The patch note is an underappreciated art form. Among the dry details of damage buffs and bug fixes are occasionally brilliant puns or revelatory details about the absurd complexity of videogames. Dwarf Fortress is the undisputed king of unintentionally hilarious updates ("Cleaned up the bear situation"), but we've also written about some of the all-time greats from Ark: Survival Evolved, Rust, and World of Warcraft.

Absurdity is always with us, though, and the good gods know we've needed every laugh we could find in 2017. To find the very best ones, I dove through the 2017 community updates and patch notes from all kinds of games. Deep, open-world survival games are always good for a laugh. After all, they model systems like pooping and sleeping, and a mention of "shitting the bed" is already 90 percent of a joke.

H1Z1

12/13

• Blood effects have been changed back to the classic mist effect. 

12/7

• Toxic Cargo Pants have been updated to be more consistent 

11/15 

• Shooting from a passenger seat should no longer result in hitting a teammate in the backseat. 

8/29 

• Old rocks have been removed and replaced with new, varied rock formations.
• Players should no longer fall out of their parachute. 

7 Days to Die

via reddit user u/nettech09

10/26 

• Some general improvements to zombie jumping
• Fixed: Snakes are fireproof

8/31

• Fixed: Businessman Zombie when killed can have his head dislocated when he falls backwards 
• Fixed: Vultures can fly underwater
• Fixed: Bears and wolves walk on water 

8/04

• Fixed: Wrong open sound on eviscerated remains
• Fixed: Dysentery description does not mention that it is lethal 

6/06

• Added: Moldy Bread is a science crafting item
• Changed: Fat zombie cops are bigger
• Changed: Zombie soldiers are less generous with the rocket launchers
• Fixed: Breaking down a car on the sloped road will create a hole in the world 

Oxygen Not Included

10/5

• Stress vomiting Duplicants infected with Hypothermia should no longer vomit "Hypothermia germs" 

8/31

• Fixed a crash that could occur if a Duplicant died while using a wash basin 

3/02

• Algae distillery has a much longer conversion interval
• Duplicants no longer use the massage table during red alert 

Ylands

12/9

• Horse is no longer perceived as a threat when sleeping 

Medieval Engineers

via reddit user u/zacrynix

12/12

• Fixed a crash when you walk on the exact north pole. 

11/28

• The Janitor will now clean up any static grids in the center of the planet. 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

via reddit user u/beerye 

12/27  

• Fixed the issue where the falling speed meter text was showing abnormally in Portuguese 

12/11

• Fixed the issue where player's footstep sound was silenced when player moved diagonally or wore particular shoes 

12/8

• Fixed the issue where while vaulting in FPP, player could look inside own body 

Lone Echo

8/30 

• Repeatedly punching the dummies will no longer result in a crash. Swing away. 

Prey

via reddit user u/everypostepic 

8/2

• Fixed crash when mimicking bass guitar in the Yellow Tulip.
• Player can no longer bypass ceiling collision by mantling GLOO. 
• If the player manages to fully GLOO the greater mimic while it is in mid-lunge toward the player's face, the facegrab animation will no longer play and trap the player. 

5/31

• Superfruit no longer appears shrunken and flat when fully grown.

As I slogged deeper and deeper into the year, dozens of tabs open across three monitors and a laptop, I started to get a little delirious. It was in this moment that I fell in love with the long-suffering community managers and blog writers who compile patch notes. These poor people cry out for help with little quips, "just to see if anyone is still reading this." My friends: I see you, and I love you. 

Astroneer

12/18

• Fixed a few other instances of Client players getting stuck in a wheelie while driving a Rover in Multiplayer games. 

10/12

• Fixed an issue where Rovers would fly into space when loading a save from a rover seat 

9/15

• Fixed a rare crash, that according to engineers was “super weird, and something that should never occur,” involving the game trying to access non-existent Rover wheels.
• Fixed an issue where items would go on a beautiful journey into space if not collected from an dead Astroneer before a second death occurs. 

