Video games have been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. They are more to me than just something to while away the time. They become methods for me to become close with those I can call friends. They become markers of my life, each game capturing the essence of the time I was going through. They fill the moments between one crisis and the next.
2017 has been a big year for me. I dropped out of college and, a semester later, enrolled to a completely different one. I started to learn to live with the Hell that's been growing in my head. I'm still learning, but I think I've figured out how to relax and let things go. It's altogether a much better year than 2016, which I only allude to vaguely in my 2016 list of games that have impacted me.
I don't write retrospectives much. My memory is a foggy place that constantly rebuilds itself. But, this year especially, video games become a landmark in that fog. So here's my 2017, as told by the games I've played. Mind, it's a very personal list.
Night in the Woods
When I played the game, back in February, Mae and I had a lot in common. She's 20, I'm 20. She just dropped out of college and came home to a small town, I just dropped out of college and came home to the big city. We both came home to loving family, whom we felt like we've disappointed. She had no idea what to do with her life, I had no idea what to do with my life. She spent her days uselessly ambling around with her three best friends that are still in town, I spent my days uselessly ambling around by myself, because all my friends are in college far away. I don't know if this is ever said explicitly in the game, but Mae's just trying her darnedest to live in the present, because whatever will happen, she is not going back to that dark place she was in when she was still in college. Girl, extremely same.
Yet despite all the similarities, I didn't feel as connected with Mae as I think I should be. I've been following the game's three developers for years, and their tweets has helped me and connected with me so much, to the point that this game they revolved those years on only felt like some kind of add-on. It's a good game. It just doesn't hit me the way I thought it would.
Or did it?
I remember playing the final scenes to the dead of the night, and afterwards, on the bed, I cried for two hours straight. For a moment, it was like the game was telling me everything about myself.
If you ask me to write a proper review of it, I don't think I can. I'm still not sure if I can replay it again.
Hollow Knight
I hate Hollow Knight. I've spent far too long repeating the same corridors because I died, and I died, and I keep dying. Something about my reflex hates everything that this game threw at me. I spent more time cursing it than I do loving it. And yet, you know what? If anyone asks what's the best game that came out in 2017, I will without a doubt say Hollow Knight.
I played the game throughout the year, leaving it for weeks and then coming back to it. Each playthrough has frustration in store, but there were moments of wonders. That first time I went into the City of Tears. The gleeful fatalism I held as I attempted the fight against Hornet for the hundredth time. The game's soundtrack both haunts and comforts me when otherwise my mind will wander too far.
Hollow Knight's setting is a bleak one: dark caverns filled with undead bugs. But the living whom you find are always so relentlessly cheerful. They sing, they greet you amiably, they enjoy their life with what they have.
Oh, it's a very well-made game. The way it's made, it's also definitely not a game for me. And yet? In a completely unexpected way, it is.
Persona 4
The Persona series defined my teenagehood, after I first discovered Persona 4 in 2009. Eight years later, I beat that game for the first time.
I already know most of the story, having endlessly discussed it with my friends, having searched high and low for more art and stories and content relating to the game. But playing the game myself is a whole different experience. I tried doing that years ago, but I never got anywhere because PS2 emulators are demanding beasts and my computers weren't that good.
Two years ago, on a whim, having a relatively modern laptop, I decided to start the game again. This time I played it with my sister, whom I've introduced into the series. Thus begin a journey we shared together. I'm the one who held the controllers, but I wouldn't do it unless she was with me.
It was a lot of fun playing the game together. We bantered, we japed. Persona 4 is such a big game, concerning things that are close to us, that there's always something in it for us to talk about. Unfortunately, being in a college the next city over meant we only got to play about twice a year. In a way, though, the game made those vacation days much more meaningful.
Early on 2016, we reached a place near the end of the game that caused massive lags on my computer. The game became a slog, and eventually we just stopped caring. We didn't think about it much, but it was a bit sad, not being able to do that final leg. Then around mid-2017, when I've enrolled on my new college and was just waiting for classes to start, I got a new, more powerful computer. That final dungeon became smooth enough to play through, and we did.
We beat the final boss just the day before I moved my stuffs to the dorm in my new school. It was a magical moment.
Overwatch
I've had my eye on the game since its release, mostly thanks to its Excellent character designs and enthusiastic fandom. I didn't even care (or even know) much about its gameplay. I just love seeing those characters and its world and how the whole thing comes together. But 40 dollars and currency exchange mean it was a bit too far out of my reach.
Independently from me, my sister has also had her eye on the game. When I first talked about the game with her, we realised we were on exact same page.
During the quiet moments before the new school begun, on a whim, we both pooled our money and bought the game. It was worth it. At first we were going to just share the account, but my sister was a bit too shy to play it with strangers (which is The Way It's Meant To Be Played™ for me), so it's just me. She watches sometimes. She might not play it herself, but at the end of the day, it feels like we have something new to share.
Persona 2: Innocent Sin
[caption id="attachment_175148511" align="alignnone" width="800"]
A fanart by someone anonymous.[/caption]
Yessir, more Persona. If you scroll down, you'll see Persona 5 further down the list. 2017 is the year where this series became my constant companion, twirling around in my head.
I thought I'd lost my PSP during the big house renovation that happened while I was away in college. It's not the only thing I've lost. I found my Wii, for instance, but none of the games, and it's missing an important cable, rendering it a very fancy but useless brick. Sometime in 2017 though, only a week or so before college started and I had to move to my dorm room, I ruffled through the old cabinets and found my PSP, perfectly intact.
