Super Jump’s Favourite Games of 2017
Our editors weigh in on the best games they played this year
A historic year
There’s simply no question that 2017 was one of the best years for video games in a very long time— possibly ever. It has been a frequent topic of conversation here at Super Jump, both in terms of our articles and our podcast. Why was it such a great year? Well, it’s probably fair to say that it felt like video games reached new heights this year.
What Remains of Edith Finch demonstrated clever new ways to leverage in-game physical interactions to get inside characters’ heads on an emotional level. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild single-handedly re-invented one of gaming’s most prestigious franchises (and, arguably, it set a new standard for all open-world games that follow in its wake). PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds felt like the invention of an entirely new sport; something great to play, and maybe even better to watch. Horizon Zero Dawn introduced us to a vivid post-post apocalyptic world populated by rich cultures, starring a delightfully well-rounded, brilliantly voiced female protagonist. Assassin’s Creed Origins dropped us into a vast, sprawling ancient Egypt full of wonder, allowing us to uncover its many mysteries over countless hours. Super Mario Odyssey reminded us why Mario was — is — the king of the video game industry, a character whose major platforming appearances remind us just how far the rules of game design can be bent, broken, and re-fashioned into something genuinely surprising. Persona 5 arguably re-popularised the Japanese RPG with its peerless aesthetic design, stylish soundtrack, and wonderfully quirky characters.
Oh, and then there were games like Cuphead, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Nier: Automata, Metroid: Samus Returns, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Divinity: Original Sin II, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Yakuza 0, Splatoon 2, Sonic Mania, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, Destiny 2, Gran Turismo Sport, Forza Motorsport 7, Nioh…
And so many more.
It must have been especially difficult for gaming publications around to sort through all these games and decide which are truly worthy of the biggest accolades. Even choosing a single “Game of the Year”, while an interesting exercise, almost feels reductive; what about all the other games that we spent countless hours enjoying?
Our favourite games
Well, we’ve been pondering this at Super Jump. After some deliberations, we decided that we’re not going to award “Game of the Year” to a single title. Instead, we got three team members together and we each chose our top five favourite games from 2017.
Why five games?
We felt it was important to have the flexibility to call out several great games each — choosing just one would have defeated the purpose of the project — but we also wanted to keep the number modest, in order to force ourselves to think carefully about which games were truly worthy of being considered favourites, given the enormous list of contenders.
We have ultimately decided not to rank these games.
However, you’ll definitely notice some double (or triple?) ups in our list — where a single game is preferred by more than one of us probably speaks for itself. It’s also worth noting that although the three team members featured in this article play a lot of games, there are naturally going to be a ton of games we simply never played this year — to be honest, we’re still catching our breath. I suspect we’ll be playing catch-up on 2017’s great games for months to come.
Before we get to the list — and our thoughts about each game — here’s a brief run down of the contributors.
James Burns
James is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Super Jump. He is also the regular co-host of the Super Jump Podcast.
Kaylee Kuah
Kaylee is the Founder and Editor in Chief of unpause.asia. She is also a regular contributor to Super Jump.
Mitchell Wolfe
Mitchell is the Producer and host of the Super Jump Podcast. He is also a regular contributor to Super Jump.
Now, without further ado, here are our favourite games of 2017 (in no particular order).
Horizon Zero Dawn
Developed by Guerrilla Games for PlayStation 4
Let’s start with a game that I’ve been following since Paris Games Week 2015 when Killzone developer Guerrilla Games released its trailer for Horizon Zero Dawn.
I was immediately captivated by the mysterious landscape of this post-post-apocalyptic future, a beautiful parallel world that contrasted starkly with ours. In Horizon Zero Dawn, humans are no longer at the top of the food chain but instead are hunted down by large animalistic robot beasts that roam the land. As such you can imagine, the gameplay action is terrifying and challenging, forcing you to extend all of your abilities but in the end most likely running and hiding like the prey you are.
Why Horizon Zero Dawn is on the list though isn’t just for its gameplay but instead for the world that Guerrilla Games has built. The characters and lore are written with a fastidious amount of depth, building a truly rich and immersive world. I couldn’t get enough of exploring and finding out all I could about the world and the arcane mystery that ran through the heart of the story. Shaping the life of the main character, Aloy. A proper female warrior that is discovering the mysteries of her past and does not feel the need to act overtly cutesy or wear impractical breast-baring armour to do it.
What Remains of Edith Finch
Developed by Giant Sparrow for PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One
Walking simulators, am i rite?
