A Heart for the peaceful GamerThe XBox360 has always had an open mind fort he Hardcore-Gamer, but there has been a new targeted audience in the bull’s eye of the developers and publishers of games: The casual gamer. And we all know that playing Non Shooter Games and Non Violent Games can be a lot of fun, also. In this very field a nice form of Franchise has been noticed. It started with LEGO Star Wars and continued with LEGO Batman and LEGO Indiana Jones. The latter has been especially appreciated by gamers, a well established gamers community ranked the guy with the leather jacked and the wip on place 3. Jump ‘n Run of it’s finest kind. But the first two ranks are taken by two of the Musicgames Genres , from which we have seen quite a few lately. It started with the plastic guitar controller, and Guitar Hero scored real well. But that wasn’t the end. Rock Band started to enjoy the masses, now guitars, mikes and drum sets wanted to be played, as well. Activision followed suit in Guitar Hero: World Tour and this games secured the second place. King of the genres became Rock Band by Electronic Arts, who followed with a sequel in 2008 withRock Band 2 Level up your LifeEpic and well done Role Games are still a scarcity on the MS-Console. But these games are on the go and a few gems have made their way into the Xbox 360 shelves in 2008. Especially when regarding Japano-Role games. Probably the most loved game within the Asian genre was Lost Odyssey, an epic fairy tale about the immortal hero Kaim, on a quest to his long lost memories, thus taking rank 3. It covers a total of four (!) DVDs and runs exclusively on the Xbox 360.The Games-Tale Teller Peter Molyneux has presented one of his highly recommended (by him, that is…) Games. Again exclusively for the Xbox 360 we got the sequel of the famous Xbox-Game Fable. A fairy tale story and with somewhat irritating Sims-Elements are what this game is all about. The fans loved it nevertheless and its not really a bad game, too. Rank 2 for Fable 2.All the way up to number one shot a special title, being number one contestant fort he game of the year: Fallout 3. The adventures of the little Vault-inhabitant, right across the post apocalyptic wastelands of Washington D.C. has made a lot of fans at the end of the year.Sports Games in 2008Now where would the Games World be without great Sports Games? In this genre there were a lot of very good titles we could not include in our little ranking. Position 3 is shared by two games. First of the third round of Top Spin, loved by tennis fans. That also goes for all the American Football Fans with Madden NFL 09, which came across with more innovations in 2008. In Europe, the first two positions went to: 2. Rank: Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 and NHL 09 / NHL 2K9.The winner, with 79% of the votes. was: FIFA 09. But other games of different sports made their appearance in 2008, like NBA Live 09 and NBA 2K9. Even golfers got their share of very good games with Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf 09.Lets look at the “Racers”. Not only the motor sport simulations but arcade-like “pedal to the metal” games went big time last year.These Fun Racers are the most liked ones. Back in 2007 Colin McRae: DIRT went into the charts and did real well. Followed in 2008 by the same team, Race Driver GRID, impressed its fans. Very cool street racings with a hot graphic helped this game to score number 3. A small but very nice game surprised the Xbox 360 Community: Pure. Speeding through the boonies with a Quad, spectacular and acrobatic-tricks with monster-jumps! Pure fun for just about anyone and therefore position 3 in the Racer category. And also in the “Surprises of the Year”!But there’s no end in sight. Developer Criterion has made an impact with the Burnout – series years ago. Part 4 of the series hit the ground running, just like: Burnout Paradise. The mixture of “Open Reality”, breathtaking speed with reckless jumps and a lot of fender benders still holds it’s fans. Maybe another reason is the free updates with worthwhile goodies that are delivered on a timely basis. So, the number one position goes to the Racer-Town “Paradise City”.