James Larners’ highlights and lowlights of 2017

The first in our series of the best and worst of 2017 comes from James Larner, with highlight PUBG and lowlight Battlefront 2.

Highlight

The core of PUBG is the uniqueness of each match. You never have two matches feel the same, due to the randomness of the plane’s trajectory and the loot you can acquire when you land

For me, 2017 has been defined by PUBG. Bluehole’s battle royale shooter is an evolution of Playerunknown’s famous ARMA 2 and 3 mod without the limitations of the military simulator. PUBG was 2017’s best selling game on Steam, never leaving the bestsellers list and never being far from my thoughts. The game is the natural progression of games like DayZ, keeping the random loot elements and tense gunfights while doing away with most of the boring sections like food, drink and running.

Image Credit: IGDB

The core of PUBG is the uniqueness of each match. You never have two matches feel the same, due to the randomness of the plane’s trajectory and the loot you can acquire when you land. One game might see you die in the first five minutes despite your level 3 armour and tricked out assault rifle, where the next game might see you win with nothing but a UMP and a double barrel shotgun. Despite its reliance on RNG, Battlegrounds is a very skill based game. Knowing when to run, shoot and hide is as key to getting that sweet chicken dinner as honed reactions and eagle eyes.

Lowlight

Even away from the lootboxes, Greedfront 2 EAlectric Boogaloo is not a great game

It will come as no surprise that Star Wars Battlefront 2 is my most hated game of 2017. EA really raised the bar as far as corporate greed goes, ruining a golden goose with a frankly insulting loot box-based progression system with an extreme bias towards microtransactions. The backlash was so incredible that lawmakers are finally looking at regulating the glorified gambling that AAA developers are trying to shovel down our throats.

Image Credit: IGDB

Even away from the lootboxes, Greedfront 2 EAlectric Boogaloo is not a great game. The core gameplay has not been improved by the addition of classes, mostly because the classes do not really synergise at all. The addition of special classes costing match specific battle points is interesting, but some are simply a mile better than others. The game’s implementation of heroes is better, but the fact that you can have Rey fighting Darth Maul deeply hurts my soul. For a game which was supposed to be an apology for the shallow rushjob of Battlefront 2015, Battlefront 2 is an insult to gamers and Star Wars fans alike.