The Delfies 2017: Introduction and Quick Links

Welcome to the Delfies Awards of 2017!

Starting with the number 10 position and counting down one per day, I shall be going over what I considered my favourite games of 2017. This post shall be kept at the top of the blog for the duration and will be updated with each new entry for quick links. Be sure to check them out!

#10: View
#9: View
#8: View
#7: ASAP
#6: ASAP

(All dates will usually be met around 11pm AEST, if not as soon as I can readily have them available)

While each post will be fairly detailed about what the games are and why I like them so much, I also want to go over my criteria for what qualifies for selection. There’s also a pretty big disclaimer in there that I shall direct you to if, for any reason, you want to protest my choices or believe something should be higher, lower, or absent. That said, I still welcome all discussions on the matter so feel free to message me and we can chat about it. More after the cut!

In order for a game to appear here, there are two conditions they have to fulfill.

First: The game must have been officially released in 2017.

Simple enough, and it should be obvious. It’s a selection of the best games of 2017, so they must have been out this year (in English) for me to play. The release has to be official and full; no games currently in Early Access count. Expansion packs for older games are acceptable for selection if I deem them to be full-sized additions and worthy of being a game release in their own right.

Second: I must have played the game either to completion, or otherwise invested enough time to see the vast majority of gameplay content.

This is an important one. It’s not enough to just pick up a game for an hour or two and say I like it enough to declare it for the top 10. It’s not enough to have seen or heard a lot about it or watch a playthrough. This is a list of personal favourites for the year, and as such they must be ones that I played and was able to get through in their entirety.

2017 was, I believe, one of the strongest individual years in terms of quality game releases that I recall in my life. The state of the industry may go back and forth, and there was a lot of questionable steps taken overall, but the game quality was undeniable. With that to consider, I didn’t get to play a lot of the games that were really good and look like games I would enjoy. Many of the games I did, I simply didn’t finish. There’ll be an honourable mentions list at the end of this one to give kudos to some I missed, but in order to qualify, I had to have played and completed them.

If I wasn’t able to complete the game, there must be a good reason. I’ll detail each of those in their individual article should they come up, but I believe it’s important that a game be something I completed. I play a lot of games, so I rarely get the time to fully immerse and invest myself in something to completion. The fact that I can do so for something is sign enough of its quality or personal interest to me, usually. Besides, if you can’t bring yourself to get to the end of a game, then I hardly think it warrants a high score or rank.

In the event that I didn’t finish a game to completion but still considered it worthy, it then has sub-criteria I considered for it to get there. For example, if a game is the sort of game without a full conclusion and meant more for replayable experiences, then it obviously doesn’t need to be “finished” traditionally.

If it does have a traditional conclusion and an end point, then I must have played enough of the game to be sure that I’ve experienced the vast majority of various gameplay experiences on offer. I need to have seen all the elements of the combat or systems, or so on. Since narrative and story is usually a thing I care greatly for in games, a game that I haven’t finished must therefore not have that as a primary focus; it can’t matter either to the game, or to me.

If neither of these are met but I still deem it worthy, then that’s a simple sign that what experiences I did have in my limited time with the game were so exceptional that they justify the price of entry on their own. This kind of thing won’t happen often… but it will happen.

With those criteria mentioned, there’s one last very important disclaimer I need to make.

The Delfies are given each year to the games that I, Delfeir, personally enjoyed the most and considered my favourites. They are completely, unashamedly subjective in nature and are not meant to be taken as a flat claim of superiority for that year.

This is not a definitive and objective list of the greatest games in 2017. This is not a list of the highest quality, the highest grossing, the highest rated by Metacritic, or any anything more or less than what is advertised. They’re just the games that I considered the most enjoyable, meaningful, and impactful ones that I played and completed during 2017. That’s it.

If you have different opinions, that’s great! The only wrong opinions are not to have one, or to have one based on ignorance. Be that as it may, these opinions are mine and mine alone, and so I chose to write about them and share them with those interested here. I did so because I wanted to talk about the video games I liked.

You shouldn’t be using these posts as anything more than a bit of light entertainment because you like reading my thoughts. If you disagree with my opinions or think different things deserve to be here — or that you have other reasons for feeling about the games I chose — then talk to me about it. Let me know! Leave a comment! Hit me up on Discord, whatever you want. I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t interested in talking about video games after all, and dialogues are just as entertaining.

It’s also important to remember the words of Dunkey from his video on game critics. You shouldn’t hate me because I disagree with you, but instead use my tastes and opinions as a reference point from which to make your own informed decisions. If I like a game you don’t, then factor in why that might be — genre, certain gameplay mechanics, specific story elements that I find lacking — and remember that for next time. If you see that brought up in a future post I make, then you know that it might not be a game for you and can use that to help decide if you want to play it or not.

Anyway, just wanted to put that out there. I highly doubt anyone who reads this is among the people who might sincerely put such accusations or complaints against me, but it’s still worth having it to point to should it occur. So with that out of the way, we can finally continue (or resume!) the Delfies of 2017.

Thanks for reading thus far, and I hope you enjoy!