Here they are: the ten games of 2008 that really tickled my fancy. It’s hard to say they’re a cut above, considering how deep this year’s releases were, but, if anything, this year proved for me that it’s the year of the downloadable title (I bought two of these games on Steam, and three on Xbox Live Arcade). It’s a scary future, because I find the lending and borrowing of games really important to me as someone who likes sharing and discussing the medium (more on that another day, I suppose), but it’s hard to complain when the games are of such high quality (and, in the case of four, are so cheap. The other was expensive, but so many of my friends had already bought it that the lending thing was irrelevant).

10. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (PS2)

I haven’t played very far into it so far, but everything I’ve seen, I’ve loved. It’s not the pacing, because it’s slow; it’s not the combat, because it’s pretty basic so far; it’s not the voice acting, because it’s deplorable. Honestly, I think the reason I love this game (and, incidentally, 3) is the graphic design and the ease of use. I think one of the greatest secrets of a good RPG is a menu system that continues to be a joy to use, and P4 nailed it. Furthermore, the high school sim is intriguing, the whodunit is intriguing, and the art is stunning. Now, can this be the last great PS2 game, so I can stop having to plug it back in every few months for the next unbelievably good release?

9. Burnout Paradise (360)

I don’t really buy car games. Unless you count GTA IV, this is the only car game I’ve bought this generation (I got Forza with my 360, so that doesn’t count). In fact, it took me a really, really long time to pick it up; it wasn’t until I went into a Future Shop and saw it for $20 or $30 (I bought it at the same time that I bought the hilariously excellent Earth Defense Force 2017). What I didn’t expect was to get one of those games that you can just throw in when you just want to mess around. It’s like the Skate of cars. I don’t care about the driving around to start missions, despite the fact that it’s just the kind of thing I usually hate, because driving feels good in this game. More games need to steal this idea: make an engine that is SO GOOD, that nothing can feel like a chore. Go figure, right? Add to that the most progressive, laudable DLC releases in the history of DLC (free stuff, so you don’t resell your copy) and you’ve got a game that nobody should be without.

8. Braid (XBLA)

In spite of there being a lot about this game I didn’t like, I still loved a lot about it. I hate laundry-listing games, but the mechanics and the pacing and the art are all utterly top-notch. I LOVE Hellman’s art style. What I didn’t like was everything else about the presentation; the story, the text dumps, and even the setting left me a little flat. Still, no platforming game has been this incredibly well put-together. Blow might be a bit of a dick, but he knows how to think up insane puzzles, and that’s awesome. I hope his next game doesn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth like this one did, because he’s clearly an incredibly talented director.

7. Rez HD (XBLA)

Yeah, it’s a re-release, but two points: firstly, I never got to play the DC/PS2 releases due to scarcity, and secondly, HD is (probably) how the game was meant to be played. Bad demo alert, though, the first level is very simplistic and not so exciting. It’s not until you get into the later levels that you realize how thrilling this game is. By the fifth level, Fear, I am so enrapt that I forget I’m a sack of meat on a chair staring at a glowing picture frame. I forget everything, really. I just listen to some dorky rave song and react to pictures and grin like an idiot. If you doubted this game’s quality, check it out anyway. It costs little and doesn’t take long. But turn the lights off and sit close to the screen. You won’t find better immersion for a while.

6. Audiosurf (PC)

Yep, two music games, and nary a Guitar or Rock in their names. I can’t remember where I read it (apologies if you said it), but someone said of Audiosurf “If you hate this game, you probably don’t like good music.” Pretentious, and probably a bit inaccurate, but there’s a seed of truth there: if you don’t like Audiosurf, you’re playing it wrong. I’ve listened to new records using this, and it makes it even easier for me to absorb them on first listen because I am so intently focussed on little idiosyncrasies. Of course, it doesn’t really work for, like, a Bon Iver record as much as it does a Zazen Boys release, but I digress. This game is simple, but as endlessly playable as your music library. I reckon I’ll be messing around with this title until they make a new one.

5. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (DS)

This only came out in December (in English), and only in Europe (North America is, inexplicably, still waiting on it) so I was hesitant to include it. But, I wanted to, because it’s great. It is a Fire Emblem game, to be sure, but unlike some of the most recent entries, it’s really thoughtfully laid out and interesting. It forces you to lose a member early, meaning you are less likely to freak out about the inevitable casualties you face. Class changes are more flexible than in previous iterations, meaning that no character is as irreplaceable as before. The battles, while difficult, are not hair-pullingly maddening meat grinders. Each is a well-thought out set piece, unlike the decidedly mediocre Gamecube and (especially) Wii installments. While it might not stand quite up to the GBA games (I haven’t gotten far enough yet to judge) it is a great handheld turn-based strategy. And, since that genre is like catnip to me, I can’t help but adore this game.

