Vidya of 2008
Another year and another selection of great games have been released. Some will fade into a distant memory while others will live on as legends in years to come… or something. At the end of every year I’ll be posting one of these “Vidya of…” entries. However, unlike a lot of the end of year round ups on other sites, with Twilight Lynk it will be different…
Instead of telling you what has gone on throughout the year, I’m more interested in how people in the community have spent their time gaming and what they thought of 2008 through their own experiences.
This was a very interesting year for me… an extremely interesting year in fact because for the first time I have actually bought a non-Nintendo console. In years past, while I have played A LOT of games on all of the other systems from Atari, Sega, Sony and Microsoft, I hadn’t actually bought any of them but rather played games for them on consoles owned by my friends.
The first non-Nintendo console I had bought was a PS2 slim and a copy of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater… though I wish I was able to find Subsistence instead… oh well, maybe later. While I had gotten the PS2 first, I was on my way to getting a free PS3 through a deal where if I buy a HDTV, I’ll get a free PS3 from Sony. I pounced on this offer and also bought myself a second DualShock 3 controller and a copy of Metal Gear Solid 4. Later I got Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (as well as a PS3 remote) for my birthday and also bought Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution (which was a bad idea since it would’ve been better to buy the 360 version instead) and finally Valkyria Chronicles, which as you all know, I was really excited about for a long time. Along with a few games I also got to buy a few Blu-ray movies…
Of course, it doesn’t end there, recently in November I got myself a Xbox 360 Elite which came with Halo 3, Kung Fu Panda, LEGO Indiana Jones and Mass Effect for free and for Christmas I got BioShock, Dead Space, Duke Nukem 3D for XBLA and Gears of War.
It doesn’t end there though because I also bought quite a lot of Wii games too… Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, LEGO Star Wars The Complete Saga and others I’m definitely forgetting about lol. I also go, I think, only ONE DS game (Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Justice For All) which I feel very ashamed of. I’ve been neglecting the DS so much this year even though there are a TONNE of great games for it that I really want to buy.
I got lots of games this year… but still not enough. For most of the year I didn’t have the money to buy any video games so the list of games I’ve mentioned so far is pretty small for my taste. I only managed to get a lot near the end of the year. That said, a lot of the games I got this year are quality stuff and I’m very happy with pretty much everything I got. 2007 was a great year for me with Nintendo games, however aside from a few gems, Nintendo didn’t really do anything for me in 2008… luckily I was able to fill in the void with some great PS3 and 360 games.
So, that’s what went on for me, how about everyone else?
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So that started me on this whole idea of looking back at PS2 games that I missed out on and my backlog of PS2 games began to grow. I started out by looking for RPGs I haven't played and stumbled upon SMT:P3 FES which seemed to have that sort of cult classic type following, I got hooked by that game. After I found one gem that I missed out on I kept looking for more, I purchased or eBay'd several more titles, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, Dragon Quest VIII, SMT: Nocturne, Okami, I also picked up PSP titles that were ports of PS2 games, Disgaea, and Star Ocean. I still have barely made a dent in my new collection of old games.
That's not to say I didn't pick up any games for my PS3 and PC though. I got Mass Effect when it came out for PC, and I purchased several PS3 games this year. MGS4, BF:BC, Valkyria Chronicles, LittleBIGPlanet, Prince of Persia to name some, my roommate even bought Army of Two and Mercenaries 2, neither of which were that great... I also got a couple of Wii games, those being Brawl and Mario Kart. Also I can't forget about my DS, although I actually didn't get that many games for it, just Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift now that I think about it.
Anyway, I guess the major thing that happened for me in 2008 actually had nothing to do with the new releases, but actually playing games that I had missed from the PS2 days. I have much different tastes in gaming now than I did when the PS2 was in its prime and as a result I missed out on some tremendous games. I'm still looking at getting more games that I missed out on, I've been pondering getting Odin Sphere and Rogue Galaxy, so if anybody has played those games, let me know what you thought of them
. So yea, that was my 2008 in a nutshell.Luckily I did find some great games from 2007 in BioShock and Final Fantasy III DS, though BioShock gave me some problems on my laptop at first I got it running on my desktop and really enjoy it. And having never played a FF game before, I really got into FFIII. This year I also played Diablo 2 for the first time with some friends online so that was pretty fun, and we also played some of Neverwinter Nights 2 which I enjoy very much. A great game from 2008 that I did really enjoy was Mass Effect for PC, and I also got to try some of The Witcher which I look forward to completing eventually.
And come Christmas time I got several great games to keep me busy. I got Castlevania Order of Ecclesia which is excellent thus far, Hotel Dusk Room 215 which I had been wanting for a while and has really got me interested, and Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir which I actually have yet to try but it should be fun if I can play it online with a friend of mine. Also getting to try out Mirror's Edge and Prince of Persia among others gives me something to look forward to when I can play them through all the way.
Hopefully I'm not leaving a whole lot out but this is a pretty good overview of what I did this year in gaming.
My top three games this year were definitely GTA IV, MGS4 and Mass Effect.
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