Oh, look, it's the resident sports game du jour of the Video Games list! When I first started playing NBA 2K17, I was enamored with all of the content at my disposal. The ability to create teams and then import them into the NBA for franchise mode was what kept me playing for hours on end, while MyCareer continues to be one of the shining lights of sports games. I was ready to declare this my #1 game and not look back, but there are some big flaws that hold this game back, particularly the bugs it faces. Somewhere along the way, 2K decided that the game that they had made was sufficient enough for release, despite having so many bugs that Bethesda would have looked at the game and thought, "Man, your game is buggy." It's a shame, because this could be the best sports game ever made if they just fixed the bugs that haunt the game.
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I am a masochist, and Mega Man 9 is example A. One of my goals as a gamer this year was to tackle, arguably, the toughest game I have ever encountered...and beat it. Over the course of 2016, I took on Mega Man 9 and its insane difficulty. Many, many, MANY hours later, I finally reached Dr. Wily's Castle. I had beaten all of the robot bosses. I still consider this to be one of my greatest achievements in gaming, genuinely. I also knew that my job wasn't complete, because I had to get through the remaining stages. After a lot of trial and error, I got through the first stage, and I got to the boss of the second stage...and I just couldn't overcome it. Why do I tell you this? Because Mega Man 9 was such a tight and precise game that I can overlook the fact that, as of this writing, I have not beaten the game.
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Lara Croft is back! Hooray! And Rise of the Tomb Raider is good! Hooray! Now, listen to Red ramble about the game for a few seconds! Hoo...ray? Okay, anyway, Rise of the Tomb Raider is a strong follow-up to the endlessly surprisingly wonderful Tomb Raider reboot, a follow-up that doesn't rock the boat too much or try to change things up all that much. Instead, Rise focuses on just refining the things that worked so well in the first game: The exploration, the set pieces, the consistent pace of the gameplay, and Lara Croft herself, who remains one of the most engaging characters in all of video games since the reboot. I don't think that I like the game as much as the original reboot, if only because Rise feels like a bit of a rehash of that game...but a rehash of one of my favorite games of the decade so far is a-ok with me.
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I had a very difficult time deciding between my top two this year. I loved both of the top two games for different reasons. Far Cry 3 posed a unique problem for me this year, in that I seemingly wanted to do everything EXCEPT play the story missions. That's not to say that the story missions aren't engaging. If anything, the opposite is true. The story missions are very fun. The issue that I had is that there's just SO much to do in Far Cry 3, so many things that can occupy your time instead of the story. You can play poker, you can hunt wild animals endlessly, you can drive around the map and randomly encounter enemies, you can race against time and try to deliver cargo on a strict timer...there's no shortage of things to do in Far Cry 3. It can all be overwhelming, to the point where you're okay with not playing any story missions for a long period. I missed this game when it was first released, and I regret it every day since playing it for the first time.
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I loved Far Cry 3. Loved, loved, loved that game. I loved how massive and vibrant the entire world was, I loved that every area provided a different challenge, and I loved that you could spend hours on end doing anything BUT playing through the story. At the end of the day, though, I looked back at a game from an old friend, and I simply could not ignore how enraptured I was with the game. I wouldn't say that The Wolf Among Us is the best Telltale game I've played, because that's not possible in a world with Walking Dead: Season One available to purchase. The best compliment I can give The Wolf Among Us is that playing through the game was the first time that I came close to the enjoyment that TWD provided in its first season. More than any other publisher, Telltale has this way of capturing my attention and refusing to let go. Some of their games don't work as well as others, but when their games work, they work, and The Wolf Among Us works. I can confidently say that it stands alongside Walking Dead: Season One as the finest achievements in the storied history of Telltale.
And that's the Games list done and dusted! Now, we can focus on the lists that everyone actually cares about.
Particularly, up next is the albums list. Again, I'm struggling with what to do in terms of the # of albums. I might stick with 20, or I might include more albums and make the list a top 25 or a top 30. For now...let's just say it will remain a top 20, and the first set will be posted tomorrow.