4. Left 4 Dead (PC)

As I mentioned before, this game was instrumental to my friends’ ability to keep in touch once everyone moved across this giant, freezing country. Now, I’ll be honest: this is a game best experienced in groups of four or eight. Once you throw strangers into the mix, it’s less fun. But, when you play with a crew that you’ve been gaming with ages, and you know each other’s weird gaming idiosyncracies, and you’re forced to take care of each other while a sadistic AI attempts to bleed you out over the course of a dozen incredibly thoughtful set pieces, you end up realizing how awesome those gaming relationships can really be. My favourite gaming moment of the year was probably when Andy was charging ahead, and Angus was trying to be super-careful and thoughtful, and Travis was accidentally shooting everyone in the back, and I wasn’t paying any attention and a smoker choked me to death. Even though we hadn’t really displayed those tendenceies in this game yet, it was so us. And it was great. Add to that some of the most thoughtful social satire in zombie-related media since Dawn of the Dead (”I miss the Internet,” the how-many-zombies-I-killed pissing contests, Zoey calling zombie bullshit) and you’ve got a game that was really worth the long wait.

3. Space Invaders Extreme (PSP)

Space Invaders Extreme, like Pac-Man Championship Edition last year, took an old game, flipped it on its ass, and made a new, more modern, incredibly exciting game. Aside from speeding the game up and turning it into a veritable laser light show of a game, they do a lot of little nice things that remind you that you’re not playing as game designed to eat your quarters. If you fail a level (there are five, with branching levels of difficulty), you can start it over. If you turn the game off, you can come back to that level later. Or, you can start over from level 1, but it never forces you to– it makes it your own choice. But, the point is, it’s thrilling. It’s nimble and colorful and, while there are only five “bosses” (yes, there are bosses) in the game, each feels like an inventive use of the game’s mechanics. The inclusion of little, commercial-break-sized bits (where it breaks away from the main game and sticks you in a mini-game) gives it a pacing where you never get so used to the speed that it becomes boring. Every time it drops you in, you’re thrilled.

2. The World Ends With You (DS)

This title is, for lack of a better term, transcendental. It transcends its publisher, Square Enix, by existing as a bold counterpoint to their inaccessible, tradition-laden, committee-made lineup of sure-sale RPGs. It transcends any sort of “action” or “RPG” or “action RPG” genre definition by doing both things better than ny of their permutations. It even transcends what could have been a disasterously stupid setting (”extreme”-looking teens trapped in an “extreme” version of a metropolis’s shopping district) by handling it, with as much grace as can be expected from a handheld videogame, maturely. I found myself playing it all of the time, for a while. I was enthralled, in spite of the developer and the setting and the genre and whatever else stood in the way of fun. And, if that’s not proof of something awesome, then I need to take a class on what’s fun because YOU GOT ME.

1. N+ (XBLA)

There’s a lot to be said for a game that just feels right. N+, more than any game I can remember in the recent past, feels right. Its physics are neither floaty, nor overly frictional and oppressive; the game is as airy and precise as a monofilament whip. And, as such, is as difficult to master. There’s also a lot to be said of a game that comes in bite-sized but satisfying chunks; the freedom to play for as much or as little as I want has always been a major sticking point for me (RPGs with “save points” instead of allowing saving anywhere, a prime example of the OPPOSITE effect). Minimalist but clean graphics are, in my opinion, both a lovely use of HD technology and a striking contrast to it. I can’t think of a single thing this game does wrong, with the possible exception of too few leaderboards. I’d love to see the current “score” leaderboards complemented by pure time-trial leaderboards, but that’s a nitpicky detail for a game that feels so right.

Well, that was exhausting. I better take a little break, since I’ve only got a year left to make my 00’s best-of lists! Start early, Internet!

Here, I’ll tell you more about the games that, while they don’t appear among my top ten of the year, came very close. These games could have dominated in a more meager year and all deserve at least some of your time; at this point, it would be difficult to rate them, however, so I’ve chosen to present them in alphabetical order.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift would have been among my dishonorable mentions had I not ended up playing it so much. I wrote a piece about how I felt about it on my Destructoid community blog before I had this space. Basically, my feeling on this game can be summed up as such: it’s slower than should be legal. It’s the weakest attempt at a plot in a Strategy RPG I’ve seen in ages. It’s, at best, a monkey on my back. However, it’s also a game that came at the right time: just as I was getting completely sick of spending three hours a day in transit a day (my job’s location sucks), this game appeared in front of me, and I gave it my time.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 is a brilliant followup to what might be one of the best games of this generation. I’m not sure I appreciate all of its tweaks to the system, but the Pacifism mode (and, by extension, the Wax On/Wax Off achievements) really put it over the top. I’ve never had so much fun chasing two simple achievements before, and GWRE2 gave me faith in the entire concept.

