(Part 1)

Best Most Game: Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)

Nintendo’s catch-all fighting title returned bigger than ever. But it wasn’t just how overstuffed the options were for multiplayer. Or how the single player had evolved into a full-blown (if semi-mediocre) adventure along with classic mode and various minigames. Or how events became a mode unto themselves. Or how achievements for just about any action were tied into rewarding players with various goodies. Or that it included demos of classic games, a stage builder, and full co-op modes. But all of these things (and many others not even mentioned here) were demonstrative of Sakurai’s compulsive need to make Super Smash Bros. Brawl the game equivalent of the turducken, so much game you could see the seams bursting.

Best Mediocre Game: Haze (PS3)

Coincidentally, this choice was already set before Free Radical was put down due to the overwhelming failure of Haze. And the saddest aspect of this whole affair is how in the end Haze wasn’t terrible as much as incompetent. Free Radical and Ubisoft’s much maligned shooter set the standard for mediocrity in all facets of design and play. The by-the-book FPS gameplay, the hackneyed narrative of military-corporation vs. the sympathetic rebels that wouldn’t have been fit for Michael Bay, the half-baked drug system that did nothing except force players to inject themselves every few steps all combined to form a thoroughly boring experience. Not even a slightly unique multiplayer mode could add enough spice to make Haze the killer app for the PS3 and in the end not enough to save Free Radical before they could redeem themselves with Timesplitters 4.