GTA IV. It was the game that made me dream of having a PS3. When I finally got one, it was one of my first games for the console and it pretty much delivered on everything I wanted. It's my favorite GTA, one of my favorite modern city-sandbox games (along with The Godfather and Watch Dogs) and one of the games I've played and finished the most in my life.

It's not perfect mind you! It still pisses me off that they don't let you choose the color of your car in the spray shops lol

Dead Space is remarkable and should win.

Of the games I played I liked very few from this year.
And of the few I liked I do not feel any of them is good enough for the title.
Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, Fire Emblem Shadow dragon and Advance Wars Days of Ruin all are games I enjoyed but think are downgrades compared to previous entries in their series.

Give my vote goes to other and the mobile tower defense game Fieldrunners. Still got it installed on my phone and pick it up from time to time. Nothing special, but more enjoyable than anything else I played this year.

I think that from what I have read about Dead Space it would be a contender. But I have not yet. Might just go and fix that right about now.

Gara go with Fallout 3

Other - Tomb Raider Underworld. Shout out to Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.

This year, I ahb been mostly playing Tekken 6. Left overs from last year. However did get MGS4 and was great outside of the install and loading things. Sign of the times really.

Infact, this is somehting I missed from last year, as I got it this year (it was released so late 2007, hard to consider it a 2007 game). Super Stardust HD. Literally one of my favourite games of all time. Infact, might have a go when I get home. As an arcade twin stick shooter, I think it's utter perfection (little claim to fame, on 'easy' I was at one point on the PS3 version top 60 players in the world), last I checked with PS4 version I was in top 100.

Anyway but this was the first year I actually bought downloadable games, as well, it was the only medium from which I could buy them. Wipeout HD being the main one for me.

So for me, that gets top billing. Loved it.

I have to vote for Mirror's Edge, just love the style and the flow of the gameplay. It is one of my all time favorite games.

GTA IV comes really close for me, it is a game that has grown a lot on me over the years, despite initially disappointing me. It really shows how sometimes less is more. It is smaller than San Andreas and V, but it packs so much detail and character into it's smaller World that it is hard not to love. It is my favorite GTA, even if SA comes close.
Also a huge honorable mention to Gears of War 2, which imo did what the original did, but better in every way. Still the best in the series, I thought the third game was a rather disappointing follow-up. MGS IV is brilliant as well, and I am ashamed I haven't played Fallout 3 or Dead Space yet. Braid was a masterpiece as well, what a year!

Or, well, there were also some terrible ones too. Burnout Paradise abandoned everything great about the Burnout series and suffers severely from Open Worldtidis. Resistance 2 is one of the most generic shooters I have ever played and a disgraceful follow-up to the decent original.
Mario Kart Wii is one of the worst designed games to ever come out of the big N, I have never seen a game punish the player so much for being good. Getting hit by 4-5 blue shells in a single race is not uncommon in Mario Kart Wii, and both the blue shell and red shells stop you completely for seconds. Expanding the number of karts in a race to 12 was clearly an afterthought as the game is not balanced for that. Besides, the drifting sucks compared to previous games. A chaotic, luck-based mess. They even forgot to balance the karts vs bikes. Bikes are just objectively better.

Edit: aahh I forgot Vesperia was a 2008 game originally

Brawl is one of my most played console games ever and easily my choice, except for the fact that Vesperia. To be fair Brawl was probably in my top 3 ever at the time and Vesperia has never been quite that high because I played it much later, but the game I like the most today would have to be Vesperia. My top 5 for the year then:

1. Tales of Vesperia
2. Super Smash Bros. Brawl
3. Persona 4
4. Fallout 3
5. Kirby Super Star Ultra

2008 was also the year of another Tales game: my arch-nemesis Dawn of the New World. Honestly not a bad game if viewed in a vacuum, but it just felt like they started work on an original game and then suddenly decided at one point to brute force it into a Symphonia sequel instead resulting in messy concoction of story and lore and not doing the original characters justice at all.

This one is the one that I remember oh so well - and not in a good way.
Fallout 3 launched and, while enjoyable and fairly solid RPG, it was a pretty shoddy Fallout game. FO1/2 are some of my all-time favourites, and it was painful to see what Bethesda did with the IP.

But there were some other good sequels/"sequels" - Fable II, Tomb Raider Underworld, Mario Kart Wii, LEGO: Indiana Jones and LEGO: Batman.

Also start of plenty of great new IPs - Mirror's Edge, Left4Dead, Little Big Planet, Dead Space, Mount & Blade.

Two games stood out for me that year - SPORE, another Will Wright's life simulation game, taking you all the way from single cell organism to galactic civilization with what is, basically, five games in one tied all together (though the last, galactic, being a bit overwhelming), While I like most of his games, I consider SPORE to be in his top 3, along with SimCity and Sims. This one is my favourite from that year.

The other one was Braid - not only it was a superb puzzle platformer with fantastic aesthetics, but it is, arguably, THE game the started the whole indie revolution, so my vote goes to Other: Braid.

Smash Bros. Brawl.