It’s been a big news week with Super Mario Brothers selling for over 2 million, Capcom showing off the final Street Fighter V DLC character, and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds adding BattleGrounds to their name to become PUBG: BattleGrounds. We also dig into the deeper stuff with Steve Gaynor’s abusive behavior at Fullbright, J. Allen Brack stepping down from Blizzard, and Unity making it a whole lot more expensive if developers want to put their game on console.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, @solonface, and @Scottblah.

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Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

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The post VGCC Episode 367: Gotta Love the Glove appeared first on Gamesline.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, @LVmaeparian, and @judgementscythe

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 335: FMK PG-13 appeared first on Gamesline.

Support us on Patreon! Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, & @YourPalNiall and don’t forget to rate & review the show on iTunes, as well as tell a friend! You can also send questions, comments, and concerns to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com or find us on Tumblr! You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Enter Chooch’s arcade via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 213: #StarWatch2018 appeared first on Gamesline.

Johnorable Mention: Horizon: Zero Dawn

My affection for Horizon: Zero Dawn primarily stems from the love I once had for the CW’s excellent sci-fi young adult series The 100, a show which trafficks in the same kind of post-post-apocalyptic creole that at once relaxes me and grabs my imagination. It’s a reverse-fantasy situation, transforming advanced technology into a new kind of magic. The worldbuilding becomes a game where the player tries to guess which piece of fantastical terminology will map onto a recognizable piece of tech and what that could mean for the state of the world. Horizon’s depiction of 31st century Western America is well realized, and even a chance to spend more time in that world is worth any weaknesses this game might possess – but to be fair, those weaknesses are few.

10. Destiny 2

Destiny 2 brought games culture to an absolute standstill earlier this year in a way I had occasionally seen but rarely been able to participate in. This year, this time, I got to be a part of the zeitgeist. I got to be in on the joke, and I loved it. I understood the memes. I devoured every Destiny-centric news story and planned my weekend around the first Xur. I consumed. And sometimes that feels good for a while, only for you to remember how we all got into this hyper-capitalist mess in the first place and eventually you snap out, but for those couple weeks it feels so good.

It still does, not in the same ways, but in all the ways that count. The game plays like a dream and the loot is meted out in a way that feels like a legitimate loot game rather than an incomplete title. Almost every problem I had with the first Destiny has been fixed, which is really all you can ask from a game where the sum total of its appeal is watching some numbers tick up.

9. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

2017’s most delightful surprise, Resident Evil VII: Biohazard is both moderate reinvention and statement of purpose. The series needed to find its way home in order to start a new chapter. Back to the familiar sense of dread, to the more restrained location, to grossing out players with all the gore and violence a videogame-ass-videogame could muster. Biohazard’s dedication to its own mechanics and systems almost feels retro, with no desire to obscure the man behind the curtain. There’s an inventory-ass inventory. There’s a drink-based health system. There are over-the-top boss fights. There’s a chainsaw. You’ve seen this all before, but rarely executed quite like this. Resident Evil VII is all craft.

8. Emily Is Away Too

There’s an important distinction between people who grew up with the internet and people who grew up on it – I’m absolutely in the latter category. I didn’t go to a traditional high school, and I wasn’t exactly prone to making friends in a hyper-masculine sports-focused part of New York State, so I found that all-too-essential human connection online instead. I remember so much about my first online relationship: visiting her high school in Ohio, talking with my friends about my relationship troubles over the same program I used to chat with my girlfriend, and ending the relationship over the phone. I literally couldn’t do it in person, so my only recourse was the ultimate coward move. I know plenty of other people who have been through something similar. Even if we took different paths, there are just certain things you understand about your first online love.

Emily Is Away Too is built on that shared emotional language. These people and their lives feel recognizable, because how could you ever forget them? You lived those lives and met those people – at the very least you should be able to recognize the broad strokes. The scene where you’re trying to keep two very important chat windows going at the same time felt so authentic that I could believe I was replaying a scene from my own life. Emily Is Away Too’s sharp writing makes this game worth a look, but I suspect a fair number of my fellow millennials will find meaning in the game’s pitch-perfect mimicry.

