Fave Games of 2008
You know the drill. It’s the end of the year, this is a gaming blog and a list of my favourite games of 2008 is presented below.
But wait! Yes, you, Little Miss Skipahead. I can see that furrowed brow from here. You stole a glance at the list and are a little perplexed about the presence of a few games from 2007. Well, I can explain. You see, I wandered out of 2007 and through most of 2008 with a decidedly underpowered desktop PC. It could just about manage BioShock and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, but beefier innards were required for anything a little more advanced. I finally got all multi-cored and 9800GTX+ed in September, whereupon I spent the following months playing catch up.
Well, that and the fact that most of 2008′s triple A titles were a bit shit. But hey-ho, let’s soldier on and see what’s what:
BioShock
Anyone who knows me can safely attest that I’m gay for Looking Glass. Their gameography reads like a list of my all-time favourite PC titles: Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld II, System Shock, Terra Nova, Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2 and Thief II: The Metal Age. (Yes, even Terra Nova. Bet you forgot about that one, didn’t you?) Needless to say, any fruit produced from the loins of Ken Levine would be mine for the chomping, so I was on board with this so-called “spiritual successor” to System Shock from day one.
I blasted through BioShock in a couple of weeks and loved every minute of it. It more than lived up to its Looking Glass legacy and delivered a highly-polished FPS experience that’s light years ahead of what most developers are capable of. Great visual design, gorgeous graphics, outstanding sound design and music. Despite what my fawning may suggest, it wasn’t an altogether perfect experience. The linear level design cramped my love of more open-ended gaming environments (which, ironically, Looking Glass pioneered so successfully in days gone by). Character design and movement borrowed heavily from the Quake II school of cartoon-like figures moving with gravity-defying speed and agility. (Don’t get me wrong — it all looked great but otherwise detracted from the realism. With the exception of the big daddies, the enemies never really felt as if they had any real weight or presence within the game world.) Still, in the grand scheme of things these are relatively minor quibbles. If 2K Marin do the same thing all over again with BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams, I’ll still be a happy punter.
Crysis & Crysis Warhead
Crytek’s Far Cry has a special place in my heart. True, it came free with my eVGA 7950GT card, but I’m not shallow enough to express my undying love for it on that basis alone. I’d never really followed Far Cry during its development phase and so knew very little about it, other than it sported some rather pretty graphics. I had the likes of Doom 3, Quake 4 and Half-Life 2 all queued up for my attention, but after spending a few hours with Far Cry just to “give it a go” I’d found my new gaming fix. Being somewhat disappointed with the never-ending parade of linear shooters, Far Cry knocked me for six. Here was a shooter that sported huge environments with massive draw distances. I could approach my objectives from numerous angles, opening up the tactical scope of the game considerably. The somewhat pedestrian “take out the evil drug lord’s henchmen” missions began to take on subtle sci-fi overtones as I delved deeper into the game. It was all very compulsive and… well, just pure fun.
So, yeah. Crysis? Pretty much Far Cry with prettier graphics and a nifty futuristic combat suit (and I got it free with my eVGA 9800GTX+!).
I’ve also slapped Crysis Warhead down because I played both games back-to-back, with nary a pause for breath. They both blend into one big homogeneous ball of pixels as far as my memory’s concerned. The only thing that made Warhead stand out for me, other than Psycho’s Cockney twang, was its far superior climactic level. The aircraft carrier battle in Crysis was fine, but there’s nothing to beat the combination of sheer terror and adrenaline rush in Warhead when you have to climb down from the radio tower, into an area swarming with aliens, with low health and little ammo, hoping you can make it to the downed aircraft without having to change your underwear too many times.
Awesome stuff. Crytek are now on my list of developers whose games I’ll automatically buy (or get free with my video cards) on release day without question.
Fallout 3
I decided not to follow Fallout 3 during its development process. Not because I wasn’t interested in the game — I’m a huge fan of both Fallout and Oblivion, so there was no question I wouldn’t be grabbing this the moment it hit the shelves — but simply because I wanted to avoid all the tedious fan squabbling and bullshit that came with it. (You know what I’m talking about — hardcore Fallout fans who had difficulty distinguishing Bethesda from the Antichrist, hardcore Oblivion fans who wanted nothing to do with the a sequel to some old turn-based bollocks, etc.) Consequently, I was able to simply knuckle down and enjoy the game once it finally arrived, free of all the pre-release hype, bluster and myriad spoilers courtesy of everyone who had access to beta code.
Fallout 3 checked all the right boxes for me: open-ended environment, non-linear design, sandbox potential, post apocalyptic setting, great visuals and sound design, etc. The only minor quibble, which was also true of Oblivion, is that there’s not much variety in the interior locations. Many buildings are laid out almost identically, which is a little bit disappointing given that the main exterior map is a veritable smörgåsbord of variety. Still, it doesn’t detract too much from the experience, given that it’s simply great fun to head off in a random direction and explore the world in front of you with relatively few constraints.
