Xbox 360: The Year That Was...

If I wasn't so lazy I would dig up my Future Shop receipt to find out the exact date of when I purchased my Xbox 360 last year. As I write this, it's been roughly a year, give or take a couple days. I wanted to take a moment now to reflect on the year that was; the year that I became a full-time console gamer again after more than 10 years of dedicated PC gaming.

2007 was a banner year for Xbox 360 gaming. The console was a full year ahead of the competition and was beginning to pick up steam with various high-profile game announcements, a solid online service and a decidedly safe, "middle of the road" strategy to win the hearts and minds of the core video gaming market. While Sony was inducing sticker shock with its sleek, expensve PS3, Nintendo pulled a few tricks out of its own hat by sticking to the family and courted the burgeoning casual games audience. The Xbox 360 played it safe, and continues to do so. They singled-mindedly target the young male, hardcore gamers and through its catalogs of games, stubbornly sticks to the bread and butter of games. Shooters, action games and more shooters dominate the 360 games library. Not that I have any problem with that.

I wanted to do a quick pass through on my gaming highlights with my 360 since last Christmas. Hit the jump for my personal year in review.

Gears of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas
What can be said about this double-whammy? Gears of War was often touted as the 360's first legitimate killer-app and I will gladly admit that it played a massive role in getting me to plunk down my $450 for my Premium edition box. Gorgeous graphics combined with fluid, responsive play mechanics to complete a game that truly felt next-gen when it came out in November 2006. I didn't actually pick this game up until around the end of December and have since played through it three times on co-op, once on each difficulty level. This speaks to how fun and polished the game is. Looking back on it now, it's likely one of the best co-op shooter experiences available anywhere.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Six: Vegas caught me a bit by surprise. I had played a few unsatisfying minutes of it over at my friend's place before I got my Box and only bought my own copy at his incessant recommendation. He sang its praises, calling it the "complete package". Hundreds of hours sunk in to the solo campaign, multiplayer and its addictive co-op modes, I can safely confirm those kudos. For a shooter fan like myself, RS:V had it all. Here was a tactical shooter that kept all the nail-biting realism of combat only if it made the overal gaming experience more fun. Did did away with the withering tedium of planning out every single step of a mission plan and opted for a fast-paced, intuitive squad system that put the fate your mission's success firmly in your hands, yet provided enough tactical depth to really make you feel like a commando ordering your troops around in the heat of battle.

While the game seemed to provide diminishing returns the more you played it, what with the brigade of bugs that ranged from annoying to the game-stopping variety, the full suite of online options gave this title so many legs to last months well after launch day. My personal favourite become the co-op terrorist hunt mode and I can't even begin to imagine the hours I wasted away ranking up on LVU Campus and Dante. And the terrorist body count, oh the body count!

Crackdown
Although this game came out a full two months after I purchased the 360, I consider it a system seller title just as much as Gears of War. Here as an open-world game that was truly open, allowing you to explore the entire world the moment you stepped into the shoes of a futuristic super agent. And explore you did, leveling up your agent's abilities as you used them and eventually earning the ability to clamber up the tallest buildings and leap across rooftops like an amped-up version of Morpheus from The Matrix.

Crackdown never full delivered on gamers' expectations that they would be immersed in a believable, breathing world and the skimpy narrative that drove the main campaign was hardly engrossing. There were crimelords to take down and you're the only capable of taking them down. So, what are you waiting for? Go get'em! The game was also criticized for its graphics. I loved the graphics in Crackdown. It may not have had the most intricate texturing or artistic design, but it provided such a sense of scale and momentum and comic book attitude that really supported the core gameplay. There were virtually no load times, as each section of the massive city would stream into memory and online co-cop notwithstanding, the frame rates were buttery smooth.

Xbox Live Gold
One might expect that an online service with a yearly price tag of $60 would be a hard sell for a veteran PC gamer so used to free online matchmaking and content. And in the beginning, I myself barely considered the possibility of getting a Gold membership. I was content to play Gears offline, along with all the passable single-player games that were bundled with my 360, including the likes of Gun and GRAW.