7. Puyo Puyo Tetris

I’ve been playing Tetris for about as long as I can remember. For me, Puyo Puyo Tetris was a way to hone my block-stacking skills in front of my friends, who traditionally have been on the receiving end of a good thrashing. The campaign is a really fun way to explore both Tetris and Puyo Puyo, and the plethora of inventive arcade and multiplayer modes were enough to keep me coming back to Puyo Puyo Tetris in the months since release. But that core – that sweet, sweet Tetris – is a perfect realization of arguably the most iconic video game ever made.

6. Night in the Woods

This was a good year for games that spoke very specifically to Mike Cosimano. I guess if you’re going to release a video game about a self-loathing college dropout returning to their dead-end hometown, all the while dealing with unspoken parental disappointment and the very real specter of mental illness, you could pick worse years for said release than 2017. I don’t need to recap everything that bummed people out this year, especially when everyone has a completely disparate list of 2017’s worst moments.

Night in the Woods feels like a (capital g capital n) Graphic Novel, in that it has all the hard drinking, cursing, and existential dread of a first novel but with the extremely clean anthropomorphic animal aesthetic of an experimental modern-day Disney cartoon. One way or another, these creatures are gonna work though their emotional stagnancy via snark and band practice! If you’re in the mood for Night in the Woods’ particular brand of bittersweet, there’s a good chance this game will speak to you as well.

5. Heat Signature

Heat Signature feels like a really good sophomore album. It’s an artist coming into their own; synthesizing the pros and cons of their debut into a sort of road map for the future. Designed by Tom Francis, the man behind Gunpoint, Heat Signature is a strong follow-up to 2013’s best game, with the same emphasis on improvisation and failure state recovery that first captured my imagination when those tenets were stapled onto a man with super jumpy pants.

Although the transition from Gunpoint means Heat Signature loses my all-time favorite setting (sci-fi neo-noir), it still benefits from my all-time second favorite setting (grungy space), crafting a world so deeply lived-in that your very presence feels like a trespass. Finally, a game where I can truly become the scheme-ruining goblin I was born to be.

4. Persona 5

It’s a shame that 2018 has already been officially christened as The Year of Corky, because 2017 brought the video game stuff I do like. Games like Heat Signature or Zelda brought the open-ended improvisation, while games like Night in the Woods or Persona 5 fused genre trappings with larger thematic content in the most obvious way possible. I love a subtle message as much as the next person, but there’s something I truly adore about a work completely defined by its ideology.

From every angle, Persona 5 is about co-operative rebellion. In some way, it feels like a Japanese Watch Dogs 2 – this game taps into the unspoken fears, hopes, and beliefs that come hand-in-hand with growing up in the 2010s. Your weird friends will be the only hope and solace you have in the coming days. You don’t have to suffer institutionalized abuse. Take that hope and that solace and use it to shove your brilliance down your foes’ respective throats.

Aesthetically, Persona 5 is a curious hybrid of in-your-face punk and improvisational jazz, but like every other game in the series, it’s really about the scope of human connection, both on a macro and micro level. It may not be as fresh nor magnetizing as Persona 4, but it’s still one of the best games you can buy on a PlayStation.

3. PUBG

I have an anecdote from playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds that perfectly summarizes why I love this game so much.

I was moving towards one of my favorite hiding spots (a house on the right side of the map) when I heard gunshots behind me. The dirt exploded around my feet as I made a break for the house, only just barely making it inside. With several minutes left before the map was set to shrink, I figured I could regroup inside and come up with some plan of attack. I poked my head out quickly to get a grasp of where my rival had set up shop…but I didn’t count on another player in a nearby car spotting me.

I had only one choice. I hid inside the house. The car had managed to spot me, but not the sniper hiding in the grass with a rifle trained on my house’s front door. Of course the player in the car wasn’t going to get out when they had a rolling death machine at their disposal. Of course the other player hunting me wasn’t going to reveal their spot when there was a rolling death machine kicking around. Of course I was going to sit inside that house grinding my teeth.

The person in the car began to taunt me, driving in circles around the house and revving the car’s engine as a sort of Warriors-esque “come out and pla-ay”-style taunt. Eventually I had to get out of the house, or I would’ve been trapped outside the blue circle. I zigzagged it out the front door while the car was on the other side of the house, in the hopes that I could get some distance before my opponents had time to react.

