Games of the Year 2008
BackLoggd is doing another throwback GOTY event, this time the dial landing in 2008. I've made my selection, but it wouldn't be complete without some supplemental commentary.
2008 was a big year in my life: in autumn 2008, I made the move from Finland to the UK and the course of my life changed forever. That had an effect on a whole load of things in my life from big to small, including video games. When I was browsing through Wikipedia's list of 2008 games, it took me a long time to really find anything meaningful until we reached the final months of the year, after I had already started my life in the UK - many of those games were also communal in nature in one way or the other, reflecting on the isolation I felt and the comfort I sought from connection.
Backloggd has five distinct sub-categories besides the standard GOTY, so I'll spread my comments accordingly.
Best Gameplay / Best Multiplayer: Left 4 Dead
Throughout most of the 2000s I dabbled in multiplayer - I was too nervous to really commit to arena FPSs or other competitive online action games, and so mostly I stayed away from that world. It says a lot about the pull Valve had on me that I gave this a go... but the other big reason is that it was something co-operative. A frequently changing and adapting challenge that I could push through together with my friends. One of my main hubs of activity around this time was a small IRC channel (shoutout to the rest of #hugs, wherever you are) which had a number of PC players, and we all got the game together. Those sessions were the kinds of gameplay events that created memories which last forever. So it being the Best Multiplayer title is obvious. As for Best Gameplay, well some might argue that there isn't much to L4D's gameplay - it's a pretty barebones shooter compared to everything else out there. But the key thing here is how flawlessly it executed what it aimed for. Every last little bit of the game has been considered with careful intent, and it translates to an incredibly smooth and exciting gameplay experience which encapsulates the culinary idea of celebrating a few specific ingredients rather than throw everything in the pot. It is precise, sharp, and tight, and as a pure gameplay experience the most flawlessly realised of the lot. L4D2 improved on everything and added an extra bit of detail which fit seamlessly into the straightforwardness the game bears as its core, but the first game was a real event for me.
Best Narrative: Valkyria Chronicles
One of the effects moving out of home in 2008 was that I moved in with someone who had a Playstation 3. That meant that I could experience some of the contemporary gen console features as well, and there's no doubt in my mind that had it not been for the other person's whim purchase of Valkyria Chronicles and it being available for me to play as well, I would have steered far and away from it all these years without realising what a great, turn-based tactical action game lied underneath the generic anime dressing. I earnestly encourage everyone who loves the modern X-COM games and their ilk to play Valkyria Chronicles - it's easily available on Steam now too.
But to be honest, this is a bit of a cop-out answer for 'best narrative'. Truth is, 2008 wasn't exactly the year of incredible stories in gaming - my favourite narrative of the year was actually Mass Effect, but the 2008 PC port of the game doesn't count for Backloggd's purposes. I don't think the overall story of Valkyria Chronicles isn't that outstanding if I'm honest: not-Germany threatens a tiny country in not-Europe during their equivalent of World War 2, a plucky young group of local militia rises up to impossible challenges, the innocent young baker's daughter of the town has a grand secret, etc etc. Instead, the truly memorable story of the game are the individual stories of your team serving in the frontlines. As you recruit new folks and take them to missions with each other, you begin to learn more about them. Their personalities take the form of positive and negative personal traits which are accompanied by voice lines and mini-cutscenes in missions as they trigger, and the more you take these guys on the more positive traits they unlock as their personalities embolden in the battle field. There's a friend/foe system where your team members get along either really well or not at all with other people in the group, and building those trust levels unlocks special missions for 2-3 individuals together which build on their personal narratives. Valkyrie Chronicles really is about the journey, not the goal - you know from the get-go that eventually your rash upstarts will be knocking on the gates of pseudo-Berlin, but the charm and magic of the game is seeing these at-first innouous collection of random folks grow from generic names on a list to actual personalities you want to take on to missions and see them survive. Very few games who've done something like this has pulled it off as well as Valkyria Chronicles. That's why it got a pass at getting to Best Narrative.
Best Soundtrack: Sonic Unleashed
I'm glad to see that Sonic Unleashed has managed to find a critical re-evaluation in the recent years, after it got caught in the aftermath of post-Sonic 06 bilefest where no one even considered it on its own merits. That applies to me as well to some extent; I was definitely a lot more mixed on it when I first played, compared to how wonderfully it's aged and shown its strengths over time. It's revealed itself to be one of the most memorable Sonic experiences, and I talked about that in a bit more detail when I ranked through all the mainline Sonic games.