What Remains of Edith Finch takes many of the tropes popularized in Gone Home, one of the classical examples of the “walking simulator” genre, and expands them into an experience whose beauty is unrivaled in gaming. This is the story of Edith Finch returning to her childhood home after many years, sifting through memories of her family, and discovering their secrets. Some family members’ stories are funny, some are heartbreaking, and some are mysterious, but they all share one piece of connective tissue. They died before their time in unusual ways: ways that suggest that the Finch family is cursed.
The story is great, but that’s not all the game is. What Remains of Edith Finch will be remembered for its controls. Constantly, I was astounded by how emotionally connected to the Finch family I was through only the interaction between my hands and the controller. If a character is swinging, the player will find themselves making a swinging motion with the controller. If a character is tightly squeezing something, so is the player. There are no motion controls, this is accomplished purely through genius button-mapping. This kinetic parallel between real life and the game brings the player into the Finch family in ways I’ve never seen a video game narrative try before. Everyone owes it to themselves to find out What Remains of Edith Finch.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Developed by Nintendo EPD for Nintendo Switch and Wii U
I am now well over 120 hours into Breath of the Wild — probably somewhere closer to the 150 hour mark. Just a few days ago I was playing The Champion’s Ballad DLC and somehow I stumbled upon an area — and a pretty significant character — that I’d managed to completely miss after so many hours spent in Hyrule. This colourful (and somewhat frightening) character can, in fact, resurrect your beloved steed if it falls in battle. This happened to me once, and when I returned for some resurrection goodness, the strange entity paused to assess just how my horse passed away; did it die a heroic death in battle? Was I simply a careless owner? Or was I — god forbid — directly responsible for the crime? The entity described exactly the circumstances of my horse’s death, and proceeded to warn me to be more careful next time, before returning my partner-in-crime to my side.
I was left awestruck by this encounter; it’s one that folds into what feels like years of personal history in Hyrule. On my adventures, I’ve seen and experienced many things — hilarious, terrifying, and majestically beautiful. I’ll never forget the moment when I first glided down from The Great Plateau. I landed gently in an open field as the sun was setting. I didn’t suddenly run off to explore, though; I simply stood there and looked back up at the high walls of the plateau as the sun passed behind Mount Hylia. The plateau cast long shadows across the field. The silence was punctuated only by the sound of wind shimmering across the grassland, the occasional calls of a nearby flock of cranes, and subtle piano keys that seemed to dance on the wind.
As I said in my review, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the best games Nintendo has ever made. In fact, it’s possibly one of the best games ever made by anyone.
I’m following up Horizon Zero Dawn with an equally genre shifting open-world RPG The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I am unable to choose between both games (in terms of which I’d rank higher) because both give the same sense of wondrous awe and transportation to a new world as each other. How lucky we are in 2017 that this list is so difficult for me to write.
The Legend of Zelda has a special place in my heart and I’ve been playing through the franchise across all the Nintendo consoles. The story is always the same and yet we return time and time again to save the land of Hyrule. Every time we play a Legend of Zelda game the world is familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time. That’s exactly how I felt with Breath of the Wild. I was excited to go back to Zora’s Domain and visit the Goron’s in Death Mountain, take back the Master Sword, recover from amnesia. But I was hard pressed this time to figure out what was so different between Breath of the Wild and its predecessors. Then I realised it, autonomy.
Nintendo switched up the formula in Breath of the Wild, the world is huge and the dungeons are small. Giving you a sense of progression in a seemingly un-ending world. You can go wherever you want, solve the dungeons in whatever order you want, solve any and all side quests with hardly any barrier. Fight the boss, complete the side quests or just collect ingredients to cook and level up, the choice is up to you.
If you follow games journalism, you’ll undoubtedly know that people seem to think this game is pretty alright.
Breath of the Wild took the Zelda franchise and pushed its boundaries until its decades-old formula shattered and its structure split wide open. Nintendo has managed to take the feeling of freedom found in tabletop RPGs and inject it into a console action-adventure. As Link, you can adventure through Hyrule finding enough stat-boosting pick-ups until you are a combat-ready god among men… if you want. Alternatively, you may beeline it from the beginning of the game to the final boss within a couple hours. Another option still would be to visit the various races of Hyrule, solving their problems and learning more about the kingdom’s past. There is no wrong way to play Breath of the Wild and there is no way for the player to truly waste their time.
