Gamers have many reasons to be thankful

With Thanksgiving holiday quickly approaching, the concept of giving thanks to those you appreciate becomes very important. In this entry, I want to give my thanks to a few people that made this year in gaming so special. The year started off rocky, but amazing fall lineups turned the tide and made this one of the most memorable times for gaming in history.




First of all, I want to thank the shotgun. First-person-shooter games took the gaming world by storm this year, and it's all thanks to our double-barreled friend. Bioshock, Halo 3, Crysis, The Orange Box and Call of Duty 4 are all examples of games that will be talked about generations into the future. Shooter fans really had no time to rest this year, and now have the ammo they need to keep them busy until next Thanksgiving.



My next round of applause goes to the goomba. No matter how many times I stomp on your head you come back to make me smile. Smiling was about all I could do while playing the newest entry in the goomba... I mean Mario series. Super Mario Galaxy takes platforming to a new level with intricate level design and the fan-service that Nintendo die-hards crave to see. The game is personally my favorite release of the year, which is quite an honor considering all of the quality games that came out.



A big, enormous, mega-sized applause goes to developer Agetec for bringing Fire Pro Wrestling Returns to the US. In a world filled to the brim with horrible wrestling games, Fire Pro Wrestling Returns delivers exactly what grappling fans want and then some. Japanese gamers (and American importers) have had the luxury of playing the game for over 15 years now. Agetec did the right thing, and hopefully the game will generate enough sales to make their good deed payoff.



Realtime Worlds makes me thankful for games that encourage cooperative gameplay. The studio created quite a buzz with Crackdown earlier this year, which featured full online cooperative. RTW took coop one step further by allowing each player to be anywhere in the city at anytime. Many coop games of old forced players to stick together, which limited what you could do. The result was one of the best multiplayer games this generation, and proof that cooperative games need to feature online play.

In addition to the above category, a small thanks to the Halo 3 beta for helping to generate hype for Crackdown. The Halo beta was made available to anyone that purchased Crackdown, and that sold plenty of copies to people that did not know what the hell they were buying. So thanks Halo, you made a lot of people realize what they could have been missing.



Finally, I want to thank Rockstar Games for delaying Grand Theft Auto IV to March of 2008. This year was so packed with games that we needed something to be pushed back, and our friends over the pond obliged. Thank you Rockstar, and please fix all of the framerate problems that were evident in early builds of the game. Please?

There are many reasons for gamers to have a smile on their face this holiday season. The Thanksgiving break will allow us all to catch up on our growing backlogs, or enjoy some of the past hits that we cannot stop thinking about. Happy Thanksgiving and happy gaming.