Ok, the year so far has been kinda crappy, nothing really worth championing as part of the best year for gaming so far.
GTA4 I hear you cry, well, yeah but no, after the initial honeymoon period, its shit.
But now, Dead Space gets a 10 out of 10 from Luke, Eurogamer goes and awards Fable 2 10 out of 10, and now today, they go and give Fallout 3 another 10 out of 10 - all 3 game hitting the top of the scoreboard within 2 weeks of each other
I've not seen that happen....EVER !!
So has the last quarter of this year just made this the best year for gaming so far ?
You should have made this thread a poll. I'd have voted 'yes'.
Or look at it this way Eurogamer gave Dead space 7/10.
Fallout 3 is Obilvion with guns.
and none of those 3 games are good enouth to break gamesrankings top50.
Its been one of the worst ever first 9 months to the year that is only now producing some decent games.
That's what I said !
After a fairly crappy year thus far, has the last 3 big releases, that seem to be stellar, made this the best year so far !
Honestly....
Don't really think it's fair to call GTA IV shit just brcause you don't like it either. Still an extremely good game.
I wouldn't say it's been all that bad a year up to this point, just that a cascade of pure quality has hit us now and we forget all the greatness we've had in the past ten months. DMC4, MGS4, GTA IV, Soulcalibur IV (jeez, all the 4s - roll on Street Fighter!), Braid, Rock Band, GRID, Battlefield, Spore, FIFA finally levelling up - I'd say it's been a pretty damn good year all round. Now we've got Dead Space, Fable (bleaugh) and then Fallout this week, with GH, Gears, LittleBigPlanet and CoD still to come. It's gonna be a corker all right...
The year has been no worse than last years opening 8 or so months. Last year I didn't buy a 2007 release until BioShock (and then bought a god 7 or 8 between then and January), but this year there's been BiA, Battlefield, Vegas 2, GTA, Ninja Gaiden, The Club, Euro 2008, NFL Tour, Dark Sector, Bully, Far Cry 2, Fable 2, Fifa 09 and there's still another 3 or so to go hopefully.
Obviously that is a personal list (and there are a few duff ones in there) but it at least shows that there has, at least, been a few games I've thought worthy of playing. The only one out of those I really didn't like is Bully.
But it's not an extremely good game trev.
It's a badly controlled repetitive mess, same as any other GTA game I've played.
I bought into the hype surrounding GTA4, COS IT'S NEXT GEN AND BETTER AND IT HAS A PHONE OMG !!!!!!, but it's still a heap of pish that any single element of would be a game breaker in any other title.
If Gears controlled like that, it'd be awful ; if any driving game handled like that, it'd be ludicrous, if Bankshot Billiards played like that, it would be laughable, it had a decent enough story, but that wasn't good enough, it just wasn't an enjoyable experience.
But that's a topic for another thread that's been done to death a million times over.
And I forgot about Braid, tsk !
If you judge it on each seperate element then yeah, GTA isn't that great, but it all came together so perfectly.
Based on what others have said, Saints Row 2 is the progression of Vice City and San Andreas some anticipated (even though SR was shite, apparently the sequel's good fun) but GTA took the crime genre to a new level. I don't really consider it a great sandbox game anymore, but rather an amazing example of how videogames can now challenge movies as the most cinematic and involving form of entertainment*.
Braid was fun for a while, but I got bored eventually. I played it properly for the first half, then got sick of it and just ran through the rest.
*OK, I still think movies have the upperhand by a far bit, but you must admit that that did sound impressive, at least.
It sounded good yeah
But I still don't think GTA came together perfectly.
It just annoyed me that all the little things I said just weren't as good as it should be - if they were it would have been a fantastic game.
Braid, for all it's brilliance, is a one play game only : thanks to the deviousness of some puzzles, the feeling of achievement at beating them only happens the first time, and that's the only thing wrong with it.