For me personally, though, 2017 has been a year of finding who I am. After many years of trying to lie to myself, 2017 was the year where I finally felt comfortable with embracing who I am and made me realise that I am stronger than I thought I was. No longer do I feel ashamed of being geeky or anything like that: to me, it's just what makes me who I am and I should not feel a need to hide it any more. Plus, 2017 helped me to explore some sides of media which I had ignored for way too long, which I feel has helped me become a more rounded individual.
Still, it's fine looking back over 2017 on a personal level, but that's not what we're here for. So, let's get the awards for 2017 out of the way so we can continue seeing what 2018 has to bring!
Best Game Of 2017
2017 has been a pretty interesting year for gaming, with the Nintendo Switch being, in many ways, a game changer for consoles. Certainly, the absence of any Switch games in the debate of personal awards for best game of 2017 is only down to the fact that I do not own the system yet: in many ways, I’d be inclined to argue that it is one of the best games consoles ever released, simultaneously taking handheld gaming and console gaming into new, uncharted waters and raising the bar for what to expect from both.
Still, I can’t talk too much about games without naming my favourite game of 2017 and, honestly, my pick was locked down as far back as June and anyone who knows me in person is going to be very unsurprised by my choice, because I still gush about it now and it was the game which truly hooked me in to what is now one of my favourite JRPG franchises (behind only Pokémon: incidentally, I am not giving this award to Pokémon Ultra Sun because I didn’t actually play it in 2017, though I honestly would have banned it from obtaining the award even if I had played it because I feel rewarding an already great game for basically remaking itself isn't sending out the right message!).
I speak, for anyone unaware of where I’m going, of Tales of Berseria. Calling it a pleasant surprise after my disappointment with Tales of the Abyss in 2016 doesn’t really do it justice: it’s a truly magnificent game that I adore for its amazing (and very unconventional, by JRPG standards) story, its deep combat system that expertly blend elements of fighting games, real-time combat and turn-based strategy, its brilliant characters and its wonderful art style. You know you’ve done a game right when I am so impressed with it that I happily buy copies of it (admittedly, while on a Steam sale) for my friends so they can experience it for themselves, gush about it whenever I get the opportunity to do so and go out of my way to play as many previous games in the series as I can just because I have become so enthusiastic to learn more about the rest of the series from experience. I speak no hyperbole when I say that I could genuinely see this game being this generation’s Final Fantasy VII: the game which sets the new standard by which all other games in the genre will be judged against. It isn’t flawless (it has some padding and I will acknowledge that Velvet, the main protagonist, can come across as a bit TOO focused on her own pain at points), but, if you like JRPGs even slightly or just want to make a start with them, then GET. THIS. GAME!
Honourable mention goes to Persona 5. Why is it not my game of the year, I hear you ask? Because I picked it up a few days before the end of 2017 and barely got any time to play it due to a busy few days in the lead up to New Year’s Eve, which unfortunately disqualified it from getting any awards due to it not being played for long enough to form a decisive enough opinion on justify giving the award to. What little I DID get to play before I had to write the final draft of the awards, though, is brilliant (even on PS3, the system I got it on), so, if you are disappointed that Persona 5 did not get the award, then rest easy in the knowledge that, had I been made aware of the PS3 version before the end of the year, it may very well have ended up dethroning Tales of Berseria as my game of the year. Both games, however, are fantastic and I urge fans of either franchise who have not yet played a game in the other franchise to pick up the most recent instalments of each franchise if you can, because both are really worth your time!
Best Metal Album Of 2017
I am not going to lie, I’d actually been listening to a lot less metal music than might be expected in 2017. Don’t get me wrong, there were some solid metal releases that I’d heard, but, honestly, my priorities musically leaned towards other genres, like acid-jazz, folk and country.
