Top 5 Video Games Of 2017

There are no good years for videogames, and no bad years. They’re all just years, with some really good games, some really bad ones, and a bunch of forgettable ones in-between. Those numbers fluctuate from year to year, but there’ll never be a shortage of stuff worth playing if you keep your mind (and wallet) open.

The first half of 2017 saw two games that would top lists like this in almost any year (scroll to the bottom of the next page if you want to spoil yourself), and several more worth seeking out and taking the time to learn.

# Little Nightmares

Tarsier Studios’ Little Nightmares presents us with the third circle of Hell, wrapped into a Tim Burton-esque package comparable to PlayDead’s Limbo or Inside. In Little Nightmares, these nightmares are grotesque and terrifying. Tarsier Studios has crafted a hauntingly provocative story with its use of atmosphere, cultural themes, and fear of the unknown.

# Tumbleseed

Tumbleseed is all about patience. Predicting the trajectory of the seed and adjusting the angle of the bar requires quick thinking, and steady fingers. The levels change every time the player restarts, and thus the layout cannot be memorized. They can only anticipate what types of enemies and obstacles may lay ahead based on the environment they’re playing in. The mountain has four separate ecosystems as the seed travels upward, and they offer a change of atmospheric pace as the game progresses.

# Resident Evil 7

There is something in the game’s specific combination of ambient sounds, level design, lack of soundtrack, and camera acceleration speed that ended up ticking all of the boxes for making me feel profoundly and disturbingly anxious while playing the game …Resident Evil 7 is so anxiety-inducing, I had to get someone to come play it with me.

# Horizon Zero Dawn

Guerilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn looks like a living nature painting. As the player runs or rides from one settlement to another, the landscape constantly shifts between distinct, gorgeously realized biomes. One minute, it’s a frozen tundra, with sun gleaming off enormous white, snow-covered cliffs, and ground covered in scraggly little bushes and errant branches. The next, it’s an orange sanded desert with towering red clay mesas jutting up into a perfectly clear blue sky. In each, birds and foxes, boar and rabbits frolic.

# The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

Breath of the Wild is a fresh approach to what Zelda games have strove for since the very beginning. The depth you expect, the open exploration and constant sense of discovery the series is known for, are here in perhaps greater effect than ever before, but with the systems and mechanics that drive the moment-to-moment action heavily overhauled. The result is a Zelda that feels unmistakably like a Zelda, but that also breathes new life into the venerable classic.