Ikaruga is a further testament to the depth of this year’s release list. A game I played a fair bit on my friend’s Dreamcast ages ago, getting to revisit this old gem was a total treat. This was further enhanced by my purchase of a TATE-friendly LCD monitor; indeed, Ikaruga was the first vertical shmup I played on my vertically-tilted screen. While this game was a joy, it couldn’t make my top ten, simply because I had experienced the breadth of what it had to offer me in years gone by.

Lost Odyssey is another unfortunate casualty of my incredibly elite top-ten list, as it was probably the most fun I’ve had with an old-fashioned JRPG since… well, if you don’t count FFXII and Suikoden V as “old-fashioned,” then FFX. Despite its shoddy case (four DVDs on a tiny spindle? Really? Couldn’t you guys shell for something a BIT more secure?), the thirty gigs of game within contained some of the most challenging character studies found in a game like this that I’ve ever seen. Seth, who starts a typical, quick, independent pirate-woman undergoes a series of trials that prove she is anything BUT typical. I won’t be surprised if this is the best classically-styled JRPG of the entire console generation.

NHL 09, simply put, is enough to instill complete faith in EA’s iterative sports game model. More than a mere roster update, EA has decided that the only way to make users want a new game is to add so much to the game that the previous one feels like a useless coaster. Indeed, the Be A Pro mode changes the way to think about the game; its use of gently-guiding arrows ensures that you learn positional play, and its awareness of the importance of statistics other than goals (like, for example, +/-).

Professor Layton & The Curious Village combines two of my favourite things: those dorky brain-puzzles that used to come in books that offered “Over 300!” of them, and awesome professor-detectives in top hats with plucky, curious young sidekicks. Indeed, this game captured my brainmeats as well has my heartflesh. And, despite my fears, it even managed to offer me some new puzzles that I hadn’t conquered long ago during my socially awkward library-habitating days.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is the shooter I wanted when I bought Call of Duty 4: a realistic, modern-day FPS with a real sense of self-preservation. Ever since the halcyon days of the Half-Life mod Hostile Intent, I’ve yearned for more shooters that make you as scared of the guns that you’re carrying as you are deadly with them. Vegas 2 delivered this in spades, with a pretty fun “terrorist hunt” mode for co-op multiplayer fun.

World of Goo is a game that I’ve yet to give more time to, and perhaps I’ll regret not putting it among my top ten once I get further, but from what I’ve seen, what a fun game. I haven’t enjoyed a wobbly, physicksy, experimenty game like this since I first played Armadillo Run a couple of years ago. I’m always glad to see games that feel like high school science projects, especially when they’re coupled with such above-the-cut presentation. While I’m not usually one for blobs with eyeballs, the game gets massive points for its love-filled messages from its mysterious sign-painter.

Every year, some games just don’t tickle my fancy. For one reason or another, the six titles below just left me unsatisfied. It’s probably my fault, and I probably need to give each of these games more of a chance, but at this point, they’re my biggest disappointments of the year.

Now that you know my list of disappointments, and the list of games I didn’t play, you can try guessing what my fave games are! Whee!

Fable II
This is the last 360 game I bought, about two months ago. The main quest is a lot of fun, admittedly. But all of the stuff that Molyneux was pimping really hard, like the social functions and the dog, left me completely cold. I mean, really? A dog whose sole purpose is to look cute and pop “TREASURE” up over his head when the game decides you’re worthy enough to receive some stuff in a hole? A digging animation from 1999? A menu system that takes ~45s just to eat an apple? The ability to fart on command in front of your wife over and over until she decides NOT to divorce you on grounds of being gone for a week (but doesn’t care when you’re gone for ten years)? Argh.

Fallout 3
I’ve played for about 5 or 10 hours on the PC, and the game has crashed about ten times. I never save, so this REALLY sucks. Plus, the last time I played, I got stuck in a hole that I could not walk or jump out of. And it’s not like this hole was intended to capture me; it’s in some dumb random place. I haven’t booted the game up since then. Furthermore, while I never intended to hold it against its predecessors, it does so itself by giving you so much of the SAME as those games, but without even a modicum of charm or heart or soul or whatever you call that spark that makes a great game amazing. Fallout 3 is sexy, but offers the user NOTHING worth remembering in ten years. I felt the same about Oblivion, as well. It’s soulless.