Still, I would be lying if I said that I’d completely avoided metal music and I actually have a pick for metal album of 2017 that may surprise everyone: The Future in Whose Eyes? By SikTh. While “best” might be debatable for a lot of people, I feel that SikTh’s reunion record deserves the award simply because it is the metal record that made me remember why I loved metal music so much in a year when I had drifted so far away from the genre. By the time this record came out in early June, I was basically convinced that there was little in the scene that was new and interesting to me any more. I hadn’t grown to HATE the genre, but I was tired of hearing the same old sounds again and again in the metal scene and was wanting something new and exciting to remind me of why metal made such a big impact upon me when I first started listening to it.
This, to me, was that record. Unorthodox, slightly unhinged and yet very memorable, The Future in Whose Eyes? was (pardon the word choice) an eye opener for me, making me realise that I COULD still be pleasantly surprised in metal music. It made me reconsider my stance on nu-metal to some extent (though listening to a lot of LINKIN PARK in the aftermath of the suicide of Chester Bennington also helped) and made me realise that there was some really unusual ideas in the metal scene which I barely had paid attention to before now. In that regard, it was the most important metal record of the year to me and deserves recognition for that fact.
Best Non-Metal Record Of 2017
Interestingly, this is the first time I have had far more nominations for record of the year where the choices were not rock related in the slightest than were. So, to save giving an honourable mentions list which needs more lines than this whole paragraph, here’s the records that DIDN’T get the award:
Under Burning Skies - The Souljazz Orchestra
Empty Rooms - Halflives
Hell Yeah - KMFDM
Beautiful Trauma - P!nk
Stones - Manafest
TLC - TLC
Fénix - Nicky Jam
El Paradise - Los Amigos Invisibles
Under Your Spell - The Birthday Massacre
Heart Break - Lady Antebellum
Songs of Robert Burns - Robyn Stapleton
okay. - As It Is
Doing the maths for the curious, that’s 3 nominations which are undeniably in the rock spectrum (Halflives, Manafest and As It Is), 3 which are debatable (The Birthday Massacre and KMFDM) and 6 which absolutely are not (everything else). The winner...is another which is absolutely not rock related: Automaton by Jamiroquai. This was a very big surprise to me, as I originally passed it off as club music from the cover alone...only for it to turn out to be the record which made me love acid-jazz (and remember why I like house music, too!). A great fusion of acid-jazz and more electronic elements, the best way I can describe this album is what you’d get if you got Daft Punk to remix a typical Jamiroquai album...and the results, put bluntly, are fucking amazing! Definitely worth checking out if you have even the slightest interest in house or acid-jazz music!
Best Film Of 2017
I am not going to lie, up until mid-December, I thought this pick had been locked down by Logan essentially by default: nothing else I had seen in 2017 affected me quite as much as it did and, while really depressing, it represented a high water mark for superhero movies to me (ironically enough, by NOT being a superhero movie, for the most part). Then, about a week and a half before Christmas, I went to the cinema with my now-girlfriend to see a film that touched my heart in so many ways that I realised that I HAD to include it as my film of the year: Wonder.
Now, admittedly, when you look at the basic events in the film, it’s easy to think that Wonder isn’t an especially remarkable film. Based on the 2012 children’s novel of the same name by Raquel Jaramillo, the film spends a year in the life of a ten year old boy who is an outcast, going to school for the first time and deals with bullying. Nothing too unusual, I hear you saying: there’s a lot of movies like that out there.
Once the details start getting added in, however, Wonder truly begins to become (pardon the pun) a truly wonderful movie. See, the outcast suffers from Treacher Collins Syndrome, a genetic disorder which affects about 1 in every 50,000 people and is characterised by deformities to much of the face. While I have seen some people criticise the movie for taking an inspirational tone towards the end (especially as Treacher Collins Syndrome is a lifelong condition, with the only ways to make things less noticeable being reconstructive surgery and speech therapy, among many other things), I honestly found myself touched by the story because it DOESN’T sugarcoat the struggles that Treacher Collins Syndrome sufferers have to live with and the film cleverly approaches telling the story from more viewpoints than just the appropriate main character: it tells a larger story that also pays attention to his family (which allows for a look into how a disabled family member can bring strain upon a family, even in the best case scenario where everyone understands the condition and loves their family member), family friends (which shows how friends can drift apart over misunderstandings and that sometimes, this won’t always be a permanent thing) and even personal friends (which shows that someone who is disabled can still be a really good friend once you get used to their condition and are able to look past it to see the person behind it all). It also handles an interracial relationship really nonchalantly: essentially, it just goes “yeah, they’re a couple” and just moves on with the story, not making a big deal about it when it would be so easy to spend some time bringing it up. All of this is powerful stuff and it’s very hard not to be impressed that this is in a film which could have so easily taken the easy way out and focused on just the one story at the expense of a larger, more detailed story which truly comes to life and turns an already powerful movie into an amazing one which is hard not to be touched by.
