There were 3 games I had the most fun with last year and 2 of them were on the PS2, and I figured I could forever put away the system with a smile and fond memory. Persona 4 built upon the great idea from its predecessor combining RPG and dating Sim game play. There wasn’t a lot I could complain about Persona 4 with its improved storyline most likely inspired from Death Note and much better-paced random dungeons, I could complain about the lack of the mini-social link stories that awed me from P3, what happened to stories like the MMORPG thread and the sick young man in the park? Social links in P4 were mediocre at best, even with the sexy nurse playing the Devil, and this time I spent more time on maxing them out, clocking in over 90 hours (of course a good chunk of it was while I left it on doing other things), but I can’t really complain with the awesome central plot, so I was very much satisfied. Was P4 not just the swan song of PS2 but the swan song of all now mediocre JRPG which is now a dying breed, we have yet to tell.

If I had to give a best writing/script award, I had to give it to Yakuza 2. The story was simply filled with twist and turns and moments of cordial warm-hearted feelings and sad triumph. Wait, I think I just wrote a sentence that didn’t make sense. I can’t help comparing it to MGS4, though they are nothing alike, they are games that are meant to be watched, not played, though both Yakuza’s gameplay and story was about 100 times better than MGS4. I didn’t understand why many journalists would nominate MGS4 as game of the year, it was a huge disappointment, not unlike the feeling you would get from watching Matrix 3, or getting an ending from Lost telling you its all been a dream, its like a hard kick in the nuts after the culmination of years of excitement.

The game of the year I would pick is undoubtedly Fallout 3, which I had the most fun with, and kept re-visiting afer I was finished. I hated Oblivion with its lackluster personality but FO3 exceeded all my expectations, perhaps it was because I didn’t have any to begin with. But it was indeed filled with what I would called awesomeness. It was filled with choices. I remember putting on sexy lingerie to increase my
charisma so I could steal a key to rescue children at the slave pan. I remember saving someone and then shooting them in the head afterward and trying to figure out whether I will lose karma from killing a evil person. I wonder if I will ever have this much fun again with any game. And did I mention, POP was a huge disappointment.

30 rock, Robot Chicken, how did I miss shows like this? They constantly appealed to my nerdom. Dexter and Prison Break, it’s a crime to not watch them.