Football Manager 2009
I love FM08. I also loved FM07. I liked FM06, and that’s when I started playing the series. However, this one just isn’t doing it for me. I’m still playing my 08 games. I’m open to the idea of a 3D match engine, but it doesn’t feel right. It just feels off. Ad to that that everything feels really… I don’t know, imprecise, and that the injury engine, as cozen put it, “[built like] Passchendaele 1916.” I just can’t get into it this year. I’ve heard that a patch was released in the past few days, which might be enough to get me back on the wagon… but that, mixed with the fact that my dumpy work laptop can’t run the new game, is really putting me off playing.

Grand Theft Auto IV
Maybe this should be in my top games. I did beat it, after all, and that takes a lot of time. There is a lot about it that I do like — it LOOKS stunning. On another level, really. Driving under trains in fake-Brooklyn, staring at billboards in fake-Times Square, getting shot in fake-Bronx (ha)… it’s absolutely worth playing just to look at. But, I have the same problem with it that I had with other GTA games (excluding San Andreas, the only one I really loved): it’s junk food. Once I have played through a GTA game, I don’t retain anything; there’s nothing about them that I think about and want to write about. They’re just incredibly well-made junk. By the end, I didn’t even want to turn the game on. It had become a chore. San Andreas gave me characters I cared about, at least; while Niko Bellic had potential, he completely lost it at some point when he was the exact same sociopath from III and Vice City.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots
I forgot to originally add this, but I’m going back just to do it now. This is the only PS3 game I’ve played much of, and I beat it. I loved MGS, MGS2, and MGS3, in that order. What made thme great was that they pushed the definition of player and console and game to the absolute limit. Not only does MGS4 fail to do this in the same way, it’s also got one of the most irritatingly preposterous scripts in the history of script. And not in a way that’s amusing, like MGS1 and 2. Definitely one of the most interesting games I played this year, but hardly one of the top 20.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
I didn’t play it much, to be honest. The Smash Bros games just don’t do it for me. Maybe the fact that I never had an N64 or a Gamecube or a Wii means that I don’t “get” it, but it feels floaty and imprecise and random and unbalanced. It’s fun enough with a bunch of plebes who can’t play the game for a drunken night of hitting each other with fans, but I just can’t get behind it as a “good game.”

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix
Chalk this one up to the Xbox 360 controller. I can’t buy an arcade stick, because I’m waiting for those new ones to come out with SFIV. This means, sadly, that I can’t play this game effectively AT ALL (unless someone miraculously releases a 360 controller that ships with a SNES or PS2 D-pad.

Questionable Mentions are games I didn’t get a chance to play, but might have made my top ten list. In my opinion, nowhere near enough people mention the games that didn’t make their list due to ignorance. Whether this is a mistake of negligence or arrogance, I don’t know, but I don’t want to be accused of either. Here’s a list of games that I wish I hadn’t missed, from least interested to most interested.

Prince of Persia
I got about a half-hour of this game at my friend Matt’s house while in Ottawa, and it just didn’t grab me. I don’t see what everyone likes about it; I’ll be the first to say I want something more Assassin’s Creed, where there are many ways to handle the tasks in front of you, instead of precise button combinations at precise times. But, I didn’t spend enough time with it.

FIFA Soccer 09
I love soccer, and I really wish I had picked this up considering all of the love for it on I Love Games. I may still do so, but I don’t know. I probably will waste many hours with it if I do.

Time Hollow
One of the several DS games I’ve heard are unmissable, I just haven’t had the energy to pick it up and try it out.

Lock’s Quest
Even more than Time Hollow, I really want to see this game. I’m not a big tower defense fan, but the buzz for this game has been o surprisingly positive that I’ll have to go back and have a look at this at some point.

Star Ocean: First Departure
Considering how much people freaked out for the original, and how favourably the reviews are looking at this one, I’m intrigued and want to spend some time with this. I hope the save functionality is bus-friendly or I’ll ignore it.

Persona 3 FES
I played a fair bit of Persona 3, but I lent my copy of FES to my friend Angus as soon as I got it. He’s yet to get it back to me! It’s okay, though, because I hadn’t even gotten that far in P3.

Zoids Assault, Operation Darkness, Spectral Force 3
I love SRPGs, but these ones got such mixed reviews that I just want the prices to drop! C’mon, Atlus, throw me a bone! UPDATE: Apparently OD and SF3 are $20 on Amazon.ca now. Go figure! ORDER’D!

Wipeout HD
When I saw the trailer for this, and it had Kraftwerk in it, and was pretty, I was sad. I don’t regret getting a 360, but man, I wish I could have some of those PS3 games.

