Cultural Impact: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was obviously the biggest game of 2007 and really the one that cemented the Call of Duty franchise as a household name. I've never played it. No interest. Matter-of-factly, smack in the depths of the Iraq War, with that as a dominant headline in the news every day, I couldn't have been less interested in what that game seemed to be selling.
My Favorite Games: Portal was not only my favorite game from this year, but also my second-favorite title of the whole decade (after only the original Metroid Prime). That's partially owed to the game's insanely fun approach to puzzle-solving and equally to the fact that it introduces my favorite video game villain ever, the hilariously passive-aggressive GLaDOS, masterfully voiced by the one and only Ellen McLain. Up to that point, I don't think any other game had made me both smile and worry quite so much. Not in that combination. The entire final act of the game in particular wherein...
...was especially inspired and really did authentically capture that feeling of being somewhere you're not meant to be, doing shit you're not meant to be doing. (A very familiar one if you were me. 
) The way GLaDOS's attitude shifts over the course of your playthrough, together with the soundtrack, plays a huge role in making this an equal parts fascinating, frightening, and just plain fun experience for me that really doesn't get old. To think it was created by a small team of students recruited from DigiPen just went to show up the entrenched industry's comparative lack of imagination. And the fact that it's also a rare example of a relatively popular game that's development was headed up by an actual woman is the icing on the cake. Yup, I originally got it in the Orange Box bundle.
A list of my favorites from '07 includes:
1. Portal
2. BioShock
3. Rock Band
4. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
5. Peace Maker
6. Super Mario Galaxy
7. Aquaria
8. Mass Effect
I guess I'll add a small note on Peace Maker. You know that "games for change" or "games for impact" category in game awards that everyone dismisses as essentially the unearned affirmative action award? Peace Maker was the game that made those awards a thing and it did actually have conceptual merit. The game simulates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more or less as it existed at the time and tasks the player with resolving it by finding a way to realize a two-state solution. Some crucial aspects of the game's formula for peace are obviously no longer valid in today's landscape, but it's worth pointing out that 100,000 copies were distributed in Israel and Palestine as in November of 2007 (75,000 copies were sent to the subscribers of the Israeli daily Haaretz and 10,000 to subscribers to the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, while the remaining 15,000 were distributed in high schools of both sides) as part of a project to "teach peace", which led to supervised debates taking place in Israeli and Palestinian schools and to over 50 workshops being held in 2008. That's what the "games for change/impact" category is supposed to represent: games that make a positive difference in the real world, not just games that make the people who run game awards events feel good about themselves for noticing. Maybe games can't solve all the world's problems, but they can have a positive impact, and not just on an individual level. Just my two cents.
