For lack of a better list of categories, I'll just go with the ones Giant Bomb used last year.  Also, as I can only definitively talk about games I've already played, those are the only ones eligible.  As such, there will be no "sports games" anything because I didn't play any this year....nor will I next year.  In fact, my new years resolution is to finally reach 100,000 gamerscore with no sports games on my profile.
 
 

• Best Explosions:  Why this game?  It's certainly not known for its explosions.  Well those of you who played it might remember a little scene with a helecopter, a tumbling train car, and a tunnel that still gives me goosebumps thinking about it.  The explosions in the rest of the game didn't look bad either.
  

  

• Best Classic Revival:  I had more fun with this game than any other arcade title of the year.  From the weapons to the physics to the inevitable "OH SHIT"   moments that occur in every single match, this game is by far the best.  It took me from not being even slightly interested in the franchise, to a diehard fan.
  

  

  
  
• Best Multiplayer Game: Oh like you didn't already know
  

  

  
  
• Best Premise:  A shooter with infinite gun variations and the possibility of randomly finding a weapon no one else in the world will ever have?  Fuck yeah!
  

  

  
  
• Character I'd Most Like to Party With: He may be my worst new character, but this dude knows how to kick it
  

  

  
  
• Character Whose Phone Calls I'm Least Likely to Return:  No, I don't want...you're just going to ruin my house...I don't care if you're bored
  

  

  
  
• Best Debut:  I don't think there's a game this year where I'm more interested in what's going to happen in the sequel.  It's fun, addictive, crazy, awesome, and I want more
  

  

  
  
• Most Satisfying Sequel:  This game stepped it up on every level from the graphics, to the story, and even has the second best multiplayer of the year.
  

  

  
  
• Best Graphics:  Other games are pretty, but none really come close to this masterpiece of eye candy
  

  

  
  
• Best Use of User-Generated Content: LittleBigPlanet is still supported hugely by its community and turning out amazing content on a daily basis, but since it didn't really come out this year, gotta give it to this one.  A new user can make a fun, challenging level in under an hour.  Infinite replayability, so why the hell would anyone buy that track pack DLC?
  

  

  
  
• Best "Games-As-Art" Game:  It's barely a game, but its uses of color and level design will have you marveling at the pretty flowers all the way through
  

  

  
  
• Best Downloadable Game: What can I say?  It's almost not a fair fight.  The graphics, premise and story blow every other downloadable game away.
  

  

  
  
• Best PSP Game: So great.  So addictive.  On multiple occasions, it had me bobbing up and down making other people in the airport very nervous
  

  

  
  
• Best DS Game:  I may have only played it for a few minutes at a Gamestop, but that was the most fun I've had with a DS this year.
  

  

  
  
• Best Game I Didn't Play:  I got so close to buying this thing so many times.  I mean I'm going to play it eventually...stop looking at me like that!
  

  

  
  
• Soulja Boy Award for Games To Play If You Drink And Get Drunk or Smoke And Get High: Dude. I'm gonna stretch as far as I can, fall off the world, and come out the chimney.  And then the whole city's gonna ride on my back while I wrap myself around the clouds.  Then I'm gonna cut myself in half, but I'll be okay after I eat my own ass
  

  

  
  
  
  
• Take A Break Award:  Other than going for one annoying trophy, this is the most relaxing time you'll spend with a game for a long while.
  

  

  
  
• Most Disappointing Game:  I honestly thought this would be game of the year.  Sadly, what I was left with was a pretty average experience.
  

  

  
  
• Best Xbox 360-Only Game:  With so many multiplatform games, the 360 doesn't really get much all to itself.  It's a pretty hard choice and ODST would probably get it if I had played that game.  In the end though, gotta give it to this one.  It may have the most impossible achievements ever, but it's still a damn good game.
  

  

  
  
• Best PlayStation 3-Only Game:  Now this one's hard.  Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 are both fantastic games, but in the end, gotta give it to the one that wowed me the most and kept me coming back long after other games came out.
  

  

  
  
• Best Wii-Only Game:  Of all the platforms, the Wii underperformed the most spectacularly in 2009.  Still, there are a few diamonds in the mountain of shit that is the 2009 Wii releases, my favorite of which is:
  

  

  
  
• Best PC-Only Game: In terms of exclusives, the PC had the least in 2009.  Thank you, pirates.  You've convinced so many people to make more games for us console users.  Still, there is at least one game I can recomend that didn't come out for any other platform.
  

  

  
  
• Best Multiplatform Game:  Damn you Infinity Ward for showing up everyone else trying to make content for every system.
  

  

  
  
• 2009's 2008 Game of the Year:  Fallout 3 was a close second with so many DLC packs released, but damn it if the community didn't pull through for this one the whole year.
  

  

  
  
• Game of the Year:  It was a tight race between Modern Warfare 2 and this one, but its story helps take it above and beyond anything that multiplayer powerhouse has accomplished.
  

  

  
  

So I just went prestige and I had all my guns reset so I decided to try playing like someone I met the day before since it requires nothing but the good ol' handy knife.  Basically, for the perks, I put on marathon, lightweight, and commando.  With this, you're already running crazy fast with what might as well be a Halo sword, but once you unlock the tactical knife for a pistol, you're like an effing ninja.  Where this play style really comes to its prime though, is when you unlock a care package in a match, which for whatever weird reason, increases your speed when you're holding it.  You can't use any guns, but your knife remains active, as does any equipment you might have, and you run in sort of a crouching position.  So the result of all this is running around like the fucking flash just shanking everyone on the other team.  By the time they hear your footsteps (which are loud and on rapidfire), they're already dead.  The bane of my existance is the enemy UAV, but other than that, this is the most fun I have had playing this game multiplayer.  I average 17-ish kills in any given team deathmatch using this insane method.

