Over the Holidays, we asked you to write in your votes for the best games and console of 2008. We’ve been collecting the votes over the past two months, and the results are in. Here are the best games and consoles of 2008 according to you.

Best PC Game: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and Left4Dead
Best Xbox Game: Fable2
Best Nintendo Wii Game: Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Best PS3 Game: Metal Gear Solid 4
Best Handheld game (for PSP or Nintendo DS): Chrono Trigger DS
Best game overall: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Fable2, Left4Dead
Best Console: Xbox360

Thanks to the following communities who took part in this; Hardcore Christian Gamer, CandaceHolly.com, The Geek Media.com

Back in December of 1992 Nintendo Power released it’s monthly magazine to it’s readers and inside was a little surprise…The Super Nintendo was going to compete with the Sega Genesis that was ever so popular and gaining steam on it’s competition with it’s Sega CD.  How was Nintendo going to do this?  They had formed a partnership with Sony to create the Super Nintendo CD-Rom system that would boast ” a custom 32-bit processor”.  The agreement with Sony didn’t last long as relations disintegrated. Nintendo was convinced that the world was not satisfied with 16 bits and that it was necessary to upgrade to the next generation of console gaming so they eventually partnered with Phillips to bring this new system.  Of course Nintendo didn’t announce it’s new partnership with Phillips until after Sony had announced their partnership with Nintendo, catching Sony off guard.

Sony and Nintendo did eventually patch things up and got back to work on the Super Nintendo CD but that didn’t last long. Nintendo decided that a CD-Rom based system would be impractical due to long load times and eventually dumped the idea.  Sony also saw the shelf life of the Super Nintendo as short and they too did not want to continue with their arrangement.

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It’s flattering to think the video game industry is somehow immune to the negative effects of a weak economy, but it isn’t necessarily all roses and butterflies. How many people have to lose their jobs or how many studios are going to close before people can come to the conclusion that everyone is going to be effected. This industry doesn’t exist inside a bubble safe from all factors, and while it has redeeming aspects that will help lessen the blow, it will still be hit. Midway, Free Radical and a Factor five are either completely folding or are having to make serious cuts to the number of staff, just to name a few companies that have been hit particularly hard so far. Tough times are ahead for all, and I want to offer up some comments on the situation and get a response on how you think this industry is going to cope with a weak economy.

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Hey remember the format wars?  That’s right, long ago and far away there were once two different types of High Definition movies.  There was HD-DVD and Blu-ray, both looked the same visually but Blu-ray had a larger storage capacity and better backing from the movie industry.  Panelist debated long and hard over who would be the winner of the format war.  The nail in the coffin however was when Warner Bros decided to go Blu-ray exclusive.  Blu-ray disc was finally given the crown of the king of HD and skeptics speculated that the PS3 would skyrocket in the area of in-home-install-base due to the Playstation 3 being the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market.

It’s easy to associate the PS3 with Blu-ray. Sony took the title as the HD winner and used it till it’s juices were squeezed right out.  With Blu-ray being the HD winner why wouldn’t you think that Sony would do well with their Blu-ray player that happens to play video games?  The problem itself doesn’t even lie with Blu-ray although some may argue that society wasn’t ready for an upgrade in movie watching yet (C’mon the Wii doesn’t even play DVD’s).  It could be possible that part of the blame for Blu-ray’s lack of  appeal has to do with the small installed base of the Playstation 3.
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I was sitting in my favorite chair 6 feet from my 46” Samsung LCD, a cup of hot coffee on the end table by my side. I was more than happy to play Call of Duty 4 in private chat with my most faithful Xbox Live friend, “Nemesis hawg”. After a short time another good buddy signed-on from across the globe, my other XBL Mr. Reliable, “SONGTANSQUATCH”. Forced to either swap between separate private chat channels or use the game channel to communicate with them, we decided to switch to the latter.

Now, I am not inherently opposed to the game channel. There have been times when I have used the game chat channel to coordinate team strategy and have cordial conversation, but I’d had so many bad experiences with it before that I usually chose not to use it at all, even when I was playing alone. I’d rather listen to the sounds of the game than a couple of punk players insulting each others’ mothers, dropping cuss words multiple times in a single sentence, taking the Lord’s name in vain, or uttering nonsensical racial slurs over and over again. Every now and again I would monitor the game channel just to see, if maybe this once, I was lucky enough to get into a game with some decent human beings. I was more often than not disappointed.