On top of that, it’s a REALLY well acted movie, with an great cast of actors who turn in solid performances (including a surprisingly great performance by Owen Wilson, who plays the slight manchild of a father with a sense of humour so perfectly that I couldn’t help thinking that he needs to do these roles more often).
While I can see why Wonder might not be for everyone, it’s my film of the year for the simple fact that it is the film I saw in 2017 which I feel simply HAS to be seen by everyone. It might follow a few too many of the cliches one would expect of a film clearly made to win Oscars, but this time, it’s in service of a movie which is truly fantastic and I cannot recommend it enough!
Best Anime Of 2017
I was not expecting to be giving out an anime award originally, but, ever since getting Crunchyroll on my iPhone, I’ve been casually watching anime series a lot in my free time, so I figured that it made sense to provide a nomination! While part of me was tempted to give the award to Nora, Princess, And Stray Cat for some hilarious comedy (and, indeed, it’s my honourable mention, if you don’t mind the slightly awkward fact that the anime is based on a H-game!), the true winner is actually Konohama Kitan. A beautifully touching series inspired by the manga of the same name, Konohama Kitan is a series that tells the story of a young fox spirit named Yuzu and her time working at a hot spring hotel called the Konohanatei. While it has more than a few moments of lesbian fanservice and teasing of being in a relationship which goes so far beyond blatant that I still am not convinced the two characters responsible for it aren’t actually lesbians and in love with each other (yes, even by anime’s not especially subtle standards, the shipping is blatant!), the story has this adorable charm to it which is really sweet to watch and the episodes manage to balance comedy with emotional storytelling beautifully. While those wanting a more action packed story might find the pacing a bit too slow, it is a really solid series that is worth taking the time to watch. Highly recommended!
Best Company of 2017
Yeah, I know, awarding a company an award for not being rampantly dickish seems like giving an award for basic decency, but, considering just how bad 2017 was in terms of dick moves by companies, I feel giving praise for a company who actually got things right would be quite appropriate. To that end, I have to say that Nintendo actually might have been worthy of the most praise as a company in 2017. Not to say that they’ve been perfect (quite a few moves they did were VERY dumb, especially during the start of the year with stuff like the Nintendo 2DS), but, when you look at decisions across the gaming scene from 2017 like the widespread embracing of loot boxes, Nintendo suddenly starts looking much more sensible for not embracing all that bollocks. Combine it with a REALLY great release for a fantastic new console (despite my grumbles over the strong focus on re-releases of games available on other systems) and it’s really hard not to come out of 2017 impressed with Nintendo for treating their audience with a surprisingly large amount of respect in a year when contempt for gamers practically is a new industry standard.
So yeah, through virtue of not embracing dumb trends in modern gaming too heavily and treating their audience with a surprisingly large amount of respect that seemed all too rare in 2017, I have to give the award to Nintendo! While Namco Bandai also have had a pretty great year (so, feel free to consider them an honourable mention if you want!), Nintendo’s success really is all the more remarkable because NOBODY saw it coming when the year started (for those who forget, 2016 was when Nintendo announced that the Wii U would be being discontinued from retail sale once the new year rolled around and the 3DS only really had a big sales boost thanks to Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon...and, arguably, Fire Emblem Fates) and 2017 has just been proof that Nintendo can always surprise people!
