With how fast the video game industry moves, it can be fun to take a step back from the countless new games releasing on a daily basis and turning our gaze to the past. In this case, leaping back a full ten years and seeing just how we’ve progressed with some titles biting the dust never to be seen again, while others have thrived into long-running franchises. Today we’ll take a look at some of the most noteworthy titles released the month of October 2008, as well as how they fared, in no particular order.
Dead Space
Ever since the gaming community saw this amazing trailer, it was clear that EA’s first foray into the horror genre had great potential. To everyone’s glee, Dead Space more than delivered on its promise of a creepy atmosphere and stomach-churning enemies you are forced to face, becoming an instant classic. The player took control of the engineer Issac Clarke who was sent into the mining ship known as the Ishimura to discover why it has gone dark and fix the assumed communications issue. To his luck and that of his crew, what they found aboard that ship was far worse than a malfunctioning piece of equipment. Now stranded and alone, the only thing keeping Issac from becoming yet another corpse aboard the ship is his flimsy armor and a handheld mining drill he uses as an improvised weapon. Trying to find your way off the ship while strategically blasting the limbs off of these resilient creatures is still as enjoyable as ever. It even received a sequel that some argue is the best of the series. With such a strong start, this new series was headed to great things. That is until the third entry killed it off for the foreseeable future due to its introduction of online coop as a main focus, microtransactions that allowed the player to essentially buy power, and a cover system to fight humanoid enemies that shoot at you. It was a massive, though still a somewhat enjoyable misstep as to what fans loved about the first two.
Saints Row 2
The first entry of this series enjoyed a rather comfortable position during the console’s early 7th generation. It was a GTA clone on systems that did not yet have a proper Grand Theft Auto game. That was not so when this sequel came along as GTA IV released earlier that same year. In a wise move, the developers over a Volition took a new approach with their relatively serious franchise and injected tons of over the top humor into it. This direct contrast with the bleak and dry approach Rockstar took earlier that year allowed Saints Row 2 to get its own following, despite releasing so close to that monolith of a series. In it, you play as the last game’s protagonist and after the events that took place then, it gives you a handy reason as to why you can completely change how you look and even turn into a female now. Customization is a key factor to this game as you deck your character out in cool or wacky clothing and pimp out your ride with a wealth of options to choose from. Your main objective is to regain your gang’s lost turf from the three newcomers that have split the city apart, as well as a shadowy mega-corporation that wants in on that action. In the biggest surprise of all, the campaign’s story is quite brilliant. It’s campy sure, but when it gets serious you will be solemnly reminded just how dangerous that world is. It later had a third game that felt more like a reboot, needlessly bringing back characters and cheapening the events of the last title. More damningly was that it was made during THQ’s struggle with bankruptcy and Saints Row 3’s DLC practices where disgusting, to be frank. Luckily for us all, Deep Silver came in and saved the day when they published Saints Row 4 and it remains a strong franchise to this day.
Far Cry 2
With Crytek, the developer of the first title going off to make a little game known as Crysis, Ubisoft handed this series over to an in-house team to work on. Unsurprisingly, the feel and theme of Far Cry 2 was completely different to the original, heck to any FPS game since even. Often accused of being a tech demo, and not entirely unwarranted since some key aspects of it seemed half-baked, it nonetheless offers an incredibly unique experience. Part realistic simulator, part unrealistic action game, it blends both together to create an equally dangerous and fun world to be in. There is nothing quite as memorable as storming into a well thought out plan, forgetting to check your weapon’s condition beforehand, then having it jam mid-fight and die. In most games that would be that, though this is Farcry 2. You wake up to find your friend over your half-conscious body trying to fight off your attackers, you stand up and fight back to back, then he takes a nasty shot towards the end while you remain unscathed. Having no health items, you can either leave him there to die or put him out of his misery. All of this is completely unscripted and that character will not respawn later, he is gone for good, leaving you with a real sense of guilt as you collect your meager reward for that ambush you set. It’s not perfect though, if you try to rush straight to the end, its various quirks will probably quickly turn you off from it. Treat it as a sandbox however, and the organic nature of the game will give you many a story to blather on about for several years to come. This series has only gotten bigger since a decade ago and has taken a far more power fantasy structure to it, making this second entries realistic simulation approach entirely unique to it.
