Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you all had a Merry Christmas as well and have started 2008 off on the right foot.
I just got done reading the Best of 2007 Awards from GameSpot and when I reached the Game of the Year Award, I would've bet money that Super Mario Galaxy was NOT going to get the award. I was positive it was going to be The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4 or Cyrsis. And yet they gave it to Super Mario Galaxy! Imagine my utter and total shock.
Although I haven't played any of the other games on the list (I've seen Assassin's Creed though) I have been playing through Super Mario Galaxy and I think it was an excellent choice for Game of the Year. It is simply a phenominally fun game that I think blew apart everyone's expectations of it, and it really did change up the platformer in ways I couldn't imagine and that do not come across in screenshots. It's also a very smart, quite long and challening game with great, colorful graphics, great music, inventive game mechanics, terrific level design, insanely fun gameplay and tons of nostalgic appeal, a fact that I love about it.
I do think that the awards were flawed in some ways based on the nominees (and the fact that they only select games that scored over 9.0) as someone pointed out in a thread on the Best of 2007 board, but I couldn't be happier with GameSpot's choice.
And you know what I think is absolutely crazy? The fact that Halo 3 has been so completely and utterly overshadowed in the awards this year. It didn't even pick up ANY awards from GameSpot! In any other year you know it would've conquered because it's Halo and a great game in it's own right, but man what a year it is for gamers when Halo 3 is overlooked. Madness!