Gamasutra.com has their top 5 PC games for 2008, and Sins of a Solar Empire is on that list! This covers the top 5 games out of 15 "standout" titles from the year.
"One of the year's great success stories was this space strategy title from Vancouver-based Ironclad Games, which put the small developer on the map and scored another hit for its increasingly influential publisher Stardock. Ostensibly a member of the "4X" genre of domination-oriented titles, Sins of a Solar Empire, with its explicit focus on battles and its real-time nature, is more like an RTS with 4X scale."
Check out the full article at Gamasutra.com.