We clearly love the Final Fantasy franchise here at BOP, just not quite enough. This is the sixth year that we have selected Best Videogame. We have selected a Squaresoft game five times in the previous five years with four of them being Final Fantasy titles. Of course, three of those were Nintendo DS releases. The only Final Fantasy console title released in this period was Final Fantasy XII, which missed winning in 2007 by a single first place vote. History shows that we blew that one as Gears of War had nowhere near the staying power of FFXII. The question now becomes whether history repeats itself again as Final Fantasy XIII loses by an even slimmer margin of two votes. Effectively, a single ballot placing it a couple of places higher than Halo: Reach would have changed the result. Given how much we love the Bungie title, this is a shockingly close vote.

Why do we love Final Fantasy XIII almost enough to make it Videogame of the year? This is the most interactive game to date. The previous release, the final one on the Playstation 2, allowed the user to set up a series of commands that effectively enabled the player to put their controller down and watch. The first HD Final Fantasy release goes an entirely different way with it.

This Squaresoft game isn’t for people who like to let the game do most of the work for them. Instead, it requires the user to learn tactical strategies based upon the revolutionary Paradigm system. Reactionary players who do not play the game the way it is designed find themselves effortlessly squashed by Adamantoise turtles. This is the first Final Fantasy game that attempts to humble the player and while some of us did find it too frustrating at times, the endless hours of gameplay more than counteracted that temporary irritation. Of course, we may be biased toward all things Final Fantasy. I recently defined the location of an item in my home by saying it was “on the shelf between the Chocobo and the Tonberry dolls”. If this isn’t a statement you understand, you need to play more Final Fantasy like the rest of BOP does.

The first non-sequel to make our Best Videogame list is Alan Wake, which finishes third. A single first place vote would have allowed this Microsoft Game Studios release to achieve one of the most shocking upsets in Calvins voting history. What allows it to compete with established videogame franchises we love? Alan Wake is the game that ponders what the world would be like if all of the twisted things in Stephen King’s mind’s eye were possible. It then embarks upon the task of tying some of those night terrors together in a waking nightmare so pervasive that only beams of light save the player from death. I cannot say much about the story for fear of giving anything away; suffice to say that by the time you play the concert with the 1970s rockers forgotten by the world, this game will have you hooked in a way you would not have believed possible. This is arguably the most innovative game idea since Bioshock, making Alan Wake a fitting choice for the third best videogame of the year.

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