Difficulty of games is a very interesting to me nowadays. More and more I find that I want to enjoy the gaming experience and not be frustrated in the process of doing so. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I am becoming a casual gamer, but as my life has gotten more busy I find that I would rather see something new in a game and not be languishing on stage for days on end. Even so, there are games that treat difficulty as a badge of honor such as Ninja Gaiden (which berates you mercilessly if you lower the difficulty level) and Halo (which says that the most difficulty level is the real way to play). Some folks find that brand of masochistic behavior fun – I still have mixed feelings in regards to that.
Mega Man 9 was an interesting game in 2008 as it was designed with old school 8-bit graphics as homage to the old days of the NES. Along with the old school graphics came old school gameplay: that is, Capcom made the game incredibly difficult to satisfy fans of the series, oftentimes evoking thoughts that the game was deliberately designed to frustrate you. In fact, I don’t remember the original Mega Man games on the NES ever being this difficult. And yet, I still had a lot of fun with the game – a testament to solid game design.
Stuff that can kill you here: insta-kill spikes on the ground, a spinning pendulum, and a teleporting robot that shoots stuff. Yep.
Needless to say, I have not finished Mega Man 9 – I stopped at around the 6th robot master defeated before my interest was diverted elsewhere to another game. This was only after dumping a good eight or so hours dying, breaking controllers, and calling myself an idiot for getting tricked by the game. Perhaps I will finish the game one day.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of in-game advertisement; often times sticks out like a sore thumb and just doesn’t seem appropriate for the environment. But if there’s one game that did in-game advertisement right this year, it’s Burnout Paradise. Aside from being the best racing game this year, Burnout also featured real-world billboard advertisements in the busy virtual world of Paradise city. The best one of the bunch?
Best Soundtrack of 2008 is actually a bit of a loaded category – there was a surprisingly large amount of software this year with memorable soundtracks. Most of the ones that stuck out in my head are pretty obvious – Bionic Commando Rearmed featured the original 8 bit music tracks remixed and reinterpreted for the current gaming generation. Super Street Fighter 2: HD Remix featured hip and imaginative reinterpretations of the classic tracks by the fans themselves, a feat that was unprecedented in quality and scope. While both of these games’ soundtracks were definitely impressive in their own right, it was actually the music choice of LittleBigPlanet that really shocked me with its quality this past year.
Jim Noir – My Patch
LittleBigPlanet is an important game because it represents the advent of user-generated content to the home console. With everyone all over the world creating their own unique levels, it’s only fitting that the music actually comes from all over the world. The end result is an eclectic, multicultural collection of songs that captures the essence of the LittleBigPlanet community so perfectly.
Cafe Tacuba – Volver a Comenzar
While the soundtrack of LittleBigPlanet is more notorious because of the subsequent recall of the game, the lack of the true version of the Tapha Niang doesn’t sour the fact that it is my most memorable soundtrack of the year: it remains the only game music that kept me smiling the entire time in 2008.
This console generation and the continuing success of the Wii serves as a reminder of the fact that Nintendo’s slice of the videogaming pie is so big that unfortunately a lot of software gets completely ignored, even in spite of exceptional critical buzz. Valkyria Chronicles was certainly that title this past year.
While it was always true that Valkyria Chronicles was going to be a hard sale- niche genre, poor PR, and an expensive console… 33,000 copies sold over the month of November in North America is still abysmal. Which is an unfortunate circumstance because between amalgation of traditional strategy RPG with western style action and the unique watercolor artstyle powered by the CANVAS engine, Valkyria Chronicles easily ranks among the best titles of the year. As I mentioned in a previous post, if you own a PS3 and have not picked up Valkyria Chronicles, you’re part of the problem.