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When the shape of this holiday season’s videogame release schedule began to come into focus a few months ago, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to obsessively get every single game. For one thing, my wallet simply couldn’t handle the vast flood of games coming out. More importantly though, I was trying to keep from rushing from game to game. I wanted to take my time and not feel pressured to play every game the instant it’s out.

To some degree, I succeeded. I didn’t get Gears of War 2. I decided to hold off on Fable 2. I asked for Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider Underworld for Christmas. At the time, I didn’t have a PS3 (by the way, I have a PS3 now!) so I wasn’t factoring in those games. I also wasn’t really paying attention to my Wii, so I ignored any games that were out or coming out for it.

I ended up getting Rock Band 2, Too Human, Silent Hill Homecoming, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Mirror’s Edge, and Dead Space. I also played Sam and Max Season One on the Wii. The first three were a bit spaced out over time, but the last four hit within days of each other. I played pretty much non-stop, and Fallout 3 took up a massive number of hours in particular. A couple weeks ago I finished slogging through Dead Space and was feeling pretty burned out on videogames in general. Except for Dead Space, I loved all of those games. But the tsunami of new releases still left me tired and not particularly inclined to pick up a controller any time soon. Continue Reading This Story

A recent article on Kotaku caught my eye, where a man on the f13 forums spoke about a conversation with a job recruiter. The recruiter was instructed to “avoid WoW players”, and gave a few reasons why he was instructed to do so.

A few of the reasons included their sleeping patterns being off, and their focus is not 100%. Most of us are aware this is a general misconception about video gamers as a whole. However, most of us aren’t aware that John Q Public doesn’t know this. We can show them articles about leadership, social interaction, what games can teach a young person, and what they can do for an adult. When something is in your head - it’s stuck there.

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This article is from HCG User de Hollywood.
We did a bad thing, us internet folk. With the constant minute to minute play by play of the video game nation on blogs, we’ve made life for video game magazines very difficult indeed. They fight tooth and nail to change to stay up to date, but it’s an upstream battle to say the least. If it wasn’t for the exclusive information they seem to be able to keep a lid on for so long, would they even still be around? It’s doubtful. How long does it take to create, publish and ship magazines? It takes a century in comparison of how fast a blog can get a tip and post it on the front page. Do I think that print is dead? No, not necessarily, but it sure isn’t healthy in this case. “Nrevolution”, a Nintendo based magazine recently closed its doors and the Spanish version of Electronic Gaming Monthly ended, citing a lack of confidence in the English magazine ability to stay afloat as the main reason. We watched as GFW magazine fell apart at the seams and moved to the online world. Can video game magazines survive in the current generation of consumers that are use to more content at a much faster rate? I’m going to offer both sides of the argument, and you can make up your own dang minds.
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This post comes from HCG User SaulbecomesPaul

So, I select Prince of Persia for my Gamefly Q. I’m pretty sure that I picked it for my 360. Apparently that was not the case. Reading my e-mails that day I found that whether I wanted it or not, I was getting the new Ubisoft delivery to play on my bluray player, i.e. PS3. As upset as that made me, I figured I would make the best of it and just enjoy the graphics that the Sony system touts and hopefully make it through the game without thinking of the achievement points I just missed out on.

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This user blog is from HCG member greatheart

I have found that in my life I can get extremely addicted to certain things (video games being the prime culprit). I have managed to limit myself to a few hours each day, thanks mostly to my mom Without this guiding figure in my life I would probably be gaming all the time. For something with so much input into my life I have to be careful what I allow in the food bowl. I’m very thankful that my dad started me out on Nintendo because Nintendo is the most family friendly game producer of all of them. Instead of feeding myself with violent things like Halo, Gears of War etc… I fill myself with pretty harmless games like Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros, and others like that.

Not that I see fault with titles like Halo or anything but the amount of violence that I would be consuming on a day to day basis would be unhealthy as well as extremely addictive. My friend, SOG Inferno, and I have discussed this. He plays Halo, Gears of War and such and that is fine for him and his spiritual walk. For me, playing those games would be like acid to my Christian walk because instead of picking up the Bible I would be picking up the Xbox controller.

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