I was in desperate need for a portable gaming device. My laptop has WORK associated with it, which sometimes frustrates me. Playing in my phone requires jumping through hoops of "I should check my chats first" and "let's see what's up on twitter" and "oh, hey, notification". (I'm very easy to distract, and one of the ways that video games have helped me, and which I discovered this year, is that they keep my mind focused on one thing.) The PSP came at a perfect time.
Getting Innocent Sin was almost a random pick; it ends up being one of the games that I'd say really define me. I'd rather not repeat what I've said there. I just know that between classes, or when I got back to my room, and my mind was idling, and the Dark was close at hand, I'd start remembering the characters in that game, the things going on in that world. I'd started the PSP up, and it would be an hour or two of bliss.
Or, well, bliss as limited by its cursed cursed encounter rate. I used a walkthrough, because there's no way I'm going back and forth in its maze and fighting all the random encounters oh no no sir.
But, like, there's joy even in that, you know.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
I was in a sudden random mood for Anime game. The most over-the-top, the most ridiculous, the most tropey, campy of the lot, the better. Danganronpa, I heard, is over-the-top Anime Aesthetic taken to the absolute top of the field. Sure, let's see what's it got. Maybe I can get a good kick for an evening.
The game became so much more than that.
The premise of Danganronpa is outlandish. Fifteen "ultimate" high school students, are trapped in a building and expected to kill each other, egged on by a psychotic bear robot. The characters themselves are ridiculous, the bear's gleeful expectation of murders even more so, and paired with its wildly colourful user interface? It was camp to the top of camp.
But I didn't expect the amount of humanity in there. These kids aren't stand-ins for character archetypes, as you might expect from their design. They're... well, okay, they slot nicely into character archetypes, but they also act like normal people. They panicked, they despaired, they hoped, they formed connection with what little they have. I was clamouring for the murders (aka, the fun parts) to happen, but when it did it hit me hard anyway.
During a weekend when I visited my family, I brought the game and played it together with my sister. She loved it. It ended up, like Persona 4, a game that we always only play together. Sure, she said I can play it by myself when I get back to the dorm, but it didn't feel right. It never feel complete unless there's the two of us.
So begun another tradition.
NieR: Automata
I've beaten the game once. Only once. Which is to say, I haven't beaten it at all. I know I'll come back to it, but now, during the holiday, back home and surrounded by my family, it just didn't feel right.
2017 is the year I discovered Yoko Taro and his awful awful game series Drakengard and NieR. When accompanied by the composer Okabe Keiichi, who worked on Drakengard 3 and both _NieR_s, they became twice as awful. Like a bazillion words have been said on just how awesome Yoko Taro is (here's my words), so I'll save you that.
So I got into his works, but it was a long while until I actually played any of them. Instead, I looked it up, I watched playthroughs, and I piece the stories together through what I can gleam. Most of all, I listened to their soundtracks. They got me through so much.
One of my new friends from college was, surprisingly, playing NieR: Automata. I hadn't touched the game; I was worried that it wouldn't run well on my computer, but I've avoided spoilers on it so far. She, as all good friends do, egged me on. "It's a good game," she said. I gave in, I started playing. It's a fantastic game.
I've mentioned here about the life/death dichotomy in its world, and how its bleak visual actually helps me with my broken attention span. I didn't mention that, because of hardware limits, I play it at best at 17 FPS, which is slow, maybe even unplayable for some people. Yet, most of the time it didn't feel very slow. I enjoyed taking my time, taking in my surrounding, listening to the beautiful music (which didn't lag, thank God).
After I beat Persona 2: Innocent Sin, NieR: Automata was what got me through the idle moments after classes. As a bonus, it bridged me with my friend. She's beaten the game long before, so it's easy for me to keep her up to date with my progress (though it might be a struggle for her not to just spoil everything for me, heh).
Persona 5
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Gotta love that UI[/caption]
I have neither a PS3 nor a PS4, so I didn't play the game myself. Instead my sister and I watched a Let's Play of it by the Kubz Scouts. We're not a big fan of his channel, but we like his enthusiasm, and we like how he cut his videos so they only show the important/fun parts of the game. In a way it feels like he left off enough parts that when I get around to playing the game myself (which will happen eventually, mark my words) it'll still feel like new.
So it's a good game (which you should already know from the gazillion game of the year lists with this game in it). And he's a fun Let's Player to watch. Eventually he ended up only updating it once a week or so, which was just fine, because I only got to see my sister once a week. It became our thing during the weekend. We'll watch this and we'll play _Danganronp_a during the times when we aren't working on our separate projects.
Pyre
I should definitely play Pyre earlier. It was released in the middle of the year. It has been hovering in my mind ever since it was announced. But alas, Danganronpa was a distracting beast, and so are a lot of the games above.
As life turns out, I bought it in the Steam Sale (along with Overcooked, which was excellent too), and I played it through the holiday.
My God, this game is beautiful. In every way. The art, the music, the writing. Also its world, its characters, those intricate details: the lore and how it's set up, the pop-up that shows when you hover a term or a name, the little movements in its visual novel sprites, how you can see what your party members are doing by checking on their personal items. I can go on and on and on. I love it wholeheartedly, the the point that I became scared that it will end eventually.
I love its characters. Rukey is my best friend/fighter. Ti'Zo is lovely. Sir Gilman's EXCITEMENT!!! are the best. And I think I'm crushing on Hedwyn. Supergiant Games, what have you done.
Oh dear that was a lot longer than I expected.
There's a lot in my life that I didn't mention here, of course. A lot that aren't marked by games (might they be marked by books? I read a lot of books too). And heck this is just me. I'm sure there's an immeasurably lot more things happening to everyone else, on every part of the globe.
2017 was a good one and a bad one, but whatever it is, it's passed. Here's to a better 2018. May we survive another year.
