Eurogamer's Top 50 Games of 2008: 40-31 Comments by Eurogamer staff

John Walker: I've watched the intro for this. Then I grew very old and died. I really want to play it, but it's hard now I'm a wizened corpse.

Glad to see Okami, Lost Winds and Lost odyssey getting some love. They are the only 3 i've played on this list and I liked them.

Oh and, hold onto your hats! The shitfest that's about to begin for Saints Row 2 at 40 is going to be epic.

Please people, it's only an opinion. It doesn't matter that much more than yours just because EG has a website and you don't...

*runs for the basement* TIDAL WAAAAAVE!

Agreed

If Gears of War 2 makes it into the top 5 I'll lose all faith in Eurogamer!

Comparing Audio Surf to oral sex? That's novel.

I'm always going to disagree with SR2 being at 40, because for me it's easily number one. It was the most fun I had with a video game all year, easily.

But hey I'm not so precious that I'm going to get offended by it being at 40 or anything. Cheers EG for another great year.

On WipEout HD....

"Christian Donlan: A little unnerved that we think this is only three places better than Saints Row 2."

Couldn't agree more, shocking! Also Siren so far down? EG lost all respect with that one!

Nah only joking EG, bring on 30-21! :)

I'm not so much defending the choices in the Top 50 as I am the process that chooses them. A hell of alot more people decide the Top 50 then the scores in EG reviews. That's why there are some odd results and you'd be very hard pressed to find ANYONE who agrees with it 100%. It certainly isn't me...

Pic Pic is really addictive, but I'm not sure its "good". It's like crosswords or sudoku, are those "good" puzzles?

I recommend it to anyone, its perfect for doing a puzzle which takes 10-15 minutes a time, I've completed about 330 of them and have started to ration them out.

http://www.conceptispuzzles.com/ you can play them (link-a-pix) on this website, but its not the same as with the stylus.

Yeah Kings Bounty is not that good and neither is Audiosurf. In fact having them on the list invalidates the entire thing :P

Thank god okami is there. Awesome game.
I havent played lost winds yet, i should really download it.
Lost Odyseey's rank should be a bit higher. Top 30 at least.

ekko: It's like crosswords or sudoku, are those "good" puzzles?'

Yes.

"I'm always going to disagree with SR2 being at 40, because for me it's easily number one. It was the most fun I had with a video game all year, easily. "

SO true, yeah it was buggy, yeah it wasn't that pretty, but in the SR Vs GTA war you have to lok at 2 key points:

Jonny Gat Vs Roman.

Main character in a dress and Coverce Vs Going on dates every 18 seconds or people will hate you.

Fallout 3 for GOTY. i love dthe people who bitched that it was "Oblivion with guns" thats like saying it's a hybrid of Return of the king and the first matrix movie with a 17 minute harcore sex scene with Monic Belchicheheheisis-ness in.

surprised wipeout is so high in the list

infact i dont understand how audiosurf is higher than it? wierd list so far

Yeah Billy, I'd be outraged if a high-quality, popular game with many people does well too :)

I'm going to post how clever I am by disagreeing with other peoples opinions!!!!!!!!! Look at me!!!!!!!!

Yes Pic Pic is a much better game than either Mario Kart Wii or Mass Effect.

/Pats head of Eurogamer, raises eyebrows and walks slowly away...

I loved Slither-Link and Illust Logic, but I've been completely unable to get into Pic Pic - I'm just not finding any of the three puzzle types that enjoyable. In my mind Slither-Link is still the definitive DS game.

Also:

"Christian Donlan: A little unnerved that we think [Wipeout HD] is only three places better than Saints Row 2."

This.

To repeat: this is the CRITIC top 50, NOT the EG staff alone's choices. Makes it more interesting than just reprinting the 50 best review scores of the year.

Every damn year it's the same thing...

What does Kieron Gillen know of oral sex? Unless it's sucking-off old men for pennies.

"Yeah Kings Bounty is not that good "

Eh? As they admit, it really should have been higher on the list.

So do people genuinely expect every single person's opinions to align with their own, or is outrage just in fashion these days? And by these days, I mean since the birth of the internet, I suppose. Ah well!

Personally, I disagree!