Peggle Nights
I haven’t been arsed to buy this one yet, but if I do, it will keep me up to 4am a few nights, at least.

The Last Guy
People stopped talking about this at some point, but I wanted to hear more! An indie title that uses satellite photos of cities to build levels?! Insanity! Do want!

Soul Bubbles
I blame The Quixotic Engineer for my mad jonesing for this game. He made it look AMAZING.

PixelJunk Eden
I still don’t know what this game is about. All I know is that a lot of people love it and it looks pretty. That’s enough for me.

Mirror’s Edge
One of the games I was most excited about, I instead became apprehensive when I heard about its length (and the recession really started hitting me in the wallet area). I regret not yet getting it, as it looks stunning (I adore the clean, blueprint-like feel) and every criticism about the game sounds pretty irrelevant to me (I don’t care if the shooting sucks, I don’t want to do it).

Valkyria Chonicles
Oh, Valkyria Chronicles. You are the kind of game that might have made me buy a console in the past. Why did it take you so long to come out? Again, I’m happy with my 360… but, seriously, I might have considered the PS3 if I had known a masterful, progressive tactical RPG was on the way that had an alternate-history angle to it.

Mother 3
I need to beat Earthbound first, but I am really just sitting on this. It looks so pretty. Must play.

Boom Blox
I think this is the only Wii game in here… but, boy, does it look awesome. I love Jenga, I love knocking things down, I love physics and explosions and cleverly-used motion control and all that. Can’t someone make a Source Engine remake? Maybe I just need to get ahold of a Wii long enough to rent this game.

LittleBigPlanet
Out of all of the knives in the PS3’s drawer, none cut deeper than LBP. Every part of me wants to play this, right now. I want to make things. I want to dress sackboy up in silly outfits. I want to use calculators made out of virtual gears and wire and bits of old tire. This is one game where I just won’t hear any of the criticism; it looks perfect. Or, at least, perfect for me.

“Lesser mediums” was a bad joke that I already regret. I hope everyone realizes I’m being tongue in cheek! Here’s a list of five albums and five films I loved this year; if you haven’t already checked them out, I HIGHLY recommend you do. There’s no excuse not to! Unlike games, the cost of entry is MUCH lower than $60 a pop! I haven’t yet seen The Wrestler or Slumdog Millionaire, both of which would probably have made the list of films, but that’s how it goes when you drop a movie in December, right?

First, films!

5. All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

Of my top five movies this year, four were at the Fantasia Film Festival. This is probably because most of the movies I actually bothered to go see were at Fantasia. As such, a bunch of these probably didn’t even come out in 2008, but I think their Canadian premieres were in 2008, so that counts, right? Anyway, this is an AMAZING teen-slasher movie that starts with all of the grinning spookiness of the genre, and, at some point, warps into something really twisted and actually creepy. Highly recommended.

4. 4bia

Actually an anthology of sorts, 4bia is four short horror films by four Thai directors. Each one, however, plays out entirely differently; in fact, I’d say each fits into one of the horror subgenres that are actually relevant these days. The first plays out like an asian horror flick, but in thirty minutes. What makes it really crazy is that there’s no spoken lines, and (almost) the entire thing is shot inside a tiny Bangkok apartment. The second is a creepy black-magic-revenge story with buckets of gore, a huge departure from the previous one. The third, and audience favourite, is more of a ghost-comedy (if that makes ANY sense). And, the last one (my least favourite but that’s not saying much) feels like a Thai episode of Tales From The Crypt, about a mummified royal being returned to her country on a plane. All four are SO good, and they’re all bite-sized!

3. The Dark Knight

A no-brainer. Heath Ledger was a terrifying monster. What can I say? I never expected a cape film to be this good. It was. You’ve probably seen it, so I’ll shut up about it. But… wow.

2. [●REC]

A lot of horror this year, not because I’m a horror buff, but because I didn’t go see much else this year. [●REC] was astounding, though. If possible, make sure you don’t even see the commercial spots for the American Quarantine because it seems like a shot-for-shot remake (I didn’t see it, I heard it was bad) and it spoils a lot of the best moments. Just see [●REC]. I don’t think a movie has ever scared me more. All I’ll say to avoid spoiling things is that they completely SHATTER every idea I ever had about timing in horror movies. Best zombie movie of the decade, I reckon. Beats 28, Dawn remake, or whatever else. SEE THIS…

1. Let The Right One In

…But not before you see THIS. Best vampire movie of… well, EVER; this Swedish movie doesn’t patronize you by explaining for the fiftieth time all of the rules vampires need to follow. It’s not really a horror film as much as it is kind of an awkward kid-romance movie. Every character in this movie is intensely hug-worthy (thanks, Lyndsay, for pointing this out; Oskar really DOES look huggable) and an intriguing human being (or not, in one case). It’s a hard movie to explain, but see it.