My plan actually worked. The car rounded the house and made a beeline towards my future corpse, accidentally running over the prone sniper along the way. I popped two shots through the windshield, killing the driver. In my panic, I left the car abandoned and booked it over a nearby hill. PUBG rules.

2. Super Mario Odyssey

I could play Super Mario Odyssey pretty much every day of my life. Everything about this game is so finely crafted that I feel confident putting it at the very top of any sort of Mario ranking. The worlds in Odyssey are brilliant, constantly rewarding the player for experimentation and exploration at every skill level. If you’re just poking at Odyssey while you’re on the toilet, you’ll be entertained. If you’re sitting down for a multi-hour session, you’ll be entertained. I found Power Moons to be one of the most addicting collectibles in recent memory. I agonized over each hidden Moon and delighted in the Moons that I just kinda tripped over.

Games like Mario Odyssey are the reason why we still buy Nintendo consoles, no matter how wild the pitch. No other game company could make a game like this, because there’s an implied quality to major first-party Nintendo titles. You expect games from the people who gave us the unqualified classic Super Mario Sunshine to be good. Super Mario Odyssey is better than good. It’s great.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

A lot of people don’t understand exactly why we as a culture still talk about Citizen Kane. That’s fine! Not everybody should have to suffer through film school. If all you know about Citizen Kane is that it’s considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time, then you’ve at least nailed the broad strokes. What made Citizen Kane important – what made it formative – was its technique. It expanded American cinematography on the eve of the noir boom, popularizing and expanding a filmic visual language that people still use to this day. It’s not that Citizen Kane hit some objective checklist to become the Best Movie or even that it got people to take American cinema seriously.

Citizen Kane is Citizen Kane because its crew found new ways to use the tools they had been given.

We as an industry talk a lot about the Citizen Kane of videogames. At first some of us did it sincerely, now all of us do it ironically. I’m here to make an illegal u-turn and whip this discourse back into the sincerity lane. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the Citizen Kane of video games.

Breath of the Wild isn’t a literal 1:1 to Citizen Kane because it expanded game cinematography or something like that. Yes, the game looks gorgeous, but visual direction is not the primary language of video games. Interactivity is how games communicate with their players; Zelda redefines that interaction by creating a world where every aspect of post-apocalyptic Hyrule interacts with everything else. If you have enough patience and a solid understanding of the game’s mechanics, there is no limit to what your imagination can accomplish.

By giving players a box of easily accessible tools and a physics ruleset that feels recognizable and logical, the game actively encourages you to sequence break, hairbrained problem solving becomes the norm. There’s no more glitching around mountains trying to avoid another long trek like in Skyrim. Now you can just climb over that mountain, all the while looking for places where Link could rest when his stamina gets weak. That’s noteworthy because it feels real. It’s human. Breath of the Wild is the greatest fantasy simulation ever created because Link as a physical object starts with all the limitations and skills of your average person.

Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule feels like a real place, not because it’s populated with a horde of NPCs following a set path or because it’s got the best god rays, but because I can get those apples by chopping down that tree. Yeah, it’s still a beautiful game filled with whimsy and thrilling adventure, but its willingness to experiment with things we take for granted is what makes Breath of the Wild so magnificent. Zelda redefines the basics in order to elevate its ephemera, so obviously it’s gotta be my Game of the Year.

Congratulations to Kentucky Route Zero, 2018’s Game of the Year.

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

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.

10. Out of the Park Baseball 18

Intense management, an old ass sport, and a ton of menus? That’s me in a nutshell. Despite enjoying Motorsport Manager, I didn’t think this dryer, less graphic based cousin would do anything for me. I grabbed Out of the Park in a Humble Bundle and instantly realized this was my kind of shit. I would normally spend a season or two in a sports game trying to live out my own team dynasty. Out of the Park puts more of that control in my hand, more “realistic” information on the screen, and makes me feel like a real baseball manager. I’ll gladly take my menu based fantasy fulfillment.

9. Cook, Serve, Delicious 2

Despite the long hours, the low pay, and the less than grateful customers, a part of me enjoyed the challenge of cooking up as many damn sandwiches I could manage. Cook, Serve, Delicious manages to reintroduce that stressful challenge that actually feels like a rewarding practice. It’s what I imagine gym rats feel like after a good workout. The actions might be rough, but the mental reward outweighs the pain. No pain, no gain. Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 may have been light on some of the original’s features, but it still managed to change things in just the right way. I feel like this sequel expands on how I, personally, wanted to play Cook, Serve, Delicious.

