Our guiding philosophy for our first year of awards was the K.I.S.S. principal. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Rather than overwhelm you with winners and runners-up for every category on every system, we wanted to focus on what really stood out and grabbed our attention, regardless of what platform it was running on.

Besides trying to follow the K.I.S.S principal, we also had to make things interesting. You are after all on GameAlmighty.com, where we tend to do things like this, and this .

Best Game That No One Played

Crackdown

Oh sure it sold a ton of copies, but most of those were because of the Halo 3 beta that came bundled with it. It’s a shame as well because Crackdown was a great sandbox game for the Xbox 360 and even better co-op game. Who doesn’t enjoy trying to get an achievement that entails juggling a body in the air for 10 seconds using a rocket launcher?

Toughest Game

Ninja Gaiden Sigma

One of our favorite Journalists from another site put it best when he said that it was so brutally hard you could die just from opening the packaging. That fate did not befall anyone on our staff, but that’s not to say it didn’t try. Thankfully, we have cat-like speed and reflexes.

Worst Promotional Game

Yaris

We fully acknowledge we aren’t professional car critics, so we’ll just say this – if the car performs anything like the game plays, we’d rather take the bus.

Best Localization

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

How did Capcom manage to take such a distinctly Japanese game and make it so approachable and charming to every category of American gamers? It’s a matter we think will be best left to the courts to decide.

Worst Localization

Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles

The new translation of Symphony of the Night was completely unnecessary. Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is a close runner-up for completely ignoring all of the issues the Japanese release had. Keep on truckin’ PSP.

Barrels and Crates

Crysis

This belongs quite solidly to Crysis - not because it used boring, scattered barrels, crates, and knickknacks, but rather because it used them so damn well. The simple act of picking up a crate was turned into a thing of joy by this game, as just the ways to dispose of the thing felt absolutely endless. A favorite was to switch to strength mode and see just how high one can throw the thing. And barrels? Endless fun, be them exploding or not. Shooting a full barrel would yield a leaking oil stream, which the then-tipped over barrel could roll along. Crysis made barrels and crates fun again.

Best Value

The Orange Box

Let’s take one of the most anticipated sequels of all time, Team Fortress 2, and combine it with the next chapter in the blockbuster Half-Life saga and sell that for $50. Better yet, let’s toss in Portal, one of the biggest surprises of 2007 with infinite replayability, and see how gamers react. Whoever had this mindset at Valve deserves a big promotion, because The Orange Box packed more AAA-quality gameplay on to a single disc than any other game this year, and that’s why it’s our pick for Best Value.

Funniest Game

The Simpsons Game

With many of the show’s writers working on the game’s script, it is no wonder that it was able to catch the character and charm of the Simpson’s Family so well. If you are a fan of the series’ brand of humor at all, you won’t be able to help but laugh your ass off the whole way through.

Best Hardware Included

Eye of Judgment

It’s no secret that we love it when a game comes bundled with some unique hardware, but the new Eyetoy for the PS3 isn’t particularly remarkable. What has us so excited though is the potential it creates. The Rockband guitar and drums were great, but we don’t see much chance of them being used outside of music games. Just keep your fingers crossed that Sony takes better advantage of it than Microsoft has of its Live Vision.

Best Videogame Babe

Nariko - Heavenly Sword

We think the picture speaks for itself.

Best Marketing

The Simpsons Game

The premise of The Simpsons Game, a parody of video games and the industry, gave the PR team over at Electronic Arts good fodder for some very creative marketing. We hear they even worked with a very unique website to extend the spoof to the video gaming media itself.

Best Remake

Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition

What’s this? A Wii remake that doesn’t simply shoehorn in waggle? Kudos to CAPCOM for combining the best parts of the Gamecube and PS2 versions of RE4 and releasing an ultimate version for fans to replay or for those that missed out on it the first time around to discover.

Most Disappointing

Unreal Tournament 3

What was Epic thinking? Somewhere in the years of development they’ve spent on Unreal Tournament III’s engine, they forgot to make a good game. Alright, that’s not entirely fair, as UT3 is still a competent online shooter. The problem is that it brings aboslutely nothing compelling to the table, and gamers might as well continue playing Unreal Tournament 2004 which runs better and isn’t gimped on gameplay modes like UT3.

Worst Game Manual

Every 2K Sports game

If you want to learn how to make a horrible game manual, look no further than a 2K Sports game. It doesn’t matter which one you buy, they’re short, all black and white, worthless manuals that do little more than rehash the feature list from the back of the game box. It’s too bad because the games themselves are deep and robust experiences. If only you knew how to play them.