One of the cleverest new additions to the Zelda formula is Link’s ability to climb almost any surface. Mountains are no longer simple barriers to be traversed around. They can be conquered as long as Link has enough stamina to finish the climb. This often leads to the player needing to choose between climbing the side of a hill, following the longer, more enemy-laden road up the hill, or trying to glide to the top of the hill from a nearby higher point. From moment-to-moment action to larger narrative progression, Breath of the Wild supports player choice to such a degree that it often feels like the journey you’re on supersedes Link’s.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Developed by PUBG Corporation for PC, Xbox One, and Mobile (China)
If Call of Duty is basketball, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is golf.
Military shooters are admittedly not usually my cup of tea. If I wanted to play a competitive first-person shooter, I would gravitate towards something more along the lines of Halo or Perfect Dark. I’ve never understood being given the option make a video game, a medium where literally any fantasy could be lived out with the proper amount of coding, and choosing to go with a simulation of the worst thing that actually exists in the real world. PUBG is one of the first games in this genre that’s succeeded in bringing me around to its military aesthetic.
In PUBG, 100 players are deposited onto an island with only the clothes on their backs. They can either be grouped into squads, or they can go solo, but survival is the name of the game either way. If they want bullets, guns, scopes, armor, or anything else that might help them kill rather than be killed, they will have to find them themselves. If they want a car to outrun the competition, that’s there too but, again, they’ll have to find it. PUBG is a competitive shooter, but it’s also a competitive survival game. Trying to brave the opposing teams while the field of play steadily shrinks isn’t just an exercise in ambition and aggression, it’s horrifying.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds also has the distinction of being, in this journalist’s opinion, the best game for streaming of all-time. Being able to follow a single soldier from the beginning of a match, to looting weapons and other useful tools, to either falling in battle or winning (unlikely) is an amazing, near-cinematic experience. Even if it isn’t always my favorite game of the year to play, it is my favorite to watch and that is not to be underestimated in our internet age.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Developed by Capcom for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC
It really feels like 2017 was the year of reinvention. Much as many of us complain about certain franchises being released annually and rehashed to within an inch of their lives, this year certainly proved that big publishers are occasionally willing to take major creative risks. Luckily for us, most of those big risks seemed to pay off in a big way this year.
I’m a big Resident Evil fan, right down to the corny dialogue and even the increasingly cheesy and convoluted plots that began to plague the series over time. For the most part, I had thought this franchise had long since lost any real claim to being genuinely scary — it felt more funny B-movie than anything else. At least, that’s how I felt until I started playing Resident Evil 7, which quickly reminded me there’s a reason Capcom are considered masters of the survival horror genre.
Resident Evil 7 pretty much reboots just about all of the series’ tropes — it made the bold (and highly successful) change to a first-person view, and it eschewed most of the series’ convoluted story baggage. To a large degree it even discards the traditional Resident Evil zombie in favour of something that I found far more terrifying: a family of cannibals who are hunting you as you explore their house. Exploring the eerie and utterly fascinating Baker Mansion is an experience I’ll never forget, and it’s definitely been one of the big gaming highlights for me this year.
Aside from sheer terror, the gameplay itself is surprisingly unique and refreshing — progression through the game is roughly divided into quarters. The first three quarters are essentially “themed” in the sense that you’ll work your way past three key members of the Baker family; each of these long cat-and-mouse sequences feel highly distinct, almost like separate levels.
An unfortunate final quarter might feel like the experience ends with a whimper rather than a bang, but it doesn’t detract from the majority of the game, which breathes completely new life into a series I love dearly. I couldn’t be more excited to see how Capcom take this bold new formula forward in the future.
The Sexy Brutale
Developed by Cavalier Game Studios and Tequila Works for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch
Dim candlelight illuminates a dark ornate corridor, there’s a masquerade in progress and you’re there to witness a murder.
Welcome to The Sexy Brutale.
Unlike the rest of the games on this list, The Sexy Brutale is a casual puzzle game that is not especially challenging in gameplay but has a certain je ne sais quoi for intrigue. Set to the gorgeous soundtrack of the 1920s the sprawling mansion turned casino has a wondrous party atmosphere that’s tinged with the looming specter of death.
Like the gears of a clock, each day at The Sexy Brutale works on a tight uninterruptible schedule of grisly murders with everyone playing their parts. Except for you. In the game you play as Lafcadio Boone; an aging priest who is both hero and puppet master doomed to repeat each day in an endless loop as you attempt to abate the horrors that are happening all around you. The game is compelling, terrifying and melancholy all at once. I don’t want to give anything away but let’s just say this game stayed with me.
Nier: Automata
Developed by Platinum Games for PlayStation 4 and PC
Nier: Automata is like a fever dream. When I think back on it — especially after a few weeks of not playing it — I start to wonder if it’s even real. Is my experience with YoRHa №2 Model B (“2B” for short) and her companion YoRHa №9 Model S (“9S”) simply a set of false memories? It can be tempting to think so, in part because Nier: Automata drowns the player in an avalanche of innovative concepts that have to be seen to be believed.
