Every year, Digital Trends editors hand pick the most exciting products we’ve had the privilege of handling this year. Make sure to check out award winners in categories from cars to computers, plus the overall best product of 2017! Read on for the games that floored us this year.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gives new meaning to the idea of “going on an adventure” in a video game. Nintendo has been telling Zelda tales for 30 years, but this one not only feels fresh relative to its predecessors, it feels unique among all games — a truly rare phenomenon in 2017.
This game takes its hands off the reins and allows you to explore the world your own way. You can go anywhere at any time. Some areas may be too difficult for you without the right equipment, but there’s nothing stopping you from finding what you need and coming back. Restricted only by your skill and imagination, you can always look out into the distance, pick a point on the horizon and just go.
Many open-world games built for exploring feel like a series of key locations strung together with visually interesting, but ultimately flat scenery, but Breath of the Wild’s land of Hyrule feels alive. There are creatures, friendly and dangerous, travelling on every road, sleeping in every clearing, and hovering over every mountain summit. No spot in the world feels out of place, or like a technical seam meant to hide loading enemies: You are meant to see every square inch of it.
Breath of the Wild is one of the rare few that gives you the tools and inspires you to try new things.
And you’ll want to go out and find it. It feels like every new interaction — every quest, puzzle, and activity — introduces some new gameplay element or weird quirk. It’s always exciting to see what’s over the next hill. That desire is so strong, in fact, that we’ve heard of many players who have spent dozens of hours wandering without conquering any of the core “Divine Beast” temples.
That, more than anything, is what makes Breath of the Wild feel special. Plenty of games offer you a sandbox and give you toys to play with. (Nintendo’s other major release this year, Super Mario Odyssey, does it extremely well). Breath of the Wild is one of the rare few that gives you the tools and inspires you to try new things.
Read our full The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.