Originally, console-based DLC was just this occasional thing that only crazy high-profile games did, so there wasn't as much to choose from.  This lack of content is why people still condemn Bethesda for horse armor despite there now being far worse deals out there, just because there was so little available at the time.  Still, reactions to terrible DLC deals are strange even now and I feel like it needs to change.  There is so much downloadable content for stuff that it's unreasonable to take it personally anymore.  I was just listening to the bombcast, and the conversation about the Animal Crossing clock and calculator made me realize something.  People don't just shrug off bad DLC deals and not buy them.  Instead every downloadable thing that someone doesn't want to buy is taken as a personal insult.  You aren't obligated to buy any of it so if it seems unapealing, just don't.  You don't need to make a big deal out of not wanting to buy something. 

It's the same reason you don't walk into a museum gift shop and yell at the manager for charging #25 for a rock with the museum's name etched into it.  You leave the museum and spend that money on something dumb that other people would see as being an equally bad purchase.  People who play a lot of games aren't usually into the dumb seemingly overpriced stuff, but there are people out there who are.  Who's to say a dumb little Animal crossing clock isn't exactly what many fans are looking for?  The average guy going into that museum doesn't want to buy the stupid rock, but to the tourist who has been wanting to go to the museum all year, it's the perfect souveneer.  It's a useless paperweight to some, but as the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure.  If you don't want to buy the dumb game thing, guess what; it isn't meant for you.  It's meant for the massive fan of that game's franchise.  I bought every add-on for Ninja Gaiden 2 because I absolutely love that game, but I absolutely understand why other people wouldn't want to pay $2.50 each for a new costume.  I didn't, and won't, buy any of the Street Fighter 4 costumes, but I don't take it personally  that they're charging so damn much for each pack because I know there are people who are into that sort of thing and would gladly pay double that price.

Since the day Street Fighter 4 came out, I have been adamant about my desire not to buy the game.  At first I was vocal about it all over the place, evolving as more and more people yelled at me for not owning it, from "The game looks cool but it's not for me" to "no, that game's way overrated, I'd rather save my money", and eventually to "STREET FIGHTER 4 SUCKS BALLS!" as I reached critical mass of annoyance towards people wanting me to buy this game.  Originally, I thought people's interest would wear down and eventually they would stop expressing their shock and dismay over the fact that I had not, and did not intend to, buy it.  But it never stopped despite my never actually bringing up the game in any conversation anymore.  Even last night, people on my friends list insisted to me that it was a mandatory $65 that I had to spend whether I wanted to or not.  Even now on XBL with people still messaging me about it, and with every 5 posts on this forum are still saying how amazing the game is even a month after it came out (something that never happened on these forums for any other game by the way), it does not cease. Well I give up.   the combination of the jerks on this website and the jerks on my XBL friends list have finally worn me down and today I finally lost the fight so today after depositing a check in my bank account, I walked into the gamestop and ashamed with myself, told the clerk "so I guess I'm buying Street Fighter 4 today" to which he, fitting with everyone I know, replied "YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED IT YET!?"  So now here I sit, writing this instead of playing the game because I know the second I open it, the failure of my quest not to buy the game will have been cemented for all eternity.  I fear that when I finish posting this, I will imediately rip open the game and start my quest to unlock Dan.

Originally when I purchased the Xbox 360 console, I just didn't play any sports games because I didn't think they were the least bit interesting and along with RTS games, I just don't like them.  Then I rented Fight Night Round 3 which froze before getting to the title screen, but it was active in my account just long enough to be stuck there with a 0-point label in my achievement status (or whatever you call that).  Now with NXE, I've deleted it from my system and I've become wierdly proud and obsessive over the fact that I no longer have any sports games in my gaming history, mainly because those are largely associated with having easy ass achievements and I'm some sort of elitist douchebag because I haven't played any for points.  In fact, when I was visiting my parents house for christmas, my step brother offered to let me play his copy of Madden 2009 (I was trying to get 50,000 achievement points before the end of the new year, a goal which I barely completed), but I never played it because that meant I would then have a sports game infecting my profile.  Now I wonder:  What if they actually release a sports game that I'm interested in?  I mean what if they remake Sega Soccer Slam?  Dear god, what will I do if that happens?  Will I stay away from it just because of the fact that it's a sports game?  Or will I play and get points in it despite it being a sports game because of the undeniable fact that Sega Soccer Slam with online capabilities would contain so much awesomeness that space-time would rip in two?

I absolutely loved the first season of Heroes.  Even though it wasn't as good (because of the strike), I was also a big fan of the second season.  But this third season....what the fuck?  The actors are still top notch, but the writing and character development are the worst I've seen since my days of watching Power Rangers. 

I mean seriously, this last episode had so many good things going for it, but the writing turned around and just raped the story at every turn with everyone doing things completely out of character, and absolutely no subtlety in the lines.  When I finally thought Noah did something cool and got it across to the viewer perfectly, Clair's mom completely ruins everything by going "You're using them as bait!?"

I've reached the point where they've just killed off so many people, brought them back, made them unrelatable, and sent them into stupid ass situations, that I just don't care what happens in this series anymore.  What happened to stuff like Company Man?  That was by far the best episode and they haven't even tried anything like that since.  Unless they fire whatever monkeys they have shitting on paper and calling it a script, Heroes has officially died.

(I accidently posted this in OT before realizing I wasn't making a blog)

Hm...well 2008 was the year of awesome sequels if nothing else.  Effing everything came out this year.  What about 2009 though?  Well there is one title everyone seems to be forgetting:  DARK VOID!

10. Tales of Vesperia