2008 Game of the Year, Day 3: The CG Awards

And on the third day Uncle Crispy created a winner, and he saw that it was good.
12/23/2008 6:14 PM | 2 Comments | Page 6 of 13

Jason McMaster: Fallout 3 outshines all the other games of 2008 for its weird mixture of nostalgia, collecting and exploration. When I bought the first Fallout, I spent hours upon hours with my PC and the Bloody Mess perk cackling with glee. Fallout 3 manages to capture the same sense of humor that made me love the original games while incorporating the V.A.T.S. system for the sickening pleasure of shooting someone in the face in slow-motion. Bless you, V.A.T.S. system, for making me laugh at violence again and again.

James Fudge: If Fallout 3 proves anything, it is that with the right combination of creative talent, you can go home. While Fallout 3 had no chance of appeasing hardcore Kool-Aid-drinking fans of Interplay's brand of Fallout, Bethesda did a capable job of creating a world and characters that were representative of what we would expect from a civilization wallowing in the shit for hundreds of years. Vats also deserves an honorable mention for turning what would have been a glorified first-person shooter into something far more strategic. Yeah, as an extension to the Fallout universe, Fallout 3 was a worthy addition, even if some are secretly playing it and publicly deriding it for all that it doesn't do right.

John Keefer: Fallout 3 did an incredible job of bringing back the visceral emotion I had when playing the original Fallout games. My initial trepidation of a first/third-person view quickly melted away because of the deep story and interesting gameplay. Yes, it did drag in spots and felt a bit derivative in others, but overall, I found myself compelled to dive deeper and deeper into the game, and even replayed portions to see how the story changed based on my actions. The game really does deserve the accolades it has received here.


Read on for the Game of the Year runners-up, in descending order of votes received...