The Best PS4 Games Of 2017 That You Can't Play Anywhere Else
This year has felt like an absolute blessing when it comes to great games to play. No matter what consoles you own, you're not far from any of 2017's game of the year contenders. While each platform certainly has its own wide selection to choose from, Sony's PlayStation 4 has been blazing fire when it comes to hits. To make things even more impressive, Sony's PlayStation 4 exclusive titles cover a wide range of genres and styles. From fresh concepts to spin-offs and sequels, these are the best PlayStation 4 games of 2017 you won't find anywhere else.
Horizon: Zero Dawn
Best known for the Killzone series, developer Guerrilla Games turned its attention to an all-new open-world action game in Horizon: Zero Dawn. It was unlike anything we'd seen from Guerrilla before, and it had massive robotic fauna roaming its lands. From the first trailer, gamers were hooked. Then they played the game and never wanted to leave.
Focused on the journey of an outcast female warrior named Aloy, Horizon: Zero Dawn took players across a post-apocalyptic southwest in the search for answers about where Aloy came from and how she could stop a virus from turning all the robotic animals in the world into violent killing machines. Aloy's adventure was at times heartbreaking and somber, but it was also hopeful–something we rarely see in post-apocalyptic journeys.
Plus, critics and consumers alike loved the fantastic combat and crafting mechanics, including some truly unique weapons for slaying some of Zero Dawn's larger beasts. Coupled with absolutely stunning art design and scoring, and you've got not just one of the year's best PlayStation 4 games, but one of the best PS4 games to date.
Yakuza 0
Sega's Yakuza franchise has called Sony's platform home since the PlayStation 2, with each entry continuing to tell the expanding story of Kazuma Kiryu and his friends and foes in the fictional Japanese city of Kamurocho. For the first PlayStation 4 entry to ship outside of Japan, Sega localized Yakuza 0, the first prequel in the series, and the perfect jumping-on point for new audiences that hadn't spent a decade immersed in the world of the Japanese mafia.
Split between two main protagonists in Kiryu and Goro Majima, Yakuza 0 breaks down the earliest days of the series regulars, including Kiryu's rise as a real estate mogul and Majima's time as the best hostess club owner in all of Kamurocho. The beat-'em-up RPG has some incredible writing, full of mystery and fantastic characterization, with the added benefit of some really goofy extra content like karaoke, batting cages, and phone dating.
Yakuza 0 also features the best iteration of combat in the series so far, with multiple styles to learn for each character. There's just so much to engage in, you could play this game for hundreds of hours and still have more to do.
Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age
The original Final Fantasy XII was one of the greatest games on the PlayStation 2, and was a technical marvel that helped close out the final days of the console. That said, audiences outside of Japan didn't get the complete version of the game until Square-Enix re-released it this year as Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age. For the first time, players around the globe could enjoy the International Zodiac Job System, along with high-definition graphics, a remastered soundtrack, and of course, trophies.
Whether you played Final Fantasy XII when it released back in 2006 or for the first time this year, the new Zodiac Job System gave some tremendous depth the game's already impressive character leveling mechanics. Rather than just having one board, players had 12 different license boards to choose from, each corresponding to a different sign of the zodiac. These license boards were how each of your party members could learn new abilities, in addition to gaining more hit points, magic, and strength.
Some might say the high coat of gloss given to Final Fantasy XII makes the game world and art too crisp and clear, robbing the original game of its impressionistic charm. That may be true, but every facet of the fantastic design is still in place, and looks better than ever, making this the clear best version of an already great game.
Polybius
It's not often an urban legend actually comes to life, but that's just what happened with Polybius, a super-psychedelic shooter. For those who aren't familiar with the story that reportedly originated sometime between 1998 and 2000, gamers have been talking about a government-made arcade game from the 1980s that was used to experiment on gamers' minds.
In 2017, Polybius came out for the PlayStation 4 with full PSVR support, the latest in a long line of trippy shoot-'em-ups from Llamasoft, which previously released hits like Tempest 2000 and Space Giraffe. Few developers would be so bold as to name a game after such an incredibly conspiratorial myth like Polybius, but the game more than lived up to its own hype.
Perhaps the legend of Polybius is what gave Llamasoft the inspiration to make such a senses-shattering virtual reality title to begin with, as the old gamer's tale has always placed the fictional version of Polybius in the same creative space as this actual release. Players speed through a high-intensity visual landscape, taking down anything that flies in their faces. Since the landscape is fixed, there's next to no motion sickness. It also helps you feel the sensation of incredible speed Polybius forces on you for higher scores.
Though the men in black suits may not be coming to your house to watch you play, you might never know since you'll be in a VR headset anyway. Besides, who cares if they're watching while you set a new high score?
Uncharted: Lost Legacy
Nathan Drake's story finished up quite nicely with 2016's Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, so how would the series continue now that its lead character was retired? Rather spectacularly thanks to Uncharted: Lost Legacy. A shorter journey than any of the proper entries, Uncharted: Lost Legacy found that the franchise had plenty of legs to stand on when Nathan Drake was out of the picture–those legs just happened to belong to women.
