The Best Games of 2008

As the year comes to an end, most game sites are putting up lists highlighting their favorite games of 2008. Gamasutra is no exception, but they've nicely consolidated a variety of lists, and included some of their reasons and commentary to go with them. The topics range from the best overlooked games (Soul Bubbles and Pure) to the best new gameplay mechanics (first-person parkour in Mirror's Edge and Spore's procedural content generation) to the best overall games of the year (Fallout 3, World of Goo, and LittleBigPlanet). What were your top games of 2008?

Comments

Fallout 3

[Middle - Adopter]

I'm an avid gamer, and Fallout 3 was the best game hands down this year. Bionic Commando: Rearmed was pretty great too, for a Xbox Live title. But beyond those two, this was actually a great year for games: GTA IV, Mirror's Edge, Far Cry 2, Gears of War 2...man, I wish I didn't have to go to bed now! :/

Re:Fallout 3

[VinylRecords]

Nonsense story, terrible and surprisingly limited ending, very few side-quest arcs (and even fewer that had a satisfying payoff), and only 3 cities, only one of those had anywhere near as much depth as even Klamath did in F2.

- Nonsense story, completely true, you are thrust into a world where you can live a life of any range of karma (angel, good, neutral, bad, evil) but no matter how to choose to live your life the main story is always the same. The Water of Life. Not open ended and extremely boring. Forcing the player into a boring and linear story ruins almost the entire single-player experience once you get to the worst and most disappointing ending I've ever experience. Remember, Bethesda specifically promised over 200 unique endings, saying that the character could end the game in almost 200 different ways. Later on their own forums for Fallout 3 they admitted it was an error and that there are only four endings, not 200, quite a large discrepancy between 200 endings and four.

Bethesda needs to spend more money on writers and less on their managers that keep shipping obviously-unfinished games out the door.

Rumor has it that Bethesda spent significant amounts of budget on hiring the voice actors for the game, specifically two or three more famous ones, and that it broke the bank on the project. They invested so much money into voice acting that other aspects of the game had no extra budget.

Re:Fallout 3

[Fallingcow]

- Nonsense story, completely true, you are thrust into a world where you can live a life of any range of karma (angel, good, neutral, bad, evil) but no matter how to choose to live your life the main story is always the same. The Water of Life. Not open ended and extremely boring. Forcing the player into a boring and linear story ruins almost the entire single-player experience once you get to the worst and most disappointing ending I've ever experience. Remember, Bethesda specifically promised over 200 unique endings, saying that the character could end the game in almost 200 different ways. Later on their own forums for Fallout 3 they admitted it was an error and that there are only four endings, not 200, quite a large discrepancy between 200 endings and four.

I'd have settled for a short little pre-rendered video and a voiceover for each major side quest (hell, there weren't very many significant ones, which is another problem altogether) at the end, like in its predecessors. That and a couple days of intensive editing and modification of the main story by a person who was willing to say "wait a minute, WTF?" could have salvaged it from my current rating of "oh, wow, kind of bad" and boosted it up to "a worthy but weak entry in the series".

Rumor has it that Bethesda spent significant amounts of budget on hiring the voice actors for the game, specifically two or three more famous ones, and that it broke the bank on the project. They invested so much money into voice acting that other aspects of the game had no extra budget.

Ah. I'd been deliberately avoiding news about the game so I wouldn't spoil the experience of my first playthrough (HA!), so I hadn't heard anything like that. Certainly sounds like something Bethesda would do, though.

I love the frameworks of the games they put out, but the games themselves are notoriously half-assed. I was sure that wouldn't happen this time since they were just building off the Oblivion engine and wouldn't have the same difficulty and expense of building that part, but they still managed to disappoint.

Re:Fallout 3

[AstrumPreliator]

Now see I hated VATS. I thought it was a horrible system which took the worst parts from both real time FPS combat and turn based combat. On one hand you have a finite amount of action points which have to be recharged over time, on the other the enemy doesn't have AP, it just attacks until one of you dies. A lot of the time I would just end up running up to the guy point blank, going into VATS, use all of my AP on his head (which had a 90% probability of hitting) and then watch the slow motion carnage. After it was over I'd run the hell away and let my AP recharge. I know other people didn't mind VATS, but for me it was rather annoying.

