What do you feel were the best games of 2008? I'm not going to limit this to any specific platform; there were plenty of notable releases across the board, although most of the ones I enjoyed fit into the Nintendo or PC category.
2008 was a year of many good releases and also many disappointments. I blame the disappointments on excessive amounts of hype.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl is the most obvious one. I really didn't know what to expect from this release, although in retrospect I probably shouldn't be surprised by the fact that it turned out to be worse than Melee. I probably won't ever play it outside of a party setting, though, so I can't really complain about that. It is quite fun to play, but I've found that with this game more than any other that even in casual settings people will complain that it isn't the game that preceded it and demand that we play the older game instead. Nobody plays Halo 2, but people still play SSBM, which probably says something about Brawl. I don't think there were any games in 2008 as good as Melee, so you can't really fault Brawl for falling into this category. It was a good game, it just had a larger measuring stick than everything else.
Mario Kart Wii was almost the exact opposite. Mario Kart Double Dash was such a disappointment that I really shouldn't be surprised that the next console-based Mario Kart would be so much better, but I was. It's difficult to find a multiplayer game with such a forgiving learning curve that doesn't have an absurdly low skill-ceiling, but this game managed to pull it off. In that respect, I'd almost say that it's better than Mario Kart 64. The game is still socialist (people in last place get better items), but the game is so visually appealing that these items cause more amusement than frustration; Mario Kart 64's blue shells didn't have wings and it didn't have anything like Bullet Bill. It's not as random as Mario Party and it's not as cutthroat as Smash Brothers, and for that reason it's a lot of fun regardless of who you play it with.
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 was kind of like Brawl in that I had very high expectations for it. However, even though it was different from the original in a lot of ways, I had a lot of fun playing it. It introduced a lot of new mechanics that made the game a lot less tedious (I really liked the bazaar) and it made it easier to manage a large party because everyone received skill experience. It's also evident that SquareEnix tried to balance things a bit by making Assassins a little bit less broken and tweaking several other classes to make them more equal in terms of playability. Even stuff like the auction house made it possible to play the game for a long time before getting bored by the same repetitive mission pattern. It's a really well-made game and it was definitely an enjoyable experience, but some of the changes to the game mechanics really made it difficult for me to enjoy it as much as the original. The biggest gripe I had is the way the experience system worked. Level-up stats are still tied to class like they were in the first game, so the fact that the game does not allow you to strictly control level-ups can really be frustrating. I also did not like the fact that facing affected damage rather than accuracy; this implicitly nerfed status spells and one of the things I had liked about the first game was that status spells were actually quite powerful, removing the whole "attack it until it dies" formula that is all too common these days. Still, it's an excellent SRPG, I have to give SquareEnix credit for giving fresh gameplay to an old paradigm and creating a world that was fun to explore despite the plot's brevity.
Left 4 Dead was one game that I expected to be a massive disappointment, but it wasn't. It effectively combines the best aspects of team-based multiplayer games and atmosphere-driven single-player games. The versus mode clearly demonstrates that unlike Doom 3, it's not a game that's driven completely by atmosphere, and the campaigns are definitely a more immersive experience than any other multiplayer game I've ever played. The most common criticism I hear of this game is that the lack of content, and I view that as a good thing: if the biggest criticism that people bring up is that a game is too short, that means that what they got they enjoyed, and the developer was wise in realizing that they probably could not deliver more of the same. (Portal is another example of a game that was "too short.") Valve didn't clutter the game with useless weapons or boring levels, and for that they deserve credit.
No More Heroes was one game of 2008 that did not disappoint me simply by virtue of the fact that it was not a sequel and I had nothing to compare it to. I was going to call it an "impressive" use of the Wii's hardware, but that wouldn't be giving it enough credit. It's not difficult for a game to boast "impressive" hardware use. It's quite another for it to utilize hardware to make a game that is still fun to play where the controls enhance gameplay, rather than encumber it.
Audiosurf was by no means the best game of 2008, but it's definitely a game that was easily worth every penny you paid for it. One of the biggest problems that a lot of action-rhythm games face is the fact that content is limited, and Audiosurf allows you to use your own soundtrack. There are a lot of games that allow you to import your own library to use as background noise, but with Audiosurf it felt like completely the opposite: the music is the main focus and the game visual and control interface is just the background. It's easy to play for very short segments of time, but I often find that I can spend very long periods of time at my computer playing this game without realizing that I'm doing nothing.
Chrono Trigger DS, Kirby Super Star, Final Fantasy IV, and Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon are all remakes of older games, so I really won't go into explicit detail about them, but I will say that they all make me very glad to own a DS.
