I was going to do platform awards but instead I'm just going to make a list of my top 15 games of 2007.

15. Naruto: Rise of a Ninja

My Score: 8.0

14. God of War 2

My Score: 9.0

13. The Darkness

My Score: 8.5

12. Unreal Tournment 3

My Score: 8.5

11. Eternal Sonata

My Score: 8.5

10. The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

My Score: 9.0

9. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

My Score: 9.0

8. Halo 3

My Score: 9.5

7. Super Mario Galaxy

My Score: 9.5

6. Assassin's Creed

My Score: 9.0

5.Mass Effect

My Score: 9.5

4. Rock Band

My Score: 10

3. Call of Duty 4

My Score: 10

2. Bioshock

My Score: 10

1. TheOrange Box

My Score: 10

Wow, been awhile since I blogged. Here are my Game of the Year picks:

*Note, I haven't played any new PC games this year that's why none are nominated.*

Special Achievements:

Best Graphics: Nominees:

Bioshock, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Call of Duty 4.

The Winner Is:

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Why: Even though I like Bioshock's art more, IMO Uncharted is the best looking console game ever. It just looks amazing with all the color and great animations when Nathan Drake is dodging bullets and taking cover.

Best Story: Nominees:

Bioshock, Mass Effect, Eternal Sonata, Assassin's Creed.

The Winner Is:

Bioshock

Why: Not only is the story amazing but the way it's told is awesome. The game really draws you in with the atmosphere and Mystery. Also the audio dairies are excellent for telling a story without interrupting the gameplay.

Best Voice Acting:

Mass Effect, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed.

The Winner Is:

Mass Effect

Why: I never thought anything could be better then Bioshock's voice acting, Mass Effect proved me wrong. The voice acting is great, Paragon or Renegade.

Best Original Soundtrack:

Assassin's Creed, The Orange Box, Bioshock, Eternal Sonata, Mass Effect.

The Winner Is:

Bioshock, Eternal Sonata.

Why: God so much awesome soundtracks! I was so close to picking The Orange Box for the Portal song! I really couldn't pick just one: Bioshock's remix is so creepy but Eternal Sonata's music is just so beautiful.

Funniest Game:

The Winner Is:

The Orange Box

Why: Portal is IMO the funniest game ever made. The Cake is a lie! Also "Still Alive" is an awesome song.

Most Innovative / Original Game:

Assassin's Creed, Rock Band, The Orange Box, Bioshock.

The Winner Is:

Rock Band

Why: The use of toy mics, guitars and drums to give people the feeling that they are in a band is crazy. It's just amazing that it works so well! The game is just so original.

Best Local Multiplayer Game:

The Winner Is:

Rock Band

Why: Above comment ^

Best Online Multiplayer Game:

Halo 3, The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4.

The Winner Is:

Call of Duty 4

Why: Unlocking new perks and guns is so addictive, It gives you something to strive for as well.

Genre Awards:

*I skipped the obvious ones like "Best music game": (Rock Band of coarse)

Action / Adventure:

Assassin's Creed, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja.

The Winner Is:

Assassin's Creed

Why: Killing Templars is great fun even though it gets a little repetitive.

Best Shooter:

Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, The Orange Box, Halo 3.

The Winner Is:

Call of Duty 4

Best Platformer:

The Winner Is:

Super Mario Galaxy

Why: The platforming is refreshing, the controls are excellent. Best Mario Game yet.

Best Puzzle Game:

The Winner Is:

The Orange Box

Why: Portal is just original and it appeals to people that don't play a lot of puzzle games but love shooters, Like me.

Best RPG:

Mass Effect, Eternal Sonata, Oblivion (Expansion).

The Winner Is: Mass Effect

Why: Great Sci-Fi story, fantastic voice acting and cool dialog wheel.

On November seventeenth I finally got Assassin's Creed. A game I've been waiting for since 2006 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. After watching the first trailer I had a feeling it would rock. It exceeds by expectations by rocking hardcore. It's one of the best and most recent gaming experiences I've had all year so I figure it's worth writing about.

I'm about two thirds done or 65% done the game. Thus far I really like it. There are a few things that make it stand out a lot. The game centers around an assassin named Altair. Altair means "The Flying One" in Arabic. It takes place during the 12th century . The game has you take the role of Altair. You assassinate various targets. All nine of these men have something to do with the third crusade. One thing that makes Assassin's Creed so special is how historically accurate it is. Some of the people you assassinate were actually real. Better yet, they disappeared in the same year the game takes place. Also the three featured cities are all real and created with lots of detail. You can actually climb on anything you could in real life, a first ever for a video game. So when you explore Jerusalem it's the same size as it was and has lots of sites to see. I've even looked at real ariel pictures of the cities on Wikipedia to compare, the game does a great job. For example you can climb the Al Jezzar Mosque in Acre and explore the Citadel, the view is amazing. You really feel like your in the twelfth century.