Now, music!

5. Amadou & Mariam - Welcome to Mali

I’ll be honest– I wouldn’t have checked this out if not for Metacritic. I’m glad I did, though; at once bleak and exuberant, the album really jsut gets under my skin and makes me want to do everything in my life with even a sliver of the vigour they bring to their music.

4. Portishead - Third

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much other than disappointment with this record. It was, what, eight years since the last album, or something? Plus, plenty of other bands have been making “combacks” recently and just proving to us that aging makes you lame. Portishead bucked the trend and made the perfect followup after such a long hiatus.

3. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Aside from a few expections (three, to be precise: Joanna Newsom, Grizzly Bear, and Final Fantasy), the whole alt/freak/whatever folk scene has been at best uninteresting and at worst repulsive to me. This year, I added Fleet Foxes to my list of loved bands that get labelled as such, though. The EP is good, but the full-length is just astounding.

2. Zazen Boys - Zazen Boys IV

I can’t believe it took me until Zazen Boys IV to listen to Zazen Boys. I’m glad I did, though. Weekend is an amazing single, but it’s not even close to the highlight of the album. Honnoji is probably my favourite track (although practically every track is astounding). I wondered whatever happened to math rock that wasn’t boring; apparently it just moved to Japan.

1. Love Is All - A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night

I don’t even know what to say. I saw them in Manhattan, then I saw them in Montreal. I can’t stop listening to their music. The songs are sorrowful and lonely, but also noisy and fast and cathartic and exhilarating. I still can’t stop listening to this over and over and over. I’m as smitten with this album as one can possibly be with something that isn’t a person (or, uh… tangible, really).

Sadly, due to a combination of being home + visiting people + messing up the wordpress publishing thing, I missed a few of my year-end recap posts. I will post them over the course of today and catch up, however.

2008 was full of awesome things, videogame-related and non-videogame-related. I’ve attempted to put together five memories of the past year that’ve had some significance for me that fit into the former category, at least, a bit; while not all of these things are strictly related to video games (or, in one case, strictly related to me), I hope they’ll all fit the mold enough.

5. Starting this blog

It took me ages. Since I started writing a Livejournal 7 years ago, I’ve gone through probably a dozen different services, looking for the right one for me. What I realized, at some point, was that I wanted to have a webspace that’s all mine. Finally, when we were founding Cikro, I decided to buy my own domain, and the rest is… err… history? I bought an (admittedly expensive) .am domain, stuck a Wordpress on it, and started writing. And a few people even started reading it. Then Gamesetwatch linked me and I got really confused (but flattered) and lots of people I respect started reading and linking and commenting. It’s been awesome so far!

4. Getting a PSP

I borrowed my brother’s PSP for a little while, and it was enough to get me to get one. While it’s not the most impressive console I’ve ever owned, setting it up for homebrew allowed me to start emulating old games. This has been really great, as I don’t think I’ve ever had a competent way to play SNES games portably; this has opened up the possibility for me to play a bunch of classics that I missed the first time around (like Earthbound). Plus, one of my top games of the year is on the PSP, so getting a chance to play that was awesome.

3. GTA IV Midnight Launch

This is the only time I’ve gone to a midnight launch, and it will probably be the last, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Well, maybe not “fun,” necessarily, but… interesting. It made me realize a lot about gamers that hadn’t really set in yet; gone are the bespectacled geeks of yesteryear, replaced by a new species of weed-smoking, cussing, novelty-shirt-donning jesters. Since I preordered, I got to skip the line, too, which was nice. That’s about it, I suppose.

2. Blipfest and NYC

Only second because the first is so unbeatable, my NYC trip was amazing. My friend Kelvin and I took an epic ten-hour bus down to that stupidly tall metropolis and met up with a bunch of the Destructoid community and saw a bunch of amazing music. I won’t talk too much about it, as I already talked about it at GREAT length, but getting to meet close internet friends like Tiff, Samit, and Zen Albatross, as well as some who I hadn’t had a chance to speak to much online like AnonymousNoob and Cataract, was an unforgettable experience that I’m insanely grateful for. I can’t wait until the next time I get to hang out with all of these kids because even though we were together for a weekend, we felt like old friends.