The temptation of playing online co-op in Gears and RS:V eventually wore down my resistance against the Live service. I worked out my investment of $5 a month to be a reasonable price for unlimited online play and took the plunge in early February. In the course of a Saturday afternoon, I upgraded to a new wireless router, went through the maddening network configurations and got myself online. It's been a sweet ride ever since. I've made some nice gaming buddies in the time I spent playing RS:V as well as meeting my share of Internet jackholes. I've been lucky enough to only have had one incident where I was compelled to leave an inflammatory message for another player and then proceed to ban them from ever communicating with me again.

How can I talk about Xbox Live without giving some online props to the fantastic community of mature gamers over at Adult Gaming Enthusiasts (AGE)? These friendly boys and girls focus on a fun, communal gaming experience and they get it down week after week.

Forza Motorsports 2
Forza is my most neglected good game in my library. Maybe it was the bad taste that Ridge Racer 6 had left in my mouth, but I was suddenly in the mood for a full-featured, realistic racing game. There were very few big game releases back in May, so I took the leap of faith and picked up what I knew would be a very frustrating racing experience.

Much to my surprised, I took to the steep learning curve very well. In fact, the curve wasn't so steep, it was completely customizable to how fast I was willing to learn and take on new challenges. That, in a nutshell, is the crowning achievement of this game. While the car graphics were superb and the tweaking, painting and upgrading mini-games proved to be quite addictive, none of that would have mattered if the designers didn't do such an amazing job of letting you dip you toes in, little by little.

In just a couple of weeks of regular play, I was turning off most of the driving assists, driving stick and barreling around the tracks, actually winning races and have a grand old time. It's any wonder why my Forza gaming petered out so drastically after another couple of weeks. I still want to finish the solo career mode and unlock the bevy of cutting-edge racing prototypes that are still available to drive. One of these days, I'll get back to playing.

BioShock
Hailed by many as the undisputed game of the year when it was still only August, BioShock slapped the gaming public awake after a seemingly endless drought of game releases during the summer. Here now was a game that pretty much heralded the avalanche of gaming goodness that would continue with Halo 3 and all the quality titles that have come out this fall and winter.

I never played the System Shock games. BioShock is the spiritual successor to that series and based on my experiences with 2K Boston's masterpiece, I can understand why those games are still held so near and dear to gamers' hearts. This game stands out in so many ways: the eye-poppingly sumptious visuals, the mature story that was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand's ideologies, the integration between adventure, shooter and RPG genres. This game pretty much has it all, with the exception of multiplayer options and truly satisfying replay value. The end game was also particularly weak given the quality of the early parts of the game. I grew tired of the combat and exploration and was waiting for the game to really throw me a curveball gameplay-wise.

Blemishes aside, BioShock is still the most mature, sophisticated and atmospheric shooter you'll find on the Xbox 360. It's also one of the only real valid contenders for Game of the Year.

Mass Effect
I had been waiting for this game since day one. This game was my Halo 3, the game that I would call in sick from work for, the game that would dominate my mindshare for several days on end. Mass Effect promised so much and in many ways fell short on most of those promises. The open-world galaxy exploration turned out to be quite shallow and repetitive. The combat system was solid, but tactical control over your squad mates was trimmed down and simplified. The dialog system was superb, but the much-hyped ability to interrupt the flow of conversation with a conversation choice never made the cut to the final version. The graphics were gorgeous, but came at the price of load times, inconsistent frame rates and texture pop-in.

The game is essentially dotted with dozens of tiny imperfections and bizarre design choices, yet the beauty of the game shines through despite all of that. The story and plotting is classic space opera fare, but expertly written and brought to life by full spoken dialog performed by professional actors. The RPG system may have lacked depth, but it never got in the way of what you wanted to do in the game. And I must admit it was so refreshing to see a Gears of War style of combat and done so competently in a role-playing game. They really did pull of the real-time combat very well.

Finally, Mass Effect deserves accolades merely by having a proper climax and end sequence. Too many games skimp on their endings these days, with even A-list titles like BioShock dishing out some miserable payoffs for your efforts in completing the entire game. Mass Effect bucks this trend with a vengeance by providing players a satisfying and cinematic, if not the most challenging, conclusion.

And that wraps up my review of my first year with the Xbox 360. There were certainly honourable mentions that I failed to, err, mention, but time and space is limited. What I'd like to post up next are my top stinkers of the past year. These are the games and experiences that I would have preferred not to have but they became a part of my gaming life anyway, for better or worse.

Stay tuned for that next time, hopefully before 2008 rolls around...