It's also great to play a Sonic game on the Nintendo Switch-certainly the best-looking side-scrolling Sonic game on a portable device I've ever seen. Sonic Mania is an addictive, incredibly fun return to form. The Sonic franchise has fallen on hard times, with a legacy of flops since its glory days. Retro Sonic returns in Sonic Mania and it's so great. The pacing didn't always hold up-a long open-world segment fell a little flat-but by and large this was a tremendous (and gorgeous) adventure game. I actually really enjoyed the game in part because of its brevity. If nothing else, it proved that the series has legs even without its wise-cracking protagonist. The stand-alone expansion to Uncharted 4 ditched Nathan Drake, trading him in for two female leads. I confess, I enjoyed it more than the new XCOM 2 expansion, if only because I actually enjoyed my time with it rather than just feel stressed out the entire time. The combination of XCOM-style turn-based combat and the zany worlds of Mario and Rabbids makes for a surprisingly engaging (and funny) video game. Marrio + Rabbids Battle Kingdom was one of the best surprises of 2017. The 'battle royale' game pits 100 players against one another in a last man standing high-stakes fight across a huge map. Still, it ended up selling over 20 million copies, spawning copy-cats, and capturing the hearts and minds of players across the globe. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was in early access for most of 2o17, only officially launching on PC this past week. I thoroughly enjoyed the game from start to finish. A pretty excellent VR version makes this an even more attractive purchase. Easily one of the best fighting games of this console generation.ĭitching the third-person perspective, Resident Evil 7 biohazard turned out to be one of the more frightening games of the year even as it took several rather large steps away from its franchise roots. An excellent story made the single-player campaign way more fun than I've had with a fighting game in ages, and the excellent combat made for great solo or multiplayer play.

We were all surprised by just how excellent Injustice 2 turned out to be.

A game steeped in atmosphere and filled with great exploration and puzzle-solving, Prey pressed all the right buttons for me. It's a very clever sci-fi horror game that deserved far more attention than it received, in part due to Bethesda's failed review copy experiment. These are all excellent video games and there's bound to be something in this category for everyone, from tactical turn-based games to horror titles to first-person shooters, these are some of the best games of 2017.Īn imperfect game, Prey still managed to capture something of that old-school PC single-player spirit that we've come to hope for from Arkane and Bethesda. It's pretty tough to decide which games get shuffled off into the Bronze category, but honestly, you shouldn't write them off simply because they're not Silver or Gold.

New video games 2017 october