The official mandate has come down from the top, as you have seen—that it is December, and we all write about games, so we all have to pick some arbitrary number of them that we enjoyed above all others this year. This is an arduous task that we have all figured out ways to cheat at, and I am no different. Though I will pick ten games, exactly, and present them in order from #10 to the best game of the year, I will not be starting that list today. Instead, here are my special jury prizes for the year. These games would have made it into my top twenty. They all did one or two things pretty well, and many deserve more recognition than they ended up getting.
Best Games to get Your Girlfriend to Play Games – Wii Fit and Echochrome: A tie here, for two otherwise incomparable games. Wii Fit is an obvious one, as it has been specifically targeted at women and is barely a game at all—it’s really just a charmingly presented tool. Echochrome is much more interesting, because it’s a gamer’s game through and through. Despite being maybe the most abstract game released this year, it’s actually surprisingly easy to get the layperson to understand it—“the M.C. Escher game” is a fully illuminating description that almost anyone is at least intrigued by. That both of these games were technically ambitious (Wii Fit in hardware, Echochrome in software) is not a coincidence, as this is the kind of lateral thinking that grows the scope of the medium.
Best Storytelling Game – Yakuza 2: Yakuza 2 is a technically dated, kind of clunky PS2 brawler/RPG hybrid thing that uses cutscenes to tell the majority of its story. It breaks just about every rule that Half-Life laid down about what a storytelling game should be. So why is it so gripping? Because it gets the fundamentals of storytelling right. The writing is tight, the saga epic and complex, and all of it is complemented by strong environments and plenty of incidental detail. In an age of high-definition and super-slick shooters, this was a reminder of why the PS2 and its plethora of Japan-developed games had such a long run at the top.
Best Transition from Console to Handheld – Warriors Orochi for PSP: The Warriors series gets a bad rap because it fails to add value from release to release. But the core of the game is and will always be viscerally entertaining, because who doesn’t want to obliterate men by the thousands with just the few swings of a sword? Previous attempts at bringing this series portable resulted in crippling gameplay compromises. This year Warriors Orochi for the PSP finally brought the full-fat franchise experience to the mass transit systems of the world, which is absolutely the best place for this kind of repetitive but satisfying gameplay. Having such a game on the go is actually hugely valuable, which makes it a shame that this one came and went with zero recognition.
Best…Hmm, Why am I Still Playing This: Viking: Battle for Asgard – Viking is a game where you play as a lumbering, shirtless piece of man-meat who has to save hundreds of other lumbering, shirtless pieces of man-meat from some horrible woman on a mountain. I probably don’t have to tell you that I played the whole thing.
Other Bests of 2008:
Derrick's Top 13 Games of 2008 - Part 1, Part 2
Bob’s Top 10 of 2008 in No Particular Order - Audiosurf, Braid
10 Games Nadia Played In 2008 Instead Of Working: Super Smash Bros Brawl