My Favorite Games of 2008
My favorite games of 2008, in order. Once again, this is simply a list of the ten games I enjoyed the most, not the ten best games.
List items
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2008 was probably my favorite year for gaming in the decade. Sure, 2004 was very impressive and very deep, but I just enjoyed so many games that didn't even make this list. Still, you have to start at the top with Metal Gear Solid IV. Like Grand Theft Auto IV, it makes a gameplay transition from Pinocchio the puppet to Pinocchio the real boy. While their predecessors were somewhat fairly criticized for substituting various elements for tightly refined gameplay, MGS 4 and GTA IV both have top of the line gameplay. Metal Gear Solid 4 does such a great job of finishing a singularly defining and beloved series that it actually manages to surpass the incredible expectations people had for it going in. I spent over $500 to buy a PS3, a DualShock 3, and a copy of the game just to experience it, and it blew my expectations out of the water. I'm not going to go into the story and why it's so brilliant and moving. All I need to say is that it was worth the 500 bucks.
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After thinking long and hard, I have to put Smash Bros #2. Super Smash Bros. Melee WAS one of my five or so favorite games of all time. I played it hundreds of times for hundreds of hours, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl made it utterly obsolete. It's one of my favorite games in years, way ahead of any of the games in 2006 and 2007 with the exception of Twilight Princess. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was pieced together half as a loving, dedicated tribute to Nintendo's history and greatness, and half as a perfectly balanced (well, assuming you turn the smash ball off) multiplayer game that takes minutes to learn but months to master. I can't think of a SINGLE thing that I would have changed about this game. I don't know how they can ever make another Smash Bros. game because there's simply nowhere else for them to go.
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Before GTA IV came out, video games were in a bit of a rut in the sense that there hadn't been a really amazing game out in a while - the last one was Oblivion about two years previously, and before Oblivion was Resident Evil 4 in very early 2005. So for over 3 years, there were only 2 really, really great video games released (in my opinion). In 2008, there were THREE. Not surprisingly, they're all at the top of this list, because they all were right up my alley and they all were perfect as far as I'm concerned. In my view GTA IV is the second best game of the bunch. It has dozens of hours of gameplay, most of which is vastly improved from GTA: San Andreas, which was pretty amazing in its time. The story and character development was also heavily invested in. Given the return to Liberty City, I was excited to the point of numbness. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the decision to write a too-serious script with a protagonist who, while much more real than the previous three, was simply less fun to play as. It's a great story with great missions, but none of the characters are funny or interesting in a way that even the minor characters in the original trilogy were. Ultimately, not the way I would have gone, but I respect the decision they made and they certainly delivered on what they went for.
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YES. This game, while clearly a step down from the top 3 games on this list, was utterly awesome. It is the best 3rd person shooter since Resident Evil 4 (and that continues to be the case, Resident Evil 5). I played through this game 3 times, and the only thing I got tired of was that incredibly irritating cultist-scientist who whined for a total of maybe five minutes and that meant five minutes of not shooting crazy, terrifying monsters/aliens/whatever the fuck those things were. Shooting limbs was a great gameplay twist, and frankly it would have been really fresh even without that aspect of it. The story, while not particularly outstanding in the wide world of videogames, is probably the best EVER in the survival horror genre. Take THAT, Resident Evil.
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Game as art. Nothing else needs to be said.
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Oh Gears of War 2. This is as unoriginal a sequel as there could possibly be. And yet it is SUCH a better game than Gears of War 1, which was pretty good in its own right. Every aspect of the gameplay is better in Gears of War 2 than it was in the original. More guns, more enemies, more balanced gameplay. It feels like the leap from Halo 1 to Halo 2 except without the atrocious campaign. Gears 2 has a great campaign and while the multiplayer was largely broken, I could not have cared less: Horde is the best addition to the game and I played it for months.
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The first Geometry Wars game was extremely cool but after playing it for a couple hours, I became exasperated with it (after playing it for 20 hours, I became progressively more exasperated, shockingly enough). Geometry Wars 2 is a huge leap forward and is a much, much, much better and more well-rounded game. The Evolved mode alone is twice as good as the original game was, and there are five more modes! Granted, some of them are throwaways, but Sequence was a fantastic challenge for even the most tried and tested Geometry Wars fans - yes, I got the Smile. And the multiplayer was surprisingly engaging as well.
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Let's start off by reminding ourselves how cute the Sackboy is. I mean, he's probably the cutest video game character that I can remember. But that's just the exclamation point to what was such a fun and unique experience. To be sure, it has a major flaw - it's imperfect platforming gameplay. And there's a reason nobody makes platformers anymore - bad platforming gameplay might be the most frustrating thing ever. The reason this flaw is so easy to overlook is because the visuals and sound are so impressive from start to finish, and it is perhaps the best outlet for creativity in a video game since Lode Runner. I feel like I tapped into less than 5% of what this game had to offer and just by experiencing Cat Racing, it earned a spot on this list.
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