
It’s good in that I can say that the grand narrative payoff for the game is exquisite. It is both a good thing and a bad thing that Torment: Tides of Numenera is novel-like in its ambitions and scope. Here’s what’s good on Xbox One in 2017, starting with an enigmatic and intriguing new RPG. We took a look at all the games released on the Xbox One this year, both the exclusives and the multiplatform titles, to sum up the best of what the console had to offer. Also being the exclusive console home of the phenomenon known as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds doesn’t hurt. With new hardware and at least one solid hit, the Xbox One ended 2017 on the upswing. The Xbox One X came out too late in the year to really change that narrative, but it might’ve started to close the gap. Like our lead editor Garrett, I’m not too invested in the so-called console wars, but as he noted in our PlayStation 4 round-up, the Sony console has traditionally gotten more attention from the games media. Cuphead has since gone double platinum, selling two million units since its debut. While not solely available on the Xbox One (players can also find it on PC), its absence on PlayStation 4 was deeply felt, scoring a win for the underdog upon the game’s release in late September. On the other, Xbox One X, touted as the world’s most powerful existing console, was released this year, updating the performance of many games in the console’s back catalog, and offering graphics natively rendered in 4K resolution.

On one hand, the platform has been dogged by complaints of a thin library with too few exclusives, and for that, continued to live in the shadow of PlayStation 4 in 2017.
