This year was pretty good for gamers.  We all got a little bit to play, while RPG lovers got a TON of new games to play.  Overall, while there were some good games that came out early in 2008, the big hitters and critical darlings all seemed to drop on each other week after week in November and October.  After the wreckage there’s only one question left.

What was the game of the year? Well, over the course of this week, I’ll post five articles with my five GOTY contenders.  The first one is a shooter and it’s probably not a game that you were expecting.

My first pick, after the jump.

My only real issue at this point is whether or not I should have waited a week or so, to play Prince of Persia, as it seems to be getting great reviews.  Well, I’ll make a deal with you, if it rocks my face off, I’ll revisit this article next week and update the list.  In the meantime, lets carry on with the discussion.

In formulating my contenders, I was surprised by how few first person shooters made my short list.  I guess it just wasn’t the first person shooter’s year.  Resistance 2 didn’t make make my short list and I haven’t played Legendary, although it doesn’t appear that I’m missing much.  Haze stunk up the joint, but Battlefield Bad Company was fantastic and Conflict: Denied Ops was a joke. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty may have been the low point of the year and Frontlines: Fuel of War just didn’t meet the lofty expectations that were set far too high by Battlefield fans like myself.

In the end, I was able to narrow down my list to two great first person shooters: Battlefield Bad Company and Far Cry 2.  In considering the two, I enjoyed the open world feel to BF:BC, but I enjoyed the “actual” open world of Far Cry 2 much more.  On the other hand, the multiplayer for both games is pretty good.  The destructable environments of BF:BC create an incredibly immersive experience that’s ultimately hampered by team communication issues, hit detection issues, spawn issues and unbalanced map issues.  Far Cry 2, on the other hand doesn’t quite get the immersive aspects of BF:BC down at all, but instead offers up a fun experience that is only hampered by your own imagination.  The map editor tool is a feat in and of itself and it’s a shame that it seems like our site has been the ONLY website shouting its praises.

Ultimately, Far Cry 2 is less of a shooter and more of an experience.  Reviewers bemoaned graphical glitches and AI issues along with repetitive mission structure, but, I’ve got to say that I just didn’t have that same experience.  I never noticed graphical hitches and I found the AI to be both ingenious and stupid, but not in a way that broke the game, but instead, heightened the experience.  I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that most reviewers that played the game, played it on an easy or normal difficulty.  By default, the AI is supposed to be “dumber” on those levels.  I played it and continue to play it on the Hard difficulty mode.  The AI gives no quarter and will hunt you down if you make a mistake.

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