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2017 was an amazing year for games, both big and small. And in Episode #58 of the Spoiler Cast, we talk about all of the games that make this the case as well as encourage the existence of episode #57 (it’s coming, we swear).

Categories include, but are not limited to, 2017 game of the year, biggest surprise, best story, and most egregious loot boxes.

Music, in order of appearance:

K.Flay – Blood in the Cut

SZA – The Weekend

Lorde – Green Light

Don’t want to listen to 3 hours of audio content? You really should… it’s full of laughs and good times had by all. But if you really, really, really don’t want to, you can see our choices below.

2017 Gaming Honorable Mention(s)

Dan’s Honorable Mention(s)

Dan’s honorable mentions included but were not limited to Destiny 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Pyre, and Assassin’s Creed Origins.

Dan felt especially bad about Pyre, whose soundtrack, story, and world were just edged out by other games in those respective categories.

Tristan’s Honorable Mention(s)

  • PREY

Ali’s Honorable Mention(s)

  • Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
  • Yakuza 0
  • Gravity Rush 2

Patrick’s Honorable Mention

Fortnite (Base Game). Patrick wants you to know he definitely did NOT mean the Battle Royale mode. What does he have against it? We don’t know. He wasn’t able to make the podcast this time around.

Best Old Games of 2017

  • Overwatch
  • Full Throttle Remastered
  • Okami HD
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
  • Starcraft 2
  • Dead by Daylight

On Starcraft II — “It’s a swan song of what made Blizzard great. I don’t think Blizzard is ever going to make a game like Warcraft III or Starcraft II ever again.” – Bera

Biggest Surprise

  • Persona 5 being amazing – Dan (someone who doesn’t like these sorts of things)
  • Nier Automata
  • Night in the Woods
  • Mass Effect Andromeda being so bad – Bera
  • Star Trek Bridge Crew

Star Trek Bridge Crew is a game most of us didn’t know about, but apparently, you get to be Captain James T. Kirk, but in VR and stuff. Speaking of space, Bera cannot imagine how a beloved series like Mass Effect could fall so far from grace. Neither can we.

Best Story

  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • Persona 5
  • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Most of us picked Horizon Zero Dawn because the characters, twists, and arcs are so amazing. Also it has a really cool world…

Coolest World

  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

…Such a cool world that it made it on our list of coolest worlds as well. That being said, we were all in agreement, with strong coercion from Dan and his fanboy love affair with everything Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Most Egregious Loot Boxes

  • NBA 2K18
  • Call of Duty: WWII
  • Star Wars Battlefront 2

We hope to have another, shorter cast to just take the bit from the podcast of Tristan going OFF on EA on their loot box practices, but this short list of heinous loot box games in 2017 will have to do for this writing.

Favorite Moment

  • Stepping out on to the Great Plateau for the first time – Breath of the Wild
  • Everyone coming together to hate on Battlefront 2 and EA
  • Finding out you can be a tree – Super Mario Odyssey
  • Every time you put a tomahawk in a Nazi scalp – Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

SAY IT! SAY IT! SAY IT WITH THE VOICE OF LIEUTENANT ALDO RAINE! 100 NAZI SCALPS! 100 NAZI SCALPS!

Most Disappointing Game

  • Yooka-Laylee
  • Star Wars Battlefront 2
  • IDK My BFF Jill? (Secretly “The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild” — Let the flame war begin)
  • Friday the 13th
  • Madden 18

Man, 2017 was a great year for games, but as is said of the 100 floors of frights in the SNL David S. Pumpkins skit, “They can’t all be winners.”

Best Music

  • Persona 5
  • Cuphead
  • Friday the 13th

Cuphead sounds real good. Like real good, with it’s old school big band noize, but man Persona 5 music stays amazing for hundreds of hours, and that alone makes it award-winning.

Best Looking Game

  • Cuphead
  • Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2
  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Cuphead is all hand-drawn bliss, and the unanimous “winner” of this category. Graphics aren’t everything people.

Additionally, the Guilty Gear Xrd team used black sorcery to convert the Unreal Engine 4 into a pseudo 2d/3d fighting game engine.

Game(s) you wished you played

  • Resident Evil 7
  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
  • Super Mario Odyssey

Shame on whomever didn’t play Super Mario Odyssey, not mentioning any names *cough* Patrick *cough*.

The common scene in the games we wished we played is that a lot of them were scary. Resident Evil was scary this year, in a Hills Have Eyes kinda way, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice tackled psychosis in a way that REALLY unsettled people.

Best Gaming Waifu of 2017

  • The Nintendo Switch
  • 2B – Nier: Automata
  • Haru Okumura – Persona 5
  • Zelda – Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • Anya – Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
  • Aloy  – Horizon Zero Dawn

While Tristan spends a lot of time in the podcast discussing the perversions of Yoko Taro, the irony is that Bera and Ali make much better cases for other waifus in far fewer characters. Zelda has yoga pants in Breath of the Wild, Anya kills Nazis while pregnant, and Aloy is a beautiful warrior goddess with flowing red hair.

2017 Game of the Year

  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Dan, Patrick)
  • Persona 5 (Tristan)
  • Horizon Zero Dawn (Ali)
  • Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Bera)

Collectively, the above were our favorite games of 2017. We didn’t pick one in particular, since we all have different opinions.

What were your favorite games of 2017?

Let us know if you agree with us, or had an entirely different list, in the comments below! We look forward to the conversation.