Shorap's GotY Ballot

Best Singleplayer: Mass Effect
-While it certainly isn’t very long for an rpg, it has one of the best stories and characters in any game period with the most fun battle system for the genre yet. Multiple playthroughs aren’t a chore either with the new game+ and achievement rewards features.

Best Multiplayer: Halo 3
-The addicting gameplay of the previous Halo games is nearly perfected with the latest game in the series. Add in the best supported community, saved films, and forge and it’s a game that could stand as the best multiplayer game until the inevitable release of Halo 4.

Best Game That No One Remembers: Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
-With FPS’, RTS’, and Mmorpg’s being as common on the PC as corrupt politicians in the government, it’s no wonder a good, old fashioned crpg like MotB got overlooked in ’07. Fixing the vast majority of bugs and glitches from its required predecessor NWN 2 and priced at only $30, it’s a definite must have for anyone looking for quality variety in the PC gaming arena.

Biggest Letdown: Assassins Creed
-How can a top tier developer nearly ruin a game about controlling a badass character running around a fully realized world with sandbox gameplay? By trying to create a storyline that’s too clever for its own good, focusing too much time on making the game look pretty, and making the game activities boring from the start and recycling them throughout the game.

Game that Revolutionized the Industry: Portal
-While Prey introduced the use of portals in games, Portal perfected it by making it affect gameplay. Using portals at any time in the game instead of at ‘hotspots’ opens up so much in terms of game design that I’ll be very interested to see how other developers integrated (copy) this into future games.

Best Downloadable Content: TES: Oblivion-Shivering Isles
-An expansion pack one can download from Xbox Live Marketplace that adds on even more to an already content-packed game. Oblivion's DLC, after the horse armor debacle, is a shining example of how to do DLC right by offering significant and varied content at an affordable price. Shivering Isle is the pinnacle of this and this method will hopefully be adopted by more dev's in the future.

Best 360 Game of the Year: Halo 3
-One part awesome single player, one part awesome multiplayer, one part awesome community support, one part awesome feature-set equates to one hell of a bargain at $60. While some may think that other games do one of the above parts better than Halo 3, from a cumulative standpoint, there’s no other game that comes close this year to topping the experience that is Halo 3.

Best Wii Game of the Year:
I can’t comment as I didn’t play any Wii games this year. While there are a few standouts that were released they just weren’t evocative enough for me to play them.

Best PS3 Game of the Year: Ninja Gaiden Sigma
-An evolved redux of the Xbox 1 classic, NGS showed PS3 owners how to do action games right without having to use ‘quick-time events’ to look cool or using incessant button-mashing to pummel opponents. It plays like a fighting game, looks like a dream, and runs at a blistering 60 frames per second.

Best Handheld Game of the Year: Geometry Wars Galaxies
-GWG represents the best of handheld gaming’s ‘pick up and play’ atmosphere. Filled to the brim with content and easy to learn, hard to master gameplay it’s the game I always turn to when I’m on the road, bored at work, or on the toilet.

Best PC Game of the Year: Neverwinter Nights: Mask of the Betrayer
-An expansion pack that is anything but, Mask of the Betrayer is normal rpg length and includes the tried and true game design that developer Obsidian is known for (think Bioware games like Kotor 1) set in everyone’s favorite fantasy world, Faerun from DnD. It also can be played by anyone with a decent rig instead of like some of the other PC only games released this year that need supercomputers to run them.

Top Three Games of the Year:
1. Halo 3
2. Mass Effect
3. Neverwinter Nights: Mask of the Betrayer