Category: Comics

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you are really awesome this year.

Alright, let’s close this damn year out already.

5) Mirror’s Edge
As much fun as Mirror’s Edge‘s campaign is, there’s even more fun to be had after the credits roll. Or before, if you’re the type of savage to skip the story mode all together and go straight to the time trials, but that would be a grave mistake. Beyond the hideous flash animation is a brand spankin’ new subgenre that works better as a first attempt than it has any right to. Controlling Faith is as responsive as can be, and every failed leap is just another opportunity to make her look cooler than she did the last time you attempted that wall-to-wall leap over a barbed-wire fence into a dust-kicking slide. Mirror’s Edge 2 will be incredible if they figure out what the hell they want to do with combat.

4) Condemned 2: Bloodshot
I may have forgotten some great entertainment from the first half of 2008, but I never once forgot about this one. You know you’re in for a treat when your first objective as alcoholic detective Ethan Thomas is to “follow the bum up the stairs.” Condemned 2 spirals into madness from there, and though it pains me not to spoil it at this point, it’s home to what is hands-down my favorite scripted event of the year. I will raise hell if there isn’t a third game in this series, and I will blame everyone that for some reason or another doesn’t seem to give a hoot about one of the freshest first-person series since you first typed IDKFA in Doom (cheater).

3) Castle Crashers
I like Alien Hominid. I love Castle Crashers. It’s both a send-up to one of my favorite genres—the rowdy beat ’em up—and a gorgeous case for the future of 2D gaming in high-definition. It has humor, it has fantastic animation, and it’s a much deeper game than one would expect at first glance. Even notoriously buggy online multiplayer that was only recently patched couldn’t stop everyone I’m friends with on 360 from jamming this game rotten. If this is what The Behemoth is putting out for their first real exclusive-to-XBLA title, I can’t even imagine what the future holds.

2) Little Big Planet
This was my game of the year at some point, and it certainly deserves the spot. Rather than ask why it isn’t, let’s just focus on why it’s as high up as it is. Little Big Planet is a very strange game, and there hasn’t really been anything like it up to this point. The platforming and physics are imprecise, but the game is so much damn fun, especially with a friend, that it doesn’t matter how floaty the jumps are or how much Sackboy slides in ways you don’t want him to. All the little flaws disappear when you realize you just spent hours running and hanging and being slung around each themed level, all to the tune of what is without a doubt the best soundtrack of the year. The game keeps giving, too, and it won’t stop as long as there’s a creative community to support it and push the design boundaries of a level creator that already seems pretty limitless.

1) Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
I’m no saint. Innovation be damned, Metal Gear Solid 4 pushed almost all the right buttons for me. Sure, Kojima’s obvious mental deterioration is splattered across every cutscene like the aftermath of a Scanners showdown, but MGS4 is the culmination of a decade of gaming for many, and its emotional highs and lows make it worth watching every absurd cutscene, even if it’s obvious no one at the studio has ever heard of an editor, balking at the concept that “less is more.” Old Snake’s story is heartbreaking in a way, but this final chapter goes out with a bang, and the five-act structure does a fantastic job of framing the story while setting up landmarks for every major change in game philosophy. From the wide-open range of the game’s opening war to the back-to-basics finale, Metal Gear Solid 4 is unforgettable.

No need for a long-winded preamble this time. Here are numbers 10-6:

10) Dead Space
EA has taken a bold step with this one and, regardless of any lacking sales, it’s one of the best action/horror games ever made. The atmosphere is disgustingly thick, and even the cheap closet scares are pretty thrilling. If more games don’t start using a HUD similar to the one in Dead Space, I’ll be plenty sore. It will also be a while before I shake some of the game’s more sublime moments, like stepping out of the ship’s confines and right into the unnerving silence of space. Maybe we should all go buy some downloadable suits so they’ll hurry up and give us more.

9) Ninja Gaiden II
Yeah yeah, the camera sucks and the game can be cheap as hell sometimes. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s the best straight-up action game that came out all year. Capcom may as well give up on Dante unless they can match the speed and skill with which Ryu Hayabusa absolutely pulverizes every living creature. The icing on the cake is a story worthy of the most primal action figure fiesta, complete with a four-armed werewolf king and a pair of double-Ds that gleefully send gaming back to the tomb raiding 90s.

8) Prince of Persia
Last year Altair satisfied my need to run and jump like a buffoon, but the Prince takes it a step further in this reboot that everyone should be required by law to play. Well, everyone that’s interested in platforming, at least, because that’s 90% of the game here, and don’t let the haters squawk for too long about the lack of a game over screen. Prince of Persia moves its genre forward rather than keeping it at a standstill, and it does so in both the method of storytelling and the gameplay itself, with combat that manages to be as cinematic as a cutscene without becoming the type of straight-up Quick Time Event gauntlet that made The Force Unleashed a backward-thinking chore to get through.

7) Mega Man 9
If Prince of Persia is the progression of the platformer, Mega Man 9 is a game that embraces its roots to the highest degree, dialing back the visuals to a time that must scare the living shit out of today’s children. Get this, though, the level design actually exceeds that of its predecessors, even classics like Mega Man 2 and 3. It’s the type of satisfying challenge that gets richer with the more time you commit to learning every button-crushing jump, and is actually accessible to anyone willing to sit down for just a few hours and get into the groove. The only thing breaking the illusion of this being some time-capsuled relic of the past is Capcom’s very modern insistence on nickel-and-diming everyone to death with DLC.

