GS.com GOTY Overall Xbox360 PS3 PS2 PSP Wii NDS PC Genre Awards Special Awards Game of the Year: Bioshock It wasn't easy coming up with a clear cut game of the year. There were a lot of worthy contenders from Rock Band to Call if Duty 4 and several others in between. But no game captured our imagination quite like Irrational Games' underwater opus, BioShock. The city of Rapture really steals the show in BioShock. It's one of the most brilliant settings ever for a videogame and brings the game to life. The gameplay borrows heavily from classics like System Shock 2 but remains original enough to stake its own claim. Touching on themes such as greed, depravity, loss, hope, and insanity, the story of BioShock drives you forward - forcing you to play another level to just find out how things unfold. It doesn't hurt that the design itself is fantastic; the visuals drop dead gorgeous and the soundtrack certifiably haunting. BioShock is an example that first person shooters do not need to have a tacked on multiplayer component to work - this is single player gaming at its absolute finest, and is our pick for Best Game of 2007. - William Abner GameShark.com Review Runner-Up: Rock Band Oh sure, when you and three friends pick up the fake instruments, you feel pretty stupid, especially you, who has the thankless job of singing, but then, remarkably, you find that your drummer can actually keep a beat. Then your guitarist starts playing the first few notes of "Wanted Dead or Alive", perfectly no less, and when you start singing, the crowd is actually singing with you. After that it's nothing but four minutes of rock infused delirium as the four of you work together, hitting note streaks, rescuing each other from failure and finally ending the song with an all out blitzkrieg of rock. By the time the music dies down, you're not thinking about anything other than the next song. In a world where Guitar Hero was king, Rock Band did more to get people playing together, and at the same time push the rhythm genre to new heights than any other game this year. The solo tours for the different instruments, the Band World Tour mode, the seamless integration of downloadable content all combined to do one thing, and one thing only: to well and truly rock. - Brandon Cacowski-Schnell GameShark.com Review Runner Up: Call of Duty 4 While Bioshock may have taken the top spot this year, it is easy to see why so many have awarded Call of Duty 4 top accolades in multiple categories this year. Call of Duty 4 brought the WWII action game series from Infinity Ward into the modern era with style, delivering some of the most realistic game combat in recent memory, layered on top of spot-on graphics, compelling storylines, narrative and voice acting that enhances the overall game flow and some of the most amazing gaming moments ever. Call of Duty 4 is top shelf gaming at every level and Infinity Ward deserves all the praise it is getting. - James Fudge GameShark.com Review Runner-Up: Mass Effect BioWare once again delivers an impressive title that spit shines the best elements o its past accomplishments (most notably Knights of the Old Republic) to create what many, including myself, consider the new benchmark for role-playing games. There's so much to do in Mass Effect and so many options that there's no possible way someone wouldn't wanted play through it a second or third time. But the real hook of Mass Effect is that it's not just a game for RPG fans. The game focuses like a laser beam on the action - from the button mashing mini-games to the frenetic fights on distant planets, there's plenty of mindless action to tackle in between the dialogue trees, skill building and inventory management. Most of all, Mass Effect proves that BioWare is the standard bearer of the genre and a leader on whatever platform they decide to focus their efforts on. - James Fudge GameShark.com Review Runner-Up: The Witcher The Witcher is a far from perfect game. Egregious save/load times and problems with the Polish translation into English make it a difficult game to get into. It's also a much longer game than many gamers want to suit up for. But once you let this story of Geralt the professional monster hunter dig into you, this game doesn't let go. It's a game that forces you to make the kinds of murky ethical choices we've not seen since Planescape: Torment, it has an addictive, yet brilliantly simple, combat model, and the gritty story has a depth to it we've not seen in an RPG in years. - Todd Brakke GameShark.com Review