PixlBit

The first thing that comes to mind is changing my Xbox gamertag. I got one in 2004 when Xbox Live Arcade dropped but a mini-game on an Official Xbox Magazine demo disc was giving me trouble in '07, and I thought a new gamertag would solve it. Well, it did solve it, but I lost touch with my old gamertag over time, and now it's probably been deactivated along with the few games I bought under it. It'll be 20 years on my current gamertag next year. It could've been 23 years if I'd stuck with my original one.

Aside from that, it's all about the games across console generation 7: Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, PSP, DS and, weirdly, there were PS2 games still being released.

Here are some games I played from 2007 listed in order of Metacritic rating for that year. I'll write until I run out of time today. 

#1 - Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) - I played this much later, but really enjoyed it. I loved the theme the most: traveling in space and experiencing unusual gravity effects. 

#2 - Bioshock (X360) - I distinctly remember the Summer of '07 when this came out, seeing the jaw dropping trailers for it. I don't remember buying it day-one (I rarely did that) but I played it sometime soon thereafter. Since then I've revisited it almost yearly. 

#3 - The Orange Box (X360) - I had played Half-Life on PS2 and Half-Life 2 on OG Xbox. Add the two new chapters which, I think, were PC only originally, and I was on board. I don't remember a day-one purchase though, but sometime soon after that. The included Portal game was novel, if not my sort of thing (although, I'm still playing it today), and Team Fortress 2 I could say the same about but I haven't touched since then. 

 #5 - Halo 3 (X360) - Nothing has ever topped the play time MK and I put into Halo 1, but we both got Halo 2 and 3 day-one and played through them solo and co-op at least a couple times. Master Chief had to finish the fight and did. Maybe Bungie was already thinking of ending the series after this. We got two spinoff titles: ODST and Reach without Master Chief before Bungie left Microsoft to do Destiny. 

 #6 - God of War II (PS2) - Talk about late PS2 games. The PS3 was already out. Nevertheless, I still had all my previous consoles and got this sometime after release and loved it as much as the first game. I feel like it was deminishing returns from GOW after this for me though. 

 #7 - Rock Band (X360) - I think I tried this back in 2009 or so because I can still remember telling my real rock bandmates about it. They were unimpressed, but I guess they weren't gamers like me (my band ended in 2010). Intiallly, I was a little disappointed it didn't exactly simulate the experience of playing real instruments (I tried the drums too), but when I played it again recently in 2026, with some time away from playing actual music, I enjoyed it much more. Even if it doesn't put a real instrument in your hands, it still gets you to very listen closely to the music like you do when trying to transcribe a song. 

 #13 - Mass Effect - Darn, it's going to be 20 years since the first ME next year. It's kind of incredible to me what BioWare accomplished after Knights of the Old Republic. I played this a little later than release and enjoyed it, but the combat, not so much. I think that kept me away from the series after this until fairly recently when I played all the subsequent games and enjoyed them a lot. 

#21 - Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3) - I can't decide when I got a PS3, this year or in 2008. But Ratchet & Clank games were high on my list of wants for the system. I generally played only exclusives on PS3 and Wii, the multiplatform games I played on Xbox 360 'cause that's where MK and I played co-op the most. This was the first R&C: Future game and several more would follow this generation. All looked amazing and played great. 

#22 - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3) - PS3 was really establishing itself with great exclusives this year. This first Uncharted game will make the series hit 20 next year too. [I'm pretty sure now I got a PS3 in '08 because I don't remember playing this in '07. I think it was Valkyria Chronicles in '08 that sold me on the system]. Uncharted is an amazing game and penned by Amy Hennig of Legacy of Kane fame. I wonder where she is now? Still working on a Star Wars title?

#24 - Jeanne d'Arc (PSP) - I probably got a PSP sometime earlier because of 2005's Untold Legends, a co-op RPG that I played with MK over the system's wireless feature, a first for me. Jeanne d'Arc was a tactical RPG by Level-5, which made it a must play for me. I traded my PSPs not too long ago. Although I liked the system, it seemed a little fragile over time. Batteries would wear out and the UMD door would loosen and make reading discs difficult. 

 #27 - Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 (PS2) - At some point at the beginning of a new generation, Gamestop would run a lot of sales on last gen stuff and this is when I got to try a lot of new games for cheap. The Persona series was one of them. I'm kicking myself for not still owning this now, but that's how it goes. This was very different from my usual gaming but not crazy different because it still had turn-based rpg battles, just with the personas that made it even more interesting. The setting, Japanese high schools and cities, was novel to me and very interesting as well. 

 #59 - Crackdown (X360) - Probably this would be my number one most played game that year. I remember a demo in early 2007 that sold me on it. The best part was co-op play across the whole open world. MK and I played it a lot, almost as much as the first Halo. We played it solo a lot too. I loved "collecting" cars in the game. MK loved the super powers you built up over time. We are still quoting lines from the game to this day, mostly of the Agency Director talking to you and giving you orders like: "stop killing civilians Agent!" and "I can see my house from here.". His voice is by Michael McConnohie who has done a ton of voice work for anime and video games. I keep coming across his voice in other stuff. 

 #61 - Pac-Man Championship Edition (XBLA) - Namco has done a lot of reimaginings of their video games but none, I think, top this. Before this, I think, they had mostly just tried to make their 2D games into 3D with not much success. Why not stick with the original formula and just spice it up to the extreme. That's what they did with Pac-Man CE and it's dynamite - a model for any future remakes. 

 #62 - Rogue Galaxy (PS2) - Another Level-5 video game out in the U.S. two years after it was out in Japan.  I had to have it for the developer but subsequently traded it because I wasn't that into the battle system anymore. It's a third-person, real-time hack 'n' slash system with two other NPCs that you can give orders to. I found it a bit awkward when I replayed it last year. It is gorgeous to look at though. I scanned an advert I found in a comic book years ago that is great. Here's someone else's scan. 

#67 - Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix - I guess this was the year I got into tile-matching puzzle games. I loved the chibi Street Fighter and Darkstalkers characters and the music is divine. Gameplay is fast and fun too as you try and load your opponent with extra tiles. An absolute gem I've tried to secure various physical copies on 360 and in its original form on PS1 and GBA. 

#69 - Odin Sphere (PS2) - And yet another late great PS2 game! This was Vanillaware's first console game along with GrimGrimoire this same year. It's a very unique action RPG with a gorgeously strange art style that I was thinking about just the other day. Characters have distorted features both too large and too small all together in the same character. It reminds me of those long necks drawn by artists of the Mannerist period in fine art. I still own this and will not let it go for anything largely because of the visual design of it. 

#71 - The Darkness (X360) - MK and I play a lot of shooters. I don't know if I'd play so many of them without his influence actually, but there we are. This one has darkness powers that give imp helpers, attacking tentacles or black hole like effects. It's by Starbreeze of Chronicles of Riddick fame. It gives you a delightfully diabolical fun time. 

And now I'm out of time, but, of course, there are more as I go down the list on Metacritic's best of 2007.

PS: I find it crazy how many games I was able to play on a full time work schedule and real music rock band gigging in '07.