Sam Hart

The best console games of 2008

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  Fallout 3

  
  

  Xbox 360/PS3

  
  Bethesda's last game, Oblivion, was one of the winners in my 2006 SVGAs and really raised the bar for western developers.
  


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  Resistance 2

  
  

  PS3

  
  

  Most Improved Player Award

  
  Insomniac's last big FPS outing on the PS3 was one of the SVGA winners for 2006, but ultimately was best described as a flawed classic. The premise was unique with an original take on the tired World War II genre (Hey, what would happen if the second World War was interrupted by an Alien attack?) and it was a thrilling game. But the level design was lacking, the difficulty frustratingly unfair, and the weapons largely useless (there were two, maybe three guns in the game that you'd wind up using 90% of the time, with the remainders all being relegated to distracting novelty purposes). The online was about the best you could get from PS3 exclusive titles, but ultimately degraded into massive sniper fights between skilled players and everyone else due to the lack of the adequate ranking systems on competing platforms. In short, while the game had a lot of promise and was a hell of a blast for the time, it hadn't aged well.
  
  2008's sequel not only solved the nagging issues from the first game, it improved the rest of the game in incredible ways. First, the useless weapon issue from part one is gone- completely. All non-essential and broken weapons (I'm looking at you, Sapper) are gone, and those weapons that had potential but didn't perform as expected (ahem, the Auger) have been upgraded and retooled. Quite literally, there isn't a "dud" weapon in the mix for Resistance 2, and that alone is a huge improvement.
  
  Second, the already decent graphics have been ratcheted up and the game is absolutely gorgeous. My jaw dropped when I emerged from one of the early level's underwater base and saw the Chimera invasion of San Fransisco and I was floored by the stunning vista in the level set in Bryce Canyon.
  
  Third, Insomniac really raised the bar with their multiplayer offerings this time around. Instead of the constant game of catch-up that most multiplayer franchises seem to be playing, for Resistance 2 the choice was made to do something wholly original. Yes, the classic deathmatch and other derived online styles are here, but what really sets Resistance 2 apart is the co-op gameplay that is one part MMO, one part FPS, and one part RPG. ClanAM friends and I play this game nearly every weekend, and see ourselves still playing it by next year. That's significant.
  
  
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  Braid

  
  

  Xbox 360

  
  Braid is the most brilliant and original game to be released in 2008. Hands down. Side scrolling platformer with a very unique time-based puzzle aspect to it and a highly moving story, this is the little game that you wouldn't have thought would be released let alone sell well.
  
  

Best of the Best

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  Grand Theft Auto IV

  
  

  Xbox 360/PS3

  
  GTA San Andreas did something pretty radical for the GTA series: It had an actual thought-provoking and intelligent story that was significantly less juvenile than the previous games. GTAIV refined this further by going for gritty realism and playing down the over-the-top humor in its story. The end result is something that is compelling and warrants inclusion in this list for content alone.
  
  Coupled with the facts that GTAIV was absolutely gorgeous and was quite fun to play, and you can see how it was a shoo-in for one of the best games of 2008.
  
  


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  Saints Row 2

  
  

  Xbox 360/PS3

  
  What?! Two open-world games in the same award section?! Are you mad! And isn't SR2 just a GTA rip-off?
  
  Yes, the Saints Row series began as a GTA rip-off, but that doesn't change the fact that the series has been fun and has many merits which allow it to stand on its own. As for SR2, it's actually kind of hard to compare it to the recent GTA games simply because its emphasis is so different. Allow me to explain.
  
  GTA has become a series with biting social commentary and gritty realism in its story telling. Much of the over-the-top nature of earlier GTA games is gone in the most recent GTAIV and, in its place, is a mature and heady story of betrayal and revenge.
  
  SR2, on the other hand, celebrates craziness and over-the-top gameplay and humor. Blasting pedestrians with fecal matter from the back of a sewage truck or committing insurance fraud by flinging oneself into traffic would be out of place in the world of Liberty City, but fits in perfectly in the burg of Stillwater.
  
  Yes, SR2 is graphically not as good as GTAIV. And, yes, it is rife with glitches and issues. But, in the end, I think I had more fun playing it than I did GTAIV. It was just comically insane from start to finish, and was a real blast to play, and I wasn't the only one who felt this way.
  
  

Biggest Disappointments

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  Alone in the Dark

  
  

  Xbox 360/Wii/PS3/PS2

  
  I know, I really shouldn't keep getting my hopes up that a new AitD game be released that doesn't suck, but this year's AitD reboot had so much potential. It had good graphics, a fancy-as-hell physics engine that included deformation based upon fire, and an open-world nature that we've just not seen in survival horror games very often.
  
  Unfortunately, it also had hideous contextual controls that you never quite get used to, physics-engine glitches galore that can send your car rocketing into the stratosphere, annoyingly imbalanced difficulty, and a whiny side-kick that easily sent women's rights back 80 years.
  
  The big problem was it was a good game that was ultimately buried under a pile of broken gameplay and glitchy code. If you could dig through the mountain of garbage, you would find something special, but the real question is: Would you want to?