Best Catch Up Media
(For those reading for the first time: this is basically where I give a shout out to the stuff which I caught for the first time this year that I feel is worth checking out and don’t mind getting stuff which isn’t necessarily new!)
Brace yourselves, because this is gonna be a long list!
On the music front, I’ve made at least a solid dug into the discographies of a HUGE number of artists. To pick just my favourites, Kate Rusby, Ruth Notman, Shania Twain, Danny & The Champions of the World, Planxty, Vienna Teng, Five Point Plan, Teaze, Destiny Potato, TLC, Mother’s Finest, Los Amigos Invisibles, Jamiroquai, SikTh, BABYMETAL, exist trace, Cynic, TNT, Harem Scarem, Pretty Maids, Eagles, Death, Atheist, Dire Straits, Dir En Grey, John Denver, James Taylor, Highwaymen, Theocracy, Lynyrd Skynard and Def Leppard were artists that I’d spent a lot of time listening deeper to and really enjoying. Going purely on a genre level, 2017 was the year where I REALLY got into acid-jazz after a brief dip into it in 2016 and, indeed, acid-jazz may very well have become one of my favourite genres of music, being a fantastic fusion of jazz, soul, funk and disco that has scope for so many extra sounds alongside that while still managing to have a recognisable core sound that binds it all together. It also reminded me of why I enjoy house music when I actually bother to listen to it, so that’s another point in its favour!
Not counting the Tales franchise (because this whole section would basically comprise of every localised Tales game aside from Zestiria if I did count it!), I’ve also done some catching up on the BlazBlue series, which is a lot of fun if you like fighting games. I also highly recommend Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax (though you’ll probably want the internet on standby, because quite a few of the characters are from media which hasn’t left Japan), God Eater, Guns of Icarus, Super Meat Boy, Persona 4, Skullgirls, The Binding of Isaac, The Expendabros, Long Live The Queen, Overwatch, StarCraft II and Dark Souls, if you haven’t played them yet, as I quite enjoyed my time with them, despite 2017 being the year which I first tried them out! To talk purely on a franchise level, the Tales, Shin Megami Tensei (which includes the Persona subseries) and BlazBlue franchises have won me over this year, after generally mixed reactions to them on first encounter in 2016. I will admit, I misjudged them the first time around and it took giving them a proper go this year to realise how good they really are! To a limited extent, I have also gained an appreciation for Gears of War and Halo this year: while I’d never disliked them, I’d never really had a chance to properly experience them until late in 2017, when snagging my own Xbox 360 also gave me a chance to play the first games in both series and realised that, while some of what they paved the way for in shooters today sits poorly with me, they DO hold up as really fun games in their own right.
I’ve caught up on a good few anime which I’ve quite enjoyed in 2017: Black Lagoon, Blue Exorcist, Ghost in the Shell, Attack on Titan (and the Junior High spin-off), Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Yuri!!! on ICE, Glitter Force and Little Witch Academia. I also have found The Testament of Sister New Devil and The Irregular at Magic High School quite enjoyable, though A LOT of the content in them is unlikely to appeal to most people, so keep this fact in mind if you’re reading this and looking for new stuff to watch!
Slightly unrelated, but I’ve also enjoyed watching BoJack Horseman, Rick ‘n’ Morty, Inspector Gadget, Red Dwarf, Yes Minister and Archer. For most of them, I had not watched a lot of them before, but, with Red Dwarf, it was basically me doing a rewatch of the whole series and loving it all over again!
