Eurogamer's Top 50 Games of 2008: 30-21

26. SingStar PS3

Sony / Sony London / PS3

Rob Purchese: I'm outraged that this isn't top. Everybody's eyes light up when SingStar comes out. A chance to show off and a chance to be ridiculous, and for that reason, SingStar, you are my most cherished game of Saturday nights. Sorry, 2008.

Rob Fahey: It's utterly disappointing in so many ways - no wireless mics (next year, we're told), no improvements to the scoring, and a steady flow of disc releases (on PS3 and PS2 alike) whose content, infuriatingly, doesn't appear in the online store. It's awful - and yet when Saturday night rolls round, bearing with it a bottle of JD and a box of silly wigs, it doesn't matter a damn how awful it is.

Kristan Reed: Now that Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour exist, my reasons for playing SingStar have diminished slightly - except when I feel the need to engage in sickening duets with Keza. True story: we killed a set of speakers singing two-player SEX BOMB.

Keza MacDonald: Ah yes, the game that broke my speakers, had two of my controllers and my EyeToy thrown across the room in moments of emotional excess and is the cause of at least six of the eight massive beer stains on my carpet. Since I figured out that my SingStar purchases are tax-deductible it's all gone downhill.

Oli Welsh: As social-gaming software goes, Sony's London studio can still show Nintendo and Harmonix a thing or two. On PS3, SingStar does a fair few things better than any other music game, notably the superb use of the camera. Helping put together Ellie's SingStar video was some of the best fun I've had in front of a games console this year. Now that's user-generated content.

Ellie Gibson: Only 26? This should have been in the top ten, surely. As should my performance of Total Eclipse of the Heart. Roll on next year's X-Factor and Christmas number one.

Alec Meer: My ex-girlfriend managed to spend a small fortune in the online store before leaving me. I remain convinced getting 20 quid of free karoake downloads was her devious six-year plan.

Kieron Gillen: I love that SingStar turns up every year in the Eurogamer Top 50. Because EG knows how to party.

Simon Parkin: SingStar has always been the best-looking game on the rhythm-action market, its white space and stylish understatement a refreshing antidote to Guitar Hero's unsightly clash of stage-light colour, sweat and lycra. Despite the pleasing neutrality of the menus and HUD, it's more of a game than Microsoft's rival Lips, which aims for a literal approximation of the Japanese karaoke experience. But SingStar's competitive elements never disrupt the flow of a party by alienating non-gamers. Visiting the SingStore while drunk - the only time most players will ever visit the SingStore - can be an expensive excursion.

Johnny Minkley: Familiarity didn't quite breed contempt with SingStar, but certainly complacency. It was only when I got my tonsils around the lacklustre and slightly chapped Lips that I realised why this remains a crooner sans pareil. I secretly prefer the Disney version, but that's a genetic defect.

25. Wii Fit

Nintendo / Wii

Rich Leadbetter: Nothing short of a work of genius in attracting newcomers to videogaming. My family wheels it out every time a visitor turns up at the house, and everyone leaves wanting it. Of course, the game itself becomes dull and repetitive to anyone who plays it within a matter of days - hours, even. It's a masterpiece of concept over content. Not that Nintendo cares as the money keeps rolling in regardless.

Oli Welsh: The mini-game with the penguin and the fish and the tilting block of ice is a work of minimalist genius. Seriously. It's just total arcade-game perfection, and the best thing Nintendo's in-house studios did all year.

Christian Donlan: I really liked this, mostly because Wiifity Island was such a lovely place to wander around of an afternoon. I'm still fat, however.

Keza MacDonald: Well, I lost weight playing it! I even had fun doing it, for about three weeks, and then a proper game came along. But Wii Fit is something special - if you'd have tried to tell me that a fitness game would sell millions five years ago (or, for that matter, a brain training game), I'd have slapped you in the face with a haddock until you'd come to your senses.

John Walker: If you took all the people in the world who'd spent 80 quid on this convinced it would help them trim down and get fit, and put them in a big pile, you'd have a big fat wobbly pile of big fat wobbly people. With me on top.

Simon Parkin: The Wii Fit experience mimics in small our wider experience of its host console. Initial wonder at the bright innovation of the concept turns to joy at first touch. Slick, utilitarian design guides you through the game's exercises and physical games with the very best Japanese elegance and thoughtful efficiency. Then, a week into the relationship, joy gives way to ennui as the repetitive tasks fail to offer much depth (or weight-loss) and finally, you sink into buyer's regret just as you slip the balance board into a cupboard and turn off the light, fat and a bit unhappy.

Kieron Gillen: When a peripheral provokes web-memes based around scantily-clad grinding hips, you have to suspect Nintendo is subtly kicking against its reputation. Fewer family games, more making-family games. The inevitable porn-based Miyamoto-designed game can only be a couple of years away. They've already got the plumber. They just need the slightly bored housewife, y'know?

Johnny Minkley: I would love to see some proper research done into how many of the 70,000 Brits still buying this every week keep playing after the first few weeks: it's the gaming equivalent of January gym membership. Or, at least it would be, had it not actually worked for me. Gathering dust my Balance Board may be, but the insufferably smug virtual trainer shamed me enough that I've been running three times a week since. Anything that allows me to eat as much KFC as I like without getting fat is all right by me.