The way that you have to hunt these mechanical beasts with primitive bow and arrow or grappling hook is especially compelling, meaning that you’re always walking a fine line between being the hunter and the hunted.

From Aloy, its great new heroine, to the intriguing post-apocalyptic setting it’s no wonder that it struck a chord with PlayStation owners this year.Īt its core are the tense and fraught battles with the machines that now roam the world. It’s outstanding as it blends new ideas with the familiarity of the Zelda universe, likely setting the course for the series’ future. If you own a Nintendo Switch or a Wii U, this is practically essential.įor Guerrilla Games to step away from the first person shooter genre was a bold decision, but it’s one that paid dividends, resulting in the fantastic open world action adventure of Horizon Zero Dawn. A huge and freeform open world of Hyrule lies before you to explore however you see fit, taking on the Divine Beast temples, tackling puzzling and challenging Shrines as you come across them, while combat has borrowed from the stamina-led style of the Souls-like genre of action RPG. With Eiji Aonuma at the helm, Breath of the Wild started anew. Through the series’ 31 years, it’s had many moments that have defined the series, but none have been quite as bold as this. With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo graced not one, but two generations of home console with one of the finest video games of all time. There’s still time to vote for your Game of the Year in our community poll! This year’s discussion boiled down to two main contenders, two platform exclusives, but as close as the vote was, we have to choose a winner.

Naturally that makes it one of the most hotly contested genres and one that’s so often leads directly into the final deliberations for the overall Game of the Year. You have the likes of Uncharted going up against the latest Assassin’s Creed, you’ve got the tense stamina-based combat of Nioh competing with the equally tense and fraught Resident Evil, and so on.

Every time we come to consider the action adventure genre, we’re always caught out by just how broad and all-encompassing the genre description is.

Best games of 2017 action adventure pc