If you were around for the electropop zeitgeist of the early 2010s, chances are that Purity Ring feature prominently on your nostalgia playlist. And if you were a young adult at that time, well, there's also a high chance that you played Japanese role-playing games as a teenager – whether that was Chrono Trigger on an SNES or Final Fantasy on a PlayStation. Purity Ring's new single Many Lives is an attempt to recapture the feeling of the RPG that you discovered as a 12-year-old and immediately made into your whole personality. Inspired by games such as Skies of Arcadia, Phantasy Star Online and Secret of Mana, it is poised to tug on the heartstrings of fans of a certain vintage. This is a bold decision for a band who have previously collaborated with Deftones and covered Eurodance classics, but members Megan James and Corin Roddick have the gaming expertise to pull it off. "We're huge fans of the JRPG genre," they say, naming Nier: Automata and Final Fantasy X as major influences on the sonic atmosphere of their latest work.

Playing this game on the Nintendo Switch only underscored how rare such an experience is not just on the platform, but in the medium in general. Yoko Taro has famously said he finds games that stick to genre conventions boring, which is why his titles often mix and match formulas on the fly. In its first five minutes, the game covers twin-stick shooters, side-scrolling action and top-down shoot'em up gameplay in a virtuosic opening sequence, all while retaining the same button controls, maintaining coherence in player participation.

The much-lauded action-RPG NieR: Automata is being developed into an anime series, Square Enix has announced. A teaser trailer shows a potential glimpse of how it will look (and not much else), and the developers also tweeted an image of the lead character 2B and her Pod companion robot. It appears that the story will closely follow the plot of the original game. "The stage is a distant future in which human beings are routing to the moon in front of the overwhelming force of'machine life forms' that aliens unleash," according to the developer's blog post. "The '2B' belonging to the newly organized android unit'Yorha' will put himself into a fierce battle to recapture the Earth."

Bereft of his signature mask – which he will not be photographed without – and perched awkwardly on a folding chair, video game director Yoko Taro has the air of a dishevelled monk. The famously camera shy developer behind cult hit games like Drakengard 3 and last year's Nier: Automata listens attentively as questions and answers are rapidly translated. "To be honest, I think I am making normal games targeted towards normal people," he says. "But ultimately when I release those normal games, weird people find them to be weird games and enjoy them. Which probably means there's something wrong with me."

On the second floor of an unassuming office building in Shibuya, Tokyo, a process of transformation is happening. "We don't want to stand out," says Hiroko Minamoto, president and co-founder of video game translation firm 8-4. The company, named after the final level of Super Mario Bros, specialises in repackaging Japanese video games for English-speaking audiences, or vice versa. "When localisation is bad, that's when it stands out, and that's when people yell at us. We want it to be natural."

Nier: Automata was one of the most surprising games of 2017. The Japanese RPG had a mind-bending story, conceived by Nier and Drakengard director Yoko Taro, and a snappy combat system refined by Bayonetta developer PlatinumGames. It was a huge success for Square Enix, shifting more than 3 million copies and winning countless awards. Now, the game is coming to Xbox One. A special Become As Gods edition will hit the Xbox Store on June 26th, bundling the base game, the 3C3C1D119440927 expansion, and a slew of in-game skins and accessories, including a Grimoire Weiss-themed robot companion.

I never got around to playing Nier: Automata. Yes, I know it was on a bunch of GOTY lists, and I know that it combines solid gameplay with some genuinely intriguing ruminations on artificial intelligence and humanity. But it was a busy year, and nobody can play all the games that come out, not even all the big ones: Divinity Original Sin 2 nearly sucked an entire two weeks out of my life, after all, and Destiny 2 chewed up a huge chunk of playtime before running thin. So where was I supposed to find the time to play Nier: Automata? Yes, alright, I guess I have more free time than I thought.

The start of a new year is a good time for reflection, and as we head into 2018 I think it's time to take on a big one: How much do a game's graphics actually matter? Around the time of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launch I remember a lot of discussion about whether we needed new, more powerful consoles. That was four years ago and even then the conversation was old. And as a PC gamer primarily, I can understand the counterpoints--there's a thrill to good-looking games, to those "Can it run Crysis?" But 2017 marked the confluence of two opposing trends coming to a head, and as such is a uniquely appropriate moment to resurface the discussion. On the one hand, you had the industry's giants resorting to underhanded monetization tactics (mostly loot boxes) to ostensibly offset the ballooning costs of development.

While 2017 has generally been an awful year, the sheer number of excellent games has been quite astonishing. PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch have benefited the most from wonderful exclusives, while cross-platform AAAs have been significantly better than last year. After playing through countless hours of video games, The Independent's staff has managed to create an end-of-year list featuring games from across all genres. Of course, there could only be one number one, and a worthy (unsurprising) winner has come out top. Without further ado, here are our 15 best games of 2017.

There's a big reason why the PlayStation 4 is the best-selling console: It has a smattering of games that you can't play anywhere else. Think: blockbusters like Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Bloodborne. But even if Indiana Jones simulators and massive open worlds where you hunt down robo-dinosaurs aren't your thing, there are still plenty of exclusives to pick from. Whether it's the best baseball video game franchise, a choose-your-own-adventure horror or an engrossing social simulator/JRPG hybrid, there's a lot to play on Sony's latest console. And then there are games from massive third-party publishers like Activision and Ubisoft, along with quirky indie offerings to round out the selection.