Now what really matters, the gameplay. It stands out here as well. The controls are excellent. You have high profile and low profile commands. High profile is faster but it draws un-wanted attention to you, low profile does not. To use an example to sum it up, when you are low profile the B button will genteelly push through crowds. Perfect for getting past guards without them noticing. But hold down on the high profile button and the B button will tackle people out of your way. Great for escapes. Another example is the A button, it runs in high profile or walks in low profile. So you can see how walking is low profile and tackling people is high profile.

This works well with the 3 main parts of each mission. First you must sneak into a city. Then climb up a tall building to spot where people are that can give you info on your target. There are a bunch of ways you'll have to confront these people. You might have to pickpocket, interrogate or ease drop on them. You'll have to keep a low profile during this step so you don't alert the guards about your assassination. It's really cool how you have to hide in the crowd and not draw attention to yourself.

Next comes the actual assassination. You plan out your approach using the info you gained. Then once you strike and finish him off you have to get away. You can use Altair's athletic skills to escape by jumping, climbing or out running the guards. You can hide in bundles of hay, roof guards of even the crowds.

For the last week that's what has made up a lot of my free time after school and on the weekends. The game has some issues like it getting a bit repetitive. However in short bursts it's great. After waiting a year for it I am very satisfied. It's one of the enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had. Also it's my most recent big experience so it's easy to write about. Assassin's Creed is great.

That's it for this weekly blog, sorry it's late. I'll have a bunch of reviews up in December once I get a break from school.

I'm sad. Assassin's Creed, Super Mario Galaxy, Kane & Lynch, Uncharted, Call of Duty 4, Umbrella Chronicles. They all came out today (expect Call of Duty, which came out last week). And I still don't have either one! Let me explain...

I live in a very small town in northern Canada, all we have here is a Walmart and a RadioShack to buy games at. Radioshack charges like $80 per game, so that's auto fail. Walmart is usually pretty good, They get their freight in every Tuesday. So today I was pumped! I couldn't wait to go up to Walmart and blow a bunch of money on games! However to my misfortune nothing was there. I've never been so disappointed since I played Red Steel. I love games! I eat, sleep, game. sometimes a even skip the other two and just game. So I was very sad. I hope they have them in soon. Now the waiting I can deal with (kinda). This next thing not so much.

I can only choose one! Out of those six, eight if you count Mass Effect and Rock Band coming out next week! So as you can imagine I have to make Ihard decision. I've narrowed it down to Assassin's Creed. I'm going with Assassin's Creed. Such a hard decision, here are my reasons. Number one: it's out before Mass Effect and Rock Band. Number two, I already bought the pre-sell kit for it so I get ten dollars off. Number three It's shorter then Mass Effect, I won't have much time to play cause of school. So as you can tell Iam really excited about Assassin's Creed. Anyway not much happened this week, just me being disappointed but all was not bad! I got Guitar Hero 3... so heres a mini review of it:

Guitar Hero 3 is good. Not as good as Guitar Hero 1 or 2. However it's still fun. Basically Neversoft took Guitar Hero and whored it out to everything they could find. From the Pontiac Stage to the Axe body spray guitars and shirts, it's a in-game ad fest. It doesn't bother me to much but it really gives me the impression that they only cared about the money. (I'm a video games are art hippie)

I really got the feeling they didn't put much effort into it. Mainly because oftwo things. Number one: onlyabout 70% of the songs are fun to play. Alot just feel oddly made and theres alot of feeling it was put together without to much effort. I know, I'm being a bit harsh but Harmonix felt so strongly about their new concept. Now it just seems like "People buy Guitar Hero, let's make Guitar Hero". Number two: The only majornew additionis Battle Mode. Let's just say it's great but I wish they spent as much time on it as they did whoring the Guitar Hero name out. I wish they spent more time on the Battle Mode because it's a great concept. Also why did they bother to make brand new songs for Career battles if you can't play them against your friends in the online/offline battle mode?

