So now that the last drop of 2008 has dried up, I think it’s time to separate the winners from the losers:

• And the Game of the Year goes to Dead Space!

Here you can find the quick review I did. After having played the game a second time around, I’m not taking anything back. I, however, want to look beyond the game itself:

For one, let’s have a look at the sales figures: according to Gamasutra’s NPD analysis, Dead Space sold 421 000 units across all platforms. As the commercial lifespan for this game seems to be over, can we – we, developers and fans of the game altogether – be satisfied with less than half million copies sold? I somewhat feel the game isn’t recognized to its true value. The timing might help, though: Dead Space being at the forefront of the “quality over quantity” motto EA seems to be abiding by nowadays, the franchise probably has enough inside support for the 421 000 copies to be good enough to keep it going. Indeed, a sequel has been more or less confirmed.

Moreover, let’s not let the global marketing approach go unnoticed: on top of the game, there’s a comic book, there’s an animated movie, and there’s an story-rich website. Only after you’ve read/watched/browsed all of these, can you really realize the coherent universe that’s been created, the team tapping each media to deliver different aspects of the story, keeping it all interesting and deep. Now I don’t have any kind of figures on the revenue these have generated, but surely one can admire what the developers have offered to their fans. And surely a fanboy I have become. When’s Dead Space 2 due?

• And the Shame of the Year goes to Left 4 Dead!

I already expressed my discontent after playing the demo. Now that I had the opportunity to play for a couple hours with some colleagues, I can confirm it: this game is just not fun. Spraying bullets like a madman is just not fun. Coerced teamwork is just NOT FUN.

I’ve already discussed gameplay and immersion, I’ll just add that the atmosphere a lot of reviewer seem to be raving about is absolutely not worth mentioning; the only effort I notied were the cries of the Witch that you can hear from afar. Wanna see an atmosphere? Try Dead Space, they know how to set one up (hint: it resides more in the audio than in the post-processing effects).

Edit: The 421 000 figure for Dead Space only took the PC plateform into account; EA has announced just over 1 million units sold across all plateforms. The point remains, though: it’s still too little for such a great game.