Rampancy

Falling just one spot short of GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann getting the axe for his "tone", the story of Bungie flying the Microsoft coop makes #10 on Game Daily's list of big gaming stories in 2007:

Although Bungie has said that right now their focus is on Xbox 360 and only Xbox 360, at some point in the future you never know what might happen. The fact that Microsoft let Bungie leave in that sense is somewhat perplexing. It's not as if they're stacked with plenty of great first-party devs.

To me, though, the idea that a major console manufacturer would let its previously wholly owned #1 first party developer go independent is slightly more surprising than a game reviewer getting fired for a bad review (or for other reasons, depending which story you read).

GameSpy wants you to know they love Halo 3. They really do. It's just that 2007 was just too good a year for the console, and well... a game that executes really well on a known formula while tinkering with details and adding some new features just isn't quite enough to make the top half of a top ten list this year.

Halo 3 is a carefully tuned refinement of one of the most successful game formulas of all time, and innovative gameplay mechanics don't really figure into that equation. So, while Halo 3 accomplished amazing things in terms of its impact on the burgeoning Xbox Live community by introducing the Forge (object-oriented level editor) and an impressive set of video-editing tools, the frenetic multiplayer remained mostly the same, with just a few tweaks (HD graphics, deployable equipment, new guns) to bring the experience into the new generation.

Ironically, the Halo game even Halo lovers love to hate-- Halo 2-- got comparatively more accolades than either the original or the final chapter, despite the fact that many fans like both of them better.

Oh well. So Halo 3 takes the #6 spot, behind Mass Effect ("brilliantly stylish"), Rock Band ("magical balance between musical experience and videogame"), Orange Box ("best gaming deal of 2007"), BioShock ("a beautifully designed and wonderfully thought-out world") and Call of Duty 4 ("It isn't set during WWII!").