If there’s any doubt that 2007 was one of the best years for videogames the medium has ever enjoyed, one need look no further than venerable British games magazine Edge and their reviews section for the past few months. No other critical organ guards their 10/10 ratings so closely, with only a precious handful of games earning them since the magazine first began at the end of the 16-bit era. Since fall and its insane bounty of new games arrived they’ve handed out three of them (to Halo 3, Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, and Mario Galaxy, respectively). It’s an exciting time to be playing games, with the Xbox 360 firmly established as the go-to console for online gaming and the Wii and PS3 coming out of their obligatory rough first years of release (though the PS3 has undoubtedly had a worse time of it than Nintendo’s more affordable box of pure joy). 2008 is rich with potential, and while there will still no doubt be plenty of terrible games in store, I honestly can’t wait to see what comes next.

This was originally going to be a simple Top 10 before I realized that was actually making it harder on myself. Titles moved up and down the list right up until I stared writing about them (and in one case jumping another two spots up the list once I was halfway through giving my reasons for its position), and several more ended up left off completely. Keep in mind while reading that I don’t own a PSP or PS3 or have a computer worth playing on – not that any of that would have changed much, as this was clearly the 360′s year. All positions are also subject to change depending on when you ask me about it and/or how much I’ve had to drink at the time. That said, onwards with the great experiment.

15. Team Fortress 2 (Xbox 360)
Pixar + multiplayer carnage = win. Of all of Valve’s many achievements with The Orange Box, I think the most lasting will be the lengths they went to in reminding us that games are supposed to be fun. Every bit of TF2 just oozes the stuff, from the wonderfully realized characters (and their wonderfully hilarious introductions), the incredible environments, and even the harsh reprimanding tone of the unseen mistress alerting you when the enemy has taken the lead in a given match. This would have been much higher had the fickle gods of wireless internet let me get away with more than thirty minutes of lag-free play at a time, as it’s clearly the game by which all future multiplayer shooters should be measured. I wasn’t terribly interested in the genre before TF2, and until someone else manages to create something so well-balanced, so inviting, and such a complete blast to play, I don’t see these sort of games becoming a staple in my gaming diet. At least not until the third one comes out ten years from now. It doesn’t just say something that TF2 players are the nicest and most mature lot I’ve run into on LIVE – it says everything.

14. Zack & Wiki: Quest For Barbados’ Treasure (Wii)
Pity Zack & Wiki, as it was purchased the Friday before Mario Galaxy swung lo in its sweet chariot, coming forth to carry us home. Classic Adventure gaming in all it’s bastard-hard puzzle glory as it hasn’t been seen since Lucasart’s hey-day, Zack & Wiki is proof-positive that not only are third-party developers Getting It when it comes to the Wii, they’re doing so with style. Possibly the best example of what the Wii controls are capable of since Wii Sports, few other games this year were so immediately accessible and inviting. Top of the list as far as Things I Really Need To Get Back To goes, if for no other reason than making me laugh during the tutorial – it’s a must-have for anybody with a Wii and a reason to finally pick one up for everybody else.

13. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (Xbox 360)
A tricky one, as I keep thinking this should be higher until I remember some part in particular that really pissed me off and want to knock it down a peg or two instead. While starting off a bit shakier than any other game in the Half-Life series, it quickly finds its legs in the form of the Hunters, the truly menacing alien killing machines that stalk the bleak world of Episode 2 looking for anything with a pulse. As far as enemies go they’re a genuine terror – when you;re holding your own in the small resort town on the way to meet Alix’s father, their arrival on the battle field causes your heart to drop like few other moments in gaming, and that’s nothing compared to what comes later. Episode 2 culminates in one of the best (and must utterly frustrating) boss fights of the year, introducing the concept of an open world to the venerated series of games with all the panache you’d expect from the people who made realistic physics a must-have in shooters, sending you rushing around a valley to stop a horde of monstrous Striders from reaching your bass while Adam Baldwin narrates. For that alone it makes the list, though continuing to be one of the smartest first-person shooters around certainly doesn’t hurt.

12. Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
It’s just Halo again, but there are far wore things than being one of the most enjoyable shooters around. Still suffering from the amazing first act, weak middle, okay-but-disappointing third formula that plagued its forbearers, Halo 3 provides a fitting (if confusing) conclusion to one of gaming’s most popular stories in a style Michael Bay would envy. With not one, not two, but three fights against the monstrous Covenant Scorpions, visuals that show up just how ugly Gears of Wars’ bleak and blasted landscape was, and the insanely fun opportunity to play through the main game with up to three friends, there are few better ambassadors (or is that gateway drugs?) to represent gaming to the unwashed masses than this. Toss in the well-oiled machine that is Halo’s multiplayer and the fantastic sandbox potential of the Forge, and you have a game that, a year from now, when all the disappointing bits are mostly forgotten, will shine as one of the most solidly enjoyable 360 games to date. Still, shame about all those repeating corridors towards the end. Rassum-frassum, etc.