1. The Ottawa Exodus

This one is a bit roundabout, but hear me out. Two and a half years ago, I moved to Montreal. All of my friends were still in Ottawa. This meant that, while I was still close friends with many of these folks, I was also really isolated. This summer, however, two of my very closest friends also left Ottawa. About five of us always hung out and played games together, and now, I was in Montreal, Angus was in Fredricton, and Andy was in St. Johns, Newfoundland. Despite everyone’s moving away, this brought me closer to my friends, because it meant they could only play games with friends online now. Games like Left 4 Dead allowed me to feel a lot closer to some of my best friends than I had for the two years before.

Here are five massive hunks of words that intrigued me this year. I tried to put them in a sort-of-chronological order, but, as you’ll see, some of them are difficult to place (the first really spans a year). You’ll also see that I didn’t list all of these because they’re good– one of them is there in spite of being bad and one of them is there because it’s bad. Anyway, I’ll shut up so you can read them. Or about them. Whichever. Happy boxing day!

The Publications

The Round Table: Gender & Games. (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) and the following deluge of further examinations of the subject (too many to list)

While this writing didn’t happen in 2008, I didn’t read it until this year. Furthermore, the dialogue that it spawned bled into the rest of the year and gave everyone a lot to think about. Indeed, there are a few things that any medium needs to achieve before it can claim relevance; one of those things is a feminist voice, and another is a voice that can speak across gender to the human condition. The more we make noise about it on the Internet, the more we might be able to push videogames off the path it’s heading down right now. While I like Jason Statham movies, can you imagine if they were the only option, every time you went to the theatre?

Mitch Krpata’s New Taxonomy of Gamers

The first proper entry for 2008, The Insult Swordfighting series of essays did all but make the terms “hardcore” and “casual” (in reference to gamers) obsolete. Over the course of the eleven-part epic, Mitch introduces some new concepts to the way we think about games. This was important to me in two ways: for one, it gave a vocabulary to issues that I (and apparently others) had with the labelling we give ourselves (I hardly consider myself a casual gamer, but find the term “hardcore” just as ostracizing). While I’m not sure I’m willing to call myself a “tourist” gamer yet, I’m definitely more aware of the inherent flaws in the hard/casual spectrum. But, secondarily, this series of essays opened me up to criticism of other terms used in the industry. I don’t think I would have written (or even thought of) my criticism of the term “retro” if I hadn’t read the NToG, or questioned countless other things that we say (for example, I would have considered the previously mentioned Football Manager a sports title until I realized that it’s really just a turn-based strategy title with a sports gloss).

Actionbutton.net’s Braid Review

Sadly, this review was pulled, and it’s a great shame. It was replaced with the equally brilliant review by Soulja Boy (I’m not being sarcastic or cutting here, I think Soulja Boy might just be the Jonathan Swift of our generation) and I can’t find the original anywhere on the Internet so far. This review really opened my head; Braid was a game that I had many very conflicting feelings about, and this review gave a voice to them. That voice was also petulant, pretentious, contrarian, and base. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever disliked a game (well, partly), AND disliked the ONLY negative review I could find about the game. It also got the ball rolling on a series of discussions I had about the rather misogynist angle the game had. It also made me very jaded with how homogenous opinions seem to get among a lot of tastemakers. It seemed nobody wanted to agree with me, or even discuss with me, that the game isn’t perfect.

My Dtoid Article, Feel The Hatred: Gamers

Don’t get me wrong, that article was kinda shit. I wrote it in a vitriolic rage, and I didn’t edit it, and I was honestly embarrassed that it got put on the front page of Destructoid. But, it made me realize I like the way blogging works. And that I wanted to write in my own space instead of Destructoid’s community blogs. And that people reading stuff I write, even when it sucks, is fun, because then we get to talk about it. There’s not a lot else to say about this other than that I’m sorry that it was so mad. I’m not actually that mad in real life.

Jason Fagone’s Jason Rohrer Feature

Oh man. I love the games that Jason Rohrer makes, but he’s not really the kinda guy who talks about himself outside of the stuff he releases. This is the feature that I’ve always wanted to see, ever since I played Passage; I want to know what makes this guy so great. The answer: EVERYTHING. I love that there are people making games who aren’t living like everyone else making games. I even remember after reading it that I felt like the being in the city was a bad call and that I should move somewhere with a meadow (I was drunk) (I was also going to NYC in a week, good timing!). Now all we need is people writing with weird worldviews.

Tomorrow: Day 3, The Moments.

As I said earlier today, I’ve been playing many games this year, and not all of them came out in 2008. Here are five I particularly enjoyed over the past twelve months, despite their vintage.