Worst Game Of 2017
I’ll be honest, I REALLY don’t want to have to give this award to this game. I’m not saying this to make excuses for a terrible game, because, honestly, it really isn’t: it’s flawed and maybe made some choices that weren’t the best in hindsight, but there’s a lot which works about it and, as a fan of the series, I really do not want to have this being my worst game of the year. However, I genuinely have not played a game released in 2017 which was actually worse than this game, so, by that virtue, I have to give this award to Dawn of War III. There was so much potential for this game and it just didn’t manage to capitalise on it on launch: a limited range of multiplayer options hurt its online potential, a lot of questionable decisions were made for how to create armies, the story mode was pretty much a retread of the original Dawn of War (though I’d argue this one is justified: there’s not really a lot of ways to escalate things in 40k without involving Chaos at risk of destroying the universe!), the new voice actors didn’t really give performances on the level of those who they were being compared back to and there just isn’t the variety one would expect of a base game for a Dawn of War game (though I feel those comparing it to Dark Crusade and Retribution are ignoring the fact that those were expansions to their base games, and not the first ones either, so I feel some of the criticism is unfair there!). It’s really not a bad game...but, unfortunately, I genuinely have not played a worse game than it that came out this year, so it has the bad luck of being my worst game of the year.
If it’s any consolation, Relic, I’m not giving your game this award because I hate it: honestly, I DO want to see what you do with the expansion for this game when it comes out! But you can do better than this, I know you can!
Worst Album Of 2017
This one was an interesting one, as two picks found themselves at the bottom on my shitlist for different reasons and each one was a solid candidate for being given the worst album trophy. I was tempted to split this into “worst metal” and “worst non-metal” awards, since they easily give me something to put in each award, but, honestly, by distinguishing the award, I feel like I’m trying to make the metal album look less bad...and, frankly, I don’t want to do that, as both of them are worthy of a lot of criticism in my eyes!
So, for the first time ever, I’m giving the award to two records: Will to Power by Arch Enemy and Now by Shania Twain. Arch Enemy as a band have been coasting on their name for a long time, but Will to Power criminally misuses one of the greatest guitarists in metal today and badly uses Alissa White-Gluz for the second time on top of providing a record that had even less worth listening to than the already underwhelming War Eternal. Shania Twain, by contrast, returned from her long hiatus sounding not like her usual, faintly rock-influenced country self, but like your typical average country pop singer who relies WAY too heavily on the auto tune...and also failed to provide anything worth listening to. Twist my arm and ask me which is worse and I’d say that at least Shania Twain has an excuse for her material sounding different (her divorce from Mutt Lange made some style change a necessity) and relying so heavily on the auto tune (she did basically have to retrain herself how to sing after several years of what was basically vocal paralysis, to say nothing of the fact that it’s been 15 years since her last record, so her voice changing is understandable), which is FAR more than I can say for Arch Enemy. Even then, I refuse to accept that those excuses should magically fix the problems I have with Now, so my criticism (and, thus, giving it the award) still stands!
So, for the first time ever, I’m giving the award to two records: Will to Power by Arch Enemy and Now by Shania Twain. Arch Enemy as a band have been coasting on their name for a long time, but Will to Power criminally misuses one of the greatest guitarists in metal today and badly uses Alissa White-Gluz for the second time on top of providing a record that had even less worth listening to than the already underwhelming War Eternal. Shania Twain, by contrast, returned from her long hiatus sounding not like her usual, faintly rock-influenced country self, but like your typical average country pop singer who relies WAY too heavily on the auto tune...and also failed to provide anything worth listening to. Twist my arm and ask me which is worse and I’d say that at least Shania Twain has an excuse for her material sounding different (her divorce from Mutt Lange made some style change a necessity) and relying so heavily on the auto tune (she did basically have to retrain herself how to sing after several years of what was basically vocal paralysis, to say nothing of the fact that it’s been 15 years since her last record, so her voice changing is understandable), which is FAR more than I can say for Arch Enemy. Even then, I refuse to accept that those excuses should magically fix the problems I have with Now, so my criticism (and, thus, giving it the award) still stands!
So yeah, both records are my worst albums of the year. Call me lazy if you want that I've put both in one category, but I consider it efficiency!
Worst Film Of 2017
I know that some people will be labelling this a troll review right from the moment I say what movie is getting this award from me, so let me back up a bit and stress this now: I do not think this is a bad movie. Unfortunately, it is the movie which I was most disappointed by in 2017 and I never saw a movie which I could fairly label as a bad movie (not even Ghost in the Shell struck me as bad, just very flawed), so this leaves this movie with the award by default. So take this award more as a sign of how few movies I saw in 2017 rather than a sign of the movie actually being bad.
