Hi there, I’m Jake from “Internet Unwind”. This year I have been very busy, I used to play a lot of games to stream and do videos but I don’t have time to anymore. So I didn’t play many story heavy games this year as I have in years past, but I did play a few more casual and multiplayer games.

Assasin’s Creed Origins on PS4 is actually the tenth game in the Series and it really feels like it. The game has introduced more new mechanics than most of them but still feels like just another AC game. The story and visuals are a bit more enjoyable but the gameplay itself was only slightly altered including the heavier focus on quicktime events. They tried to break the mold a little with this and came up short in my opinion. I hoped this would bring me back into the AC story since it seemed to be a breath of new life into the series, but it ended up only being a hiccup.

Destiny 2 on PS4 I also wanted to like as there haven’t been many really enjoyable FPS games to me since before Overwatch became a thing. Personally, I think OW is overrated and prefer more traditional deathmatch style gameplay or a campaign. The story of Destiny and Destiny 2 is pretty good and the mission variety is decent. It’s not as if you are repeatedly doing the same missions on different maps, like in some games. I didn’t get too far into Destiny 2 before the combat started to get tiresome. If I was playing on PC it might have felt a little more smooth but on a controller, I wasn’t very happy. I also didn’t have anyone to play multiplayer with on PS4 which may have made it more enjoyable and given me more interest. Graphics were good, physics were good. I liked it, just didn’t hold my attention. I have a small issue of ADD so having trouble staying interested in a story shouldn’t be a huge surprise.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands on PC is an open world 3rd person squad based shooter seemingly focused on playing with friends. While I only got to play the Beta release, I was able to play enough in that time to see it’s a great game for multiplayer shenanigans. Honestly, though, the story at that time didn’t seem very interesting, I spent most of the time ignoring the story with friends and just playing GTA in the jungle. It was buggy at the time, though none of those bugs were game breaking. They were all dumb issues like civilians jumping in front of cars to escape the safety of the grass next to the road. I got a lot of funny footage for a video on that game haha, I still consider buying it if it's on sale really cheap sometime.

Call Of Duty: World War II on PS4 was the return to non-futuristic settings that recent years of the COD franchise had been focusing on. I for one was glad they did this, as the first two modern warfare games were among my favorite shooters alongside Halo 1 and 3. Unsurprisingly mostly for the multiplayer modes. This return to the WW era actually resulted in a great multiplayer experience, once the company got the servers functioning properly about a week after release anyway. Playing on PS4, the controls are clean and the graphics were a nice upgrade from the last COD I had played. This is pretty much the same as every upgrade each year, a slight improvement on what works. The map design was disappointing though as it feels as though they designed a landscape and just dropped houses in randomly. There are no built-in lanes as there were years ago guiding you and your opponents into head on combat. The Zombies mode is improved with a more story driven function this time around, which as a non-zombie mode player I appreciated more than previous iterations. Multiplayer has been a lot of fun, I haven’t had this much fun since I got all wrapped up in PUBG and CS:GO with my friends. Speaking of PUBG.

PUBG on PC is my favorite game of 2017, not because it was a beautiful game or ran super well. Not because it had a lot of features or a well-behaved community. It was because it was fun. Even on very low settings, the game in some textures looked like a ps1 game, in other ways it looked like a modern title. The game is a downright blast, especially with friends. I am not good at the game, that’s for sure. I just really enjoy the sense of urgency you feel knowing you have people all around and a timer all gunning for you. The balance of borders shrinking rate, loot spawning, number of players per game and general aesthetic of the maps and vehicles has an amazing balance that isn’t matched in the rival versions of the “Battle Royale” genre.

Fortnite on PC prominently features one such game modes. Fortnite was originally interesting as a survival/tower defense game with a lot of promise. Since the focus of Epic’s development seems to have shifted focus to a Battle Royale mode, my interest has waned. This is unfortunate because the main game was what I got into the early access for. The main game is a very arcade style shooter with RPG and crafting elements and because of that, the weapon accuracy is less important than in other games. The Battle Royale mode is frustrating and boring to me. This is partly because it has the same shooting mechanics as the main game, which doesn’t seem to work as well in a player vs player mode about strategy and precision. You don’t have the ability to craft weapons or ammunition. You need to find them on the map, which feels strange given it's not how the main game works. Most of the 2 modes are conflicting like this. The problem for me is the gun play is very arcade like in the Battle Royal mode, and when you are playing an open world, fast paced shooter you want weapon accuracy. The mode was fun for a while but lost my interest rather quickly. The main game is where the fun was and the fun lasted quite a while. I didn’t have much opportunity to play the game with others but it was a much better experience when I did. The main game is a bit complicated due to it having so many different features from so many genres merged together. It made the game a little difficult to get the hang of at first but the more you play the more you understand.

All in all 2017 was a good year for the shooter genre. Hopefully, 2018 will be even better.