casino Mansion.  Deaths being perpetrated no less, by the Mansion staff.  In the first moments of the game you are awoken by a mysterious presence and are witness to a man getting shot in the chest with a rifle.  But by using his magic pocketwatch you are able to rewind the day and retrace his steps, as often as needed.  Eventually, by being in the correct places at the correct time; you’re able to cleverly load a blank into the rifle before the killer retrieves it, thus giving it’s intended victim enough time to thwart the attack.  This tutorial section is actually the most mundane murder there is, with others ranging from death by giant spider to being burned alive in a huge furnace elevator contraption.

4. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

I don’t even know

This game taught me that there is no dilemma that you can’t solve with tactical use of nuclear weapons.  Every time I felt like Wolfenstein couldn’t get any more ridiculous it went and kicked it up a notch.  Every time.  Why am I on a base in the clouds of Venus, I think to myself, as I’m preparing to audition for a movie to play myself of all people  – and the casting director is Hitler himself.  I don’t even know. But yet, at the same time it all made perfect sense.

3. Prey

Spaaaaaaaaaace

Prey is a game that just managed to check all of the boxes for me. Science Fiction? Check.  A Space Station?  Check. Zero G sections? Check. Alien life forms? Check.  Being able to 3d print a nerf crossbow and corresponding foam ammo?  Check and Check.  A mashup of Bio/System Shock and Dues Ex style gameplay?  Big ole check.  There’s even a side quest revolving around a group of the station crew members playing D&D together.

2. Divinity: Original Sin 2

This probably would be my own fault

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the 2017 game where I probably spent the most time getting myself killed by own stupidity and was still okay with it.  It’s a spectacular old school RPG, the likes of which I can’t recall seeing since Baldur’s Gate 2.  I think it’s the closest you can get playing a full on D&D campaign in a video game without actually running on yourself.   What makes this gem really shine are all of the interactions in the game.  For example – My main character was Fane, an Undead Necromancer skeleton who literally rips the faces off people in order to make masks from their flesh.  Well I might take Fane into an encounter where en enemy lit the ground on fire, and cast blood rain over the area, causing pools of blood to form at the oppositions feet while dousing the flames.  Since Fane has a bunch of points into Necromancer, he literally regains health by standing this blood pool to recover health from the burns.  On my next characters turn, my Mage Lohse  casts a lightning bolt spell at the nearest hostile archer, who happens to be standing in the blood.  That spell zaps the target stunning him, but also electrifies the entire pool; simultaneously stunning and damaging everyone else standing in, including Fane.  Did I mention stupidity?

1. Nier: Automata

A robot after my own heart

I’m going to get right down to it.  Nier: Automata is a masterpiece.  There are often discussions about whether or not video games are art, or can be considered art.  Well as I was playing through this, I felt like I was playing out a literal work of art.  I want to be clear that there is no hyperbole there.  I originally played Nier in late March shortly after it’s release and at the time I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  The fact that I finished it nearly 10 months ago at this point, that I still think about it and what it means a video game can be actually speaks volumes about what it is.  I was left questioning my humanity and left wondering about the meaning of existence, which clearly was not what I’d expected when I loaded up this fuck off Japanese title that has a nice Android ass.  The rest of Bottled Fuchsia can attest that I’ve been raving it about it ever since and replayed it vicariously through all of them as they spoke to me about their playthroughs and experiences.