The Oldies

Crackdown
I got Crackdown last Christmas from my brother, who bought it at a used game joint for a song (seems everyone got rid of their copies once they got their Halo 3 beta codes). I’m glad I asked him for it. There’s little I can say about the game that hasn’t been said in the past 24 months, so I’ll keep it short: there are few pleasures greater than scaling a building with an SUV in your hand and throwing it ten blocks, only to crush an evil ganger from a distance. That’s entertainment!

Earthbound
I’ve started this game some dozen times, but always got distracted or had issues with emulation and never really got into the good stuff. This year, though, I managed to get some semi-working emulation going on my PSP. Sadly, that emulation stopped working once I got to the part where you get to control the geeky kid instead of Ness, but that was far enough for me to understand that this is, absolutely, a game worth my time. I have since visited my friend Kelvin’s place in Ottawa, and borrowed the original cart from him. I’ll be playing this beauty on my SNES in 2009, and I can’t wait to see the end.

Football Manager 2008
This game took hundreds of hours of my life that I’ll never get back. I don’t want to get started on it, because I’m reasonably sure there isn’t a single reader who’ll care, but I’ll say one thing: nowhere else in games will you find a chaos machine like this. This game has millions of numbers which are constantly running simulations; you make decisions and attempt to direct the flow of chaos in your own favour. I spent months trying to figure this game out, and failed; I merely figured out how to tell it what I wanted, and hope for the best. It’s kinda like real life, in a way; you can never figure out how it works the way it works. All you can do is crack it open a little bit and eke out the existence you want. It figures– the one game I get all deep is the sports management simulator. Go figure.

Pokemon Snap
The N64 was to me once what the PS3 is to me now: the “other” console. I had a PS1 back in the day, and there weren’t many games I coveted. Pokemon Snap was, however, one of those few games. I didn’t care about Zelda, or Mario, or Goldeneye; I loved the concept of a game where you go around taking photographs, and get rewarded for composition and quality of shots. While it didn’t really look at composition as much as it did subject size and centering, I was still really aching to play it (and, I’ll admit, at the time, I kinda dug Pokemon). This year, I got to play it on Wii’s virtual console. I expected it to age poorly, but it was still everything I wanted it to be. Why there aren’t more games like this (pafrticularly for the Wii) is completely beyond me; a non-violent FPS that teaches users how to take good photos seems like the biggest no-brainer ever.

Skate.
Last Christmas, I got two copies of Beautiful Katamari. I traded one to a friend for Skate. I almost feel guilty for this, because Skate is so great and Beautiful Katamari is so, err… well, mediocre. I spent a lot of time playing this game; more than any Tony Hawk game, that’s for sure. It’s what a skateboarding game should be: noodling around in a beaufifully-rendered city and occasionally doing tricks worth seeing– then being able to show those things to the world via the magic of EA’s footage sharing system.

I can think of a few games that’ll probably be on this list at the end of 2009, but I don’t want to talk about them too much; after all, many of those games will be in my “Questionable Mentions” article in a few days.

Tomorrow: Five games-related pieces of writing that were important to me in 2008.

Every year, I tend to make my own list of favourite games. I’ll parrot that list wherever people might listen; forums, livejournals, real-life conversations, and even print ‘zines have had to put up with my pre-year-plus-one ramblings at one point or another.

This year I’ve decided to break it up into a few parts to spare any potential readers from too big a burst of annual logorrhea. I’ll be spreading it out over four days:

December 25: The Oldies. These games didn’t come out in 2008 but since the order in which I get and play games is hardly, if ever, chronologically coherent, they only got to me this year.
December 26: The Publications. These are the things I read about games this year that really inspired me to think or to write. I’ve probably talked about some of them before, but it’s worth taking a trip down blogosphere lane and patting some backs unnecessarily at the same time, innit?
December 27: The Moments. Here, I’ll talk about the news and the non-news that made 2008 interesting to me.
December 28: The Lesser Mediums. I don’t know what’s worse about this title: calling them “mediums,” or calling them “lesser.” Here’s my top lists for films and records.
December 29: Questionable Mentions. Games that I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to play, and that may have placed if I had.
December 30: Dishonorable Mentions. Games that disappointed me in one way or another; things that just didn’t have everything I needed to be satisfied.
December 31: Honorable Mentions. Games that, while fantastic, would have to settle for a double-digit ranking if I were to rate them. Instead, they’re presented in alphabetical order.
January 1: The Big Ten. It took me ages to get here, but here are the ten games of 2008 that really moved me, in one way or another.

Indeed, I’ve planned a lot of writing for myself over the next few days. Hopefully, I’ll figure out how to make them post automatically on each of these days so I don’t have to come back to this terrible computer at my folks’ place every day. Wordpress can probably do that, right?

Day 1: The Oldies coming soon! Be excited afraid!