7. Viva Pinata -- Okay, the opening experience is pretty rough, the interface clunky, and the choice of your avatar being a disembodied cursor is bizarre to me in a kids game.  But what an addictive game it is!  I'm breeding Raisants and farming Buzzlegums and evolving Redhotts and planting Gem Trees and in general having the best strategy / resource management experience I've ever had on a console.  Rare really delivered on this one, and I expect it to be a "slow burn" game with long legs at retail.

6. Magic Online: Time Spiral -- Magic Online continues to take more money from me each year than any game I play (aside, perhaps from Craps).  Time Spiral is a fantastic followup, a great way of showing how Magic re-invents itself each year and constantly impresses with it's ability to feel "fresh".  Having timeshifted cards from old sets (that really look like old-design Magic cards!) is a brilliant touch.

5. Oblivion -- I admit the previous Elder Scrolls games never quite captured my interest despite a love of the huge epic feel and open world they focus on.  But Oblivion finally got the formula right for me.  Sure I would have loved to see some of the bugs fixed and the awful auto-balancing dealt with more gracefully, but still Oblivion was a fantastic world I couldn't wait to explore.

Man, picking just 10 is so hard...