15 Best Months To Be A Gamer (Since 2000)
7. October 2008 Space, Saints And Fallout...
You might think that 2008 would have very few good games to balance out the insanity of 2007... on the contrary, 2008 might have been just as good a year. October 2008 is the strongest month of that year, providing us with several modern day classics, including the rebirth of the survival horror genre.
By this point in time, Resident Evil and Silent Hill were mere shadows of the horrific greats they once were. Something had to take their place and that game turned out to be Dead Space from Visceral Games. Set on a seemingly abandoned space ship, Dead Space is a lesson in how to do atmosphere properly. It's a dark and terrifying game, designed to leave you constantly on edge, plus it features some of the best limb-destroying gameplay you'll find in any game.
The original Saints Row was largely written off as a basic Grand Theft Auto clone but Saints Row 2 quickly changed that by making everything slightly more bizarre. Saints Row 2 sees you play The Boss as he bids to make the Saints the number one gang in Stilwater again. While at its core it's still very similar to GTA, Saints Row 2 is a huge success because of how fun it is the side-games are memorable (throwing your limp ragdoll in front of cars for Insurance Fraud, anyone?), the missions are ridiculous and over-the-top, and it's a bright and colourful take on the crime genre for a change.
One game that isn't bright and colourful though is Fallout 3. Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland (aptly named the Capital Wasteland), Fallout 3 takes the RPG elements of the early games in the series, strips their isometric 2D gameplay away and immerses us in a 3D world which we simply want to dive into and explore. Some may have criticised the loss of black humour and gameplay from the earlier games but Fallout 3 is a great example of Bethesda's style of RPG in action; its one of very few games that can absolutely dominate your life for months.
Elsewhere, the phenomenal Bioshock was ported to the PlayStation 3; Fable 2 arrived and while you couldn't quite do many of the things that were promised (sorry Peter Molyneux), it was still a great game, and the highly anticipated LittleBigPlanet released to great reviews.
Metacritic Roundup: Fallout 3, 93. Bioshock, 94. LittleBigPlanet, 95. Average: 94.