The Best Gaming Moments of 2008

[lanux128]

over at bit-tech.net, there is a quite interesting and ubiquitous (given the time of the year) article. i wonder if fellow DC gamers could come up such a list of games they had played throughout the year and their comments about the good, the bad & the ugly. i myself for the time being had been sucked into the wastelands of Fallout 3.


• http://www.bit-tech....ng-moments-of-2008/1

[justice]

I had a good blast with GTA4 but that's finished now and I don't think the multiplayer has enough grown up people playing it Also Fallout3 and at the moment Puzzle Quest which I discovered earlier this week (and world of warcraft bejeweled addon)

[lanux128]

hehe.. i've been busy myself this year. starting with Assassin's Creed, Portal, Fallout 3, some episodes of Sam & Max and staying awake long enough to finish Gothic 3.

among casual games, Peggle Extreme had been a nice discovery. Puzzle Quest came up several times in the chat-room discussions but i hadn't really taken a look.

[justice]

it's like bejeweled + magic the gathering + light quest / rpg story

[iphigenie]

Been playing my old games most of the year, from arcanum to sacrifice.

Best "new" game moment of the year will still be in the new WoW expansion when I realised that something I had done had triggered something that changed the game world for me - something I had always wished MMOs would dare do again.

[Lashiec]

Believe or not, I have not played any recent PC game, as I've been clearing my huge backlog :). I've played a good number of demos, though, with the conclusion that gaming critics like to over reward winners (that have been declared as such before the game was even released), and over punish losers, being the most recent example a game like Legendary, a run-off-the-mill shooter that does not contribute anything to the FPS genre, but still it's a fun game that has been panned by critics, with some reviewers even pointing to inexistent flaws.

I've been more in tune with 2008 console games, where I've been impressed with Mirror's Edge, a game full of nice ideas but ultimately handicapped by a short duration and a inflated price. Originality can only take you so far when you decide to release a game at the end of year, competing with such behemoths as Gears of War 2 or Fallout 3, and you only offer 8 hours of gaming time for nearly 70 €. Also, thanks to a friend, I got into Rock Band 2, which is really a blast, even if I'm disaster with any of the instruments :P

LittleBigPlanet is really fun as well, and I just love you can play it with another friend, there are not many platform games that allow co-op play, and that makes it even funnier to the point that you're laughing like mad when playing. I'm not sure about the 'social' features (the ones that makes it part from the 'gaming 2.0' genre, or something, blergh), all the levels created by the players I saw are mostly 'meh' to me, and I doubt such feature will sustain interest for the game in the long term as mods have sustained FPS game along the years. We'll see, but the sale figures agree with my doubts, perhaps a console still it's not the best place for DIY games.

GTA 4 has been dull as expected. Don't take it personally, just simply that the GTA franchise does not have the slightest appeal to me. Oh, and the game of the year is TrackMania :D

[f0dder]

I tried Assassins Creed, but it didn't really catch my fancy, and was pretty unstable. I wanted to play BioShock since it seemed like an OK way to kill time, but that was pretty unstable too - I'd usually only get around 30min playtime before a crash, so I gave up.

Crysis was a nice game - gameplay was pretty trivial and the storyline was pretty standard, but it sure it darn pretty. It only crashed on me once, and that was when my graphics card overheated after 6 hours of continuous playing

HL2 EP2 was a really nice play, and I'm looking much forward to EP3. The game continues to look great even if the engine is no longer state-of-the-art, and I like the gameplay mechanics and storyline. Portal was a great play as well, had a great time completing that. The bonus levels are a bit too insane, though.

From what I've seen of GTA4 screenshots for PC, I don't think I'm going to bother. It doesn't look all that great (imho only minor improvements from GTA3), but from what people say it requires an insane machine configuration in order to run smoothly even at medium detail quality.

Far Cry 2 has been pretty fun, and looks great even though it's not quite up to Crysis' standard. I like that it's somewhat more realistic than Crysis, though. But it's somewhat unstable, and when it crashes the last couple of savegames are usually corrupted. It's one of the few games that seems to utilize all four cores of my quadcore pretty well, but I can't help but think how well it utilizes them - after all, the game seems simpler than Crysis, but sucks up more CPU power. The gameplay is very repetitive too, but it's fun for a couple of hours now and then, driving around and sniping people

I revisited DOOM a couple of months ago, completing all four episodes (what, you thought there were only three? Didn't know that ID software released "Thy Flesh Consumed"?) on Ultra Violence.  Ah, the nostalgia... and still a great game.

The best game I've played this year has to be Left 4 Dead. It uses the source engine, so it runs really great, and it looks very nice as well. And I love zombie movies. The gameplay is very nice, both in cooperative and versus modes... this was the game that finally made me buy a head-set in order to coordinate stuff properly with my buddies.

[Lashiec]

Hmmm, pretty puzzling those BioShock crashes, it runs like a champ here

[f0dder]

Hmmm, pretty puzzling those BioShock crashes, it runs like a champ here

-Lashiec (December 16, 2008, 07:12 AM)

Perhaps it doesn't like XP64? Could be the copy protection that messes stuff up. Or it could be the video drivers... or... etc. I've heard a lot of people complain about instability though, so it's not just me.

[Josh]

Wouldn't scancode being pwned by p3lb0x be one of the best gaming moments of 2008?

[Eóin]

BioShock ran fine for me too, but that was on 32bit XP.

I'm still playing X3 - Terran Conflict and loving it.

[Crush]

I´m playing Mass Effect PC for a few days now. There have been and I´m sure there will be countless great moments and stories. For 2008 it´s my favourite game.

[f0dder]

I´m playing Mass Effect PC for a few days now. There have been and I´m sure there will be countless great moments and stories. For 2008 it´s my favourite game.

-Crush (December 16, 2008, 06:33 PM)

Ah yes, Mass Effect was pretty OK as well. The missions are a bit repetitive, and the weapons feel unbalanced - shotgun felt ineffective even at point blank, assault rifle felt relatively ineffective, and the pistol (dual pistols? I forgot) kicked ass. But graphics were nice and storyline was pretty decent. One more complaint, though: even if you make a "ruthless" personality, it still feels more natural to play as a do-gooder.

[Shades]

Trackmania wins over here, but that is because I really like racing games. Sins of a Solar Empire is the other game I play.

[Deozaan]

Wouldn't scancode being pwned by p3lb0x be one of the best gaming moments of 2008?

-Josh (December 16, 2008, 07:28 AM)

When did this happen? What did I miss?

[wreckedcarzz]

Wouldn't scancode being pwned by p3lb0x be one of the best gaming moments of 2008?

-Josh (December 16, 2008, 07:28 AM)

Agreed

[vixay]

I had a good blast with GTA4 but that's finished now and I don't think the multiplayer has enough grown up people playing it Also Fallout3 and at the moment Puzzle Quest which I discovered earlier this week (and world of warcraft bejeweled addon)

-justice (December 16, 2008, 03:16 AM)

Sigh... gaming is my one addiction, don't get me started, but suffice to say i followed all the lead titles, but the latest game i played and most fun was Psychonauts... i know it's old, but it's a fabulous piece of art ... and King's Bounty, i'm addicted to that.

I was addicted to Puzzle quest for a while too... i even wrote a bot for it just to get over the tedious parts and get to the fun ones....  ... try it  and let me know...

http://www.autohotke...ghlight=puzzle+quest