While this is a 3D action role-playing game at heart, there’s absolutely nothing typical about it. As you pilot your spacecraft through Earth’s atmosphere to fight a proxy-war on behalf of an exiled human race, the camera will pan overhead and you’ll be engaged in an old-school shoot ’em up. Then, you land, and you’re in an open-world action adventure setting. Oh, then you fight a boss and if one of their bullets touches you, you enter a 2D bullet hell arcade experience that involves protecting your precious CPU from hacking, only to return to the 3D world and continue the fight with your selection of weapons (often massive) that hover just over your shoulder.
Leveling up and equipping your character feels just as bizarre; you’ve got to physically insert chips into a kind of personal motherboard. It feels hacky and tinkery in the best possible way. And if you remove your operating system chip? Well, you die. What do you expect should happen?
There’s so much I can’t go into here — if you play online, you’ll find the bodies of other players who died strewn across the unforgiving world. Say a prayer, or maybe resurrect their discarded hardware to fight at your side? It’s up to you, really.
Nier: Automata was always at risk of being overshadowed by the massive (and genuinely great) triple-A titles released this year. But this is a game that is every bit as innovative and beautifully designed as the best Nintendo have mustered — it’s genuinely fun, and unbelievably, delightfully strange. This one shouldn’t be missed.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
Developed by Bennett Foddy for PC, Mac, and iOS
An orange is sweet juicy fruit locked inside a bitter peel. That’s not how I feel about a challenge. I only want the bitterness. It’s coffee, it’s grapefruit, it’s licorice. ~Bennett Foddy
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy will read like a joke inclusion, but it’s great. Getting Over It is a mountain, both literally and figuratively. The player controls a bald man, Diogenes, whose legs are stuck in a pot. Never one to be limited by circumstance, the man supplants the mobility of his legs with the dexterity of his hammer and climbs. The player uses the mouse to determine where Diogenes anchors the hammer. The goal of the game is to climb to the top a mountain using only the hammer to propel Diogenes upward. This proves to be very difficult.
Narrating your experience is Bennett Foddy himself. In his affirming Australian accent, he guides the player’s morale as they repeatedly fall down the mountain, losing all of their progress. Many games try to be cute about their design philosophies. They’ll try to coerce a player into a realization without saying what they want outright. Bennett Foddy doesn’t have time for that. He’ll just tell you what Getting Over It is about. That can’t work all the time, but there is something to be said for a game so adamant in it’s goals. The game isn’t an orange. It’s coffee, it’s grapefruit, it’s licorice.
Gravity Rush 2
Developed by SIE Japan Studio and Project Siren for PlayStation 4
I had almost forgotten that Gravity Rush 2 came out this year; it feels like hundreds of hours of gameplay ago. But if you missed it due to all the Nintendo hype at the beginning of the year it should definitely be a game for you to check out. Like the name suggests you control gravity, falling through the cities in the clouds — it gives the age-old adage of flying a fresh spin.
Gravity Rush 2 is the open world JRPG sequel to the first Gravity Rush game that came out on the Vita.
See the world through the enthusiastic and naive eyes of our heroine Kat who’s making her way through a society that’s been divided between the rich and the poor. Truth be told, you don’t even need to engage with missions to enjoy yourself: simply flying around the world is a captivating experience in its own right, both for the innate thrill of flight and for the beauty of your surroundings. The world pops with color and character, building on the first game’s strong, Studio Ghibli-esque visuals. Kat flies with an awkward grace that feels totally unique, and though you occasionally need to let her fall for a second or two to recharge her power during a long flight, there’s an undeniable sense of freedom to flying through the world, unencumbered by architecture or enemies. It’s not a perfect game by any means but you will have fun playing it.
Super Mario Odyssey
Developed by Nintendo EPD for Nintendo Switch
Mario has always been something of a standard-bearer for game design, and not just for platformers. Super Mario 64 was a landmark achievement; it was a great 3D Mario game, but it also schooled an entire industry on how to make 3D games. What I find most remarkable is that Mario has never really lost his mojo, at least in terms of the main platforming titles. Other franchises have come and gone, but Mario has continued to play at the highest tier of the industry in terms of clever game design.
In that respect, Super Mario Odyssey carries the torch as proudly as any other Mario game before it. And, like Breath of the Wild, it manages to simultaneously hark back to classic Mario tropes while also turning them on their head, and introducing brand new concepts that feel as intrinsic to Mario as Super Mario Bros. 3’s flying cape or Super Mario Galaxy’s mind-bending spherical worlds.
