Game of The Year '08?

I'll agree that the online was very underwhelming, but at the same time the thought of fighting friends who lived far away whenever I wanted justified what we have.

Brawl is excellent and I don't think people say it enough.

Well I loved brawl.
And the improvements from melee to brawl are huge for a sequal.
Compare it to like CoD4 going to CoD5 or animal crossing GC going to animal crossing Wii...

saunderscowie said:
What about most disappointing games of 2008?

sonic unleashed.

expected more and always hated those werehog levels

SuperLink said:
I'll agree that the online was very underwhelming, but at the same time the thought of fighting friends who lived far away whenever I wanted justified what we have.

I've never been a fan of Smash Bros. I found the first one boring and would rather play Mario Kart in multiplayer. I was hoping online would really give it a kick up the arse, but it just didn't happen. Being stuffed to the brim with trinkets and bells and whistles wasn't enough to disguise the identical gameplay. No beef, it's just not my thing and I wish I hadn't bought it, so it has to be my biggest disappointment.

Meanwhile Banjo is steadily creeping up my list...

dartmonkey said:

The online wasn't great but the thought of great online justified the rubbish online we got? Sorry, I'm not following.

And we CAN fight friends who live far away whenever we want can't we? It's better than the no online at all it could so have easily been, and Smash is still great offline.

I thought the \'identical\' gameplay (though I slightly disagree that it is identical) was a good thing. The gameplay is awesome as is, and shouldn\'t be changed. All I wanted out of Brawl was more awesome characters and stages. Which we got.

And I never play anything online, so the rubbish online isn\'t an issue for me.

Also I played the Nuts and Bolts demo the other day. Was better than I thought it\'d be. And I played the Sonic Unleashed demo. Was worse than I hoped it would be.

( Edited 15.01.2009 20:13 by Ikana )

SuperLink said:
but at the same time the thought of fighting friends who lived far away whenever I wanted justified what we have.

No it doesn't, it's one of the worst online games I have ever played.
The game was hyped way too much....

Doesn't mean the game is bad, just means people's expectations got way out of hand.

When a game doesn't live up to expectations (what expectations you had I have no idea, it's just a sequel to Melee) it doesn't automatically make the game a bad guy.

Gameplay that has barly evolved
Crappy online gameplay
Overhyped

...

Were talking about GTA4 right?

Yeaaah.

Except GTAIV's actually overrated, especially from the all acclaim it got. Everyone seems to hate Brawl now.

Only here, most other sites I visit it's the "Brawl is the only good game on the Wii" line.

I can appreciate what some people are saying about Brawl but at the end of the day alot of other games do the exact same thing, it's very rare that a sequal actually radically improves and adds somthing that makes it feel new again.

It just comes down to what games you like and whether your allright with the formula not changing much.

SuperLink said:
Yeaaah.

Except GTAIV's actually overrated, especially from the all acclaim it got. Everyone seems to hate Brawl now.

GTA IV is rated just about right, actually. GTA IV is excellent, and I was totally bored of GTA, and avoided numero IV until November. Then I finally came face-to-face with it on one of my flat-mate's 360s, and realised that it actually was really fucking excellent, totally deserving of all the acclaim, and marked another leap for Rockstar, rather then the usual incremental improvement. So don't make such comments about games that you clearly haven't played.

SuperLink said:
I'll agree that the online was very underwhelming, but at the same time the thought of fighting friends who lived far away whenever I wanted justified what we have.

All Wii online is horribly underwhelming. Brawl is no special case, in this regard?

mage_mccloud said:
GOTY 2009 anticipation: Uncharted 2 or Another Code R

Pfft, those games will not be GOTY. Remember we have RE5 and Beyond Good & Evil 2 to look forward to, this year! Among others.

Martin_ said:
All Wii online is horribly underwhelming. Brawl is no special case, in this regard?

Also from the looks of things, there's a possibility 3rd parties may end up doing without friend codes someday soon.

Right, but until that happens, \'Friend Codes\' are the most awkward way of doing these things that you wonder why anyone at Nintendo ever thought that it was a good idea, or that it was the way that it should be done. They should definitely just have copied XBL, rather than be stubborn and try to think of their own way of doing it, and ultimately end up with something that\'s so ridiculously awkward to use, and is shit.

And even after it happens, that won\'t erase the fact that the Wii has a two-year back-catalogue of games which still use rubbish Friend Codes. One or two third party games doing it differently won\'t abolish the nightmare of the friend code from Wii. It\'s too late for that. XBL was one hundred times better and easier to use than Wii online when it first started in 2002, never mind now.

Sorry, minor anti-Wii rant there. I just find the Wii\'s online system to be a hilarious failure of epic proportions.

( Edited 15.01.2009 23:52 by Martin_ )

They may never have thought it was a good idea, but their new leadership seems too traditional and family orientated.

The Wii's online system is shit, but I would never expect it to compare to LIVE anyway.

