Games Of The Year 2008

Ok. So I was gonna do a big proper run-down from 10 to 1 on this, but I can't be arsed because there are so many games I haven't played, or haven't given enough time to. Besides, as you'll see, my feelings about a game can't always be summed up all that simply. There are ten games here, but this is not my top ten. Rather it's the ten games I felt most like giving awards to. You'll see.

Best Retail Game
The main purpose of this award is to illustrate how my two favourite games of the year are download-only. As such the winner isn't actually that important. Anyway, it's Dead Space.

Best Sequel
Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 is possibly a flawless example of how to make a sequel. It's still got the main mode which is better than ever, and it adds five extra modes which all play with the formula in brilliant ways, building tactics that are useful in other modes, and are varied enough to be fun while never being just novelties. Plus it's prettier and has better music. Yeah, it's the perfect sequel. Which means it's Game Of The Year right? Oh unless someone released a really amazing original game. Hmm.

Best Worst Sequel
Super Smash Bros Brawl is basically the same as Super Smash Bros Melee, which in all honesty wasn't that much better than Super Smash Bros No Subtitle. Somehow it still ended up being my most played game last year.

Best Game For The First Hour Or So
God, Boom Blox got really boring after that, didn't it?

Best Game That Was Split Into Five-Second Chunks And Mixed Together With Five-Second Chunks Of The Worst Game Ever
Consistency is not a word Mirror's Edge knows. Playing it, I can't help the feeling that if I could just peel away the moments of perfect clarity, beauty, exhiliration and grace (of which there are many) and make a game out of them, it would be the best game ever. Problem is, the game left over would be so abhorrently evil that it would probably destroy the world and everything in it.

Best Drumming
Admittedly I haven't played Guitar Hero World Tour, so I am completely unqualified to judge this award. However Rock Band contains some very fine drumming indeed. In fact it is the most fun I have had drumming in a game this year.

Best Game I Had Already Played
Banjo-Kazooie was so much better than I thought it would be. I'd barely rose-tinted it at all. See, this kind of thing is the reason I didn't do a top ten. You can't really put retro-re-releases in a top ten can you.

Best Game That I Still Can't Make Any Sense Of
This sort of game is the other reason I didn't do a top ten. No More Heroes could reasonably go in any position on the list. It renders criticism utterly irrelevant. I can't properly articulate why I like it. I can't properly articulate why I hate it, either. The only real flaw I can pin on it is that none of it makes any fucking sense.

Best Place To Stop Playing A Game
I'm told Zack & Wiki becomes really horribly unpleasantly frustrating at some point along the way, but fortunately I'm nowhere near clever enough to get that far. I'm tempted to just leave it where it is and preserve my love for it.

Best Game
Braid, obviously.

Dead (Good) Space

My first report from the frontlines of the busiest gaming Christmas since, well, last year, is this: Dead Space is good. Dead good, in fact. Hence the pun.

Despite having a few things wrong with it. The plot and characters have failed to excite me so far. There's a lot of things to collect, Bioshock style, which is a bit annoying. And it's not exactly scary. Not yet, anyway. It's as if, because it's an EA game, it has to be a little bit too polished, too action-movie to truly become the game it aspires to be. Whenever you forget who made this game - which is easy because it's far superior to the usual EA stuff - the largely unnecessary weapon upgrade system and incongruous "kinesis" abilities are around to remind you.

Still, it seems churlish to complain about that when the game is so visually and aurally overwhelming. The brilliance of Dead Space is all in the dark corners, billowing smoke, and constant, unsettling cacophony of clatters, clangs and howls. Oddly, the bits when you're actually shooting things are probably the least scary bits of the game. There's some eek-get-it-off-me moments, and I always get a bit twitchy about what might be behind me when I'm aiming, but generally the tension is relieved when you actually have something in your sights. It's still a lot of fun, though. Having to lop off limbs rather than just spraying the enemies with bullets makes combat very fiddly, in a good way. It's reminiscient of having to shoot the parasites off the Regenerators in Resident Evil 4.

On an almost completely different note, De Blob is quite good as well. Jury's still out though.