There is no game of the year.

I'm trying really hard not to get too caught up in the Game Of The Year discussion again.

And the entire affair is completely undermined

Let's talk about it, giantbomb. 

I'm trying really hard not to get too caught up in the Game Of The Year discussion again.

And the entire affair is completely undermined

Let's talk about it, giantbomb. 

There are plenty of good and excellent games this year.
But in my opinion there is really no one title that clearly rises above the rest this year. And even the best ones have plenty of issues.
Also eating a mars bar while taking a shit is easy, I do it all the time just not usually a mars bar but a lion bar.

While I do think it's fun obsessing about which is a better game, You're kinda right. I, like you, pretty much didn't stop playing ME2. unlike you, I also didn't stop playing RDR. (almost wrote DDR...). 
Civ V, Assassin's Creed Bro, Skate 3, Lara Croft, etc. All amazing games, but how the fuck do you compare Civ 5 with Skate 3 ? So you're right. 
Marshmellow Peeps GOTY is THIS.

Wait, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a game that people are forgetting? It got a place in my GOTY blog that I've already written.

It's no different this year than last year and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that.

All who finished Mass Effect 2 in less than 25 hours played it wrong!!!

This whole year was "meh" for me. But if I'm going to pick a specific game, it's Mass Effect 2.

I think you're forgetting a little game called Super Metroid. Thought so. THOUGHT SO. Game of the year 2010.

No More Heroes 2 was also really good. Damn this game had a lot of good years.

Yea, I'm sticking to that.

Like last year, when they sort of tied between Batman and Uncharted 2 this year has no clear winners. 
But then again there's not something as the 'best game'. 
Personal taste is such a deciding factor. No love for StarCraft 2, Red Dead or Halo from me for example.  
 
Personally, Mass Effect 2 gets my vote. Played through it numerous times and I've put it in my 360 again last week.

"Have you ever tried eating a Mars Bar whilst taking a shit? It's harder than you might think... "

My game of the year list consists of all the games I didn't play. If it was all the games I did play it would look like this. 
 
Halo: Reach 
Starcraft II 7-hour trial
Civilization V Demo 
Super Meat Boy 
Costume Quest  
LIMBO Trial 
Monday Night Combat Trial 
Deathspank Trial 
Dead Rising 2: Case Zero Trial 
Shank trial 
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light trial 
Transformers: War for Cybertron demo
 
Here's the game of the year list of games I didn't play in no particular order. 
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood 
Mass Effect 2 
Starcraft 2 
Super Mario Galaxy 2 
Red Dead Redemption 
Call of Duty: Black Ops 
Just Cause 2 
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX 
Goldeneye 007 
Singularity 
Alpha Protocol 
Disney Epic Mickey 
NBA Jam 
DKCountry Returns 
Vanquish 
Comic Jumper  
Metroid: Other M 
Super Street Fighter IV 
 
I should've bought more games this year.

I got a fairly standard list, boring stuff, but:

Tho it's not my game of the year the game that really stands out to me is Darksiders .
 
Here's a new IP that despite limited marketing, a shaky economy, an iffy name, getting hammered with accusations of it being a half-assed God of War and Zelda rip-off, and being released with a fairly serious technical issue (that screen-tearing really was something else) still managed to pull itself out of total darkness based purely on the merits of it's game itself.
 
Sure it wasn't Arkham Asylum on either a critical or financial level, but considering the situation I'm both surprised and impressed that this game didn't fall directly on it's face Tony Hawk shred-style.

Yeah, this year was a pretty great game for years. I alone can think of three or four games right off the top of my head that I believe are instant classic, even though a couple of them are flawed in a lot of ways (cough, Fallout New Vegas and Deadly Premonition, cough). 

I kind of feel like you're right.  Last year Uncharted 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum were fairly obvious choices that everyone could agree on.  Same thing was true back in 2008, with GTA IV and MGS4 (and Fallout 3 would have been up there too if people had had more time to play it).  This year is a complete mess as far as what is the "best" game.  I didn't play Mass Effect 2 or StarCraft II, so I almost feel like my opinion is voided right out of the gate.  That being said, I feel like Red Dead Redemption, Super Mario Galaxy 2, or Heavy Rain is my "game of the year," whatever the hell that means.

Mass Effect 2 just wants to be inside you^^

Peace Walker is my GOTY.suck it haters :V

Mass Effect 2 is the GOTY imho, there were alot of killer games this year. But nothing completely sucked me in like ME2 did... not even RDR

"

I'm trying really hard not to get too caught up in the Game Of The Year discussion again.

