Very Honorable Mention: For Honor

While the single player mode didn’t grab me hard enough to finish it, the multiplayer of For Honor is exceptionally good. Some modes get weighed down by bad map design or gameplay that encourages unfairly teaming up on individual players, but the moment-to-moment multiplayer combat in this game is some of the most fun I’ve had this year. It’s a shame that such fun combat got weighed down by an extra pricey season pass that excluded people from new content which the multiplayer sorely needed to stay fresh, poorly conceived microtransactions, and a convoluted faction system that never really felt like my investment in any one clan meant anything meaningful. Still, I found a lot of fun in grabbing a friend or two, hopping into 1v1 duels, and just having a few fights.

10. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The latest incarnation of the Zelda series twists the standard conventions of open world games to make something wholly unique within its franchise and in 2017. Emergent gameplay allows you to solve problems through such a large variety of solutions that it’s not uncommon to feel like the experiences you had were unique to you and nobody else. Before I picked up the game for myself, I had heard that the final boss becomes easier the further you play to the point of triviality, and I wish other people heard this too before hopping into it. It allowed me to tailor my experience to my play style in a way that was totally effective. I collected the bare minimum of hearts needed to acquire The Master Sword and only completed two of the game’s four main dungeons, which led to a really satisfying 4 stage final boss battle where I found myself using up all my weapons and items. It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend you play the game this way. I haven’t gone back since beating it, but I’m honestly considering it with the new DLC and especially Master Mode.

9. The Last Guardian

Due to it’s late December launch, The Last Guardian didn’t really get a lot of attention during Game of the Year coverage in 2016, and the coverage it did get were mainly focused on how the game doesn’t really control too well at parts. While this seems like a really strange statement to make about a game that has been in development hell for a decade, The Last Guardian clearly needed a little more time in the oven. However, that didn’t stop me from totally loving this game. It understands what it means to be a pet owner and all the heartbreaking moments that come with it. There are scenes in this game I legitimately cried at from being able to empathize with the struggles Trico and The Boy which is where it’s at its most affecting. It’s a game with highs and lows, but its highs absolutely outweigh its lows and I highly recommend sticking through it if you haven’t already played it.

8. Sonic Mania

I had the biggest, goofiest grin on my face while playing through Sonic Mania in its entirety. The early Sonic games were some of my favorite platformers growing up, so much so that I went out of my way to replay them years later. Mania manages to recapture the feel of those games flawlessly, while also updating that pixelated style with some more modern design ethos. Mania understands what Sonic fans are looking for in a game and it’s hard to say much more about it other than it’s fun. It’s fun! It’s a colorful tip-to-toe thrill ride that I left with a smile.

7. Doki Doki Literature Club

It’s really easy to see this game and write it off as another cheap, free horror game. I feel like this game is a masterwork in breaking down the visual novel genre and it’s standard conventions in order to manipulate players towards a destined path of misery and psychological horror. While it may not seem like it at first, every single inch of this game is meticulously crafted to make you fit the shoes of the player character, only to cut those legs out from under you and leave you completely disarmed. I love this game, and if you have a Steam account, there’s no reason for you not to play it (unless you’re sensitive to disturbing imagery or just aren’t really a big fan of horror, which totally makes sense).

6. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

The menu music of PUBG is so burned into my brain that it being changed for the upcoming final release leaves me sad. Thankfully this video will serve me well to put me in the ASMR like trance I need to focus on finishing this list.

PUBG is the asymmetrical Battle Royale style loot collecting game with arcane controls that I knew I wanted in my life but didn’t know existed. I know other stuff is out there. It’s not out there for me, though. Some of the greatest moments 2017 came from grouping up with some good buddies, getting lost in the wild, barely scraping together to survive until we eventually became the winner winners of some delicious chicken dinners. Hopefully they employ some Final Fantasy XV style food tech to simulate the most delicious chicken dinners imaginable in upcoming updates.

5. Absolver

Play this game. Play this game! Absolver manages to make over-the-shoulder 3D fighting with other players super fun. Absolver carries a lot of the same ethos with For Honor and while For Honor’s trappings held it back from being something good, Absolver’s always online open world is amazing and more games can learn from how it handles player interaction. You can try and troll players by getting into fights with them at random, but then a revive system after combat that shows you physically helping them up to their feet helps facilitate that the fights are just in good fun. Getting surrounded by a group of guys goes from scary to incredible when some random player you’ve never met before rushes in, goes back to back with you, and helps you fight them off, before leaving, never to be seen again. This game also has what For Honor did right as well, which is a mode that just allows you to hop into 1 on 1 matchmaking with other players or friends without any of the extra frills on the side. It’s an extremely good game that more people should play. Come fight me.