Beyond that I thought Fallout 3 was an okay game. It definitely had the atmosphere of the previous two Fallout games, and I loved the graphics. I didn't even care that it was in the first person perspective. They even had some of the same kind of humor that the originals had. There were plenty of little gripes though, for instance the pipboy interface was clearly designed with consoles in mind. It had nested menus within nested menus. Granted the original Fallouts didn't have amazing interfaces, but I was expecting an improvement, not an interface designed solely with the console in mind (I bought the PC version). I also agree that the story was a bit shallow.

As for other games this year, here's what I think:

FarCry 2: It had nothing to do with the original, kind of like C&C:Generals. It was basically GTA in Africa. I thought the graphics were superb, blowing things up and lighting vast fields aflame were fun, but it got kind of tedious. All you do is go to X to kill Y for Z diamons. I haven't completed it yet, I'm about 3/4 done, but so far the story is horrible. I don't even know why they bothered.

Another gripe I had with FarCry 2 was the fact that they went for realism in some areas, but not others. You didn't have a reticule, you had to use iron sights. Vehicles broke down, weapons jammed (even bolt action rifles), etc... At the same time the vehicles are made from paper mache, guard posts would mysteriously resupply with troops when you get a hundred yards away (and not question the dead bodies apparently), and your character can get turned into swiss cheese by a volley of bullets and a syringe full of Cureital fixes everything.

I also had a problem with locating enemies sometimes. They'd always know where I was if I walked within a kilometer of them, but sometimes it took me several minutes just to locate them. Overall I thought the game was pretty and kind of fun, but I was hoping for more.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Yes, I actually bought this game. Or rather, I bought a license which allows me to install it on 5 different computers and that's it. Before we get started let me say I loved the new naval warfare. I honestly thought that was a good addition. I also enjoyed how units had two different "attacks". The music was also quite good. Beyond those few things, there wasn't anything else I liked about the game. A lot of the story was rehashed from the first two, the Empire of the Rising sun felt very awkward, a lot of the graphics were sort of cartoony (yet the water wasn't at all), and EA hired more breasts than writers*.

One thing that really annoyed me was the forced co-op single player. When started to play the first mission it gave me a choice between solo and co-op. I thought at the time that co-op is a great idea and would be fun, but I didn't have anyone to play with at the time, so I went for solo. To my surprise I was forced to play the map with a computer ally (with campy dialogue). Now with C&C games I love capturing enemy bases to win, call it a quirk, but I always found that more satisfying than rolling them with a million units. However, now that I was forced to play with a computer ally with very limited control** either the computer would destroy the base before I could capture it, or the computer would be wiped out and I'd have to guard that flank. Overall I think the C&C franchise

My own picks of 2008

[RogueyWon]

Well, it's been an interesting year - quite a few very good titles (with a particularly large cluster of these released in the September - November range) and also a few which turned out to be fairly huge disappointments.

Anyway, my own top 10:

10) Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii) - a rare example of a first party Nintendo game which has decent production values and doesn't suffer from a severe lack of content. The single-player campaign is slightly let down by a few over-long platforming sections, but the brawling components are more than fun enough make up for it.

9) Siren: Blood Curse (PS3) - the only game I've seen to date to really pull off the whole "episodic gaming" thing. Blood Curse is the best entry to date in what has always been a very solid survival horror series. It's an excellent refuge for those who have been put off by the action-oriented direction that the Resident Evil franchise has taken and the continued flogging of the dead horse that the once-epic Silent Hill franchise has become ever since its 4th installment.

8) The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS) - quirky and original take on the Japanese RPG formula. The distinctive style isn't to everybody's taste (or even particularly to mine), but it did produce one of the most unique titles of the last 12 months. A huge range of customisation options (including heavily tweakable difficulty settings) further boost its appeal.

7) Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360) - hugely traditional take on the Japanese RPG formula. Superb production values and a well thought out narrative pull it above the average. A big improvement on 2007's Blue Dragon and a real sign that Square-Enix should be taking the competition from Mistwalker very, very seriously. The game's also notable for its extensive use of narrative text storytelling to flesh out the back-story.

6) Resistance 2 (PS3) - A few dubious design decisions mean that this isn't quite as good as its predecessor (the limitation on the number of weapons you can carry feels particularly restrictive in a game that's so heavily based around trying out funky weapons). However, it's still a slick and fun game, whose controls feel far more robust than those of pretty much any other console fps.

5) Far Cry 2 (PC - also Xbox 360 and PS3) - Despite a "ripped from the headlines" story that really is the ultimate in bad taste, this is a deeply impressive shooter. It takes some of the good ideas we saw in last year's STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl and marries them with the execution needed to really pull them off.

4) Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) - Yeah, this is the controversial one. With the cutscenes being, at a rough estimate, roughly twice the length of the playable sections of the game, this was never going to be everybody's cup of tea. However, a complete overhaul of the combat system took the series from being one where combat was, as Penny Arcade put it, a punishment inflicted on the player for getting the stealth sections wrong to a being one of the most fun games to play as a shooter of the entire year. The fact that you can play it as a stealth-em-up just adds icing to the cake. The game's graphics and production values blow away anything else released during this year.

3) Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) - It doesn't do anything particularly original, but it improves on the original game in almost every respect. It presents a longer campaign with better balance than the original, more varied environments and some excellent tweaks to the weapons lineup. It also features some of the most fun multiplayer modes of any game I've seen this year, with a heavy emphasis on co-op and team-based gameplay.

2) Dead Space (Xbox 360, also PC and PS3) - Half way between Gears of War and a traditional survival-horror game, this was very close to being my favorite title of the entire year. As others have noted, it's anything but original, drawing heavy inspiration from three movies in particular: Aliens, Event Horizon and the Thing. However, it still establishes its own distinctive identity and mana

Re:My own picks of 2008

[Anthony_Cargile]

- Mario Kart Wii - the Mario Kart formula is looking very tired now

Funny, I thought the same thing when Super Mario 64 and the original Super Smash Brothers came out. But people keep buying (and enjoying) the games, and the younger generations are apparently still enjoying it so Mario's legend still continues to live on (although Donkey Kong strangely disappeared).

I can't knock it if the majority of people enjoy it, but come on - at least enhance his graphics a little bit, you know? Add some textures to Mario for once, even though the idea of a half-life 2 looking Italian plumber would kind of kill the whole thing for me.

Re:My own picks of 2008

[ozphx]

I have a massive dissenting opinion on FarCry 2.

It was pretty. It had some cool bits (the fire propogation was very nice). The AI had 'reasonable' alertness (none of this Op Flashpoint style 'seeing you and shooting you through 200m of forest').

That said, the AI was incredibly dumbed down. You had a couple of 'cease fire zones' where the AI was in passive mode, and everywhere else they were aggressive. There was meant to be a handful of factions - not evident in gameplay - everybody shot at you.

The mission briefings had a fair amount of laughable "...and this is a deniable operation, so everyone is going to be shooting at you...". No, sorry, everyone was going to be shooting at me, because nobody could be bothered coding in any factions.

Got so sick of repeatedly cleaning guardposts, I just wanted to do the job. Admittedly there was some great gaming moments, some good fun, and some quite hilarious fuck ups (usually setting my exit path on fire by mistake).

The random-buddy system seemed to be quite cool, however I felt like the development budget had gone into a heap of dialog that I would never see. Buddys were nice, and fairly developed characters.

The ending was bloody terrible (and also left you locked out of the open-world much before the ending).

Re:My own picks of 2008

[bigstrat2003]

I have to disagree with your opinion that MK Wii was less of an update than Brawl (not to mention your opinion of the game in general). To me, they both added the same amount of functionality to their respective parent games: new areas, new characters, new items, online play. Yes, Brawl has Subspace Emissary and stage builder, but those are some serious fluff features which don't really mean anything to the game itself.

Excellent!

[AnonGCB]

I'm pretty excited to see World of Goo take #2, go indy developers! That said, I'm surprised Mount & Blade wasn't listed at all, and that Sins of a Solar Empire didn't score higher. Still, I'll agree with Fallout 3 ranking #1. While it was a disappointment to those who expected a full on RPG, the FPS element brought many more people in, and allowed for more people to get into the game, while VATS kept it closer to an RPG.

Valkyria Chronicles

[ShinSugoi]

As a fan of strategy games and RPGs, I was sad that this title was overlooked by so many. Whatever the reason, it is always painful to see an innovative title do poorly -- especially when it is one as enjoyable as this.

From the unique rendering style (which is not well conveyed in screenshots, sort of like okami) to the inventive gameplay which skillfully blends real time turn-based actions together, the soaring Sakimoto score, and unique storybook presentation, there's not much to dislike about Valkyria.

If you have a PS3, I highly recommend you give it a look.

EchoChrome: Escher game for PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

EchoChrome is a PS3 game based on the worlds of M.C. Escher's drawings.

Turn the world view until paths appear to line up, and they do!

This has got to be the most innovative gameplay mechanism of the year, if not the decade!