I have a feeling nobody appreciates me spraying my opinion everywhere like a feral tom....SNIP"  

In my opinion, Mass Effect 2 beats out Starcraft II mainly due to the latter's use of space truckers, and the former's use of space bitches.  

There is only Zuul.

" @Sweep said:

"

I'm trying really hard not to get too caught up in the Game Of The Year discussion again.

I have a feeling nobody appreciates me spraying my opinion everywhere like a feral tom....SNIP"  

 Except there it is, all over my GB. Thanks man. "

I thought the first half of the year was pretty weak, but the fall made up for it.
 
My favorite game of the year has been Super Meat Boy though. So good.

Have you ever thought, why does it have to be a "list"? 
 
As you so eloquently put it in another prodigious blog, it's hard to pinpoint a single game with no regard to all the trials and retributions that we went through playing say:  Super Meat Boy or Starcraft II. You simply can't. 
 
I can though make a collection of games that I feel were the Best of The Year, with no particular order. That way I can create a conclusive effort to minimize my top 10 most Enjoyed/Beloved/ "Insert Awesome Adjective Here" Games of the Year. I can rely on my experience with those genres and with a little bit of icing on top, I think those ten are going to be hard to arrange in a single place but hey, that's the beauty of squeezing your Top 10 Games of The Year, isn't it? :D

I'd rather talk about the failed promise of so many games this year. ME2, included, to a certain extent (though, it IS one of my favourite games at this point). 
 
Edit: Blog ahoy!

i found this year to be quite mentally fatiguing, with so many good games coming out... honestly, my brain is too exhaused from all of this to choose a GOTY.

I have no interest in picking one game that stands above others as the peak of 2010.
 
I do have interest in picking out my favorite one I played from 2010.

A big part of it for me this year was how much I wanted to get back to a game when I wasn't playing it, or how much I wanted to play it again after finishing. 
That's part of what really sunk RDR for example; I started out having a blast, and then near the end I felt like it was more of a chore to finish it. My flip side were games like ME:2, and AC: Brotherhood, where after finishing the main story, I've still been interested to play more of the game.

I think that the GOTYs are one of the most interesting past of the videogames history. All the discussion is fascinating to me. @Sweep: Did you choose a GOTY or what? Be a man and say it. 
 
Edit: Either this year it's fairly simple and it's Red Dead or they will be forever trying to come up with either ME2 and AC Brotherhood. 

" I think that the GOTYs are one of the most interesting past of the videogames history. All the discussion is fascinating to me. @Sweep: Did you choose a GOTY or what? Be a man and say it.  Edit: Either this year it's fairly simple and it's Red Dead or they will be forever trying to come up with either ME2 and AC Brotherhood.  "

I didn't actually play that many games. I was busy getting my on campus experience for my teaching credentials.

I bought and played 8 video games that were released this year, so my overall opinion probably has its shortcomings. I can honestly say that Mass Effect 2 was a great game. I played it on my Xbox 360 and the day after I finished the story I bought it for my PC and started playing it again. That surprised me, but it goes to show how much I enjoyed that game.

Easy. Cataclysm > all.
 
But then I think of Heavy Rain, and Alan Wake, and Mass Effect 2, and Starcraft 2, and Civ 5, and SSF4, and God of War 3, and...
 
Yeah, so many awesome games this year. That's not even half of 'em.

This is totally what makes GiantBomb's GOTY deliberations the best GOTY awards on the net. It's not just about the winner, it's about how you got there, and it's why I'm doing a deliberation with my friend to do our GOTY lists. I can't honestly tell you what even MY Top Ten is in order. There are SO MANY GAMES that I loved this year that it's really absurd. Many years, it's easy to pick a #1 game. Last year, NOTHING stood up to Assassin's Creed II. The year before that, it was entirely about Fallout 3. For me, 2007 was Year of the BioShock. But this year...man, it's ENTIRELY about the deliberations that get me to that point, because for once every game is almost equally amazing.

I can see the point of the whole "comparing Eagles and Triangles" argument, but there are plenty of other mediums where we do the same thing... music has the grammys (as regrettable as that is), and movies have the oscars (slightly less regrettable). Half the fun of choosing a GOTY is putting games of completely different styles head to head. The other half of the fun is arguing about it.