It's that time of year again, Christmas has come and gone. Rather than buy you socks or a stinking shirt you'll never wear, some kind distant relative has thrown a stack of cash into an envelope for your present and now it's burning a big hole in your pocket.

Welcome to the Xbox World Australia Game of the Year awards for 2007. Maybe you're looking for something to spend that extra cash on, perhaps there's a killer game that you overlooked?

Hopefully these awards will help solve that problem for you, as well as letting everyone know which games from 2007 rocked the XBW gaming den.

Which ones sucked? Which ones kicked arse? Read on and all shall be revealed...

Ok, well it wasn’t just the promise of participation in the Halo 3 BETA, well maybe it was, but Crackdown was one of the first highly anticipated games of 2007. Promising a fully unlocked open world, plenty of big explosions, loads of action and online co-operative play, Crackdown pretty much delivered on everything it set out to achieve.

As your agents abilities grew, the sensation found when jumping between the rooftops of skyscrapers and raining rocket launcher death down on the street gangs was, at times, exhilarating.

Sure, there were a few issues such as the non-existent story (not a big complaint) and that once you started to increase your abilities, the game became too easy. Most of the XBW team didn’t have a problem with that and found it nice to be able to actually completely finish a game for once.

While the anticipated new island filled with new missions didn’t eventuate, the developers made good on their Downloadable Content promise and gave us a kit of new weapons, vehicles, new achievements and new game modes as well as the ‘Keys to the City’ which was the cheat mode to end all cheat modes.

The XBW crew loved Crackdown and with it’s massive explosions and constant action easily deserves our “Best Action Game of 2007” award.

While Assassin's Creed was the recipient of vast arrays of criticism, it's clear to us at XBW that blood, sweat and tears contributed to some of the most amazing production values seen in a video game.

Assassin's Creed delivered a living, breathing world where you as Altair can exist, and experience the Holy Land as it was in the 12th century. While the story told is rather ambiguous, it can only be assumed future installations will eliminate uncertainty.

Aside from that, the sense of adventure is certainly evident as the standard platformer is revolutionized, giving you liberty to scale any building and ascend to the skies.

On top of the general freedoms on offer, Assassin's Creed also has a simple, yet effective, combat system where Altair can deal out the hurt in some of the most brutal sword-play ever seen in pixels, even if the engine does highlight the game's not-so-bright A.I. Assassin's Creed is an adventure to be experienced.

Well it certainly was a big year on the Xbox 360 for fans of this genre. There was certainly no shortage of choice with new FPS games appearing on store shelves almost every month.

There was a lot to choose from, Halo 3 & Call of Duty 4 just to name a couple of the biggest games. But BioShock ended up showing them all how a story driven shooter, dripping with atmosphere is done.

Filled with references and ideals lifted from beliefs such as socialism and objectivism, at times it felt like you’d actually stepped into a living Ayn Rand novel.

Some people criticised the game because it virtually copied the formula used in System Shock 8 years ago and that the Vita Chambers pretty much made the game way too easy, well yes these are legitimate points, but on the Xbox 360, and even on the original Xbox, there's never been a game from the FPS genre that drew you into its world and story like BioShock did in 2007.

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