Fall Games of 2008: sequels, rehashes and some innovation.
by alzabo
Posted on Wednesday, December 3, 2008Most Game publishers want to ship least one title between October and Christmas to capitalize on holiday shopping, this year there are more than 500 SKU's scheduled to be released. Because of this, game journalism is vital to the individual who wants to play several games and not waste his time and money on something thrown together to cash in on the seasonal shopping.
Unfortunately, game reviews can be hard to come by for games lately, either because of review embargos due to poor game quality or simple review backlog due to the sheer amount of new titles arriving this holiday season. Even if reviews are available, it's hard to discern their worth due to generally poor journalistic ethics in the field of games journalism. I'm not even going to touch on "New Games Journalism," I have enough problems with those people to write a 3 part article that must be written in phases to prevent my spite gland from going into shock.
So what is a gamer to do? Buy what the neck-beard clerk at Gamestop tells them to? Listen to some hipster web pundit's "well researched" opinion and get the "genre breaking(or defining) game of this console generation" that'll quickly be forgotten next year by the game's inevitable sequal?
No, you should do whatever the hell you want and buy the games that look interesting to you. But just in case you are bereft of an opinion or taste here are my choices for the fall.
Fallout 3: Be warned, this game is not perfect. No one is 100% happy with it and will describe their problems at great length, these probelms include: Poor voice acting, poor sound, game crashes, bad AI, graphical glitches, xbox live problems, DRM & install issues, et cetera.
None of these matter, if you ask them to describe 3 things they liked about the game and hold back no spoiler they invariably sprout a look of child-like glee and describe to you a wholly unique game experience rife with adventure, grim comedy and hyper-violence that truly lives up to the fallout brand. If you don't own this game already, you should drive to the store and buy it right now.
Valkyria Chronicles: Remember when Sega made RPGs? I don't, because I was too busy playing shooters and platformers. By the time I was into RPGs I had completely missed the boat on 8 and 16bit RPGs that were not made by Squaresoft.
This game was initially described to me as a mixture of FPS and Final Fantasy Tactics with a visual style akin to a pencil and watercolor painting. This excited me to no end, because I am pretty sick of Nomura's zippers and angst and how they've infected nearly the whole Japanese RPG genre.
I've yet to play more than a few minutes of this game due to a busy schedule, but it's going to get played next week after I finish moving.
Chrono Trigger DS: If you haven't played Chrono Trigger, you should go play it. That's all there is to say.
Persona 4: This is possibly the last good non-shovelware PS2 game that we'll see in the US. It contains all the excellent interface and localization of Last year's Persona 3, but has more than 1 song in it's dungeons (which are no longer randomized) and the plot is a murder mystery that is so engaging that you should avoid spoilers until you finish playing the game. Avoiding spoilers may be hard, as the damn game comes with an art book. Article Permalink