Lost Legacy follows the story of the unlikely team-up of Chloe Frazier and Nadine Ross, two adventure-seekers who stood toe-to-toe with Nathan Drake in the past. Taking some familiar elements of combat and exploration from A Thief's End and adding in some new mechanics, like lockpicking and a minimal dialogue system, Lost Legacy expanded on the franchise without having to rely on shoehorning in another adventure for the familiar male lead.
Chloe and Nadine were both more than capable of standing on their own with Nate, but really came into their own in this spin-off. With the trademark Naughty Dog characterization and action set pieces, Lost Legacy cemented itself as more than just a pretty game, but a worthwhile addition to the Uncharted lineage.
Everybody's Golf
Formerly known as Hot Shots Golf outside of Japan, the Everybody's Golf franchise is as synonymous with the PlayStation brand as any of its long-running exclusive series. This year's release offered something new for the franchise: completely open courses for gamers to explore online with friends. Sure, the rest of the game relied on a beefy single-player experience, but online is where Everybody's Golf truly let you test your 18-hole mettle.
Everybody's Golf brought the same stylized characters and world to life, but with those cartoonish elements also came the fantastic physics that have kept fans coming back to this series over the last two decades. The power of the PlayStation 4 also meant that, for the first time in series history, the front and back portions of a course were all visible at once–in previous entries, single holes lived in limbo all their own. Now players could take advantage of shortcuts that dramatically reduced stroke counts and also see how other players were doing a few holes over in real-time.
It's not without its shortcomings, as post-launch support hasn't been tremendous, but Everybody's Golf is as enjoyable as any entry in the series to this point, and certainly a must for PlayStation 4 fans.
Gravity Rush 2
It's not uncommon for portable games to gain some success and find their sequels released on bigger platforms. Such was the case for PlayStation 4's Gravity Rush 2, whose predecessor was a lovely physics-defying escapade on the Vita. Taking place directly after that adventure, Gravity Rush 2 once again put players in the shoes of Kat and Raven as they had to save another city from a gravitational attack.
Much of the original feel and flow of the first game returned, along with two new gravity powers: Luna, which let Kat jump higher and faster, and Jupiter, which let Kat alter her mass to be heavier and more powerful. The added power of the PlayStation 4 meant the world Kat and Raven explored could be more developed too, allowing for more vibrancy and diversity. Players could interact with normal citizens, the world had destructible environments, and new enemy types plagued Kat and Raven at every turn. Of course, there was also the added benefit of having a much larger screen to enjoy the wonderful topsy-turvy antics and animations.
Farpoint
Since arriving in 2016, the PlayStation VR had been waiting for its killer app. There have been a number of solid games released for the peripheral, but gamers were most excited about Farpoint, Sony's own first-party shooter that came complete with a new gun controller. Taking place on a distant planet in the future, Farpoint dropped players in a planetary expedition gone wrong, with all kinds of extraterrestrial enemies threatening to give them a digital dirt nap.
Farpoint has several aspects working in its favor, such as a somewhat linear progression to keep players from getting too much motion stickness, a rudimentary cover system, and reloading that asks players to actually move their arms a bit rather than just pushing a button for more ammo. The action is well-paced, and the plot is actually very solid for a game that looked like it would be nothing but rehashed tropes.
As one of the most complete virtual reality titles on PlayStation 4, Farpoint has earned its place as one of 2017's best games for the console.
Knack II
Okay, hear us out before you get all high and mighty about Knack II being on this list. Yes, the first Knack was very bland. It was more of a tech demo for what the PlayStation 4 was capable of than it was an actual, capable game. However, Knack II is so much better than its predecessor, and it's actually one of the most kid-friendly cooperative experiences available that doesn't have the word "Lego" in the title.
Knack II picks up shortly after the events of the first game, with the big guy and his friends having to fight back against another goblin uprising before another war breaks out. The experience is still fairly linear, but hearkens back to the fun of action-platformers of the early PlayStation era while boasting all the benefits of a modern console. Every little piece of Knack is rendered in real-time, and his shape-shifting abilities really do look great in motion. The animation is tremendous even if some of the character and world design feels a bit dated.
This is a simple adventure with some light puzzle-solving elements that's perfect for families looking for ways to play together, and shows that creator Mark Cerny's heart was in the right place all along. It just took another game in the series to get there.
Hidden Agenda
At E3 2017, PlayStation unveiled its new PlayLink initiative, which allows for people to play or interact with games on their smartphones. If you've spent any time with Jackbox Party Pack over the past few years, you have a bit of an idea of what to expect from the PlayLink line-up of trivia games and goofy party antics. However, Hidden Agenda takes things in a different direction entirely.
Hidden Agenda is another mysterious choose-your-own-adventure from Supermassive Games, who you might remember from Until Dawn. This time around, players are attempting to solve the case of The Trapper, a serial killer that's on the verge of striking again. Rather than pitting you and your friends against each other in a quirky quiz, one person controls the characters, and others get to vote on which responses are made to keep the plot rolling. Quick-time events do have some bearing on the events, but letting conversations and major choices fall to the group keeps everyone on their toes.
There may not be as much replay value as there was in a game like Until Dawn, but Hidden Agenda definitely has some great mystery mileage for those looking for something out of the ordinary.