2008 was a year of many good releases and also many disappointments. I blame the disappointments on excessive amounts of hype.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl is the most obvious one. I really didn't know what to expect from this release, although in retrospect I probably shouldn't be surprised by the fact that it turned out to be worse than Melee. I probably won't ever play it outside of a party setting, though, so I can't really complain about that. It is quite fun to play, but I've found that with this game more than any other that even in casual settings people will complain that it isn't the game that preceded it and demand that we play the older game instead. Nobody plays Halo 2, but people still play SSBM, which probably says something about Brawl. I don't think there were any games in 2008 as good as Melee, so you can't really fault Brawl for falling into this category. It was a good game, it just had a larger measuring stick than everything else.
Mario Kart Wii was almost the exact opposite. Mario Kart Double Dash was such a disappointment that I really shouldn't be surprised that the next console-based Mario Kart would be so much better, but I was. It's difficult to find a multiplayer game with such a forgiving learning curve that doesn't have an absurdly low skill-ceiling, but this game managed to pull it off. In that respect, I'd almost say that it's better than Mario Kart 64. The game is still socialist (people in last place get better items), but the game is so visually appealing that these items cause more amusement than frustration; Mario Kart 64's blue shells didn't have wings and it didn't have anything like Bullet Bill. It's not as random as Mario Party and it's not as cutthroat as Smash Brothers, and for that reason it's a lot of fun regardless of who you play it with.
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 was kind of like Brawl in that I had very high expectations for it. However, even though it was different from the original in a lot of ways, I had a lot of fun playing it. It introduced a lot of new mechanics that made the game a lot less tedious (I really liked the bazaar) and it made it easier to manage a large party because everyone received skill experience. It's also evident that SquareEnix tried to balance things a bit by making Assassins a little bit less broken and tweaking several other classes to make them more equal in terms of playability. Even stuff like the auction house made it possible to play the game for a long time before getting bored by the same repetitive mission pattern. It's a really well-made game and it was definitely an enjoyable experience, but some of the changes to the game mechanics really made it difficult for me to enjoy it as much as the original. The biggest gripe I had is the way the experience system worked. Level-up stats are still tied to class like they were in the first game, so the fact that the game does not allow you to strictly control level-ups can really be frustrating. I also did not like the fact that facing affected damage rather than accuracy; this implicitly nerfed status spells and one of the things I had liked about the first game was that status spells were actually quite powerful, removing the whole "attack it until it dies" formula that is all too common these days. Still, it's an excellent SRPG, I have to give SquareEnix credit for giving fresh gameplay to an old paradigm and creating a world that was fun to explore despite the plot's brevity.
Left 4 Dead was one game that I expected to be a massive disappointment, but it wasn't. It effectively combines the best aspects of team-based multiplayer games and atmosphere-driven single-player games. The versus mode clearly demonstrates that unlike Doom 3, it's not a game that's driven completely by atmosphere, and the campaigns are definitely a more immersive experience than any other multiplayer game I've ever played. The most common criticism I hear of this game is that the lack of content, and I view that as a good thing: if the biggest criticism that people bring up is that a game is too short, that means that what they got they enjoyed, and the developer was wise in realizing that they probably could not deliver more of the same. (Portal is another example of a game that was "too short.") Valve didn't clutter the game with useless weapons or boring levels, and for that they deserve credit.
No More Heroes was one game of 2008 that did not disappoint me simply by virtue of the fact that it was not a sequel and I had nothing to compare it to. I was going to call it an "impressive" use of the Wii's hardware, but that wouldn't be giving it enough credit. It's not difficult for a game to boast "impressive" hardware use. It's quite another for it to utilize hardware to make a game that is still fun to play where the controls enhance gameplay, rather than encumber it.
Audiosurf was by no means the best game of 2008, but it's definitely a game that was easily worth every penny you paid for it. One of the biggest problems that a lot of action-rhythm games face is the fact that content is limited, and Audiosurf allows you to use your own soundtrack. There are a lot of games that allow you to import your own library to use as background noise, but with Audiosurf it felt like completely the opposite: the music is the main focus and the game visual and control interface is just the background. It's easy to play for very short segments of time, but I often find that I can spend very long periods of time at my computer playing this game without realizing that I'm doing nothing.
Chrono Trigger DS, Kirby Super Star, Final Fantasy IV, and Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon are all remakes of older games, so I really won't go into explicit detail about them, but I will say that they all make me very glad to own a DS.
