My Top 10 Games of '08 - #1

You might be asking yourself right about now: If I loved Metal Gear Solid 4 so much because it didn't have any technical flaws, was polished as hell, and was such a tight experience overall, why is Fallout 3, who's biggest flaws are in fact the hugely visible presentation flaws that it shows, in my top spot?

My answer to that question, astute reader, is this: Fallout 3 is in my top spot because all of what it does well, all of the little niches and storylines that have yet to be uncovered by most people, the amount of depth to the exploration that exists, all of the moments that make you say "huh, didn't know that was in here. That's actually kind of cool" everything that this world has to offer, managers to dwarf all the issues that I have with it. Self-opening doors, awkward animations, and just an overall feeling of incompleteness will distract some (I would say it could be a deal breaker for people), for me does not outweigh its ambition.

The game wreaks of the "go anywhere, do anything" mentality that developers were spouting about years earlier, but ultimately had to limit somehow. Sure, the games isn't infinite in scope, and it isn't even as large as Cyrodil, but you, for the most part, really can do anything you want. You can say "to hell with this!" mid-quest if it doesn't suit you and go do something else. You aren't forced into the "You don't want to help me? Too bad, you're going to do it" loops of toher "choice" games. You can choose to be good, evil, neutral, or just walk around the wasteland and just kill anything you see unfit to live there.

The game is expansive in what it lets us, the players, do, not in where it lets you do it. The playground may be smaller, but your parents aren't there; there is the complete sense of freedom in that area, always finding something new to do, always discovering. Needless to say, the game swept me and got me hooked more than any game has done this year. The freedom is there for you to exploit, its nooks and crannies ready to explore. More than any other game (except for, arguably, GTA IV), it manages to create a living, breathing (albeit mostly dead, ironicly), and you want to live there, in the wasteland. And for whatever reason, you want to see more of this barren playground, and the game keeps giving you more, and that's why Fallout 3 is hands-down my favorite game of this year.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #2

It never really occurred to me that Metal Gear Solid 3 was a bad game. I loved the game when I played it, and to this day it might be one of my favorite games of the last generation. But I'm confronted by and odd query: Since Metal Gear Solid 4 does most of everything better, does this mean that MGS3 is inherently bad?

The answer, ultimately, is no, not really, but that was pretty much a preface to this: Metal Gear Solid 4 is a goddamn achievement. It was able to modernize its gameplay so that Halo players might be able to get into the series while giving purists something to thrive on as well. The technical flaws are few and far between (and by that I mean that I didn't find any, but if I say 'none' someone will prove me wrong), and it manages to look better than Gears of War 2. Finally, it wraps up that indisputable mess created be the first three entries in the series into a cohesive whole that manages to be watchable, and, if Kojima is to believed, does something few other games do; saying goodbye to a character formally, versus re-iterating the character until they is no longer relevant.

It manages to be worthwhile as both a game and a cinematic experiences, and makes no compromises in either department. It is both well-founded and innovative, making improvements where they are needed and leaving what is already great alone. Its technical prowess is second to none, while also being thought-provoking and seemingly artistic. It does have a tendency to be a little heavy-handed with its message, and it does transform into a movie at the end, but that isn't a bad thing. Give Kojima a little time to get set up, and the experience the most tight and solid (sigh...) game of the year, bar none.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #3

JRPG’s are always criticized for never trying anything new. They adhere to ye olde battle system, and vary only slightly between iterations. They feature neglectable, derivative characters, with some “save the world” plot that is supposed to teach you a valuable lesson at the end. Also, there’s lots of fan service. In the face of that apparent (i. e. not always true) stereotype, I am glad we have games like The World Ends With You on DS.

Square Enix’s (yes, that’s right, the people who have spawned most of these stereotypes) brings us something completely different from their Final Fantasies and their Dragon Quests (and their baggy pants, and their rap music…) this time around. TWEWY breaks so many JRPG traditions that to call it a breath of fresh air is an understatement. From the completely original battle system (controlling two characters; one using the touch screen on the bottom and the other using the D-Pad/buttons on the top), to the completely off-the-wall story (youhavesevendaystocompletethesemissonsoryouwilldieGO!), to the pin-and-clothes-based customization system, the game has a lot offer to those who are entrenched in the RPG’s of old (leveling system, lots of monsters and bosses to fight), and those who’ve never touched one.

There are very few things that TWEWY does that aren’t unique, and too much deviation can be bad. But somehow, Square Enix managed to make every new feature they were trying to create work well. It’s something completely from left field, and it manages to bring a lot of new ideas to the table without getting to ahead of itself (what I mean by that is, the game is a lot of fun to actually play, something that not many RPG’s can say), and in a field of clones and boring tales, TWEWY is truly a gem that needs to be played. By you.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #4

I have to be honest, I haven't been a fan of recent GTA titles. III was groundbreaking, but the installments since then haven't wowed me so much, mostly because they could never innovate as much as their older sibling did. It's not their fault, really; you can't expect developers to make leaps and bounds with every iteration. GTA IV is like that really friendly guy at school with lots of friends and a lot of everything else; You want to hate it so bad, but if you really think about it, the reason it has so many friends is because it's, you know, so awesome.

