[Question] The Gamingforce Game of the Year 2017: Super Deluxe Gold Voting Edition w/ loot boxes

2017 has been a pretty mixed bag, to put it generously. It's odd because when you look at media, particularly gaming, it's been a pretty amazing year overall, but then everything else has been a giant dumpster fire and then some. Who thought we'd be fighting Nazis in real life as well as games?

Anyhoo, the drawing of a close to 2017 means that once again it's time for the Gamingforce Game of the Year to make its appearance! This might be quite a tricky year as I can't help but feel there's been a really high amount of quality games coming out and I know I'm going to struggle personally wittling that down to just a couple of games. And as ever this is the arena of combat and popular choice in which the game of 2017 will do battle to become our Gamingforce Game of the Year.

But things are going to be a little different this year so please pay attention to the details below!

Firstly we're going to try and see what kind of mayhem ensues when we open up voting on Facebook as well as the GFF thread. In order to try and keep things straight there's some changes to the rules: if you post your votes on Facebook please put your GFF username at the top of your entry. Also if you try to vote twice I'll take your GFF votes and halve the points. So don't do that. This is a bit of a test run and the preference will be for people to vote on the GFF thread, but we'll see how this goes.

Secondly I'm going to ask you to add in 3 predictions for the coming year. This will just be a for fun thing that you could choose to ignore if you want, but if you do throw down a couple of thoughts for 2018 then next year as part of the results I plan to do a look back and see how we fared with our predictions.

Other than that it's business as usual as per the previous years' voting, so it'll work like this: each person has 100 points to vote for games released in 2017 (doesn't matter where, but games have to have been commercially released in 2017) and you can allocate them to as many games as you like as long as it totals 100 in the end. The only rule is that you can't award any single game more than 40 points. So you could vote two 40s and a 20, or a 40 and six 10s, or any other combination of points as long as it adds up to 100.

To vote all you have to do is post a reply with your top games of 2017, how many points you're giving each, and a brief explanation of why you feel the game deserves your points.

Example:

<If on Facebook: [b]GFF username[b]>

GAME A - 40 points
Man I loved game A because...

GAME B - 20 points
I ended up playing so much of game B that...

GAME C - 15 points
Game C gets some points because...

GAME D - 15 points
I couldn't decide between this and C, so gave both points, but D rocks because...

GAME E - 5 points
Good, but not necessarily great, but I figure E deserves some points because...

GAME F - 5 points
Like E, F gets a few points because...

Predictions:
1. That...

2. I reckon...

3. Maybe...

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Voting will close on Saturday 20th January at 18:00 GMT (that's Englandland time), at which point I'll add all the points together and work out GFF's top games of 2017, posting the results in a new thread for discussion/people to complain about.

So, go on, get voting.

Oh, and get other people to come vote and take part too.

Disclaimer/Rules:
1. If you allocate any game more than 40 points your vote won't be counted.
2. If your points allocation totals more than 100 points your vote won't be counted (totals less than 100 are fine).
3. Votes for games not released in 2017 will be ignored.
4. Only official commercial releases in 2017 count.
4a. No 'Early Access', 'Alpha', 'Beta' or other pre-release titles will be counted.
5. No negative points. I'll point and laugh and then ignore your vote.
6. Whole integers only. Fractions and decimal places will also lead me to ignore your vote.
7. Votes on Facebook must start with your GFF username.
8. Only vote on GFF or Facebook; double votes will incur a halving penalty on the GFF votes.
9. Any other such idiocy will also probably lead your vote not being counted.

And as ever, I take no responsibility for Skills fucking with stuff, which if you ignore these points he almost certainly will do somehow.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Horizon: Zero Dawn - 5 Points
Man Horizon is an great game. It's an incredible open world game with a really cool bow and arrow (and mechanics/tools to go alongside that) and with robo-dinos. It also has an incredibly story which I did not expect to find myself saying or thinking, but it does. I actually found myself so getting into the lore I became excited to find audio logs and records as I explored. The combat is an awful lot of fun and the game is ridiculously gorgeous (especially the 4K HDR mode). Unfortunately for Horizon another open world game launched at a similar time.

Persona 5 - 5 Points
My second favourite JRPG featuring my second favourite cast of characters for the year. Good lord is this game stylish. It was worth experiencing for the way the game looks and hangs together, but fortunately it's also a real solid Persona game with some neat little twists on combat mechanics. Having the main dungeons be fixed designed dungeons was also a nice feature, and the story was as solid as you'd expect. However, much like Horizon another game came along and impressed me more.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 30 Points
What's left to say about this game really? What an astounding achievement, an open world that very quick opens up and says "Have it, go wherever you want and do what you want". Just prodding and pushing at the world, the enemies, the systems discovering what works or doesn't. The sheer number of times you'd have a "Wait, will this work? Oh shit it does!" moment is just amazing. The devs put a lot of love into this game and it shows. I know some people have issues with how the story was handled, but I actually rather liked it and enjoyed all characters and piecing together what happened 100 years ago from the various memory flashes.

Super Mario Odyssey - 30 Points

YouTube Video

So much damn fun. I completely adore this game and enjoyed it so much I couldn't help by go for 999 moons just to have the excuse to keep playing. Also that song.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 30 Points
Well this was somewhat unexpected, as much as I was looking forward to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 I did not expect it to end up joining the ranks of Breath of the Wild and Odyssey, and I certainly wasn't expecting it to become my favourite experience. But man, what a game. So yeah, it has some weird designs going on that much is certainly true, but the cast of characters are so well done that I absolutely fell in love with this rag-tag group and found myself feeling a little lost when I finished the game. I so enjoyed spending time with these characters and their adventures. And plus the game is pure Xenoblade class with a fantastic combat system (that has a lot going on, but in a really fun way), the excellent world designs and amazing music. If you've at all enjoyed either of the previous Xenoblade games I strongly urge you to give this a look. Ignore the whacky designs and go with it, you'll be hansomely rewarded for your time.

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Predictions:
- Nintendo will announce at E3 that Metroid Prime 4 is delayed into 2019, but will appease fans by announcing a Metroid Prime trilogy release on Switch coming late 2018.
- Anthem will have at least 6 different editions announced for purchase on release, including a special edition that will be over $300.
- This year the following games will be announced (though not necessarily released) for the Switch: a new Animal Crossing, a new Mario Party, Smash Bros. 5, a new Donkey Kong Country game, a new Zelda game and a new game based on the F-Zero license!

How ya doing, buddy?

To give people a little more time I'm going to extend the Game of the Year voting out by a week. So you now have until 6pm (UK time) on 27th Jan.

(I'm also doing this as something has come up which means I'm going to be out all day tomorrow and won't have time to do the results, sorry).

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.