Mario’s natural, effortless movement in 3D space feels better than it ever has before. His ability to capture enemies (and objects) both becomes second nature while also continually throwing up surprises. And the utterly genius fusion of old-school 2D Super Mario Bros.-esque platforming with sophisticated 3D world design is nothing short of spectacular.
Super Mario Odyssey is a must-own game; it’s certainly sure to be discussed (and studied by aspiring game designers) for many years to come.
What can you say about Super Mario Odyssey that hasn’t already been said? The jump feels really good. There are some stellar songs. Using Cappy to capture various new play styles is constantly surprising. This game is just fun.
I was amazed with how willing Nintendo was to flesh out the areas of Mario’s world. Tostarena, the Sand Kingdom, actually has culture, backstory, and unique styles of speech and dress. This game goes out of its way to show the universe Mario games have taken place in for decades as a living, breathing world and I think that’s pretty special. This may seem like square-one for video game locales, but it hasn’t been the case for 3D platformers in any significant way since Rare was making them for the Nintendo 64.
In an era where games are rife with scandalous monetization techniques, time sinks, and other objectionable design choices, Super Mario Odyssey is a dream come true. It’s fun, it’s free, and it’s frivolous in all the right ways. When I think of video games, I think of Super Mario Odyssey.
Persona 5
Developed by P Studio (Atlus) for PlayStation 4
I haven’t played a JRPG in years (I’m not counting Final Fantasy XV). Although a few have stood out to me, I often couldn’t be bothered making the large time investment to dive into games that I increasingly found uninteresting — especially in terms of plot. In 2017 especially, relying too heavily on clichés could spell a quick death, given the incredible field of games competing for players’ time.
Thankfully, Persona 5 feels entirely different than most games in the genre, especially if you’ve never played a Persona game before. You play as a high school student who lives out a single year while studying in Tokyo; you’re staying with your uncle, living above his coffee shop (apparently the team at P Studio are obsessed with coffee — there’s a great deal of conversation about it in the game, and the coffee shop itself becomes a kind of hideout and staging ground for you and your friends; it’s wonderful).
Without getting into the weeds too much, Persona 5 is roughly split between day-to-day “life simulation” (you’ve got to balance your study and other commitments — by the way, you will really be undertaking high school tests throughout the year, so pay attention in class!) along with dungeon crawling. You’re either exploring unique dungeons (or “palaces” as Persona 5 calls them) that are the manifestation of certain characters’ personalities (for example, one palace is a massive bank, reflecting its owners inherent greed and selfishness) or you are hunting through a randomly-generated world called Momentos (your talking pet cat turns into a van, making your travel around Momentos that much faster — because of course).
Persona 5 is wildly imaginative, hilariously funny, and lovingly-crafted. You can see that the team at P Studio have poured enormous care and effort into every facet of the experience. It is, perhaps, one of the best JRPGs ever made.
Assassin’s Creed Origins
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC
I debated putting Assassin’s Creed Origins in this list simply because it was just another Assassin’s Creed game (albeit in Egypt). It is undoubtedly the best iteration of the formula but I felt like nothing that made it a standout of the series.
Why it’s ultimately in here is because I’m a fan of the series in general and the beautiful world that this game inhabits.
Overall, Assassin’s Creed Origins, is a vibrant world of color and life tied to a serviceable story and an altogether familiar set of gameplay. The game doesn’t waste much time before it sets you completely loose in Egypt. You slip into something comfortable and pick up where you left off, perhaps riding your horse through a colorful farming village, under a cloudless blue sky. There are people who need your help and you know just what to do. Forget the story; Origins isn’t a rethinking of the genre, rather, it’s an extremely and lovingly polished version of what already works. The franchise has become the Original Recipe: familiar but irresistible.
This is a world of loveliness, a work of art. If you ever wanted to step into the distant past, into a simulation of ancient life, here it is. From marble palaces to mud-hut hovels, from dead carcasses to soaring aqueducts, this Assassin’s Creed overachieves on looks. Certainly, if aesthetics alone were the reason for a full year’s delay on the game, it’s been well worth the wait. This is, by far, the best-looking Assassin’s Creed ever made.
Thank you for taking the time to read through our favourite games of 2017. It was very tough to choose just five each, but if you stand back and reflect on these games as a group, it’s pretty incredible to think that they all came out in the same year. What a great time to be a gamer.
We hope all our readers have a happy and safe new year: bring on 2018!