I thought Audiosurf was poor too :(

Tommy rot.

I know noone's sad enough, but it'd be interesting to compile the top 50, with each game's review score next to its top 50 rank...and see how the two don't tally.

Although a review score is one person vs. a great many compiling a best of.

Maybe it's time to change the system. If EG has to post a sort of "disclaimer" about the list 2 weeks ago and most of the contributers really dont agree with the way it turns out, then why should they continue doing so, or us investing in it?

Those lists shouldnt be just a sum of review scores, no, but they do have to reflect them in some way and it clearly doesnt. Common, the writers basiclly say that King's Bounty would have jumped ~15 spots if one of them didn't miss the deadline.. is the system really that bad that it takes for one guy not to place the game in his #1 spot or top three, to make a game slide down so much.

Just to be clear, not defending King's Bounty, i didn't play it and dont plan to - it's just the way which the list is determined. It clearly doesn't reflect the scores and most of the contributers' own thoughts. Those thoughts make the EG list interesting and stand out, but i wish they were devoted more to actually say why a game made it so far, rather than bemoan how it didnt get any higher.
But to its credit, the current way does make for a rather funny remarks and stabs at certain games.

Oh for crying out loud, how is this so difficult to understand? Let me put it this way:

If I was reviewing Metal Gear Solid 4 for a web site I'd end up giving it an 8 or 9. It's clearly a very good game, looks great and for those who are fans of this type of game it's really, really good.

If I was putting together my personal top twenty of the year it wouldn't come close because I personally hate it with a firey passion owing to the stupidly long cutscenes, story that does very little to help the newbie in and frustrating game mechanics.

See the difference?

isn't the list just compiled from all the EG reviewers giving their top five(or whatever the number) individually and then its all counted up at the end? if it is then every single arguement about the results is irrelevant as its a majority vote...
my personal top 10 or 5 wouldn't include any sports, multiplayer or racing game ever in my whole life, but I can see that, if enough EG reviewers liked them over the year, they'd be included.
Any complaint just reeks of reactionary bollocks and possibly a chip on shoulder complex too..

I bought the other half Pic Pic for Christmas...biggest mistake of my life.

She has probably spent 10hrs on it already, hasn't gone this mad for a game since she got Zoo Keeper, and she kept playing that every day for about 2 years. I decided to see what the fuss was about and did the DS Download thing to get the demo from her...suffice to say, an hour later I ordered my own copy of the game.

Addictive just doesn't do it justice.

Yes Pic Pic is a much better game than either Mario Kart Wii or Mass Effect.

Yes, it is. What's your point?

Is it just me or are most of the comments negative about the games....not what you want out of top 50

Audiosurf > Wipeout HD ?!!?

GTA IV really had better not be game of the year. *Hugely* underwhelming that game.

Gaol, don't be sad. When someone tries to claim that not agreeing with them means you don't understand music... Well, you know to ignore that.

Prime, and everyone else getting upset, read Tom's explanation!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/editor...

Clearly anyone who disagrees with the exact order of our chart is wrong, and most of all, ugly.

Okami PS2 was ruined for me, as I played it after being stuck into Zelda. The beginning was just too similar in gameplay somehow? But the recommendation here makes me think i might scrape the dust off my Wii and give it another go now its maybe fresher, compared to what I've been playing recently.

Siren Blood Curse really really annoyed me as it took me ages to figure out how to get out of the first scene.

Wipeout HD was awesome but the expertise required for some of it, my god. I'd like some SNES mario kart please. Courses which were easy to play, terrifyingly tricky to master.

I'd love a good, net playable version of SNES mario kart over...well, pretty much anything. Does it exist yet? That'd be my Wii killer app.

The main problem with Audiosurf, apart from the fact that the game isn't really all that good at designing good levels on the fly, is the fact that it is awfully picky wrt. what kinds of music it needs to function more or less adequately.

Lovely concept, but it doesn't hold my attention for long, and I suspect that those who feel it's "brilliant" have more free time to kill than me.

The process just lacks transparency. Each contributer hands in his top10 list and its all digest by the formula and we get the list. EG admit it themselves it leads to bizzare results - a game showing up on everybody's list at a low spot will outweigh a game thats not in the majority of the lists, but placed at the high spots.

