Eurogamer's Top 50 Games of 2008: 50-41

47. Resistance 2

Sony / Insomniac / PS3

Dan Whitehead: Apparently I'm the only person in the world who thought this was a really good shooter. Old fashioned, yes, but I enjoyed it more than any other traditional FPS this year.

Rich Leadbetter: One of the best shooters of the year. While nowhere near to matching Gears 2's utter gorgeousness, this still has some moments of pure beauty - the Chimera warfleet bombing the San Francisco bay looks staggeringly good. A first-person shooter lives or dies by the quality of its weaponry and its online modes and once again, Resistance 2 doesn't disappoint. A lowly rating in the Top 50 but I really enjoyed it.

46. God of War: Chains of Olympus

Sony / Ready at Dawn / PSP

John Walker: Do they still make games for the PSP? How quaint.

Tom Bramwell: I don't think the PC boys get to do the "quaint" joke when we know they're all going to vote for a physics puzzle game later.

Kristan Reed: I love God of War probably more than anyone that writes for Eurogamer, but this was the worst God of War game by some margin. And yet, because it's such a good template to mimic, Ready at Dawn's cut-down cover version for PSP was still a pretty decent game, and, by default, easily one of the best games released on PSP this year. I really wish I had more reasons to dust off my PSP. Even Remote Play doesn't work properly for me. Sob.

Rob Purchese: The brutal and bloody gameplay is so fluid and unspoiled that it deserves a big shout. This should be on a home console, but you couldn't not play it.

45. Bangai-O Spirits

D3Publisher / Treasure / DS

Kieron Gillen: I'm sad to note I didn't actually play this. I finally got into Space Giraffe though when it hit the PC, so I'll claim some shooter cred for that. It'd probably have had it in my top ten if its release hadn't come after we'd all voted.

Rob Fahey: Seeing Treasure's lovely robot lunacy on a console that some people actually own is enough to provoke tears of joy. Now you've got no excuse for not buying a copy, since statistics prove that every human being on Earth owns at least three DS handhelds.

Simon Parkin: Bangai-O Spirits, like its maker, is slippery in the hands of genre. Across the gigantic spread of micro levels it slides unapologetically from puzzle game to shoot-'em-up to Brain Trainer. It's a tussle of delicious contradictions: you control a giant mecha robot rendered as a tiny, ten pixel-high sprite; you set off firework explosions of rocket nukes, up to a hundred at a time, before swinging at enemies with the unsophisticated bluntness of a baseball bat. Then, when the fire and violence clears, you dash around the screen collecting fruit. It takes a while to become accustomed to the structure-less metagame - you can play any level in any order - but soon enough stamping levels complete becomes a collect-'em-up endeavour, irresistible to the last.

44. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

EA / Pandemic / Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, PC

Rich Leadbetter: A great concept crying out for a decent engine.

Kristan Reed: I seriously wonder which other shooters my colleagues have been playing for this to feature in their top tens. I know I rated it lower than most, but my god some of this was shockingly awful. Blown up by a man pointing an RPG in your face? No worries, just run around the corner and recharge your health and bop him on the nose with a pencil.

John Walker: Wasn't this really, really average? Didn't this get 5 on Eurogamer? Did something go wrong?

Kieron Gillen: This year's Earth Defence Force 2019, basically. That is, loved by the good, and loathed by boring people who care about things like frame-rate and pop-up and probably are in the comments thread talking about whether Eurogamer is biased towards the 360 or the PS3 this week. Structurally novel, agreeably mental and I knew I was going to love it from the early mission where you have to ride a tiny pink moped while being insulted by random passers-by. Also, your character - clearly annoyed - barking out that he doesn't have an Irish guy who brings him stuff. He wishes he had an Irish guy who brought him stuff! I can empathise.

Dan Whitehead: I loved the original, but found this strangely uninvolving even though it's almost exactly the same. It doesn't help that it's plagued by technical hiccups, but I never thought demolition could be so dull.

Simon Parkin: GTA has taught us that openworld games must tick at the speed of reality, slow-burning stories, brooding descents into violence and trudging ascents toward wealth and conquest. Mercenaries 2, by contrast, plays like an exuberant arcade game, two-minute missions that leave you breathless and spent, its action rolling at double speed, its explosions all Schwarzenegger pyrotechnics. It's brash, twitchy fun and while I didn't finish the game, not even close, the time I spent in it was far more enjoyable than most reviewers led me to believe it would be.