At the moment I’m not quite sure about the game’s replay value. Maybe its because I explored a huge percentage of the game’s content on my first run through — I don’t feel there’s a whole lot more to see or do. Oblivion was a little different in this respect. Much of that game’s content was tied to very specific character classes, so playing the game as a Paladin gave you a very different experience than if you’d played through it as a member of the Dark Brotherhood. Fallout 3‘s class system pretty much begins and ends with the weapons available to you. The game’s content remains pretty much the same regardless of what character you’re playing.
But like I said, these are just minor quibbles. Assuming you’ve got about 80+ hours of spare time to dedicate to one single game, Fallout 3 remains one of the most compulsive gaming experiences of the last few years.
Left 4 Dead
Valve? Check. Zombies? Check. What more could a zombie-lovin’ PC gamer possibly want?
I can’t say I’m a huge fan of multiplayer games. There are a few I get a big kick out of (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Red Orchestra being my particular faves), but I largely find them to be an empty, soulless experience. Most online games swing between two extremes — you’re either playing with a bunch of retarded, griefing fuckwits or a with a hardcore elite band of players who get more fun out of exploiting the game’s bugs and quirks than actually playing the game as originally designed. I guess there’s some entertainment to be had from each group (although both tend to gravitate towards Counterstrike), if you’re that way inclined, but I tend to be a little bit more conservative in my approach to multiplayer gaming.
Valve take an interesting approach with Left 4 Dead, where griefing is a legitimate tactic (if you’re played as the Infected) and anything less than tightly-knit teamwork is likely to get you in trouble as much as your team. It’s nice to have this sort of idiot filter built into the gameplay mechanics, because it invariably makes the multiplayer experience heaps of fun rather than the usual test of your patience.
Of course, L4D also works well as a single player game. Not that anyone in their right mind would want to play it that way exclusively, but it’s nice to be able to put in a bit of practice before you brave the online servers. This is one feature I felt lacking in Team Fortress 2. Granted, the tactical scope offered by the different character classes in TF2 makes it nigh on impossible to craft effective bots, but having “trial by fire” the only mode of gameplay has no doubt scared off many people who’d otherwise get a kick out of the game.
If L4D is lacking anything, it’s that the Survivors vs Infected mode is limited to just two of the game’s four campaigns. I’ve no doubt Valve will remedy this somewhere down the line, but little more than six weeks or so after the game’s release, I’m already starting to get a little tired of the existing campaigns and have decided to take a break from the game for a while.
Otherwise, L4D is the best damn zombie blasting fun I’ve ever had. Yeah, and that includes Resident Evil 4.
Grand Theft Auto IV
I lost count of the number of hoops Rockstar and Microsoft made me jump through to get this game up and running. After the 25 minutes or so it took to pull 15GB of data off two DVDs, you have to create an account with Rockstar’s Social Club (without which you can’t play the game’s multiplayer component). Want to save your game? (Yes!) Well, you’ll need to create a Games for Windows Live account. And before you do that you’ll need a Windows Live account too. Once that’s all done, you’ll typically need to patch something, then discover that the game crashes when Social Club’s running anyway. I think I finally got into the game after ninety minutes of faffing around. It doesn’t help matters that the game’s an absolute beast when it comes to system resources (making Crysis as demanding as Doom in comparison). The PC required to run this game with maxed out details at 720p+ resolutions has yet to be built, but a fairly decent modern rig will get the game running at Xbox 360 quality levels.
The game itself? Well, it’s okay, but it doesn’t hold a candle to San Andreas. The first thing that’s immediately apparent is that the game is much, much smaller than San Andreas. This is a bit disappointing at first, but GTA4 makes up for things by giving you a much more detailed city than you’ve ever seen in a previous GTA title. The attention to detail is nothing short of incredible. I walked around an area of the city on foot for about two hours, just taking in the sights and sounds, and was constantly amazed at just how vibrant and realistic the city felt.
In a nutshell, GTA4 is pretty much Now That’s What I Call Grand Theft Auto with pretty graphics. If you’ve played GTA3/VC/SA to death then there’s really nothing new on offer. You’ve played all the missions before, seen all the gameplay mechanics before and progressed through the same plot before. It’s fun to play, but Game of the Year material? Not by a long chalk, but then 2008 has sadly been a year of half-assed sequels and new IPs that have failed to inspire, so it’s been slim pickings.
Honorable Mentions
A few other games caught my attention in 2008. PC-wise, STALKER: Clear Sky, Far Cry 2 and Dead Space all looked interesting from the brief, cursory session I had with each. I’ll tackle each of those games properly during the new year. I also enjoyed The World Ends With You and Professor Layton and the Curious Village on the DS. I also finally got round to completing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the GameCube. Looking forward to Rage, Empire: Total War, Portal 2, Half-Life 2: Episode Three and Singularity on the PC in the year(s) ahead. May grab a PS3 some time in 2009.
Here’s to another twelve months of happy gaming!
