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Best New Non-Player Character
Tenzin
It must say something about the quality of his actions that he won us over without ever speaking a word of English. In fact, he wins Drake over too, who comes to depend on him not just as a comrade in arms but as a friend, in the face of what seem like impossible odds. If you were deep in the mountains, fighting against ferocious yak demons, an army of well-armed mercenaries, and a psychopathic warlord bent on world domination, you'd want a guy like Tenzin on your side.
The Northies - Best Performance By Nolan North
Nathan Drake
The performance-capture technology Naughty Dog used for Uncharted 2 also means that Nathan Drake actually shares some of Nolan North's physicality. Frankly, the first time we saw an actual image of Nolan North, it was a little surprising, and more than a little disappointing, that he didn't look like a flesh-and-blood Nathan Drake. This pretty much sums up how quintessentially Northian the role of Nathan Drake is, and why it easily wins the 2009 Northie.
Most Disappointing Game
Scribblenauts
But we didn't expect Scribblenauts' controls to be so wonky and hard to handle, its puzzles and challenges so inconsistent. What good is the ability to create a zillion objects if only a minority of them behave like you want them to? Most of us ended up picking half a dozen functional tools and playing through the whole game with them... which kind of defeats the whole concept. That concept is still an enticing one, but Scribblenauts could have used some more time in the hopper before it made its way to shelves.
Best Competitive Multiplayer
Modern Warfare 2
But plenty of games have offered you a choice in weapons. Modern Warfare 2 goes beyond the gun with its extensive perk and attachment system. So if you're constantly firing that machine gun so much that ammo is becoming scarce, then you can slap the Scavenger perk on that class to make ammo pickups plentiful. If you want to be fast or quiet, there's stuff like Lightweight, Ninja, and Commando, which makes that knife of yours stick out just a little bit more than the other guy's.
While everyone claims to have found the "best" loadout that unbalances the game and always ends up getting shouted down as "cheap" by message board fans around the world, it's less about the class you build and more about effectively matching a class to your playstyle. When you finally get that stuff honed in, Modern Warfare 2 takes on a whole new feel.
Of course, it's got the modes to back all of that up and make the run from level 1 to level 70 exciting, and the fast-moving, almost arcade-like feel of the action makes it high-powered. Modern Warfare 2 is a constantly-on kind of game, and that's just another reason why it's the best competitive multiplayer game of 2009.
Weirdest Game
Noby Noby Boy
Look, if you can figure out what's going on in Noby Noby Boy, write to us care of this station. Actually, you know what? Forget about it. We don't want to know the truth about Keita Takahashi's stretching game, where BOY must stretch himself out as often as possible and report his length to GIRL, who is stretching her way past multiple planets thanks to the reported lengths of all the people playing BOY around the world. We can't even bring ourselves to see what the recent planet unlocks add to the game. All we know for sure is that this game is weird. So weird that it's barely even a game. But if there is a game in there somewhere, we're pretty sure that we're winning said game. And we're pretty sure that it's the weirdest thing to come out in 2009, too.
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