Dan's space

I played a lot of video games in 2008! I’ve got a Xbox 360, DS, PSP and Wii, but my Xbox gets the most use as you’ll see from the list below.

Favorites

10. Wii Fit (Wii) – Admittedly, I haven’t continued to use it regularly, but it’s still a great idea and pretty fun. I love that there are “games” for the DS and Wii that continue to redefine what a game is.

9. Chrono Trigger (DS) – Some people really seemed to love this. I thought it was a good old school RPG, but it didn’t really blow me away.

8. Too Human (Xbox 360) – I’m surprised more people didn’t like this. I think it has partly to do with what class you play. As a Berzerker, I really enjoyed the combat and the way you could slide from one enemy to the next. In fact, it’s what I wished I could do as a Jedi in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It did get a little repetitive, but I thought the combination of action/RPG was good and overall enjoyed the game.

7. Fable 2 (Xbox 360) – Although the main quest in this RPG was fairly short, the open world was a lot of fun to goof around in. It didn’t make it higher on my list because it did grow boring fairly quickly.

6. Penny Arcade Adventures (Xbox 360 - XBLA) – These Xbox Live Arcade titles had a twisted sense of humor that I really liked. They were pretty straightforward RPGs, but the combat system was reasonably fun and they kept cracking me up.

5. Castle Crashers (Xbox 360 - XBLA) – This was a great coop game to play with my wife. There was a fair amount of button mashing, but I really liked the visual style and how can you go wrong with poop humor?

4. Lego Indiana Jones (Xbox 360) – More great fun with my wife. We also played Lego Batman, but I liked Indiana Jones better because I found the story line in the Batman one to be a bit random. There were no real innovations over the Lego Star Wars games, just more of the same sort of fun.

3. Naruto: The Broken Bond (Xbox 360) – I had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the first Naruto game. The visuals were gorgeous and parts of it were really fun, but other things about it frustrated me to no end. Naruto: The Broken Bond continued from where the first one left off and they did an excellent job improving the game. It was a joy to play. The only thing I could have done without were some of the searching missions which just got a bit boring.

2. Tales of Vesperia (Xbox 360) – To me, this is by far the best JRPG for the Xbox 360. It has beautiful graphics and a good story. It provided about 60 hours of fun!

1. Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360) – Although they didn’t make huge advances over the first Gears of War, they did a nice job of cleaning up some of the rough edges. I played the campaign with my wife in local coop mode (I wish more games had this!). And, I find the multiplayer games to be a lot of fun.

Games I haven’t played, but might be on the list

There are a few games I haven’t gotten to that could likely have made the list: Civilization Revolution, Dead Space, Fall Out 3, and Left for Dead.

Biggest Disappointments

GTA IV – I hadn’t played any GTA games before. I thought I’d like it because I loved Crackdown. I didn’t realize how different it was and found it wasn’t really the sort of game I like. My disappointment doesn’t center so much on the actual game (which was well done), but in how much I’d like that sort of game.

Infinite Undiscovery – This RPG from Square Enix just wasn’t very fun. I gave up about half way through, which is pretty unusual for me. I haven’t tried Last Remnant yet – I hear it’s better, but still not great.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – I love Star Wars and was really excited about this game. The story line was creative, and I liked the idea of playing a character with some serious Jedi skills. However, I didn’t enjoy the actual game play at all.

Article here. I always thought daylight saving time was a bit ridiculous. That would be great if he got rid of it!

Last weekend, we went to the Bellevue Festival of Arts. We really liked the work of Juli Adams. We picked up a print of Familial Landscape:

It's now hanging in our basement where we watch TV.

The product I've been working on, Live Folders is now up at http://folders.live.com for a limited beta.