The PS3 had a bit of a rough year due to the unfortunate and badly handled (by Sony) PSN hacking, but, despite that, it still managed to have a good showing game-wise. Mostly sequels, rather unsurprisingly, but still high-quality games.

Continue to see our 3 winners!

Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten

Me loving a Disgaea game? REALLY? Yeah, not really a surprise. This features a great story, great characters, great comedy, great writing, great gameplay, insane leveling… Everything Disgaea is known to be great for. Getting to the end is tons of fun and there’s TONS of extra stuff to do if you have the patience. Overall a great game. Probably my second favorite Disgaea after the first one.

Yakuza 4

Dave’s choice (thank you for the text!):
I don’t know why the Yakuza series gets shunned and ignored as much as it does by most of the major medias when it comes to goty awards, especially with Yakuza 4, which made the series that much better and gave North America (and Europe I believe) the complete experience compared to Yakuza 3 which was butchered through translation. But anyway, the addition of three really great characters to the cast of playables (compared to only Kiryu in the previous games), the more story-oriented sidequests, with some that are quite hilarious (you get to hunt a kappa!). The deliciously well weaved story, though that might push it a bit much with the dead people not actually being dead cliche. The combat that’s still compelling and expendingly more awesome as it goes (It might look “dated” if what you’re into is combat similar to God of War where it’s the game that does it all for you) and all the minigames that are as varied as ever.

Maybe it’s because it’s the typical SEGA shun, maybe because it came out in March and people have forgotten. I dunno. But for me, Yakuza 4 stands as my favorite game this year, alongside such great games as Skyward Sword and Portal 2.

(Jo note: You get to hunt kappas? That’s kinda awesome )

inFamous 2

Originally the winner here was supposed to be Uncharted 3. But I played it and didn’t enjoy it (the QTE sequence at the start was the big red flag…  that and the WAY overuse of cinematics and the fact that it’s nowhere near as fun as the other 2 games in the series just… made me not want to include it here). So… this is pretty much just me going for my backup choice, and one I actually feel is really good. It IS mostly a rehash of the original, which I actually really liked, but there were a lot of improvements to the basics of the game. Better combat, more refined and faster travelling/building climbing, a nice story (though the moral system is still shit like every other moral system), a few great new powers (and modifications on old ones)… Overall, it’s really good and even has some replay value if you want to see both endings.

jobocan Console, Games, Games of the Year, ps3