While this isn't the groundbreaking, sandbox gameplay that III created, its breaking of the ground lies in other areas. Having already established an environment in which you could just screw around with, Rockstar decided to throw out the comical aspects of the series proper, and give the game a more sullen tone. Also, they decided to give us a proper story this time, and by "proper" I mean "extraordinary."

Instead of essentially following the path of some guy as a lowly thug to mastermind of crime, Niko Bellic actually never goes anywhere in life; he just survives. As simple as it sounds, the characters and just the narrative overall are light years ahead of the series previous attempts, so much so that I hardly ever went out and committed my common practice of going around with a rocket launcher and just killing anything, simply because I wanted to continue the story. This is a much more mature game, one that, even if you hate the series, can appreciate for what it does with narrative.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #5

I don't think Suda 51 is physically capable of doing traditional game design. Every time that man gets behind the wheel of the game, he totally makes it super-weird. This isn't a bad habit at all, though; innovation at every step is a philosophy that I can get behind. His works don't always shine as brightly as he may want, but damned if he doesn't try. No More Heroes is a diamond in the rust, in a very direct sense of the word.

Not only did the game not sell well, but its greatest joy is hidden behind flaws. The biggest flaw by far is the overworld. It's an unncecessary addition to the game, that was a much too boasted feature in the game that ultimately never amounted to more than a hub to go from place to place; you could find secrets there, sure, but aside from that the feature could've been done away with. Also, the game could've used some polish graphics-wise, even on the Wii.

Those being my biggest gripes with the game, the rest of it was pure awesome in game form. The combat is just repetitive so you know what you're doing all the time and always feeling like a badass, but not too much that you feel like it's boring. NMH's combat is just and amazing way to do fighting on the Wii, between switching stances, slashing, kicking, throwing, and a slash of the remote to finish the enemy off, it's satisfying as all hell, and you get to do it. A lot.

But the addicting gameplay pales in comparison the so-far-out-there story. Travis Touchdown has to kill the top 10 assassins in the country, simply because he wants to (at first, then Sylvia gets in involved). Now, it does get (a lot) more complicated, but in the Metal Gear way; It's just so plain over the top confusing that it's easy to realize that it's satire, and not taking itself too seriously.

Then there are the assassins themselves. Each and every one of these characters is one of the best characters in gaming this year, hands down. From Dr. Peace to Bad Girl to Harvey Moiseiwitsch Volodarskii (mouthful, ain't it?) these characters are not only fun to fight, but they all have fairly interesting scenes to watch, and even without much exposition, they manage to be engraved in your mind long after you play the game. No More Heroes is definitely not perfect, but it makes up in spades with style.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #6

The Higher I get up on this list, the more excited I get to write about it. Left 4 Dead is special in that it does one thing and one thing only; put you in the zombie apocalypse that we all dread (and secretly hope for), and it does it well. This is also a good example of a game whose assets all come from a tight multiplayer experience; simply playing this game by yourself and beating all four of the games will not do. You need to play this with friends. It is an absolute must.

Whether or not you consider that the game's greatest strength or weakness is up to you, really, but in my case I find it to be a strength. Playing the game, working together to both survive and to get achievements, yelling at each other, trying to get to safety as soon as possible, and actually making you care when one of your teammates falls is something that few games have done well. When I play the game, I want everyone to make it out alive. I just happen to be that guy that will just run to the helicopter and abandon you, though.

Although there are only four campaigns to go through, those campaigns have and immense amount of replay value. The fact they are as short as they are means if you and some friends have nothing better to do before, say, going to see a movie, you can just play a game for an hour (or even shorter, if you want), and that in of itself gives it a great sort of ability to be satisfying and brief at the same. I wouldn't recommend it if you don't have any friends to play with, but if you do, this game is one that you can just pop in whenever you have people over and not trade in any sort of gameplay (like in say, Wii Sports), and there's just something to be said about that.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #7

There's just something about Dead Space that puts me in an odd place. I find it difficult to properly put a proper title on it. "Amazing" is a good word, but it just doesn't seem to mesh well with how I fell about the game. And while "Competent" sounds good in my head, when I write it down (or type, preferably), it seems to give the game less credit than it deserves."Scary" is also not the word I'd use. Dead Space isn't scary, but I am certainly afraid of getting killed. Is that being scared? If it is, then I guess Dead Space really is scary.

Regardless of what title I eventually end up giving it, the game plays perfectly. I never had a problem with the game in gameplay sense; Isaac is wearing a heavy-as-hell suit, and he fittingly does not jump around like say, Señor Ninja. He hauls his weight around as he should, really. The monsters are a bit on the generic side, but I never noticed that because I was too busy worrying about the fastest way to chop them up, so that never really bothered me.