4. Puyo Puyo Tetris

The ability to pick up and play Puyo Puyo Tetris whenever I want on the Nintendo Switch makes this game one of my absolute favorites of the year. While it’s certainly not a new game by any stretch, it’s first localized launch in the US is my first experience with it and I had nothing but fun. There are so many different game modes with extra menus that have even more game modes that it feels like a bunch of designers got in a room, asked “how can we combine Puyo Pop and Tetris into one game?” and came back with a bunch of different designs that all got included. Being able to just play a round of Tetris whenever I feel my brain ready to shut off and keep me focused has been such a huge boon in my life. This game rules and it’s a must own for any Switch owner.

3. NieR:Automata

Not knowing anything about previous games in the Nier/Drakengard timeline, some of the major references in Nier were totally lost on me. That said, Nier still managed to hit close to home with a lot of ideas of grief, loss, legacy, and letting go. I felt a mechanical significance to the endgame choice of helping those in need by letting go of your memories or by holding onto them just a little while longer until you felt comfortable letting them leave forever. Not many games manage to be that emotionally resonant through mechanics alone, while Nier’s handling of that idea is totally superb. Nier is dense and asks a lot of questions about your relationship towards games, and to loved ones, drawing a synonymous line through the two. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life, a lot that I’ve loved and many I straight up hated, and Nier reflected those feelings back at me in a way that truly understood like they’d really felt the same in ways no other game I’ve played has.

2. Night In The Woods

I think everyone growing up as a twenty-something in 2017 can identify with something, big or small, in Night In The Woods. This game handles character writing and personal moments very effectively, and it puts to words a lot of deep emotions and ideas that many people simply can’t. The heartbreak of only having a best “available” friend, the existential terror of an encroaching conservatism that threatens your very existence, the value we place in others after our lives have been filled with nothing but terror. Night in the Woods attempts to tackle these ideas not only head on, but with a smile and a sense of humor that lets you know that uncertainty is normal. Night in the Woods is comfort in nightmarish times, a striking condemnation of capitalist America that so many of us live in, and the albatrosses around our necks.

1. Nioh

This is probably gonna sound a little hollow after how deeply resonant games like NitW and NieR:Automata have been for me in 2017, but Nioh is truly the game I had the most fun with all year. Many people reductively refer to it as Samurai Dark Souls, but it’s much more than that. It’s an alternate history story about Irish-born English sailor William Adams’ quest to save his ghost girlfriend from an extremely goth twink Edward Kelley as he treks around Sengoku Era Japan and fights loving recreations of the Yokai of Japanese mythology. The game is steeped with a lot of creative irony, as the very first level takes place in the Tower of London, utilizing the medieval aesthetic to effectively subvert your expectations of playing a samurai game and place you right into another Dark Souls for its first mission. It’s also got a great sense of humor that is completely unexpected to people conditioned by Souls-like games. There are several cutscenes in the beginning of the game where William, who only speaks English throughout the game, is surrounded by Japanese people speaking Japanese, and thus just says absolutely nothing. It’s really easy to interpret William as just plain not understanding what anyone is saying and being completely confused all the time, and once the game sets that expectation in your head, the rest of the cutscenes that follow that same methodology become a joy to watch. Nioh is such a fun game with a lot there, and even in a year full of big games with long stories and huge open worlds, I can still go back to Nioh and have a good time.

The post Scott’s Top 10 Games of 2017 appeared first on Gamesline.

Absolver begins with a cryptic, wordless cinematic depicting the player character let loose into the world as a prospect. You have to find and defeat two boss enemies and six sub-bosses in combat in any order to open the path to become an Absolver. There isn’t much of a story outside of that, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it tends to make the single-player aspect of the game seem lacking or incomplete.

The combat is easy to learn, difficult to master, and incredibly customizable. You choose one of three different styles, each with their own moveset and special ability. There are two different attacks: one that initiates a combo string, and an alternate attack that acts as a mixup. These moves can be set to whatever you have available to you in your movepool, so they can serve whatever role you want them to. You can learn moves you don’t know by successfully blocking or dodging moves from enemies, and then you can add them to your moveset. There are also special abilities you receive when you choose a style, which include a parry, an absorb move that turns damage into temporary health which heals back over time, or a close range dodge that allows you to stay closer to your opponent than the standard dodge.

On top of basic combat, you also unlock new weapons and powers as you progress through the game, which adds more variety to the combat. All players start with a healing power, but you can unlock more offensive powers from beating sub-bosses. I’m partial to the gravity ability, which, on top of being able to use at a range (making it easy to punish opponents running away to heal), makes enemies consume more stamina when attacking or blocking due to the drag on their body. Weapons are unlocked from completing boss fights, and they also have their own movesets which can be customized. There are two different weapon types: war gloves and swords. The war gloves aren’t super different from standard hand to hand combat, but allow you to have a second moveset you can bust out on the fly when you want to confuse your opponent. Swords are far different, as they have unique attacks with added range. They’re not quite as fast as punching someone in the face, but can be deadly in the right hands.

