The first game that XBW reviewed in 2007 still remains the Third Person Shooter of choice when looking back. A couple of other titles made some impact throughout the year, notably Stranglehold and (to totally disagree with GameSpot), Kane & Lynch but Lost Planet Extreme Condition was easily XBW’s Third Person pick of the year.

What wasn’t fun about Lost Planet? It was packed with little bugs, big bugs, bigger bugs (a freaking huge moth being a weird highlight), blizzards, snow, more snow, snow storms, snow pirates, heaps of weapons and even big arse Mechs (that you could tear the guns off) throw into the mix.

The single player campaign was loads of fun and so was the Xbox Live multiplayer, which still remains an under-rated highlight of 2007.

If you overlooked Lost Planet at the start of 2007 and have a yearning for a solid, action packed romp then we definitely recommend you go and pick it up.

Unfortunately, this is a little bit of a one horse race. Although Virtua Fighter 5 also came out during the last year, it’s Naruto that takes the gold home for several reasons. First of all, it managed to make a fighting game meaningful, with story cut scenes from the TV series interlaced with in-game scenes – tracking cheeky Naruto’s path to becoming the best ninja ever.

Part RPG/Action game and part fighter, we believe that Naruto’s robust combat engine, excellent characterisation and gorgeous cell-shaded graphics make it one of the year’s best games, one that has certainly been underrated or missed by many gamers.

Do yourself a favour and grab it – we predict that in no time you’ll be collecting those hidden coins (Crackdown orb hunting style) with almost obsessive compulsion.

Besides, what other fighting game lets you do a special move that creates the illusion of a sexy woman?

OK, yes handing this award to FlatOut will not be to everyone’s liking. Yes we agree it wasn’t much more than an upgrade of FlatOut 2 but honestly, what alternative were we left with?

DiRT was great for some single player racing, and it looked freaking amazing but its multiplayer component was just ridiculous. Project Gotham 4 introduced spiffy weather effects but honestly, it did feel a bit tired and didn’t have the same long-term impact that previous PGR games did.

What FlatOut UC brought to the table was some insane racing action filled to the brim with incredible physics, cool tracks littered with thousands of objects, people flying through windscreens, destruction derby arenas, crazy mini-games and all of it playable online, relatively lag free.. even against overseas gamers.

FlatOut Ultimate Carnage was simply more fun than the other racing games released throughout 2007 and that’s all that matters.

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