If you want the rest of my thoughts on the game, you can go ahead and read the review, so I won't spend too much time regurgitating material here, but in the end the game ended up being something I didn't know I want. EA sticking their neck out for once (twice, actually) is a welcome change of pace, and puts a damper on their "evil empire that has nothing left to contribute" persona. It's just a bottom-to-top good game, all around. It isn't the best game out this year (I'll get to that one later), but you know, that doesn't keep it from being totally awesome in any way.

Oh, and I found the title I was looking for: Awesomely solid.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #8

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is probably one of the sleeper hits of this year. There weren't a lot of expectations coming from this game, unless you knew about its Japanese release already, you weren't aware of how good this game is. Granted, it wasn't one of the most revolutionary concepts of the year (basically 120+ puzzles and brain teasers), it sort of reminded of us of something: Those old brain teaser books were actually kind of awesome.

Now, the game could've settled for that, 120 puzzles that stumped both kids and adults alike is nothing to sneeze at, but it had to squeeze in a story. It's nothing special, but it's actually a passable mystery story, as you uncover clues about what's happening through the completion of these various puzzles, and once you get caught up in it, you'll want to do those puzzles half out of getting the satisfaction of doing them, and half out of wanting to see the story through.

Professor Layton isn't trying to be impressive; the graphics are all well-done 2D sprites, and it could hardly be said that they're pushing the power of the DS, with the presentations being as simplistic as it is. It's this simplicity that makes it so great though. It isn't trying to be this great, ambitious project that will change the way we think about games, and it isn't something that is really proving anything, except that simple doesn't mean bad. It can often enough mean good, and doing something small, that everyone can enjoy, is something to commend.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #9

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is prime example of expectations versus results. I have to admit that for a whole year I was completely engrossed in its hype, followed the games' officical blog religiously. I reveled in message boards that would trickle out information (whether it was true or not). I fantasized about what characters I would like to see. So high was my anticipation that the two delays that befell the game were painful. The game had me completely engrossed.

With expectations of the completely-perfect-in-every-way game that I had imagined, the final product could only dissapoint. The character roster was nowhere near as large as I had imagined, the game was sprinkled with flaws that seems outright mean (tripping), and the online service that I had been looking forward to was treated like an afterthought. Nothing suprised me because before I had the game in my hands, I knew everything about it.

While I am saying that the game could not live up to its hype, this is not indicitive of it being bad. The reason that it failed to meet up to hype was because the bar for it was set unrealisticly high, and when those expectations were not met, the game was met with negative senitment.

The flaws that I first pointed out were only there because of the gap between what I wanted the game to be and what it really was (with the exception of the online and tripping). The roster was fantastic, the fighting system was better than in melee, (though I'm sure people would disagree with me), the game was more fan service than any game could ever hope to be, it was feature-rich, and the overall fun (gasp!) that could be had with the game was far above anything else released at the time. In short, it was an amazing experience despite my expectations.

Looking back on it now, the game did have its flaws, but they were not as game-breaking as I had first imagined them. The game is not fun for me on tournament level fighter, something that I thought was a shortcoming of the game; it was fun for me as party game, a great way to have fun with friends. Seeing it through that light raised my opinion of the game from "okay" to "great", and if you have a Wii, you most definitely need to pick this up. This is one of the best games of this year.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - #10

Sneaking in at #10 is Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. This may be one of those games that you may have forgotten about, seeing as how it came out back in January. However, that doesn't mean you should have. While the franchise itself is several years old now, DOR is interesting in that it's basically a reset of the franchise, something that people form the GBA era have yet to see.

However, while the changes are mostly aesthetic (darker tone of art and story), there were several gameplay changes as well. Costs of units changed, certain untis were replaced, new ones were added, and most importantly of all, the CO Powers, which, in previous games, were tide-changing super abilities that somewhat underminded the startegic elements of the games, were nerfed extensively, in that they were only effective in certain area within the unit your CO is commanding (another new feature), and even then they weren't very powerful, with a handful of exceptions. The last change was the ability for units to level up and become stronger, which is something that is suprisingly balanced, because the changes are so incremental.

All these changes are also compounded by the Advance Wars traditional gameplay, which was near-flawless to begin with. Additionally, the story is also better than in previous entries. Before, war was treated in a very friendly way, the gravity of the given situation was there, but combat itself was very light-hearted. It wasn't something I had a problem with (it gave it a disctinctive style), but DOR treats war (and the whole 90% of the population being wiped out) with the gritty realism that war deserves.

It wasn't as feature-rich as Dual Strike, and perhaps the stylistic changes aren't for everyone, but its balancing of the gameplay is a bold move that the franchise may have warranted, and all that in addition to a formula that is rock-solid is enough to warrant it this spot on the list.

My Top 10 Games of '08 - Disclaimer

Now, this is a short prelude to the nexxt 10 posts that you might be seeing from me. This is basically a post telling you that I have not played everything out this year, but I have played enough games this year to merit the list (which is much more than 10), so I really can only make this list from what I've played, so keep in mind that if you don't see a game that you thought you should've, I probably have not played it, or maybe I just didn't like it.