Once you get a hang of how the game controls, it’s wicked fun. Everything feels right. Every small hit has a good thwack that makes you want to do more of them, while every big hit has the right oomph to it that makes pulling it off just feel good. You can spend equal amounts of time practicing a combo and hopping back into the menu to retool it and optimize it. It’s satisfying to train against any random npc in the world, learn their move, stick it into one of your combos, and use it against the next schmuck you see. Whenever I got a new toy, I was always excited to use it and see where, or if, it fit into my playstyle.

Absolver is super stylish in its simplicity. The graphics are simple, yet modernist, but it’s in the animations where the game truly shines aesthetically. Each move is animated with finesse, and leads into other moves with grace. When characters take battle stances, they crack their necks and move fluidly into different stances. My favorite idle animation is when you’re holding a sword and go into the a specific stance, your character will run their finger along the edge of the blade. Even when you aren’t doing anything, the characters are doing something, and they ooze bloodlust.

While a lack of enemy variety would typically get boring in any other game, this is probably Absolver’s greatest strength. Every enemy you face in Absolver is another human just like your character, and they all have access to the same movepool and abilities you do. You never know what type of enemy or how many you’ll be facing, but you know that you’ll be on even footing with them. It’s pretty common to find yourself surrounded by two or three enemies at once, but even navigating those situations feel like puzzles that need to be solved in order to keep from getting overwhelmed.

The boss battles in Absolver do a great job of breaking up the games typical combat. The six “Marked One” sub-bosses are slightly harder than average enemies, and aren’t super interesting. However, the three proper boss fights in the game are very cool, and employ a variety of unique mechanics that still fit into the rules of the world. The stages of each fight throw you into different situations to test how quickly you can adapt to and overcome them. One boss, Kuretz, will try to run away and summon a bunch of weak minions to overwhelm you, and while they’re easy to defeat, they can catch you off guard if you’re not paying attention. Cargal and Kinor will attempt to make you fight them one at a time by having one stay back on defense while the other goes offensive, changing which one attacks every few seconds. These encounters are a refreshing change from the usual gameplay, and are some of my favorite moments of the game.

While the single player is fun on it’s own, Absolver’s greatest strength is its online multiplayer mode. Once you go online, the world is populated with other players, similar to an MMO. You can walk into an area, lock eyes with another player, and have a great moment of tension where you don’t know if this person is friendly, or if they’re going challenge you to a brawl. Most of my encounters with other players have generally been very positive. You feel like a good samaritan when you see another player struggling with a group of baddies, and then run in and tag team to take them all out. It also feels satisfying running up to another player, forcing them into a fight by punching them a few times, and then resurrecting them to let them know it’s all in good fun after you kick their ass.

There’s a positivity to the online interactions that other games like Dark Souls or Street Fighter tend to struggle with. Even in the rare occasions I was ganked by a group of other players, I never felt salty after a loss, and instead felt encouraged to improve as a player. For the most part, other players I’ve encountered have been good sports. It’s hard to get upset when, after you lose, the person you were fighting picks you up off the ground and bows to let you know it was a good fight, apropos of nothing other than human decency. I know not everyone is going to have that same experience, but I think something has to be said about the game fostering a more positive player experience.

Things get a little more serious when you get into online matchmaking and have one on one duels with other players. These fights felt way more competitive as opposed to fights in the overworld. Matchmaking feels like the pure fighting game side of Absolver, but it still manages to keep a lot of the same elements. There are a lot of mind games involved in Absolver PvP. The second you feel like you know your opponent’s strategies, you can adjust your own in order to win a match. These are also the fights that do the least to encourage player positivity. While I haven’t gotten any angry messages from opponents, I have gotten people rage quitting when they feel like they’ve already lost. This still counts for a win for you and gives you rewards, so it’s easy to shrug off, but it’s wild how the generally friendly atmosphere of the overworld shifts entirely to rude attitudes the second you get into more serious fights.

While the online is one of the best features of the game, it’s also been stunted by connection issues. Although conditions have improved and certainly continue to do so, I’ll still occasionally run into disconnects from the server that cause 10-15 minute wait times. A sizeable portion of my time spent ingame was waiting on the main menu, hoping that this next time I hit the “reconnect to server?” button would be the last time. It’s a real bummer not being able to play the best part of the game, and only playing single-player feels like a version of the game that’s not complete. Multiplayer is a huge aspect to what makes this game work, and not being able to play it for large chunks to time has ruined a part of my experience.

Absolver is a joy to play. The single player feels a bit light on content, but what’s there is tight. It’s a game which benefits from online connectivity for the best experience, but if you want to play a neat five to seven hour campaign about doing some kung fu without fear of getting overwhelmed by other players, then you’ll enjoy the single player just fine. I truly hope that the connectivity issues it has suffered since its launch get fixed soon. I could see this game getting a pretty big multiplayer scene, or even some tournaments centered around it. Until then, it’s still good fun to punch your friends.

The post Absolver Review (PC) appeared first on Gamesline.

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Scott and John get hand to hand and get absolved in Absolver!

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