Top 5 DR got around to buying (release 2007-2008) and enjoyed:

Orange Box
Bioshock
Spore
GTA IV
Hinterland

Steam is my friend, love the service now.

2008 was indeed an amazing year for games.
My top 5 would have to be
-Fallout 3
-Gta 4
-Grid
-Little big planet (easily the most fun 4 people can have infront of the same screen)
-Crysis: warhead

Fantastic Contraption
World Of Goo
Left 4 Dead
TF2
Spore Creature Creator
- gotta love Steam!

Orange Box, Left 4 Dead and hmm, WoW?

2008 games I enjoyed immensely, consider unique, polished pieces of work and I'd recommend to everyone:
Dead Space
Witcher: Enhanced Edition

Honorable mentions:
Audiosurf
Mass Effect for PC (technically a 2007 game)

I can't for the love of me call any more 2008 games 'excellent' though.
For me, all other "AAA" titles were sub par (at times extremely so) in terms of quality that was advertised or I'd expected. Prominent examples include:

GTA4 (a letdown on pretty much all fronts except mini-games or mini-distractions),
Fallout 3 (lame story, complete lack of identification with the protagonist and shitty narrative & voice acting by decent actors bugged me the fock out),
Prince of Persia (cakewalk platforming, random-button-blocking-combat and those FUCKING QTE POWERPLATE SEQUENCES),
Crysis: Warhead & Far Cry 2 & Cod5-World at War all had god-awful storylines, terribly idiotic AIs, and conveyed the feeling that Crytek, Ubi and Treyarch had a competition scoreboard trying to see how many cliches they could squeeze into their games.

I guess I'm hard to please. I keep hoping it'll apply to me in bed some day

Really didn't play as much this year. Top Five:

1. LittleBigPlanet
2. GTA 4
3. MGS 4
4. Audiosurf
5. Uncharted

GTA4 was one of the best games I've ever played. Aside from that? Meh. I enjoyed few others enough to compare to GTA4.

My problem is that I've not played many of the marquee games of 2008 yet.

So far, MGS4, GTA4, and WOTLK are the top I've played.

However, I have not yet taken Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, or Resistance 2 out for a spin, and I suspect all of them will vie for my Top 5 (seeing how lots of pro reviewers gave these best of the year awards of one type or another).

I may need to try LittleBigPlanet, though the idea of creating my own platforming levels doesn't sound like my bag (or sack, as the case may be).

But I did not play many games in 2008. It's almost like my time was consumed by some sort of non-gaming activity for much of 2008...

Anyone know of something hot to look forward to in the world of games for 2009? None of the titles I'm seriously salivating for have release dates (or years) attached yet.

(For those who're curious, that'd be God of War 3, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and the full version of Gran Turismo 5)

Looking forward to in Q1-2 of 2009 (PC): Prototype, Braid, Velvet Assassin, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Trine, Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Burnout Paradise, Borderlands, Bionic Commando, Dragon Age: Origins, Tom Clancy's HAWX.
The better part of these really ought to arrive in 2009, even if delayed. Some have solid release dates set for Feb, as far as I can remember.

Name YOUR top 5, DFT!

1. Orange Box
2. WoW: Wrath of the Lich King
3. Left 4 Dead
4. Fallout 3
5. Gears of War 2

Left 4 Dead was just about the only game I enjoyed.

Fallout 3, GTA 4, Prince of Persia, Mass Effect (PC) and Crysis Warhead were all different shades of passable to awful. Then again I'm not a console gamer so I'm definitely missing a lot of potential fun games.

Best games of '08:

1. The World Ends With You (NDS)
2. Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)
3. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)
4. Little Big Planet (PS3)
5. Grand Theft Auto IV (PS3)

Honorable Mentions:

- Etrian Odyssey II (NDS)
- Bioshock (PC)
- Touhou Project 11: Subterranean Animism (PC)
- Echochrome (PSN)

Dishonorable mention:

- Star Wars: Force Unleashed (PS3)

Looking forward to in '09:

- Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
- White Knight Chronicles (PS3)
- Dragon Quest IX (NDS)
- Getting around to playing Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (PS2)

1. Dead Space - This game didn't get it's due. Excellent production and easily the scariest game I've ever played. This is a game to be played at night with the lights off.

2. Fallout 3 - See my screenname. Beautiful environments, plenty to explore and Bethesda actually figured out how to make combat fun.

3. GTA4 - All around great game. Not sure why so many bashed it. Sure, your cousin calls too much, but the game only requires you to take a couple of the man-date missions.

4. Braid - A mini masterpiece with a bunch of fresh and sophisticated ideas. We need more games like this.

5. Little Big Planet - The game that keeps on giving. The level editor is massive, powerfull and intimidating. If I ever finish a level, I'll post the details here.

Honorable Mention:
No More Heroes - Avant garde games are rare. This is a good one.
Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village - Cool story/animation and fun logic puzzles.
Gears of War 2 - Great game with much variety. They pulled out all the stops.
Left 4 Dead - Great multiplayer fun, but a bit skimpy on levels.

Not to mention the high profile games that I haven't played yet (Mirror's Edge, World of Goo, Far Cry 2, BanjoKazooee, Prince of Persia, MGS4, Spore).

Oh dear, you're all pretty new to gaming, huh? 2008 was prolly the worst year of the past 15 years for gaming. As for my fav's up to 2008, they are:

1. Big Rigs
2. Kill Zone
3. Night Trap
4. All the Naruto games
5. Killzone 2

I don't think I played one single new video game this year.

1. Music Catch
2. Fantastic Contraption. It's kind of a game, right?
3. Doeo

Yeah, I'm totally lame. I'm just not into video games anymore. I bought a PS2 in 2001 after I got divorced, and ended up using it almost always just to play DVDs, until I got a proper DVD player. Then I gave it to a girlfriend so that her kids could play it. I used to enjoy playing the NES and Sega, but that's pretty much where my involvement with video games ended. So sue me.

*quality

Awarding dystopianfuturetoday with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by kronosposeidon.

How is it that no one has said Smash Bros Brawl yet?

Smash Bros Brawl
Bioshock
GTA4
MGS4
fallout 3

That is just to name a few though, there are many more games that could have been named...

Here's to 2009!

1. Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village (DS) - One of the most intriguing, fun games I've ever played. The music, voices, and puzzles were all maddeningly addictive, everything about the game was well-done, and I frequently found myself playing it until 5 in the morning because I simply couldn't put it down. I would argue that this game is far better than GTAIV any day of the week.

2. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (DS) - Another game that forced me into near-all-nighters with its addictive gameplay and fantastic music. I know the premise of a game where you try to win trials as a defense attorney sounds pretty stupid, but this is actually not just one of the best games of 2008, in my personal opinion, but probably among the top 5 games ever made for a hand-held system.

3. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) - It's Smash Bros., what more can I say? Pikachu got made more useful again, and he's always been my favorite character. It's sad to see how much Link has been nerfed from game to game, as he was also pretty good in the first one, but that's just how it goes, I guess.

4. Gears of War 2 (XBox) - I actually played this before playing Gears 1. The unusual controls were a little hard to get the hang of at first, but there were a lot of really cool things about the game, and the storyline was actually kind of interesting, though I feel like a lot of it was chopped out or something.

5. Chrono Trigger (DS) - Yes, i'ts a re-release, but it's my favorite game of all time, so I'm more than willing to overlook it. Plus, I got the Japanese release, and you can play it in either English or Japanese...how badass is that?

I play my DS a lot.