I picked up Fallout 1 and 2 off eBay this year and I'm having the worst time finishing them off. I love the design, I love the humour, but man does the game kick your ass right from the start! They've become my "filler" games; what I go to play when I've got nothing else in the stack that interests me. I'm looking forward to the third installment, but I don't think it's a day 1 purchase for me.

With all the amazing titles coming out in 2008 it's hard to pick just one. We've got Silent Hill 5, Alan Wake, and Resident Evil 5 spreading some horror throughout the year, along with Left 4 Dead and Dead island. Rez and Samba di Amigo in the music genre. Burnout Paradise, N+, Echochrome, God of War: Chains of Olympus, Fable 2? Already it's looking to be a damn fine year!

However, if I want to pick a game of the year for 2008 for myself? It's gotta be Rock Band 'cause it's gonna be after 2008 starts before I can get my hands on one. Everyone in Winnipeg is sold out!

I really hope that Fallout 3 is as much fun as I expect it to be. I trust Bethesda. On the other hand, I'm tipping Clear Sky as what I hope is the GOTY and thus also the best new game in a post-apocalyptic setting.

I'm really looking forward to Too Human in 2008.

With that said, Fallout 3 is also on my list of can't wait to play it.

Burnout Paradise... I'm on the fence. As soon as I start to like it, some thing would come up and I start to think... do I really want to deal with some of the annoyances. Such as... no Restart or Retry. The other day, I was checking out PS3 demo and I was doing the new Stunt mode... which I'm kind of coming around on. So I got my combo to x11, with 500K points, with the adrenalin still pumping... I want to quick start the even. I can not do that, I have to drive all the way back to the event. 1st time, I can deal with but after 6th time... it was no longer fun. Sure I could of done another event to get me there sooner, but I didn't want to. So, I'm still debating. btw, what happen to the Demo Updates?

Duke Nukem Forever...heh

Bratz Chernobyl

Yep, definitely waiting eagerly for Fallout 3. Been a fan of the series since the first one hit the store shelves so many years ago. I have purposefully shunned the fan sites, because I hate the "starving for any scrap of news" crap that comes with waiting on a favored game. Besides, I already do that with my other GOTY nominee for 2008, Warhammer Online.

Fallout 3... the game that should be renamed to "Atomic Deathlands", because that's exactly what it is. A generic post-nuclear title from the makers of Oblivion, with Fallout name slapped on it.

I've been monitoring the news on this one closely... they change EVERYTHING except for superficial visual similarities. The perspective, the combat, the dialogue (INT doesn't affect choices; everything is voice acted so not much changes anyway) the designs of previously known creatures and weapons, and apparently getting rid of any hints of emergent gameplay that were present in Fallout 1 in the process (people in Fallout protect their own... people in Fallout 3 protect their own... unless it interferes with a scripted sequence the player is currently walking past).

The setting itself has as much integrity as a scene from Star Wars Episode 1. For instance the first major town is "town of Megaton, so named because it was built in a crater created by a nuclear bomb that never detonated". Think about that for a while. Think hard.

Or the skeletons outside the vault holding signs "Let us in, motherf*ckers". Think about that too. I won't ask the obvious questions a middle-schooler could ask that shatter either one of these "set pieces", and their many friends, lest one answers "A wizard did it", vaguely pointing in an undetermined direction.

Now I don't mind Bethesda releasing another "Bethesda title", taking place in a "nucular wasteland", but ye Gods, why did they have to take a piss on the Fallout universe by buying the existing license.

As much as I can't wait for Fallout 3, Spore is my most anticipated game of 08. Spore is going to be something truly unique. Even it's a failure (and it wouldn't be the first time a genius was given free reign and nigh-unlimited resources and came up with a dud), it'll be one of the most interesting failures the industry has seen.

I am holding high hopes for Alan Wake, Ninja Gaiden 2, and Gears of War 2 (making an assumption here that the latter one ships in holiday season of 2008).

Previews and screenshots, man. Impressions from people who saw the game in action, from various sources. There's a lot of factual information out there about how the game is shaping up to be, and how the features are implemented. It's NOT Fallout. Every defining gameplay feature of Fallout has already been discarded. The rest is just "Atomic Deathlands". The trashy name fits, too, because they've got cars that explode in mushroom clouds and a weapon that fires nukes.

I hate to disagree with you Elysium, but I can't help feel that the expectations around Fallout 3 have gotten out of control.

People waited, what, three years(?), for Halo 3, and the expectations for the game got way out of control. Last I checked, it was a good, competent shooter, but it didn't herald in a new era of peace, cure cancer, or even reinvent the "state of play" as Wired so eloquently put it.

I really think that people let hype and expectations get to far ahead of them these days. I suppose it is hard not to, given the endless stream of pretty graphics, game tidbits, and marketing leaks that come out for each title...add to that that you have fan sites, message boards, forums, fan fiction, mods, and revisions of these older titles, and the level of expectation is getting close to that of those that think that the end is nigh, and Jesus of Nazareth is about to join us tomorrow for supper.

The original team at Black Isle is long gone, so that certain something that puts Fallout in the top 50 of all of those "Games of All Time" lists can't be recreated. Even if they were still together, the original was 10 years ago. They would be in a completely different conceptual place in their life...take a look at the original Doom versus Doom III is you want to see a recent example of this.

Sure, you can emulate the tone and atmosphere of that original game, but it just comes off like a pale imitation, like so many other movie, book, or game sequels farmed out to someone else to make a buck.

Bethesda is a competent developer, and they will do a good job, but let's face it: like Duke Nukem, the moment has past. I will be very happy if the game turns out good, but I wouldn't have hung the GOTY tag on such a speculative venture.

I can't wait to see what Bethesda can do with Fallout. Living in the past is just silly.

Dragon Age, if it hasn't been canceled. Who really knows with as little as BioWare is talking about it. I'm also looking forward to Mass Effect coming to the PC. Spore is a good one too, and I might pick it up on the Wii if it hold true on that system.

Oh -- and LucasArts' Force Unleashed. I would be looking forward to that one if it was coming out on the PC.

Can Fallout 3 be a really cool game if it is nothing like Fallout 1 or 2?