Zero Punctuation

...2K's steampunk Objectivist philsophyfest BioShock. Now, there's a lot of criticism that can be leveled at [the protagonist]: he's a bitch, he's an alcoholic, he has some very strange ideas of how to treat small children. But all of this is countered by the fact that he has a magical hand that shoots bees. And that's why he takes the prize. Because no matter who you are, the moment you're compared to a magical hand that shoots bees you're going to fucking lose. - Yahtzee Croshaw

It wasn't until recently when Saints Row 2 came along that I remembered what a fun sandbox game is and isn't: What it isn't is brown, gritty and forced tutorials, and what it is is taking all your clothes off, hurling yourself out of a plane and landing ass-crack-first on a sunbather's face. Saints Row 2 might not be the smartest game in the world, but I had more fun with it than any other 2008 release, so I guess it had better be my game of the year - but don't let it go to your heads. - Yahtzee Croshaw

Despite Batman walking pompously around like Gotham's grumpy dad, and dialogue that presumably came free with a script writing software, Arkham successfully balanced combat and stealth and managed to do the impossible by giving comic book nerds something they wouldn't be able to complain about. - Yahtzee Croshaw

...there were only two games this year that I wanted to keep playing after I'd reviewed them. Dead Rising 2... [and] Just Cause 2, an almost Garry's Mod-like bundle of free-roaming fun tied up in a loose but still involving gameplay structure in a world about twice the size of the entire universe. Any criticism I might have given it is drowned out by the terrified scream of an enemy soldier with one leg tied to a harrier jet. - Yahtzee Croshaw

Ironing out Dead Rising 1 's sizable wrinkles of unreasonable difficulty and [stupid] A.I. ...Dead Rising 2 is on one level a uniquely colorful take on sandbox gameplay and on another a game in which you plow through crowds of squishy antagonists with many varieties of sharp things on the ends of sticks. - Yahtzee Croshaw

Rockstar's Old West odyssey might have suffered a little from a bit of kitchen sink approach to gameplay, a kitchen sink full of brown washing-up, but overall was like throwing yourself onto a mattress made of soft meringue: unstructured, but oddly satisfying. - Yahtzee Croshaw

[Amnesia: The Dark Descent is] another dismal, traumatizing experience... In a mainstream industry where "survival horror" now means "action adventure wherein monsters from the back page of H. R. Geiger's teenage sketch diary do the Charleston under neon disco lighting," Amnesia showed everyone how horror is done: unspeakable monstrosities half-glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, no means of self-defense besides a sprint function, and dolphin-unsafe tuna occasionally extruding from the walls.- Yahtzee Croshaw

...a short but stark physics platformer as genuinely unnerving as Eastern European animation and best analogized as LittleBigPlanet visualized by a suicidal depressive. - Yahtzee Croshaw

Despite the single-player being a bit flabby and directionless and lacking in really meaty puzzles, let's face it: even the dodgiest Portal game stands head and shoulders above most of the dross that comes out. - Yahtzee Croshaw