With that out of the way, the film I felt to be the worst movie of 2017 was Star Wars: The Last Jedi. On a purely technical level, there isn’t anything wrong with this movie: the effects are great, the cinematography is great and the acting is solid. Unfortunately, it all comes down to the story for me...and, put bluntly, I think this is the worst story of any Star Wars movie to date (yes, even compared to the prequels). It fails to live up to its claims of being a truly original story after the heavily rehashed story of The Force Awakens, being basically a retread of The Empire Strikes Back with some Return of the Jedi mixed in, about a third of the story is completely pointless when you think about it (and could have easily been avoided had someone thought to just tell another person their plan right from the start) while simultaneously being padded out with several unnecessary endings, the story pointlessly kills off interesting characters who, by all rights, should have been kept for another movie and ultimately results in a film which somehow manages to do everything wrong on the story front while using visual effects to conceal this fact.
Now, is it possible that I am being way too harsh? Oh yeah, undeniably: The Empire Strikes Back arguably had some of the same issues and I will admit that, as a technical achievement, The Last Jedi is amazing! However, it is really telling that I felt that the prequel trilogy had better storytelling than The Last Jedi (even factoring out the rehashing), because the ultimate question that I came out of The Last Jedi with was “What exactly was the point of the main characters being in this movie when they felt mostly superfluous to the actual story being told?” Say what you will about the prequel trilogy, but the main characters actually were important to the events of the main stories. Here, though, the only thing that the main characters really did in this film is encourage a character to kill another character (which did nothing to affect their overall morality), encourage a character to fight another character (which resulted in their death), fight another character and watch their perceived death in a thoroughly anticlimactic fight and accidentally cause the First Order to be aware of something which, had they not been in the story, would have potentially saved hundreds of lives.
That’s pretty much the extent of the main cast’s importance to the whole film, told spoiler free. You could literally have the main cast cut from this movie and little-to-nothing would change. In fact, if anything, it might have actually worked out better for the rebels!
This is the point I’m making: as technically well made as The Last Jedi is, the story is just a mess that has the main cast do nothing of any major importance and may, in fact, have ended better for the rebels had the main cast simply not existed in this movie. In a movie which followed up a really solid movie that followed the main cast really well, this is a pretty big screw up on the writing front which is hard to ignore!
So yeah, as harsh as it may be to name a technically great movie as my worst film of 2017, The Last Jedi just did not live up to the hype at all for me. Technically brilliant, yet woefully ill thought out on the story front, this is just a frustrating movie that only leaves me asking what the point of making new numbered Star Wars movies is if all that Disney are going to do is rehashing the original trilogy to increasingly diminishing returns. I love Star Wars, but I’m not letting The Last Jedi off the hook because it’s part of one of my favourite film franchises and I really, REALLY hope that episode 9 finally does something truly original with the story, because, if it just rehashes Return of the Jedi, I’m gonna be furious!
Worst Company Of 2017
I could keep this short and just say that, a few select exceptions aside, the entire triple-A gaming scene deserves this award. However, I feel giving an award that vast would be unprofessional, so I’m going to focus on one company...and, let’s be honest, if you’re a gamer at all (and probably not even then, as this was in the mainstream news), then this should be VERY unsurprising, considering their actions not only destroyed what little goodwill they’d regained from most gamers, but outright opened the entire gaming scene up to investigation from gambling regulators due to how heavily they’d pushed loot boxes in one of the most hyped games of the year: Electronic Arts. None of this is to say that Warner Bros. should be allowed to sleep easy (they were just as guilty of doing this in Middle-earth: Shadow of War) or that Blizzard don’t deserve condemnation for starting this whole trend off with Overwatch, but EA had the stupidity of pushing loot boxes in a game that was likely to be played by hyped up children who were huge Star Wars fans AND made so much of the game built around it that gambling regulators have cited it as their main reason why they stepped in to examine whether loot boxes are gambling...and the results so far, while not official findings which will enforce major action from the law yet, are “yes, it is”.
