2017 Steam Library Roundup Created 7 years ago2017-12-21 14:43:49 UTC by monster_urby

So this here is a list of the games I purchased/received on Steam throughout 2017 as well as my thoughts on each. They are sorted from lowest to highest rating in my opinion. It would be good to see some other people chip in with their lists and thoughts too.

NOTE: I'm not going to included DLCs purchased in this list, simply the full game purchases.

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Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
This is one of those games that I often forget I own. Earlier in the year, the SnC crew and I briefly romped through Bolivia, seeing the sights and killing the bad guys. While this game did offer some truly hilarious moments, extensive customisation and some stunning screenshot moments, it ultimately paled when put beside GTA Online, which offers all of the above and far more to a ridiculous extent. One day, we stopped playing and simply never went back to it.

Quake/Shadow Warrior
A couple of classic FPS titles which I got simply for the sake of owning. I've barely touched Shadow Warrior but I played Quake almost to completion. It really opened my eyes to how much FPS games have changed, though sadly not for the better in my opinion.

Fallout 1 and 2
Having been ultimately dissatisfied with Fallout 4's lackluster RPG elements, I started playing Obsidian's Fallout New Vegas again and was immediately giddy with the amount of fun I was having messing with the residents of post-apocalyptic Nevada. During my play through, the original two games went on sale for less than a pound each, so I grabbed them. So far, I've only scratched the surface of Fallout 1 and despite feeling incredibly clunky in its old age, it's easy to see that Black Isle Studios knew their shit when it came to RPGs. Awesome stuff.

Stardew Valley
I really didn't know what to expect with this game. I thought it would get really dull really quickly and that I would likely cast it aside before long. However, the pixel art and high ratings won me over and I purchased it in the Autumn sale. This game is absolutely wonderful. It just oozes with irresistible charm and it's definitely something I would encourage my daughter to play when she's a little older. The in-game days and seasons rolled by and drew me in the same way Minecraft did back in the day. I fell into a routine and was actually getting excited when I saw that there was an event coming up in town.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
There's no denying that this game has caused quite a stir, and with good cause. It's tense and unforgiving and you just cannot stop throwing yourself at it, against seemingly insurmountable odds. It's a series of thirty minute horror stories about being lost and outnumbered. Even when the game is at its best and you're playing with 3 friends, you are still up against 96 other people who want to murder your face. The game got its official release today and after 4 months of playing the beta every weekend I don't expect to be giving it up anytime soon. Yes it's buggy to an almost infuriating extent, but hopefully it will either be improved over time, or aome other studio's attempt will surpass it.

Divinity: Original Sin 2
Remember that RPG itch I mentioned that Bethesda was failing to scratch? This game. This game scratched that itch so hard that it ripped right through to the bone. I have logged over twelve hours in the starting area alone and have barely put a dent in what this world has to offer. I'm not going to say too much about the plot, but after the events of the prologue you are stuck on a prison island and your ultimate goal is to escape. The number of potential ways to do this made my head spin and I got plenty of opportunity to explore each in detail, before ultimately stumbling into one by accident! But there are characters you can recruit (or play as if you don't want to make your own from scratch) that have origin stories and goals of their own, some of which conflict with the goals of other characters in the game causing tension and conflict. All this within the first act! I cannot wait to explore this world further and I definitely want to try playing it coop at some point.

Hollow Knight
People who know me best already know that this is my Game of the Year because I don't think I've stopped talking about it since I got it. I confess that this is the first metroidvania game that I've sunk any reasonable amount of time into, but I quickly fell in love with it. The lore, the gameplay, the astounding hand-drawn artwork and stunning soundtrack. This world pulled me in so deep that I often find myself playing more than I should. I am currently at 66 hours played and at 98% completion on my first playthrough, but I guarantee as soon as I reach 100% and finally beat it I will simply start a new game and jump straight back into it. I'm eager to see what new things I can discover and how I can approach the various challenges with my experience from the first time round.

Absolutely sublime and I would recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Good idea. Going to include console games in my list, and leave off a few more forgettable ones.

Shantae: Risky's Revenge, Pirate's Curse and Half-Genie Hero
Great little metroidvanias. Full of character, cute art and loads of secrets. Not particularly challenging.

Dishonored 2
Very disappointing.

Resident Evil 7
I was expecting it to be a lot worse. REmake is still the king, but this really aint half bad. Story sucks.