8. Persona 5

The JRPG has firmly spun off into its own genre. While it holds the hallmarks of all other role-playing games, the Japanese style maintains a stalwart attachment to a rigid way of approaching things. That’s where the Persona series, and especially in Persona 5, seeks to solidify and undermine those expectations. For every piece of Persona that feels cliche there’s another part layered with so much style, and care, that it becomes impossible not to feel joy. I didn’t walk away from Persona 5 fulfilled like I had with Persona 4, but I did enjoy the ride they placed me on. In a world where a developer must follow up their most successful title I did not expect Atlus to step so far away. And yet they did, and did so with an wonderful game.

7. Cuphead

Video games have a great power to transport us wherever the creators choose to go. Cuphead does that with powerful ease. It’s obvious at a glance why Cuphead is so special. When we all first glimpsed this early 1900s cartoon styled game we knew this would be something to behold. Despite endless delays and worrying changes the end result is nothing short of spectacular to watch in motion. Cuphead’s cartoony style conveys it’s artistic whimsy with just a devilish hint of difficulty that really rears its head by world two or three. I personally have never enjoyed intensely hard platformers or shooters and yet I came very close to beating Cuphead. Its style and presentation was enough to grab ahold of me and force me to approach a genre of game I’d never touch otherwise.

6. Pyre

Pyre is painstakingly beautiful. A simple game that starts with some form of basketball that’s surrounded by story was able to, over and over, leave me filled with astonishment. I frequently had to stop playing and take screenshot after screenshot so that I would never forget how Pyre looked. You’d do yourself a service for play, or even watch, Pyre play out. It’s a feast for the eyeballs that drags you into a unique world the likes of which I had never seen before. Games all too often limit their art to a handful of appealing moments when the developer knows you’re looking. Pyre simply layers it all in and lets you unfold it like a blooming flower.

5. Zelda: Breath of the Wild

One of my first intense moments with any video game was in Zelda: Link to the Past. I’d hop into my older brother’s saves in order to see the end game spells and items that I’d never get around to earning. It felt like Hyrule was a real place I could walk around and explore. I never felt that away again until Breath of the Wild. There’s a sense of loss and exploration, of pristine and damaged beauty, all around Hyrule. And what really hooked me in, after a few hours of floundering, was the openness of it all. I had no restrictions, no places I wasn’t allowed to go. Everything was open for poking and prodding until I either found a way inside or was rebuffed enough that I moved on to the next interesting point on the horizon. I’m so happy this will be the final cap for my Wii U’s lackluster life as a gaming system. A remarkable send off with a remarkable game.

4. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds

It’s probable that I ignored nearly a dozen emails about Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds. Each one touted this new game from the maker of Day Z mods and revealed screenshots that, honestly, never impressed. It all fell onto deaf ears and even after seeing a growing segment of players enjoy their time in this Battle Royale simulator I was still apprehensive. I thought it would be a waste of money and time. But there’s something about PUBG. Alone it’s a nervous wreck simulator, with a group it’s a wacky comedy, and in a duo it’s somewhere in between. All based around a ridiculously simple premise that’s still somehow enjoyable to replay on repeat. PUBG’s enjoyment comes from a perfect combination randomness and skill, or your own personal skills with the guns you do (and sometimes don’t) find. PUBG shouldn’t have 20 million players, shouldn’t be so fun to hop into, and shouldn’t have been this successful and yet here it is.

3. Horizon: Zero Dawn

Horizon had sold me the instant they showed robot dinosaurs. Some not-so-dormant internal child woke up and took ahold of all my decision making abilities. Thankfully, even with the long wind up, Horizon was able to deliver on the goods. Wrapping a wonderfully unveiled science fiction story around robot dinosaur combat was exactly what I was hoping for. I found myself seeking out every new piece of story and lore that would help fill in the background of Horizon’s world and Aloy’s past. Every new answer always yielded more questions and by the end I was left completely satisfied with the story I was told. Typically I’d be all for a standalone game that tells one good story and leaves the stage with the crowd endlessly cheering. However with Horizon I’m chomping at the bit to jump back in and begin lobbing some arrows at more robot dinosaurs.