Fallout 3
It seems like 2008 was a strange time in where developers were massively changing how every sequel felt and played. None more so than Bethesda’s Fallout 3. Previously being an isometric computer role-playing game, this third entry took quite an interesting approach to that with its combination of real-time FPS movement and its V.A.T.S system for combat turning it into a pseudo turn-based affair. As you may imagine, switching genres from a classic old school CRPG to Bethesda’s unique formula did not sit well with everybody. And that is a fair point, though writing this game off completely was to do yourself a disservice. We were finally given the chance to see how the east coast of the United States fared after the nuclear war and as it turns out, not well at all. Our former capital is a massive, irritated dump, filled with all matters of both mutants and fellow humans to kill you. Society never recovered here, at best you will find small pockets of survivors that have zero intentions of looking beyond their seemingly safe hideaways. It is bleak, it is violent, and it is a ton of fun. Bethesda has always excelled at providing us with a world full of things to discover at every corner and even in such a ruined, monotone environment, they delivered just that. On top of all that, the immense amount of modding it enjoyed and still manages to enjoy today to a lesser degree, ensures you are unlikely to ever run out of stuff to do with this already massive game. The next entry of the series was handed off and developed by Obsidian, home to some of the people that made the first two Fallout titles. This rather surreal chance of the original team members getting another crack at making a game for their series resulted in Fallout: New Vegas, regarded by most as the best modern Fallout title. In 2015, Bethesda released Fallout 4 which was much less enthusiastically received due to it mostly abandoning its RPG aspects, instead going for an action and crafting type experience. An MMO Fallout is soon to be released, so the series is still going strong it seems.
LittleBigPlanet
User created content is not new in console games, ranging from the days of making tracks for Excitebike on your NES to creating maps for Timesplitters. It was not until LittleBigPlanet however, that this feature was so embraced and made infinitely easier to get new content with a few button presses away thanks to online integration. We play as the generically named Sackboy, a living doll made of wool that lives in an equally charming world made of cardboard and other normal household objects. It features a full-blown campaign, narrated by an incredibly friendly sounding voice, but the meat of the game is with the community itself. From downloading new outfits, rating other peoples levels, or even trying your hand on making your own, the interactivity plays a key part as to how long this title can keep you hooked. Bringing some friends along for the ride, either online or locally makes things much more interesting as you can pull at each other to make sure your mate misses a jump or cooperate for some cool new loot you couldn’t get on your own. Sure, it is far from the best platformer out there, however it is one of the most charming and wholesome games on the market that people of any age can enjoy. It received a sequel three years after, that not only retained all of the previous games user made content, but offered up a more powerful level creator to make previously impossible scenarios. It received a third sequel on the PS4 which included new, different handling characters to play as and has enjoyed many ports or spin-offs on other systems. There has been nothing released since 2014, though a new entry for the upcoming generation of consoles would hardly come as a surprise.
Fable 2
Ah, good old Fable. A massively ambitious series, yet often met with disappointment as its lead designer, Peter Molyneux, overpromises with features such as being able to plant an acorn and it growing into a tree overtime. Despite that never being implemented in any of the three games that in this franchise, it does offer something else you can’t really find elsewhere. Sure the big bad antagonist just killed your sister and shot you out of a massive tower’s windows, but nothing is stopping you from letting bygones be bygones and living your virtual life as a humble blacksmith. Eventually, you may even choose to get married and sire a football team’s worth of children. On the other hand, you can also be both a serial killer and slaver, growing horns and a fat gold filled purse for your misdeeds. There is so much to do aside from chasing down the villain, it is a sandbox in the truest sense. For fan’s of the original, it is interesting to see how the land of Albion has grown since your adventure five hundred years ago, and since this plot ranges from you being a kid until an adult, even newcomers can see significant changes occur throughout. We got a sequel in 2010 that received a significant amount of tweaks and improvements to keep the series feeling fresh. That was, however, the end of that, everything after has been spin-offs and Microsoft eventually shut down the developer Lionhead Studios. A sad end no doubt, but at the very least there have been rumors that a fourth entry may be in the works by a different team.
Needless to say, this was quite a busy month for gamers a decade ago. Any one of those aforementioned titles would last you a decent amount of time to complete and these weren’t even all that were released during October. You also had big name titles like Command & Conquer 3, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, and Bioshock finally releasing for the PlayStation 3. It was a good time for the video games industry and gamers alike, with the latter being all too tempted to spend all their holiday cash then and there. Some of these franchises were lost to the flow of time while others have evolved to better suit the modern times. What I can say with confidence is that each of the individual games mentioned here have aged rather well, barring the graphics, and are all still worth playing to this day. Just make sure to avoid the PC port of Saints Row 2 like the plague.
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