Hitman

via reddit user u/newbzoors 

7/13

• We've fixed an issue that could cause the toilet in the Marrakesh school to behave erratically after 47 kicks it onto Zaydan. This could occasionally result in 47's death. Seriously. 

Total War: Warhammer

via reddit user u/flavahbeast 

10/25

• FIXED an issue with the AI proposing peace right after entering a war with the player
• FIXED a staircase in Lothern Siege battle map which would cause chariots to spontaneously combust
• FIXED CA Cinematics Team’s obsession with slaying High Elves. May require further testing…
• FIXED Spearmen unit in Tor Elithis Rogue army T-Posing
• Skavenslaves: more salt added to diet; now 25% more delicious 

8/9

• Under-Morking no longer automatically leads to over-Gorking, and vice-versa. The waxing or waning of Morrslieb may affect this. Or it may not. 

The concept of 7 Days to Die is decent: a sandbox zombie survival game that turns into a tower defence strategy when the sun sets and increasing zombie hordes attack, each day leading to harder nights. The reality is a game that has been in alpha for years, with poor graphics, boring environments and uninspired combat.

Even with all the settings on ultra, trees and buildings popped in and out of view, textures looked flat, enemies and animals clipped and flailed into the environment. The biggest problem is the over reliance on repeating assets. I m not sure what kind of world existed before the apocalypse took it, but it was apparently one with identical cinderblocks every third step. The changes in environment are welcome as they give a variation of colour to the scenery but the transitions between, for example, a green forest to a charred wasteland isn t so much a transition as a line down the map.

You ll spend the first few minutes of the game punching trees, grass and rocks in order to make rudimentary tools and clothing. You literally have to punch them in order to get the materials a move seen in games like Minecraft, but looks decidedly odd when the game is at least trying to go for a more realistic tone. Once you re set up with the basics and you no longer have to punch your way through life, gathering gets a lot easier. There is something satisfying about being able to destroy almost everything in the environment. You can either slowly tear down existing ruins or utilise them in your building, although the most effective way to survive is to dig a big hole and create a series of burrows like a huge grubby badger.

The zombies are your standard shambling affair. During the day they are easily avoided, and you can practically walk past them, or run away. They will, however, dig or tear through your defences when night falls, approaching in a great wave to destroy your hard work. Despite having to keep an eye on stamina, health, illnesses, radiation and temperature, your character apparently never needs to sleep.

There s little you can do at night other than defend. It s pitch black and using a torch attracts a dangerous number of enemies. Early on in a playthrough I ended up just crouching in some grass for twenty minutes as I couldn t do anything, and didn t have a settlement to defend yet. When I did have to face my first zombie it was an underwhelming experience. The combat feels like an early Elder Scrolls game. There's lots of clicking and flailing without ever feeling like you re making any contact with the thing you are flailing at.

In singleplayer this routine of gather, build, defend gets repetitive fast. Creative mode allows you to do this without having to worry about your character s health or enemies. I was having an okay time going through the fairly hefty menu of potential building items until sunset. At which point it was too dark to gather or build, so I left the game running and went to have a cup of tea while I waited for the sun a limitation that defeats the point of a boundless creative mode.

Multiplayer seems to be where most of the appeal lies. Anyone can create a server and invite their pals or let strangers join them. There's PvP and PvE, but the latter seems to better fit the survivors vs. zombie apocalypse setting. I can understand the appeal in working with people to build up a fortress, then hunker down and work to defend it when night rolls around. However, if you re playing online with friends, then most things can be enjoyable. It doesn t feel enough to just say you know those people whose company you enjoy? It s also enjoyable spending time with them while doing this.

There is nothing wrong with a game being in alpha, it s a work in progress, and if you feel the developers are actively still crafting it then things like bugs and poor graphics can be forgiven. There is also nothing intrinsically wrong with a game being at this stage for around three years. Building a game like this is time consuming and complicated, especially with a small team. However, what feels off is the fact the developers released a port of a far-from-finished PC game to console before completing the game. Online communities seem to be exasperated with the slow patching. In its current state it is incomplete, and after almost three years of slow progress I wonder when it will graduate to beta, or even a finished game.