Bear in mind, this is from multiple countries worth of gambling regulators, too, not just the US, so anyone wanting to argue it isn’t, there are ENTIRE NATIONS worth of regulators saying that, nope, you’re the ones who are wrong here. You ain’t winning this debate any more, sorry! And yet, despite this being a REALLY good reason to drop loot boxes permanently and move away from the whole mess, EA have learnt absolutely nothing from that and haven’t changed course at all: it plans to bring them back at a later date, to say nothing of the fact that several of their games releasing after Star Wars Battlefront II will still have loot boxes in them!
This, in and of itself, would be very good reason to give EA the award (kind of hard to think of anything more insulting than bringing entire nations worth of gambling regulators down on the entire industry’s head over loot boxes and STILL continuing to show contempt to gamers by planning to bring it back at a later date and putting them in future games right after the whole debacle!), but there’s another couple of facts which really cement why EA deserve the award. Their games library this year have been underwhelming (on its own, not a reason to give the award, but certainly not helping their case for anyone wanting to defend them), their awful treatment of the Mass Effect franchise this year (not only closing down the studio which made Mass Effect: Andromeda, BioWare Montreal, but pretty much killing off the franchise in all functional terms) has been infuriating to many and they have basically shown a complete disregard for gamers in a time when people in general have less money than they used to by forcing so many microtransactions into games. It is telling that even Konami, despite their actions in the past two and a half years or so, have incurred FAR less wrath online this year than EA have.
I’m not someone who likes holding onto grudges, so I’m not going to say that EA have basically proven their naysayers right this year for refusing to trust them. But I genuinely cannot think of a company who have acted worse this year than EA have. In a sea of bad decisions from the triple-A video game scene this year, EA have topped the list by such a huge measure that I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who can look at their behaviour this year and seriously say “Nah, other gaming companies have acted worse this year!”
So congratulations, EA, for being such rampant dicks and so devoted to being complete idiots that you might very well have put the entire video game scene into the same category as gambling and done so with nothing in your pocket to earn back the goodwill of gamers. Was it really worth it?
Biggest Surprise Of 2017
There’s quite a few answers I could give to this one, if I’m honest, but, focusing purely on the media side of things, I would have to say that the biggest surprise of the year for me was actually KMFDM’s Hell Yeah, because, in so many ways, it is NOT what I’d usually listen to. I usually am not interested in the industrial spectrum of music even at the best of times and, while I did recognise the band for “Ultra” (Anime Abandon uses it as the show’s intro music), I wasn’t sure that I would like them enough to want to listen to a full record by them.
Then I checked out “Hell Yeah” by them when it came out.
Fast forward about half a year later and the record the song came from (Hell Yeah) is a record which I still love listening to now, to the extent that it was actually one of my nominations for record of the year! I think it’s because KMFDM’s take on industrial, at least on this record, is MUCH more electronica influenced than industrial, which makes the sides of industrial which I don’t like less prominent while still keeping a lot of the obvious features of industrial (and some industrial metal) to make something that is surprisingly accessible while still being able to be really heavy. There’s a lot which really works about the record and it is ultimately just a fun listen. Considering I normally would have passed over it out of complete disinterest, I’m honestly surprised at just how much I enjoy the album! Ironically, on some forums I’ve visited, it’s actually considered among the band’s worst records (which isn’t to say it’s considered bad, just that the ratings it has had attached to it place it among the worst received records that they’ve done to date), which really leaves me wondering just what the band at their best sound like, because Hell Yeah is a record I really enjoy and want to hear more stuff like!
Biggest Disappointment of 2017
Alright, so, ignoring the stuff which has been given awards already by me (and the obvious joke answer of “myself”), there’s actually very little which especially disappointed me that came out this year. Some of this probably comes for the fact that so much of this year has been me enjoying stuff that hadn’t came out this year, but there’s honestly not been a lot which I’d been hyped up for which came out this year and which, as a result, left me feeling disappointed (well, except for the stuff which I’ve already given awards to, obviously!).
