2007 was a great year to be a gamer. In fact, it may have been the greatest year ever as we've managed to have hit after hit after hit.

But, in this sea of stellar titles, what games stand out from the rest? Well, I have the answers to that question as well as many others in this year's Sam's Video Game Awards.

Read on for the full poop...

Everything else that was great this year

Presented in no particular order...

• Call of Duty 4

  Xbox 360

  The COD franchise is a popular one, and COD4 was the grand return to fan-favorite developer "Infinity Ward". The problem with the COD series previously was that it was stuck in the now cliched World War II shooter genre, and thus, moderately predictable. COD4 shook things up by fast-fowarding the action to more of a modern setting, thus breathing new life in what had become a somewhat stale series.

One of the biggest problems I have with Nintendo is how formulaic most of their first party games can be. Take a look at the Zelda series, it's a fine series with many memorable and excellent titles. However, most Zelda games can be reduced to the same basic formula: Green clad boy works to save the Kingdom of Hyrule and the Princess Zelda from some evil (usually some variation of Ganandorf). Over the course of the game, Link will hit all of the following: a Lava area (usually accompanied by the Goron), a Water area (usually accompanied by the Zora), a Forest area, an area where he will need to use "heavy boots" to avoid being blown or knocked away, and every dungeon will have keys that unlock doors in them. He will also obtain the following weapons and items: One boomerang, one bow, one bomb bag, and tons of crystals. In the end, most Zelda games can become boring simply because once you've played one, you've played them all.

The Mario games also can become formulaic. Sometimes this is a good thing (like "New Super Mario Brothers" for the DS, which perfected the formula so well you can easily look past the lack of new concepts in it), other times it can be a bad thing. However, generally speaking, I'm someone who loves to see new things tried in tired series (like Windwaker in the Zelda series, or Metroid Prime in the Metroid series). Which is part of the reason I love Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii so much.

I realize it's not yet the end of the year, but I don't think it's too early to state that 2007 will likely be remembered as the Year of the Shooter. This year there will have been released some of the greatest (if not, the greatest) first person shooters of all time.

This past year we've simply had some incredible FPSes. Let's take a look at them (in no particular order)....

A while ago I made this post about how all these excellent video game anthologies for various platforms are spoiling me and leaving me wanting more of the obscure yet awesome titles of yore. Specifically, I said

The point is that I want to know "Where the hell is my TruboGraphix collection?" ...... "Where is my collection of Jaguar games?" ..... "Where is my Sega Master System collection?"

and then proceeded to innumerate several collections that I wanted to see including a collection of classic Sega Master System and Game Gear games.

Well you know what? Someone did it :-)

It's no secret I'm an avid gamer.

I've been collecting since I was 3 or 4 years old, have owned nearly every system since Pong, and play games daily.

Recently, however, I've become hopelessly addicted to collections of classic games. The Activision Anthology on the PS2; The endless parade of Midway collections for PS2, GC, and Xbox; The myriad of Atari collections; The divine and sublime Sega Genesis collection for the PS2 and PSP. You name it, chances are I've devoured it.

The only problem is that all of these collections have spoiled me and left me pining for more....

Wow, what an exciting year for video games. Two new consoles, a whole new era of online gameplay, and a fresh battle for console supremacy. This year, since we had such radical change in the console arena, I will include some commentary on that.

So let's get on with it!

This book is all about my yearly video game awards (previously known as "Sam's Top Games of the Year" or whatever). You can still find my previous awards here, or directly at:

• Top Games of 2002
• Top Games of 2003
• Top Games of 2004
• Top Games of 2005

All future SVGAs will be in this book. Enjoy!