6) Soul Calibur IV
Who would have thought that this would end up being my most played game of 2008? I never even spoke word one of it on Robotronic Dynamite, and how could I? Its tendrils had my entire apartment ensnared for months, dropping a dark veil of curse-filled ranked matches over most nights of the week. My online reputation has suffered many a blow from these cheap thrills, my 360’s inbox is full of stuff like “ur a nub,” and I’m pretty sure my controllers sport physical damage in a few places. If it hadn’t worn so thin on me through sheer repetition at this point, it would probably be even higher on my list. As it stands, it’s the most fun and best looking 3D fighter your money can buy.

Just like Project Pat said, “You gotta take the good with the bad, the smile with the sad.” That quote never rang truer than in 2008, which, as I hope yesterday’s runner-ups list demonstrated, was littered with quality gaming. The downside to the plentiful goodness is that the junk appears to be even more scuffed and splintered.

The upside is I didn’t really have to play a lot of bad games this year. The ones that fell in my lap either did so out of curiosity or promotional means. Therefore, there are only a couple worth mentioning, and I won’t list games that are well-made but simply didn’t mesh with my own personal preferences. I’ll also avoid the obvious, like all the shovelware that hit Wii and whatever other games I have no business playing. The stuff below had real potential.

The Last Remnant / Infinite Undiscovery
This is a tie because both of these games are equally pungent. Actually, they’re not even good targets for vitriolic hyperbole, because they’re so underwhelming, so archaic in their design, that their forgettableness can be measured in minutes. The main hurdles that Square Enix need to overcome are technological and narrative, areas in which their struggles are most transparent. I can understand how crushing this must be for them, because they were once considered on the cutting edge, at least visually speaking, but now their hamfisted stories are tripping at every turn over graphical engines they just don’t understand. The result is ugly, and not even fun in a trainwreck sense.

Lego Indiana Jones
One could say this game isn’t for me, and maybe they’d be right, but I really enjoyed the Lego Star Wars games, and was looking for the same out of this quick rental. What I got instead was a developer that’s going through the motions and not tailoring its expanding franchise to each individual IP. Where the concept was once fun and quirky, it’s now tedious and boring, and cooperative play seemed like more of a chore than ever. Maybe these Lego games should stick to blasters and lightsabers exclusively or die off entirely.

Too Human
Too Human is everything that’s wrong with videogames. It’s a horribly designed, bland, soulless grinder whose oft-delayed release was fueled by some kind of bizarre megalomaniacal hubris streaming from the mouth of a very delusional man. I can’t possibly be harsh enough on this one. The level design is almost nonexistent, as are any interesting characterizations, and it does nothing in its multiplayer that wasn’t done more competently by Phantasy Star Online in 2001.

So many games came out in 2008 that it’s just stupid. There’s no excuse for publishers to be putting out so many titles, and it’s frankly kind of disgusting that so many of them were good. How is anyone supposed to remember what they played in January, or even July, when fun entertainment is raining down from above like so many DK-plastered barrels.

I’m only being a little facetious here, because the typical fall/winter deluge of software is kind of unfair to both the consumer and the developer(s) that worked hard on titles that many people, including myself, don’t have the time or the money to play. It’s not like it’s a sin to hold off until the next year to tackle a game you missed, but the industry is so dependent on immediate sales that a game with longer shelf life can appear to be an off-the-truck failure if you don’t “run out and get dat.”

Nevertheless, I’m pretty confident that I played a wide breadth of titles, some for work and some purely because they were on my list of musts. I’ll get into my Top 10 soon, but for now let’s take a quick look at the five runner-ups that were a butt hair away from higher honors.

Burnout Paradise
Paradise is without a doubt the most fun you’ll have inside a virtual car this year, or maybe even until the next Burnout game comes out. Though racing to the GPS-aided destinations can take some getting used to, there isn’t anything out there that matches the speed and intensity of a well-fought battle on these gorgeous streets. The multiplayer is already incredibly influential, as well, and there’s a wealth of downloadable content to dig into.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
While I wasn’t one of the many people that were apparently dissatisfied with the previous portable entry, Portrait of Ruin, I’ll concede that this is the superior game. The map-based progression offers a wider variety of locales than normal and the bosses are absolutely damnable. Koji Igarashi may be mad for getting anywhere near Judgment on Wii, but his insanity is welcome here.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
I’m not long for this “role-playing” world. As each year passes, they seem more and more absurd to me, and their current-gen incarnations (see The Last Remnant for a particularly nasty example) are even more archaic than their forefathers. The Persona series continues to impress with the way it strays from what one expects of the genre, though, and Persona 4 improves on its predecessor in some subtle yet important ways.

Bionic Commando Rearmed
Bionic Commando—the NES game not the arcade original—is still one of the most original platformers of all time. You don’t see anyone mimicking its jump-free gimmick because Capcom nailed it on their first go, and Stockholm-based developer GRIN nailed this polished remake, as well. The controls are pitch perfect, and they have to be, because Rearmed ain’t nothin’ like a stroll through the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s a real platformer with a lot of humor and genuine reverence for the series’ roots. It’s also absurdly cheap, so buy it.

Gears of War 2
I know, right? This should probably be in my Top 10, and it was pretty darn close to getting the gold, but a couple of key titles outed this follow-up to one of the most astoundingly sexy looking gray games ever. It doesn’t play too bad, either, with some really memorable levels like a gore-soaked nod to Contra and a last hurrah that almost makes up for some of the earlier vehicle stage missteps. Protip: play it with a friend, then play it with nine more in the brutally addicting competitive modes.

Hopefully none of this shocked your system too heavily. Before we get to the first part of the Top 10, though, I think I’ll take some time to look back on some of the dreck. Stay tuned!