That said, there is one album I’ve not mentioned yet which came out this year which I had hoped would be better than it actually was: Bringer of Pain by Battle Beast. Now, I was well aware that the band had lost a very important member before the album came out (I mean, he was their main songwriter, a co-vocalist, one of their guitarists and served as their co- producer, as well as taking on pretty much EVERY production related task on their self-titled album), so I was expecting a dip somewhere, but, honestly, having been let down by Unholy Saviour back in 2015, I wasn’t exactly sitting waiting for the blown away by the new album: I just wanted something decent. The single, “King for a Day” wasn’t BAD, but it felt rather underwhelming, so I was hoping that the rest of the album would be better.
It...wasn’t. Granted, some moments were decent, but I was mostly bored by the record and it just didn’t grab me much, which is a pretty big failure when you realise that the point of metal is to grab your attention! I wouldn’t normally put a record in this category that I didn’t have high hopes for in advance, but, bear in mind, their self-titled record was one of my favourite records of 2013 and Unholy Saviour still had some solid tracks, so I was hoping that, against all the odds, something good would come out of Bringer of Pain. Unfortunately, Bringer of Pain was just too underwhelming to really be worth the wait and didn’t really do enough to be worth paying much attention in general. It didn’t incur any wrath from me like the offerings by Arch Enemy or Shania Twain that came out this year did, but it is telling that I still can’t remember much about the record, despite it having been out for most of the year!
Sorry, Battle Beast, but, if this is your best now, then you might be better off hanging up your boots now, because this isn’t going to cut it in the slightest. I’m giving you one more chance when the follow up to this finally comes out, but, if you don’t step your game up, I’m giving up on you entirely and sticking with Beast in Black!
Hopes for 2018
On the album front, I’m really looking forward to seeing confirmed new releases by Shinedown, Orphaned Land, Judas Priest, At The Gates, Job for a Cowboy, Kamelot, Joan Baez, Rammstein, Queensryche, Machine Head and Dorothy. As for personal wishes, I am already hoping to see new releases of Fefe Dobson, New Device, BABYMETAL, Adam Lambert, The Brand New Heavies, Knightmare, Raise the Anchors, Destiny Potato, Hacktivist, TNT, Urban Species, One Last Run, Salsa Celtica, Kate Rusby, Ruth Notman, Vienna Teng, System of a Down, Without Mercy and Vixen. As remote as some of these are, I also am hoping for reunions from Five Point Plan, Planxty and The Morning After, as well as for any of those artists who I mentioned in the personal wishes above if they’re no longer active and just haven’t let people know yet!
On the film front, I’m looking forward to the MCU movies that are confirmed for next year, as well as Deadpool 2, Incredibles 2, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (yes, I know it’s almost certainly going to be crap, but I liked the original film and I like ABBA, let me have my guilty pleasures!), Venom, Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2, Mary Poppins Returns and Pacific Rim: Uprising. However, I will also be making a concentrated effort to try to keep an eye open for movies that are not connected to an established franchise, so this list is more the stuff that I know is coming up which I’m wanting to check out.
On the games front, I am looking forward to Monster Hunter: World, Persona 5: Dancing Star Night and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, as well as confirmed re-releases/remasters/ports of Radiant Historia, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy XV and Under Night In-Birth to systems I can actually play them on. I am also interested in Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game, Valkyria Chronicles 4 (though Sega better not screw it up by rushing it like they did with last year’s game!) and the upcoming Fire Emblem game. I am hoping that this year will bring a gen 7 remake of Pokémon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl, Project X Zone 3, God Eater 3, Code Vein and a new Rayman game, though whether these are especially likely to actually happen, I don’t know.
So, that's my 2017 awards. Hope you discovered some new stuff, had a great 2017 and are looking forward to what 2018 will bring!
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