It is also seems this list is made very much under the pressure of time. Getting everybody to submit their own lists on time, tinkering with the formula. Maybe it would be wiser to begin the year round-up earlier. Posting the Top10 games of each writer and then the overall top50.
If time allowes, the final list can be shared with the contributers to look at and see if there are any prominent issues about it. Considering all the Top50 lists i read at EG, it seems that most the writers would be more than happy to re-oraganize some spots. If the list doesnt reflect the majority opinion of those who made it, then whats the point?

To be honest, i don't see why this issue hasn't been addressed by EG in the past years. A list which ends up not at all on the same line of most of the participants, disregarding review scores very often, has no solid basis ( One man's list would have skyrocketed a game more than ten spots) and an end product that is more concerned with knowing how the hell X game landed Y spot and making stabs at some them, rather than actually share with us why it should BE in the top50 and what merits it displayed to win over the staff.

i'm still shocked that a game that is more concept than a cohesive game is considered a be higher ranked game than Smash Bros. If anything it's this list that is seriously lacking in cohesion. That's the price you pay for having individual reviewers all year and then bring them all together for a "team" feature. Work as a team all year and agree on scores together. Seriously Audiosurf is higher than Bangai-O Spirits... That's criminal.

I predict Fallout 3 or Fable 2 for top. Not my choices personally (mine are on my profile) but then I only have Wii and PS3 so what do I know...

;o)

What the hell is Wipeout HD doing so far down the list? Are you people DERANGED!?!?

Got to agree with rash really... Man talks sense.

The fact that more than half of the articles comments about Saints Row 2 were 'I haven't played it yet' goes to show how stupid and amatuerish this list is.

I think the biggest story this year is how Eurogamer has gone to shite :( I think a change of staff is needed ASAP.

A relative lack of comments about what would normally be such contentious articles suggests:

a) The majority of forumites dick about on here only during working hours, and haven't yet returned to the office.
2) The majority of forumites therefore aren't 14 year old boys.
d) The majority of forumites are a shockingly immature bunch of old men.

Possibly.

The wife got me PicPic for Christmas and it's great. I genuinely don't understand MagiPic at all, MazePic is simple and so a bit dull after a while and some of the later mazes are just moronic, but Drawing is fantastic. I'm enjoying it far more than Slitherlink. I get a tiny little rush of endorphins everytime I complete a puzzle and reveal a cute picture.

Thanks John!

I must be the only person on the planet who didn't really like Okami (PS2), despite wanting to love it so, so much.

Interestingly GTAIV is likely going to be in top 3 and yet Saints Row 2 is actually a better game by a large margin. For example, the combat in SR2 isn't retarded (because yes, still using a flawed auto-aim function is now officially absurd) and the ability to customize your character and not take the game so seriously does it wonders over what GTA can offer.

I thought maybe I just didn't enjoy the type of game GTA offers since every-time one is released I can't help but see them for what they are: overrated, glitch ridden, terrible - absolutely terrible - looking and extremely poor to play videogames. But yet I enjoy Saints Row 2.

Don't get me wrong, SR2 can never have as many issues as it does and expect to get anything above 7/10 from me (since that would actually tell developers it's okay to have a broken game... like what Eurogamer does with every review *sigh*), but for my money it is easily a better game than GTAIV could ever be.

I agree with the whole Saints Row 2 being better than GTA4 thing and i'm a huge GTA fan.

The over-the-topness of SR2 just made it much more fun than GTA4's hamfisted attempt at 'grittyness'.

"34. Siren: Blood Curse
Sony / PS3

Gonna have to get this. "

I thought it was awful; horrid camera, missing a coherent plot. Just all smoke & mirrors hidng really poor gameplay.

Crofto - not played SR2 so I can't comment.

As far as GTA IV is concerned though, you need to turn off auto aim, and also try playing a GTA race online and tell me the game isn't fun.

I take slight exception to the comment by Kieron about 'music is the artform which all other art aspires to.' The actual quote is, 'All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.' Which is not the same thing.

It's already a bit too much of a hardcore-obscure game list without misquoting literary critics from the 19th Century.