SuperLink said:
Doesn\'t mean the game is bad, just means people\'s expectations got way out of hand.

When a game doesn\'t live up to expectations (what expectations you had I have no idea, it\'s just a sequel to Melee) it doesn\'t automatically make the game a bad guy.

The online was unplayable (To say the very least). I expected online to work (like the general population), instead it was broken. It\'s just a sequel? A sequel to one of the gamecubes greatest games. I was expecting a masterpiece (I\'m sure you were too, we were all teabagging it before the release) the online ruined the game.

SuperLink said:
Yeaaah.

Except GTAIV\'s actually overrated, especially from the all acclaim it got. Everyone seems to hate Brawl now.

GTA is a great game infact I wouldn\'t dare even try comparing it to something like Brawl.

SuperLink said:

Martin_ said:
All Wii online is horribly underwhelming. Brawl is no special case, in this regard?

Don\'t get me wrong, Brawl\'s is definitely one of the worse online systems on Wii, and Mario Kart\'s is actually pretty damn good for such a broken game.

Also from the looks of things, there\'s a possibility 3rd parties may end up doing without friend codes someday soon.

If any game is broken it\'s Brawl. Mario Kart online is no where near perfect but I does a good job with the restrictions on it.

( Edited 15.01.2009 23:54 by Birdo Is A Tranny )

SuperLink said:
They may never have thought it was a good idea, but their new leadership seems too traditional and family orientated.

The Wii\'s online system is shit, but I would never expect it to compare to LIVE anyway.

I\'m not saying it has to be as great as LIVE is. Not at all. I\'m saying it has to at least come up to the bare minimum standard that LIVE started at.. over six (!) years ago. That very old standard which basically consists of \'gamer account (gamertag), and voice comms in every game\' is what I would consider to be \'par\'. That the Wii\'s online is light years away from even that is unacceptable, in my opinion.

What Nintendo have done instead is utterly unthinkable, to my mind. If you\'d have asked me three years ago what sort of online system the Wii was going to have, the answer I\'d have given would have been something like the \'par\' I outlined above. It\'d have been nothing like the reality of what the Wii ended up with, and if you had predicted to me then exactly what the Wii has now, I\'d have laughed in your face.

It\'s literally designed by an idiot, it would seem. Or someone who was trying their best to think of the most cumbersome way of doing it as possible. One of those two.

( Edited 16.01.2009 00:12 by Martin_ )

Meh, that hilarious cutscene of Captain Falcon Falcon Punching a giant ROB then accidentally murdering a bunch of Pikmin easily made Brawl the best game of \'08 for me.

Or the one where Pikachu Thunderbolts Ridley.

Or the one where Ness saves Lucas. And Lucas meets Red.

Or Snake chucking a load of Mr Game&Watches through a window.

God I love Brawl\'s cutscenes. I sat rewatching them for ages when I first got it.

( Edited 16.01.2009 00:18 by Ikana )

Birdo Is A Tranny said:
The online was unplayable (To say the very least). I expected online to work (like the general population), instead it was broken. It\'s just a sequel? A sequel to one of the gamecubes greatest games. I was expecting a masterpiece (I\'m sure you were too, we were all teabagging it before the release) the online ruined the game.

If any game is broken it\'s Brawl. Mario Kart online is no where near perfect but I does a good job with the restrictions on it.

( Edited 16.01.2009 10:37 by SuperLink )

GTA4 just felt like a 3D GTA1 to me...which is what GTA3 did years ago.
Not that thats a bad thing just I was underwhelmed, yet again I got bored halfway through another GTA, they made such a big deal out of the multiplayer yet it ended up okayish.

( Edited 16.01.2009 01:24 by Mario_0 )

I've been playing tons and tons of GTA IV online. I don't know what you missed, but it's really excellent in online multiplayer.

Should be LOTRO Mines of moria! Ya baby, expansion for Game of the Year! Woot

mage_mccloud said:
GOTY 2009 anticipation: Uncharted 2 or Another Code R

Pfft, those games will not be GOTY. Remember we have RE5 and Beyond Good & Evil 2 to look forward to, this year! Among others.

Well in all honesty i reckon Diablo III will win, but i'm just hoping either of those two might get a chance

Ex 1up crew discussion on the GOTY 08

SuperLink said:

If any game is broken it's Brawl. Mario Kart online is no where near perfect but I does a good job with the restrictions on it.

I mean the gameplay, Mario Kart's gameplay is casualed up and unfair to a fault.

It gets worse with every Mario Kart, doesn't it? Get rid of the big cars and the bikes, bring back the karts that give the game its title.

Get rid of the golden mushroom and the triple red shell (triple green can remain) and make blue shells rare again and not so damaging. Oh, and get rid of the magic boosts by drifting around corners.

Lets have a racing game Nintendo, like Mario Kart used to be, not a game about who doesn't get hit by a blue shell 10 meters before the finish!
/rant over.