2007 - The best gaming year ever

The 360 has indeed been 1337

Good God, where to start… Wheras the PlayStation 3 has spent this year developing and the Wii has used it to cement a whole new area of gaming, the Xbox 360 has spent 2007 just banging out quality hardcore game after quality hardcore game. For the traditional player who just wants to get down to the gaming, there has been no better platform. In years.

The 360 was always going to have the advantage this year. Its year-long head start on the competition afforded it a huge amount of momentum going into 2007. The developers were already familiar with how to get the best out of it and the pre-installed user-base gave it preferential treatment when it came to console games. But what games they were…

Bioshock brought us a staggeringly designed and original world to explore and be terrified by, and forced us into a set of moral and ethical decisions the like of which we too rarely see in videogames. Truly a masterpiece. Mass Effect provided a brilliantly realised and huge-feeling sci-fi universe to explore and had lots of appeal for both action and RPG fans. Crackdown gave GTA a steroid-pumped, super-powered shot of loony juice and sent sandbox games rocketing to the sky. Overlord was a deliciously amoral spin on Pikmin with a great script from Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of the legend that is Terry. Forza Motorsport 2 was a hyper realistic and deeply satisfying racer with enough customisation to last you a life time.