2. Fire Pro Wrestling World

Do you ever remember, as a kid, walking down a toy aisle and spotting an absolutely too large box filled to the brim of toys? Some set from some franchise that included a ton of characters, accessories, and even a chunk of plastic land to fight over? They were glorious, pieces of heaven expensively left in that aisle for us to hem and haw over while our parents explained how money worked. Fire Pro Wrestling World is that wonderful toy box. It’s bare when you open it but thanks to the inclusion of the Steam Workshop you can quickly fill it up. My wrestling toy chest now contains a legion of my favorites. Even better, you can organize and place your wrestlers on digital shelves, choosing which fantasy bouts you want to recreate and when. I’ve already lost hours to this fantasy booking paradise and I expect 2018 will feature the same.

1. Divinity: Original Sin 2

At a glance, Divinity Original Sin 2 is a game and a franchise I would ignore completely. It appears to be another entry in an uninteresting fantasy role-playing series that needed to be Kickstarted just to come out. It looks to harken back to typical PC role-playing games with its isometric camera and fantasy setting. While none of those assumptions are necessarily false, they were all buried underneath the immense wonder and affection I built up over my time with Divinity Original Sin 2.

The old school approach is enriched with turn based, Dungeons and Dragon like combat that feels more strategic and decisive. That fantasy feel is accented with a knowing humor and wonderful writing. Divinity feels like a labor of love from developers who were having fun putting together an immense, occasionally intimidating, but approachable game. Even the little touches like choosing a specific instrument to play during battle music or getting to meet the pre-made characters during your adventure really strengthens my attachment to the game. It really feels like my personal version of Divinity Original Sin 2 every time I boot it up. Divinity is dense yet light, complicated yet accessible, overwhelming yet friendly. It’s been such a wonderful bright spot of a game to sink into and experience and turns out that’s what I needed in 2017.

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Tencent now owns 5% of Bluehole and they may not be stopping there. In an interview with Bloomberg, Bluehole’s chairman revealed that Tencent “can be a very important partner for us.” Most assumed that meant a possible publishing deal so the Korean Bluehole could break into the massive Chinese market through Tencent. It seems that Tencent wants their relationship to be much closer than that.

To put that 5% in perspective, Bluehole’s chairman, Chang Byung-gyu, owns about 20% of Bluehole. That means, for right now, Tencent is already a major stockholder in the PUBG developer. This puts Bluehole in the same league as other Tencent video game investments like Epic Games, Frontier Developments, and of course Riot Games. No word from either company how this could impact Bluehole or PUBG’s future, but more than likely it won’t have any direct results anytime soon. Tencent knows how to make a successful game even more successful, as we’ve seen with League of Legends.

Tencent is now one of the top 10 wealthiest companies in the world, and they clearly have an interest in video game development. So don’t expect these kind of news stories to stop anytime soon.

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First, some backstory. Fortnite is an early access crafting/survival co-op game that’s been in development for years. At the moment you can pay to play the game right now, or you can wait until the game enters ‘free to play’ sometime in 2018. Things got messy however when Fortnite announced they’d be adding a new mode, citing games like PUBG as inspiration, that would feature players, on an island, battling it out to see who would survive. This is, essentially, the same thing as PUBG, 100 players dropping onto an island trying to battle it out to be the final one. Both clearly take their cue from the Japanese movie Battle Royale and PUBG is clearly getting a lot of ideas from other titles like Arma 3 and it’s popular mod H1Z1. Yet Bluehole is upset and this could get ugly.

It gets even murkier. Epic Games is developing and publishing Fortnite. They also work on and distribute Unreal Engine 4, the same game engine that PUBG is built upon. What could this potentially become if the two devs battle it out when one holds the rights to the other’s game engine?

Maybe this is about Fortnite reaching consoles before PUBG could. Maybe this is an outspoken executive at Bluehole who is overreaching. Or maybe this is a brewing legal conflict that could change how game creators and developers make their games in the future. PUBG is still awaiting a full release and console release date while Fortnite will open their battle royale mode to everyone, for free, this coming Tuesday. So today’s lesson is, you kill each other off till there’s only one left.

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Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @JohnMichonski, @SocksMahoney & @sewerpeak, and don’t forget to rate & review the show on iTunes, as well as tell a friend! You can also send questions, comments, and concerns to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com or find us on Tumblr! You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

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