Desync
Best shooter I played all year.

Wolfenstein: The New Order
Worst shooter I played all year.

NieR: Gestalt/Replicant
Really damn scrappy, but creative in it's own, weird way. I'd struggle to say I enjoyed it all, but it was fascinating from start to finish.

Yooka-Laylee
Ultimately pretty forgettable. Just doesn't have the same finesse as it's predecessors.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong
Not as tight as Dragonfall, but a great little iso RPG. I'm a sucker for fantasy and cyberpunk. Something stirs deep in the heart of Kowloon Walled City.

Splatoon 2
Just like the first - a total blast online.

Prey
Not perfect, but an admirable spiritual successor to System Shock. This is the game Bioshock should have been.

PUBG
Unoptimised, prefabricated, glitchy... and surprisingly fun with a squad.

Super Mario Odyssey
A return to form for 3D Mario games, even if it's too damn big for it's own good.

NieR: Automata
A lot more polished than the original, but just as bloody weird. Swish combat, amazing music and existential robots.

Nioh
The best damn Dark Souls clone out there. Plenty of it's own great ideas, and better combat. Maybe the best game I've played this year.

You didn't like Wolfenstein: TNO? Huh... I thought it was one of the better FPS games in recent years.

Good list though. Some of them I've been meaning to get, some I've never even heard of. Probably something to do with being PC only.

Nioh is also probably my favourite game this year too. With a special mention to Horizon: Zero Dawn which is also fantastic.

I tried to play Fallout 1 and 2, but they don't seem to be compatible with my computer and they crap out spectacularly.

Games I got this year:

Train Fever
Can't start it. Not compatible with my hardware. At all, it refuses to start with an error. But, I got it on sale for $3 or so. I'll leave it for when I get my next computer.

Train Simulator 2017 (now 2018 but it's the same POS)
Got it on the Humble Bundle for pocket change. I had high expectations. I ran it, it did start, and managed to play the very first training scenario - consisting entirely of a straight stretch of track with barely any scenery around it - at 2 to 4 FPS on minimum-est settings. I guess I'll leave it for when I get my next computer.
I'm also amazed at the vast amount of misspellings a big-name game like this has. It feels really sloppy and half-assed. Those are, however, the adjectives used in most of the reviews for the game, so I can't really be surprised. I still had higher expectations.

Cities: Skylines
Also from the Humble Bundle. My computer barely runs it and even though I got a mod to reduce the resolution and effects, the performance is still mediocre. Having played it before and having played it again now, I'm still not in love with it. It has everything, but it kind of feels plastic to me. It lacks the solidness Sim City had.

Mashinky
Pretty much the only game I played this year. Participated as a tester in my scarce free time before the early access release. Quite good for a one-man shop! Needs lots of polish but it has potential. Glad I got it in exchange for testing, though, because the price is a bit steep for an early access game.

I got a handful of other games on the Humble Bundle that one time but I haven't even installed them.

I guess it was a year of bad investments in terms of gaming

Well, I'll go through my Steam purchase history, because I'm sure I'll miss things otherwise. I still risk missing things I bought elsewhere...
In roughly the order they were purchased (starting very late last year):

Axiom Verge
I'm one of those folks who doesn't really care for the Metroid series much, and Metroid is very clearly what this game was evoking. It wasn't a bad game, but I didn't overly care for it.

Doom (2016)
I still haven't actually played Doom, since it ran like garbage when I first got it and I haven't tried playing it since. Not sure why I included it, really.

Stardew Valley
Stardew had me bad for a while there, and I can't say I'm worse off for the experience. There's something about games with an influential day-night cycle, I've noticed, that makes them tend to be time sinks. Anyway. Stardew Valley is a nice game, in both senses of the word. This'll help sap some of the world-weariness out of you. Also, Abigail.

Nom Nom Galaxy
I wasn't certain I wanted this when I got it, and immediately I decided I didn't like the feel of it at all. Thanks, Steam refunds! It seems like it could be enjoyed by some, but I am not that some.

Linelight
Frankly, I barely remember this game by now, but I seem to remember it being a fun little minimalistic puzzle game (which seems to be its own genre these days).

The Flame in the Flood
This was actually one of a number of games that my parter bought for herself, but I ended up playing it. It's... not that great. Its premise is somewhat interesting, and the gameplay isn't too bad, but I feel like as a whole experience, it kinda drags. I also severely dislike their character styling.

Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight is a good game. My compatriot up there is right to have enjoyed it. On the whole, it is a solid game of exploration and combat. Once you get the combat down, it feels great too. I do have an issue or two with it, though. Firstly, there's very little guidance. I get that that is not unusual for a metroidvania (I hate that term), but I have never gotten stuck in one like I did in Hollow Knight. I was scouring the entire map I had seen up to that point for literal hours trying to figure out where to go, and that left a very sour taste. Secondly, even after 100%-ing that game and seeing all that there was to see... I still have no fucking idea what that game is about.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
I mean, what is there to say? There's nothing around the edges of this game, no nuance, no mystery. It's just a really fun game to play. I've dipped my toes in games like Day Z and such in the past, but those are... well, they're terrible games, and they clothe themselves in their own obscurity and arcane-ness. PUBG takes them, strips out everything that isn't fun about them, and leaves a core experience that is all you ever actually wanted from them anyway. There's some bugs, but depending on who you listen to, they can get severely overblown. On the whole, the experience is fine, and no doubt only going to get better.

Overcooked
This is a fantastic little game. It's playable solo, but it shines when you get the local multiplayer going. It starts you off by introducing you to some basic tasks, then as you get into the swing of it, the levels start to throw wrenches into otherwise straightforward scenarios. Good for chaos and for mastery thereof!

Trackmania2 Lagoon
Lagoon is good fun, like Stadium before it. A stripped down racing game where it's basically you versus yourself, making runs at a (probably crazy) course over and over, carving seconds off of your time and feeling good each time you do. I don't really know what's so appealing about Trackmania, but it's a damn good game.

Snake Pass
This is a strange one. The game is all about getting good at its controls, and it feels really good when you do. It just doesn't change up enough throughout the levels though. I didn't finish it, and I can't say I particularly want to. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Slime Rancher
Kinda like Stardew Valley, this is a nice little game to hang out in and do stuff in. On the whole, pretty fun, but it lacks... je ne sais quoi. Still a number of updates to come though, I believe! (One was yesterday, in fact.)

Cryptark
Not a bad game. I don't know if it has much staying power, but I enjoyed this until I finished it.

Quake
Quake is, uh... not that great. I've played Quake II and III previously, but had never gotten more than a level into Quake I. So naturally I put it on the highest difficulty and finished it. Boy, I'm glad video games moved on. (At least, for a couple of years there. Maybe they should have stopper while they were ahead.)

Rock of Ages II: Bigger and Boulder
What a weird thing. This is sort of half tower defence, half 3D platformer, half Monty Python. I... I dunno.

Dead Cells
Bought, have not played. I'm looking forward to its release, but I won't be touching it until then.

Monster Hunter Stories
I doubt I could convince anyone about this either way, but heck, I enjoyed this. The oversimplified way of describing this would be "Monster Hunter plus Pokémon", but truth is that it's neither of those things. This just takes Monster Hunter and makes its whole own thing with it.

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!
This is a fun little game. I use the keyboard, and it's damn near a typing game. A good short-time game.

Heat Signature
Fun! This is a great little top-down stealth (or not) game. You can find a broad range of tools, and a broad range of obstacles that necessitate them. There's endless ways around situations, and ndless ways that they can go hilariously bad. Emergent gameplay at its finest.

Cat Quest
This is dumb. But at least it's fun.

Darkest Dungeon
I'd been eyeing this game for a while trying to decide if it would be my thing. Turns out it's not a bad game. I wasn't anywhere near finishing it, but I had my fill after a while. Doesn't seem like the kind of game you'd want to get too drawn into.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
I'm saving this game for a stream idea I intend to start later, and you'll all be a part of it! (If you want.)

FTL: Faster Than Light
I can see why this game was such a force for a while there. It's great fun!

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
I like a challenge and I don't get mad at games, generally, so I thought this might be fun. And it is! But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I also played Terraria (still fantastic), Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (still good, but really feel the abscence of the quality of life improvements in the newer games), and maybe a little bit of Half-Life.

Even after 100%-ing that game and seeing all that there was to see... I still have no fucking idea what that game is about.

I think some of it is intentionally unexplained for the sake of the upcoming DLCs, but there's enough information in the game the get the general idea in my opinion.