Crispy Gamer's 2008 Game of the Year, Day 1

Crispy Gamer has published a recap of 2008's video game highlights, including sections specifically devoted to the role-playing and MMO genres.
We don't need no JRPG! 2008 was the year of the action RPG, with Fallout 3 and Fable II dueling for favor. Peter Molyneux made good on some of his promises to fix the original design document for Fable, and the resulting sequel had players hoarding gold, buying towns, and loving their dogs in all new ways. Not to be left out, Fallout 3 featured real estate and dogs (and Fawkes!) but delivered a much better way to blow stuff up.

Peter Molyneux made good on some of his promises in Fable II. Without a big new showing from Square Enix (as The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery were both middling ways to kill time) JRPG fans had to make do with the remade bridge between the Kingdom Hearts games, Namco's Tales of Vesperia and the rather good Disgaea 3 from Nippon Ichi.

In the meantime, deep in the background, Square Enix continues to work on the technically ambitious Final Fantasy XIII. The company shocked E3 by announcing the title for the Xbox 360, which would go into development after the Japanese PS3 release was finished. A playable demo is promised for the March 2009 Japanese release of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete, virtually guaranteeing that said title will be wildly successful.