Enough of the negative. It keeps the same awesome Guitar Hero format. It has the best Guitar Hero soundtrack yet! The best Guitar controller yet! Alsothe multiplayer and Battle Mode are pretty cool. All in all if you like Guitar Hero you'll like this one. Buy it if you want some newGuitar Hero songs to play. I give it a 7.5 out of ten. Time to wrap it up. I'll try and post a new blog every Sunday. I hope I'll have some Assassin's Creed impressions / review. I promise NO SPOILERS!

~Happy Gaming~

It's complete garbage. There's more blood and gore then decent acting and the story is stupied. The lame ass twists feel like they are re-used from the other movies. The movies used to be something orignal, now it just feels like a lame un-orignal gore fest. My advice is don't waste your time watching Saw 4.

Well this is my second blog. I'm going to TRY and get some kind of weekly blog going but only time will tell if that'll work out.

This week was pretty boring. I've been sick since Monday, sure i didn't have to go to school but I'll have a lot of catching up to do. I think I might have gotten sick at a party at my friends house. Let me explain: We bought all kinds of food. Burgers, Chicken Etc. Unfortunately we forgot that none of us can cook. I can't say the burgers tasted bad but they seemed not fully cooked. Enough said. As a result I was too sick to do anything all that cool on Halloween. No, not Trick or Treating, I'm 15 not 10. But it was a bummer that I couldn't hang out with my friends or play Manhunt 2. I was hoping to play Manhunt 2 or something this Halloween. Sadly I didn't get to play; Hellgate: London, Dementium: The Ward, Manhunt 2 or any of the other promising Halloween releases. I wanted to try Manhunt 2 and Dementium but Hellgate on the other hand. Looks pretty awesome, my friend is playing it. I would too but my PC is too old. It can barely run World of Warcraft. I might consider getting a new PC for Hellgate, IF Gamespot and my friend both say it's really good. I was going to buy Manhunt 2 for PS2, it's only $30 and looks pretty cool. However I live in a small town and all we have is Walmart. So I lugged by sick ass up to Walmart and lone behold... no Manhunt, no nothing. I was going to buy a cheap game. There was Fight Night Round 3, GRAW, Saints Row, not a whole lot of stuff. Skate and Guitar Hero 3 caught my eye for $65 each. (I already have a guitar for my 360) But I decided I didn't want to buy any "full price" games or $40 360 games. I need money for Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4. So I went with a cheaper $15 PS2 game. You'll never guess which game it was. It's....

A odd game indeed. But I great one at that. Gamespot gave it an 8.6 Have a look for yourself: http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/warriors/index.html?tag=result;title;5

Anyways, It's a fun game. If you like the 1979 movie then you'll love the game, or if you just like good beat'em ups you'll like it too. It's pretty long, has good combat, great soundtrack (Dr. Hook anyone?) and I few fun modes like Rumble or Co-Op. So thanks to The Warriors my Halloween wasn't too bad, I rented it before and liked it a lot, so for 15 bucks this little gem was a steal. Well that about warps up my blog for this week. Next weeks should be good, Call of Duty 4 for the win!

Happy Gaming,

Steve Hall

PS: Sorry if the Box shot is too big, I couldn't get it to scale down very well.

This is my first blog so go easy :)

Both of these games are two of the best games ever made,in my opinion. But which is better? As soon as Halo 3 was released I heard alot of people on the forums saying things like "Halo 3's way better then Bioshock". I had a revelation today. After playing Bungie's shooter that set the standard for all others, for like a week straight. I decided to play 2K's "genetically-enhanced shooter", for some achievements I missed. Then I recognized how awesome Bioshock really is. The dialog and voice acting are so superb! And the story is genius! To me, Bioshock is more then just a game. It's a work of art, an interactive mosaic of colorful characters and a sinister story. 2K truly took it to a whole new level. This is what next gen is all about. So which is better? Well the answer is simple; both. If you prefer Halo to Bioshock thats fine with me. But don't underrate Boishock just cause it doesn't set the standard for normal FPS'sor have a 500 million dollarmarketing champaign. It doesn't need to, because for me it has not only set the standard for next gen games, it's raised the bar completely. I feel Bioshock is really all about the story. Bioshock sucked me in with it's story, caused me to feel; fear, anger, sadness, peity and happiness. Don't get me wrong gameplay is important, sure it's fun to shoot some flood, collect some power ups, jump on some koopasor save some princesses. But in my opinion games, if used right can be the best form of media to tell a story and Bioshockproves it.

Just keep in mind this is just myopinion.

And By the way I love normal FPS's andHalo 3 is awesome, It just saddens me thatalot of games are overshadowed by it.