11. Peggle (PC, iPod)
True fact: without Peggle, I would not have survived Christmas. Peggle is pure fun, concerned with little more than ensuring that, even when you lose, you have a good time. What at first seems like the bizarre lovechild of Bubble Bobble and a Japanese Pachinko machine turns out to be so much more, combining blind luck and skill in such a way that you often can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Toss in what is easily the best win animation I’ve ever seen (Rainbows! Fireworks! Ode To Joy! EXTREME FEVER!), and you have gaming at its purest. Scoring massive points and feeling genuinely good about doing so: it doesn’t get much better.

10. Phase (iPod)
There is absolutely no reason for the iPod of all things to have a killer app, and yet, here it is. Built by music game developer/future rulers of Earth Harmonix, Phase turns any songs you add to its playlist into Guitar Hero-style rhythm games through a process no doubt involving sorcery and devil worship. There is no better way to spend the train ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and if that should spread into knocking out just one more song during what’s technically work hours, then so be it. No other game this year let me come so close to realizing my dream of playing We Are Scientist’s ‘Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt’ in Guitar Hero, and for that alone I am endlessly grateful. Everything else is just icing.

9. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (DS)
Puzzle Quest is a harsh mistress: I spent more time playing and swearing at it than any other game this year, and even the pain of its finicky touch screen controls couldn’t override the pleasure in executing a perfect combo against an enemy. It’s the sort of thing I’ll go months at a time without playing, but the moment it slides back into my DS it’s guaranteed to stay there for at least the next two weeks. Combining the deceptively addictive match-three gameplay of Bejeweled with the overwrought swords-and-sorcery of D&D and the quests of Oblivion, it’s perhaps the most elegant fusion of game types since…anything. It’s the sort of game that I can’t believe somebody else hasn’t made already, and I’m now dreading the inevitable flood of clones its word-of-mouth success is sure to trigger in the coming year. With any luck, the sequel will come with a safe word.

8. The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (DS)
First the good: Phantom Hourglass is without a doubt the best realization of what Nintendo’s pocket monster is capable of, taking advantage of each aspect of the DS in ways that no other developer has yet managed. From the simple act of tapping an enemy to slash them with your sword to the wonderful innovations of tracing a path for your boomerang to follow or making notes on your map, it’s simply the best the system has to offer and one of the most accessible Zelda adventures in years. Reducing the series’ requisite dungeons to a size allowing me to solve them on the train ride home without losing any of their celebrated complexity was a stroke of genius, and seeing the same thinking applied to Windwaker’s much-maligned sailing mechanic felt like finally seeing long-deserved justice done at last. The bad? Having to go through the entire temple thing each time I’m able to access a new part of it is utterly maddening, and easily the biggest obstacle between me and finally finishing the game.

7. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360)
A game I expected absolutely nothing from, and was therefore all the more blown away by it when I finally played it. Keeping the best of Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty games (jumping between characters to offer multiple perspectives on the conflict, creating a frighteningly realistic war zone to run around in) while dropping the tired bits (landing on Normandy, WWII in general), CoD 4 was a breath of fresh air for the series, giving players the chance to call in air strikes, destroy tanks with Javelin rockets, shoot down helicopters with mini-guns and generally cause all manner of chaos with the best modern weapons of mass destruction around. The biggest surprise, however, was easily the storytelling – if you had told me a few months ago the latest installment in such a reliable (read: somewhat dull) franchise would offer up some of the best storytelling in games this year not involving mad computers or Rayndian parallels, I’d still be laughing at you. The actual plot itself may be straight out of a season of 24, but the way it’s delivered (again, using the proven method of leaping between perspectives) is so effective it’s hard to imagine ever going back to cut scenes. Many games brag about the number of playable characters they feature, but few promise to put in the shoes of an overthrown president at the moment their political career reaches an untimely end. That a bullet in the face is just the first trick pulled out of Infinity Ward’s very large bag (and during the opening credits, no less) is a very promising sign of their ability to breathe life into a fun franchise showing it’s age. As someone smarter than me said, sure Call of Duty 4 is still stuck on rails, but so are roller coasters. Amen.

6. Crackdown (Xbox 360)
The first 360 game I truly fell in love with after picking up the system last summer, Crackdown is truly all things to all men, assuming all men are looking to juggle drug dealers with rocket launchers. One of the first games to truly do something interesting with the idea of vast open worlds brought on by Grand Theft Auto 3 and its sequels, Crackdown opens up the vertical plane for exploration through the wonderful execution of super powers that increase over time. There’s few things more liberating than storming a crime boss’ hideout from the air, kicking his snipers off of roofs and turning his collection of expensive cars into fire bombs from a block away. Toss in a co-op mode that still hasn’t been fully explored (rather than being forced on to the same screen together at all times, you and a friend can tackle the game from different ends, fighting through each of its districts separately to meet somewhere in the middle) and the wonderfully over the top freeplay mode and you end up with a game delighting so much in just being a game that its other talking points often go ignored. I always suspected my problems with the GTA series would be solved if my character was anything other than a human cancer cell, but I never imagined how true that was until Crackdown showed me the light. That it did so by leaping from twenty stories up to land on the roof of a gangbanger’s car is just one more cause for unconditional love.

5. Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Another game I didn’t know what to expect from till actually turning it on, Mass Effect was condemned to wait till next year until I got it for Christmas. Other than a second run through Portal and some late-night co-op play with Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, this is all I’ve played since getting back from Huntsville. I never really doubted developer Bioware, as any one who created the masterful Knights of the Old Republic is more than deserving of trust, but I never considered just how much they would step up their game. Mass Effect is a triumph of high space opera, creating a universe full of interesting worlds and living, breathing characters that all revolve around its revolutionary conversation system. Every decision made only makes me wonder what would have happened if I’d chosen a different route, from taking on certain crew members to shooting a perfect stand-in for Aliens’ Burke in the head when he went mental. That action alone would have pushed it higher up the list were it not for the game’s nagging problems with load times and sexual politics (there is sex in the game, but your only options are hetero or girl-on-girl – apparently the future has done away with bummers). Problems and all, Mass Effect is exactly the sort of game I should be playing this far into the new century. Perhaps the best application of player choice we’ve seen yet, and I already can’t wait for the second and third parts of its trilogy.

4. Rock Band (Xbox 360)
Best multiplayer experience of the year, period. As fantastic as the solo careers for guitar, vocals, and drums are (and they are each superb), nothing quite compares to having a roomful of drunken friends blazing through World Tour Mode the day after Thanksgiving. Despite some hardware frustrations, there’s just so much here to love – the song list, the weekly downloadable content, the character creator that let me build first a young Elvis Costello and then turn him into a pitch-perfect version of the Joker, the ability to save friends when they drop out… all of it shows a love for games and the people playing them that Neversoft and their juvenile and abrasive turn with Guitar Hero III could never hope to capture. The devil really is in the details – I knew it was love from the first time the crowd sang along with the song whenever I did particularly well, and by the time the lead singer character leapt into the audience and continued singing while held aloft by our adoring fans, I was completely smitten. The ideal difficulty balance for beginners and veterans alike along with the (so far unfulfilled) promise of being able to download entire albums only ensures the honeymoon period will continue well through the coming year.

3. Mario Galaxy (Wii)
God, this was hard. Mario Galaxy is more than a near-perfect game, it’s the pure distillation of Nintendo’s (and more importantly, Miyamoto’s) approach to game design: a sublimely subtle opening that teaches everything you need to know to play the game without calling itself a tutorial, enemies that are as much puzzles as they are characters, a wide and innovative range of gameplay types built off the same simple mechanics, and the sort of wonders you can only find in a videogame. Mario Galaxy is the current keeper of several of the more wonderful sights I’ve seen this year – using a giant caterpillar to form a bridge between fruit-shaped planetoids, fighting an enormous shark skeleton in a fish bowl world, or just floating from one point to another via flowers the size of trees and a strong gust of wind. Galaxy is an absolute treasure, the pinnacle of platforming games as a genre and one of the best games I’ve ever played. Scratch that bit about “near-perfect” up above – Mario Galaxy achieves exactly what it sets out to do with a precision most other developers would kill for. It’s the perfect game, period.

2. Portal (Xbox 360)
Which is something of a mixed blessing, as innovation beats perfection for me every time. Not to say Galaxy lacked original thinking, oh no – but compared to Aperture Science’s little wonder of a gun, everything else feels like yesterday’s news. I hesitate somewhat to call Portal the most important game of the year, but the more I try to come up with something to top it the more Valve’s own Cinderella story shines through. The Portal gun and the world built around using it makes for one of the best puzzle games to be found, leading to awe-inspiring level design and solutions on the part of players that even the developers hadn’t considered. The writing, which gave us one of the year’s best villains in the form of GLADoS, the homicidal computer that personifies vile malevolence with more gravitas than any Disney villain could hope to muster (and let us not forget the much-mourned Companion Cube, star of office desktops and internet memes the world over) is head and shoulders over nearly every other game that didn’t involve Tim Schafer from the last several years. Even the playtime is ideal, with the entire game beatable in just four hours. As eager as I am to see what ramifications of Portal’s groundbreaking design and presentation have on games in the next few years, I’m a little worried – what is there beyond “triumph” – For now though, it doesn’t matter. HUGE SUCCESS.

1. Bioshock (Xbox 360)
As if there was any doubt. But hey, did I mention how wonderful it was to walk around Dr. Steinman’s operation room after dispatching him and seeing all the other ways the fight could have gone down, and then playing through it again and seeing that potential realized? Or how your heart breaks a little when, after you’ve killed you’re first Big Daddy and dealt with the Little Sister in the Medical Pavilion, his replacement shows up and wanders the empty rooms, going from hidey-hole to hidey-hole looking for his lost charge? Or the creeping horror of the rooms where they turned the Little Sisters into perfect harvesters, culminating in a device showing a picture of a Big Daddy and another of a loving June Cleaver mother-type that shocks you if you choose the wrong one? No? Then go play it for yourself, already. Honestly.

Filed under: talk about games