Top 5 sleeper games of 2008
Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 1:42pm by Boss Hog
Independent of platform, these are the best low-profile games this year, because I said so. What are your favorite hidden gems of 2008?
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November 21st, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Nice, Blake Snow on MSNBC! They should have had you on Hardball though, that would have been priceless.
November 21st, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Dakapon Kingdom
November 21st, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Valkyria Chronicles, in a landslide. Not getting nearly the attention it deserves. It hasn’t even been reviewed yet by certain sites of note. Fantastic game that seems to have gone under the radar.
November 21st, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Boom Blox and PES 2008 Wii. Both are fun and innovative titles that simply couldn’t be done on other systems, although maybe that’s their downfall. Most third-party Wii exclusives seem doomed to obscurity because gaming media ignores the console and mainstream media doesn’t even know what to look for.
Oh well, it only makes these games more special IMO.
November 21st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Congrats Blake! First Crispy Gamer… now MSNBC.
Congrats on your writing and increasing your profile (in addition to your wallet – I hope).
dbq
November 21st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Braid and World of Goo I totally agree with… The others are good, but I would not put them in my personal “top 5 sleeper hits”.
Instead, I would nominate Etrian Odyssey II, Castle Crashers, and Disgaea DS (does it count if it is a remake??)
A lot of really good ones are coming out in the last two months of 2008, though, so it is difficult to give a definitive list right now! Mirror’s Edge and Left 4 Dead are two others that may very well end up in my list…
November 21st, 2008 at 3:51 pm
A serious question:
What does it take to be a sleeper game? Do we judge by the advertising presence, critical reception, or number of copies sold?
For example, I have a hard time calling Braid a sleeper hit when it apparently sold very well and had tremendous critical (and gamer) support behind it. My impression was that sleepers tend to be good games people missed out on entirely or somehow forgot about… so I guess slow sales are my biggest criteria when picking a title.
Valkyria Chronicles is a good example, flying entirely under the radar because a couple bigger name releases in the same genre just bury it. PES 2008 Wii is another example of a game that ended up being better than any of the other versions, but was snubbed because it was on the “wrong” console for serious sports gamers to notice.
November 21st, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Looking good Mr. Snow….
November 21st, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Personally I think a sleeper game is one that just sort of snuck in there and was really good. It’s tough to call Boom Blocks or Layton a sleeper since there was a pretty decent marketing push.
A sleeper for me would be Time Hollow, which wasn’t really advertised or talked about much, but is actually a very good game.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Valkyria Chronicles is making me want to buy a PS3, the game looks amazingly fun.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Valkyria Chronicles IS amazingly fun. Considering the holiday deals on the PS3 (Amazon looks like it’ll be selling a $199 PS3 bundle this year), I’d buy it just to play VC if I didn’t already have one. People gave the PS3 a lot of flak early in its existence, but right now, I find myself spending my playtime with it more than any other system, even my PC. The Wii has some fantastic games along with a lot of drek, and the top tier releases I’m interested in only seem to trickle out a few times a year. Aside from VC and MGS4, there aren’t really any games I’d consider to be the same caliber as the best Wii titles (SMG, MK, LoZ:TP, MP3), but it’s developed a decent library of solid exclusive titles that are worth playing.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:15 pm
King’s Bounty
November 21st, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I agree with the list for the most part. Braid’s a pretty cool game and so was The World Ends With You. I haven’t had the luxury of playing Professor Layton nor World of Goo.
November 21st, 2008 at 10:27 pm
the world ends with you would be mine. definetly a different way of gameplay.