Fernanda Lamin
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition was released, and given away for free to the likes of me who bought the original game, and that was definitely one of the highlights of the year. Essentially that's another 2007 game, though, so it doesn't really count.
Far Cry 2 was released and went on to secure the prestigious Bennett Cross in my New Year Honours. It has been a bumpy ride for the game, with a large number of people determined to slag it off at every available opportunity. It was this ferocious reaction that made it clear to me that a large number of gamers have simply forgotten how to enjoy games. They are too intent on trying to prove their skillfulness to each other and demonstrate how hardcore and old school they are by "beating" games as quickly as possible and then boasting about how easy they found it on various forums.
Unfortunately FC2 wasn't designed to cater to that play style, which many people mistook (and continue to mistake) for a flaw in the game. Your ADD is not a flaw in FC2, it's a flaw in you. FC2 is designed to be more free-roaming, more relaxed (at least, between fire fights), more slow-paced and ultimately much more immersive. Compared with FC2, traditional FPS games are more like theme parks rides, where condensed set-pieces are served up in bite-sized chunks for the casuals. "Welcome to Arab-World. If you would like to disembark from the bus you will be provided with location-appropriate weapons and may take part in a short historical scenario in which you are invited to shoot some evil terrorists. When complete, please return to the bus and we will continue to Eastern Europe World".
What's particularly amusing (and frustrating) is when people actually have the nerve to claim that some of the theme park shooters are more "open" than FC2. Seriously, I've seen posts claiming that FC2 is not as large and open as FC1 or Crysis, or complaining that it's not really open and just as linear as conventional shooters because you have to go around the big hills. The mind boggles. People who are that stupid should be put down at birth.
Of course this whole elitism bullshit isn't just endemic within the FPS "community". If anything it has been around even longer with MMOs. Speaking of which, 2008 saw the overdue release of both Age of Conan and Warhammer.
"AoC ... is currently name-checked by anyone and everyone who writes a tedious, self-important, wanky "leaving" post on the forums of current MMOs. "waaaah this game sucks, Age of Conan will be so much better". I confidently predict that it won't. In fact I confidently predict both games will be shit, and will see plenty of their own leaving posts shortly after release."
That's right, those prophetic words were authored by my good self, exactly one year ago. And it is with enormous satisfaction that I note how entirely correct I was. The backlash against AoC was enormous, following hype that was not so much due to marketing as deluded idiots who wanted to get one over on the other MMO gamers they couldn't pursuade to leave their previous games such as Vanguard. When it became obvious that they had hitched their wagon to the wrong horse, much to the amusement of everyone who told them so, they turned on AoC itself.
Then the whole monotonous cycle began again, as AoC quitters began to fly the Warhammer flag. The Warhammer backlash wasn't quite as catastrophic, because by that time the channal-flippers had finally learned to shut the fuck up. I haven't heard a lot from the Warhammer camp for some time, but I think it's safe to say it's not the WoW-killer some people thought it would be. Next up: Darkfall Online.
While I'm on the subject of smug "told you so"'s, let's not forget what I had to say about the forthcoming Spore last year:
Yes, it makes for very impressive tech demos ... Unfortunately I can only imagine it being incredibly dull to "play". Maybe if you're into all that Civilisation/Sim City sort of stuff it'll be ok. However, I predict that a lot of people who aren't will buy into the hype and then shelve the game soon after they've installed it.
Pretty much on the money, I'd say, although even the veteran god game fans seemed massively underwhelmed by it. Definitely a victim of the hype machine. But I told you so.
Ultimately 2008 was the year of Steam, for me at least. Thanks to the various holiday and weekend sales I added a large number of games to my list. Some were great, like Max Payne 1 & 2, some were entertaining like Overlord and Shadowgrounds Survivor, some not so much, like Two Worlds. Some I have yet to pass judgement on, like Stalker/Clear Sky, Vampire: The Masquerade and Titan Quest. Then there's GRID, Tomb Raider: Underworld and Mass Effect. So it doesn't seem right to claim it has been a bad year for games, even if some of those games were appropriated from previous years.
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