The soundtrack has had a similar retrospective uplift. Unleashed was part of the experimental period following Tomoya Ohtani's appointment as the series' musical director and before he had really struck on what he wanted to focus on as the series' signature sound going forward. Unleashed's soundtrack was so out of sync with the Adventure-era sound which had become my signature Sonic style that I didn't really know what to make of it at the time. But, you get older, you learn to realign your thoughts and consider different angles, and much like the game it's from, Unleashed's soundtrack has proven to be a real stand-out of the series through its incredibly vibrant atmospheric touches, the underlying rhythmic grooves and the impeccably scene-setting arrangements which take influence from all over the world in order to match the planet-hopping adventure. It's a gorgeous soundtrack, and one which boasts one of the series' very best vocal themes to boot with "Endless Possibility". And if you're interested to read more, some time back I reviewed it in more detail.
Best Art Direction / Game of the Year: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
As I mentioned on the L4D section, I wasn't really a multiplayer guy in the 2000s but I did dabble, and the same IRC channel which I ended up getting addicted to L4D with also got me into World of Warcraft. The game at the time featured a free trial where you could get up to level 20 (I think?), and I was enticed by my friends to join in giving it a go, all together. We had a lot of fun during the initial trial period, and besides the character I created to play with them I did also test other classes (and factions) with other characters. After the trial period most of my friends had had enough and some retained their interest to some degree, but I had fallen in love with the game. It arrived in my life at the right time and exploring the unbelievably vast world of Azeroth captivated me like nothing else. My initial side character became my main character as I took on to treat the game like a singleplayer game, without limiting my advancement to when other people were free/interested and without the stress of failing their expectations in a multiplayer setting. The reason why Wrath of the Lich King, its second expansion, isn't in the Best Multiplayer section is because in reality, I never treated it like a true multiplayer game; all the living human beings were wonderful flavour shots in my own personal journey as I solo'd my way through the continents over and over again.
But as is already obvious, I was still utterly enamoured by WoW at this point and the release of WotLK was a genuine gaming event for me. For many reasons, it's also where WoW reached its peak for me and I think of this era as my WoW specifically, the same way Doctor Who fans talk about their Doctors. Everything I loved about WoW as a game experience was amplified and enhanced, both in the higher levels of the new continent where Blizzard took its grandest and most experimental steps yet in terms of presentation and mechanics, and in the lower levels where all of Wrath's new changes only served to improve life all around. Wrath became a true comfort game to get lost in; if I found myself with idle time in the evenings or nights, it was easy for me to simply put on some music in the background, boot Wrath and simply wander and explore the world for a bit as I soaked up the ambience.
Part of what makes Wrath so special for me was the new region, Northrend, and how it was brought to life. It would have been easy to treat Azeroth's northernmost slab of land as a permanent arctic wasteland, but instead Blizzard took note of just how varied winter can be like all across the world. You do have regions that exemplify the snowy tundras and ice-clad desolation as you'd expect, but you also have the truly gorgeous Nordic woods of Grizzly Hills and the coastal ever-spring of the Howling Fjord which are so evocative that they were practically breathtaking. Areas like the zone-wide ruined city of Zul'Drak and the hidden tropical jungle of Sholazar Basin took you completely out of where you thought you'd wander; the vast plains of Dragonblight and the majestic mountains of Storm Peaks showed how varied a snow landscape could be. All these areas were populated by new cultures or old ones expanded, new stories narrated through how the village hubs were decorated, how the items looked, how the fantastic and supernatural aspects were brought out. WoW's somewhat exaggerated, cartoony aesthetic has always been a lot stronger than it looks in screenshots, able to bring the world to life in a vividly evocative, atmospheric manner. The design team really went above and beyond for Wrath, where each of its zones, cities, towns and areas are brimming with personality and rich history, really transporting you to somewhere which feels like it actually existed and had a purpose, as opposed to just some generic fantasy droppings. Hence, best Art Direction. And not just visually either - whilst I would sometimes replace it with my own music, Wrath's soundtrack is truly superb and one of the best examples of Fantasy RPG Orchestral Score there is. It would have been my pick for Best Soundtrack if not for Unleashed.
It is an easy choice for my GOTY 2008 - the Wrath era of WoW was one where I could easily say a small chunk of my personality was a 'WoW Player', because of how much it meant to me to explore and quest in that world. It's a virtual place and moment in time I genuinely long to go back to, like visiting home years after you left. Of course, you can never go back to the exact time and place that made those things so special (not that Blizzard allows us to try; the fact that they turned Wrath Classic into Cataclysm Classic is one of the weirdest decisions I've personally experienced from a games company) - but the fact that those experiences were born to begin with is a sign of how strong the game was.
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