Gaming Like It's 2008

[dunpeal2064]

I'm ashamed I missed a couple of '08 releases.

Ninja Gaiden II: The best character action game ever made (imo, of course), and one of my favorite video games period

Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu: Insanely good bullet hell shooter, another one of my favorite games.

Probably goes without saying that these games should be played, regardless of the current year. They are both still in my small library, and will never leave it.

I wasn't aware that Persona 3 FES was also released in 2008.

I want to talk about Lost Odyssey, but I'll let Xeogred tackle that one, I know he also loves the game.

[Note]

2008 was the year I made the move on getting a 360. Definitely got into Gears of War 2 and was playing that a fair amount, but Street Fighter IV was my most anticipated release that year. Purchased the game on release from the mom and pop store Video Games New York.

A few months later, a friend and I took a trip downtown to VGNY again to purchase Hori Real Arcade Pro EX sticks. I ended up modding mine with Sanwa buttons as well.

[marurun]

Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s two zero zero eight.

[Nemoide]

Looking at games that came out in 2008, one jumps right out at me: Dance Dance Revolution X for PS2.

Even though I've been into DDR kid since 2003 or so, I only had the oXbox Ultramix games until I got DDR X. In my mind, this is still "new" DDR; the series popularity was definitely in decline at this point. It debuted a new difficulty scale from 1-20 instead of 1-10 which was really more than just doubling the numbers of the old scale and rounding up/down. It had a lot of SuperNova 2 songs that weren't in previous American releases (my favorites were Sunkiss Drop and Blind Justice ~Torn souls, Hurt Faiths~) and was generally a pretty good version of the game. ALTHOUGH it has hands-down *the* most annoying announcer in the game's history.

Now when I'm playing at the arcade, the other old-timers are all "oh yeah, I never really played much DDR X; I stopped around SuperNova" and the newer players seem to lump it in with the historical old-timey versions. Even though the arcade machine DID get released in the US, I've literally never seen one; they have a pretty bad reputation for breaking easily.

[noiseredux]

So earlier this year I did play the opening hour or two of GTA4's story. But I was also coming fairly hot off the heels of GTA5 at the time so I didn't get pulled in quite as much as I'd liked. And because I've been playing a bit of Red Dead Redemption lately, I don't really have an interest in diving back into the GTA4 story. However, I did recently read about how there are stand-up comic shows in GTA4. I was thinking it'd be kind of cool to try to find those. So then it kind of occurred to me a bit further - for those of you who have played GTA4 - what are some of the sight-seeing things you'd recommend checking out? That is, if I were visiting Liberty City for the weekend and totally ignoring the story, what are some of the cool things you'd suggest that I try to find? Are the comedy clubs and things like that accessible right away? I do remember doing some bowling down on the boardwalk at one point. But what other interesting/cool/funny non-story things are worth seeking out while on vacation in Liberty City?

[noiseredux]

for funsies, I thought I'd post all the covers that Game Informer published in 2008 to kind of illustrate the hotness hype of the year. Let's see how it looked, yeah?



January - Command & Conquer: Tiberium



February - Resistance 2



March - Aliens: Colonial Marines

an interesting one to me. This game didn't actually materialize until two-thousand-and-fucking-thirteen. Five years later! To universal hate! But man. I actually thought the game was way more fun than it got credit for. My love of all things Xeno aside.



April - Alpha Protocol



May - Gears Of War 2



June - Guitar Hero 4

This is a good talking point: In 2008 people were still into instrument games. It's weird right? Like back then those plastic guitars were everywhere. And now... they're just not a thing at all. Weird.



July - Infamous



August - Wolfenstein

Reboot!



September - Batman: Arkham: Asylum

I remember being pumped for this and then realizing it wasn't coming out on Wii which at the time of release, was the only current gen console I owned. Ugh.



October - Star Trek Online



November - Dragon Age: Origins

Wow. Dragon Age: Origins didn't even come out until 2009? Weird. It feels older to me. Huh.



December - Halo 3: Recon

WTF is this? I *think* that Recon became ODST?

[Xeogred]

Dude, that's awesome. And that was my reaction to "Halo Recon" as well going down the list of images and seeing that at the end, WTF is that?

I really enjoyed Alpha Protocol honestly, for as buggy as it was. Recommended for Mass Effect fans I'd say.

I played the Infamous games years later and they hold up really well.

[Jagosaurus]

2008...

I was in college. We had all 3 systems in our house with a 50" rear projection HD TV (1080i over component). We had a sweet set up. We were all about the local play and online multiplayer then:

Call of Duty World at War
Gears of War 2
Mario Kart Wii
Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles came out for Christmas 07 so we played that a lot in 08 after holiday break.

09 had one of my favorite sleeper FPS games. Guess you'll have to wait another year to find out

[muppetrat]

The best selling games are all on console.... and I don't have a console

[noiseredux]

Metacritic's top 10 highest ranked games of 2008:

98% Grand Theft Auto IV
95% Little Big Planet
94% World Of Goo
94% Bioshock
94% Metal Gear Solid 4
93% Super Smash Bros Brawl
93% Braid
93% Fallout 3
93% Gears Of War 2
92% Rock Band 2

Full list: https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games ... ected=2008