My top 5 games of 2008

2008 was a year of great games. A friend of mine in my e-mail stream asked all of us for our top 5 games of '08 and after much consideration this is what I came up with.

1. Metal Gear Solid 4. Kojima Productions was able to deliver both style and substance as well as replayability in this fully loaded game. The graphics are beautiful and it has the best sound engineering ever put into a video game. It transports you into a Saving Private Ryan-like world where the action is happening all around you and gives you multiple ways to experience it. You can go in guns blazing, sneak around, or try to use the NPCs to aid you on your way and every method works beautifully. It also managed to give players a new way to experience story and gameplay that were unexpected, innovative, and welcome and really help you feel for the character. Kudos to them for also being able to tie up a supremely complex story and wrap it up in a way that doesn't slight those who have invested heavily in the franchise throughout the years.

2. Little Big Planet. Media Molecule managed to do what Nintendo, Sega, and several 3rd party developers haven't been able to do in some time and that is to release an old school platformer that has all of the feel and fun of playing a Mario game from back in the day. It even manages to make its cuteness cool. The single player levels they put into the game were not only fun and challenging, but every level managed to tell a story and give you all kinds of fun things to do which not only keeps the player entertained, but also teach you that you can tell whatever story you want when trying to create you own level or make whatever mission you want. The multiplayer aspect makes this truly the youtube of games not only giving every internet meme, classic game, or other media new life, but also allows you the consumer to tell give everyone else something play with and think about. It was truly the most innovative game released this year.

3. Grand Theft Auto IV. Rockstar Games outdid themselves again with the release of GTA IV. A reboot of the Liberty City of GTA III Rockstar created a living breathing city with inhabitants that do more than just exist for you to run over and gun down in cold blood like the past 3 games. The story received a somewhat controversial reboot as well. The sophomoric humor of past games is still present but the volume has been turned down on it somewhat in favor of a more mature storyline. Now you play Niko Belic who has seen some hard times and just wants a piece of the American Dream. Niko has friends who call him and want to spend time with him. He has a camera phone with ringtones and themes he can buy. He can go out and get drunk. He can surf the internet which is surprisingly detailed and actually captures the feel of real life. And that's the game in general. The GTA franchise has always been a satire on America. Now it's now through its adolescent period of just being about killing hookers to get your money back and has come to make you think about your actions. Clearly Rockstar has put some though into theirs.

4. Burnout Paradise. Way back in January Criterion Games release the absolute best arcade racer in several years. There have been several open world racing games in the past but none have done anything as good as what Burnout managed to pull off. You are presented with a city complete with a downtown area, beachfront, mountains & hills, freeway, and even a bit of the suburbs. Burnout Paradise manages to capture the feeling of speed better than any other racing game. When you are barrelling down the road you know it, you lean in and you try your hards not to screw up. In several other racers you have to look and your speedometer to get an idea of how fast you're going but here that split second could cost you your speed run. Every stop light in the game is a race you can partake in and it is up to you to figure out the fastest way to get to the finish. But they didn't stop there. Scattered throughout the humongous playpen that is this game are secret jumps to try, billboards to burst through, and gates to smash not to mention setting the best times on individual streets, or the highest trick score you can possibly set during stunt runs and showtime modes. And then they happened to throw in the best jump in jump out multiplayer mode ever created. At any time while you are playing off line you are only a few button presses away from joining a group of friends or random people online simply by pressing right on the d-pad and choosing play online. Your friends' records are updated for every street and the game will let you know what they are giving you incentive to try and break them. Create your own races on the fly or just have fun trying to take down everyone else, and when you're all done press the d-pad again and online goes away while never taking you out of the game which is something every multiplayer will hopefully adopt at some point. Burnout Paradise packs in so much fun it is criminal.

5. Pixel Junk Monsters. Simple is good. Few developers understand this as well as Q Games and their Pixel Junk line. Monsters is a simple RTS game that is a time warp. It has a gorgeous stylized hand drawn graphics in full 1080p resolution. I has a very easy to learn control scheme. It has a simple premise, protect the creatures from the incoming monsters. Yet when you're done playing it you realize you haven't had anything to eat all day and it's now dark outside. These days studios are spending millions of dollars and thousands of man hours putting together these epic games that are supposed to change everything only to have them flop because they didn't get the simple basic stuff right. If you can get all the simple stuff right, you can make a great game. Pixel Junk Monsters gets all of the simple stuff right. And it is a great game.

So that's my list. I only considered games I was familiar enough with, I haven't played Fable 2, Yakuza 2 yet. Fallout 3 was my game of the show at PAX 2008, but I've only played put about 3 hours into it so far which isn't nearly enough time to accurately place it or the other games I haven't gotten to on my list.