Worst Box Art

The Orange Box

Throw a boring character montage together and print the game titles in a gigantic, boring font! It’s quick! It’s easy! And it looks like crap! I’m not sure if we should be blaming Valve or EA for this one, but either way it’s terrible.

Best New Gaming Website

Game Almighty

Not only did we just launch this year, but we won three Interactive Media Awards. We took top honors in the categories of Entertainment, Ratings/Reviews, and Web Design/Development, even beating out Sony’s website for Resistance: Fall of Man.

Most Overhyped Game of the Year

Halo 3

It really was just Halo 2 in HD, save for the scarab battle. Forge and replays didn’t completely change the way we look at multiplayer like Bungie promised, and Call of Duty 4 essentially nullified any reason it had for existing in the minds of quite a few.

Arcade Game of the Year

Space Giraffe

Jeff Minter is the Salvador Dali of game designers, known for creating mind-bending titles that stretch conventions and challenge players. His latest, Space Giraffe, was no different. While most quickly labeled it a Tempest clone after making the mistake of trying it for only a few minutes, those fortunate enough to dig deeper were rewarded with an amazing experience. Offering deep gameplay and challenging graphics, Space Giraffe demands you interpret on-screen action like no other game, in effect developing a new language while navigating 3D-Escher vectors that will push your orientation to the limit. Space Giraffe is not a casual game but one that hearkens back to the old days, when brutal gameplay was both fun, addicting...and hard as hell.

Best Sound

Call of Duty 4

From the fantastic sound effects to the authentic voice acting, Call of Duty 4 created one of the most immersive audio experiences to date. When combined with a good sound system, Call of Duty 4 has the potential to impress far more than any THX-enabled movie.

Best Multiplayer

Team Fortress 2

No other game comes close to the sheer variety of absurd situations that are possible with Team Fortress 2. With nine different classes to master and several unique maps to learn, Team Fortress 2 provides endless possibilities for friends to jump in and have a good time.

Worst Game of the Year

Jenga: World Tour

Pity anyone that actually spent money on this game. A classic family game that seems perfect for the Wii’s motion controls gets butchered and released as a budget title. What a surprise.

Most Influential Game

Rock Band

Guitar Hero brought rhythm games into the mainstream, but Rock Band has forever changed them. It’s no longer about a group of friends taking turns to beat high scores. Everyone’s playing together. Even if you ignore the masterful integration of several different band components, Rock Band is driving the acceptance of downloadable content like no other, with weekly music releases that put Guitar Hero’s efforts to shame.

Guilty Pleasure of the Year

Zack & Wiki

Visually it was a game that seemed to be targeted at a very young audience, but it introduced so many new and interesting ways to use the Wii remotes that we have all been caught playing it in secret on more than one occasion.

Most Influential Tech

Apple’s iPhone

iPhone just did for the cell phone industry what the iPod did for MP3 players. Whether you hate their hipster image or despise Steve Jobs, there’s no denying that Apple turned the consumer electronics world upside down with its introduction of the iPhone in 2007. From its announcement at Macworld in January to its release in the summer, no gadget had more people talking in 2007 than the iPhone.

Most Innovative

Rock Band

Electronic Arts could have taken the easy road and made Rockband simply a Guitar Hero clone with drums, but thankfully they decided to make it so much more.

Best Voice Acting

Mass Effect

It helps to have some of the best writing seen in a videogame in recent memory, but Mass Effect’s voice work was masterfully executed was easily the standout feature of Bioware’s latest epic RPG. Having conversations with random aliens across the galaxy might not sound like a lot of fun, but the branching dialogue systems each with their own engrossing conversations will have you replaying Mass Effect several times just to hear all of the outcomes.

Best Graphics: Technical

Crysis

Bar none, Crysis has the year’s best graphics. Nearly photorealistic at its most intense settings, the game pushed the boundaries like none before. Developer CryTek decided to make a game that not even the current generation of hardware can entirely cope with, a game that pushes far, far beyond what came before it. Crysis took graphics to the next level and beyond, giving an all-too brief glimpse at the future of games as we know it.

Best Graphics: Creative

Team Fortress 2

Ever wondered what it would be like to play a game that looked like Pixar’s Toy Story? Look no further than Team Fortress 2. In addition to being one of the most anticipated sequels of all time and providing one of the best multiplayer experiences this year, Team Fortress 2 had an incredible visual style to boot. It wasn’t cel-shading, but it was an impressively unique way to bring humor and pizazz to a multiplayer shooter. The animation also contributed greatly to the fun, as characters have their own unique taunts to use in the middle of the mayhem.