"It's entertaining to see how many people think calling a game "GOTY" means anything. Guess what, just because your favorite game wasn't given an arbitrary award doesn't mean that game was any worse. "

No surprise here.

"Modern Warfare 2, all the way. "

"I wonder if threads like this are common on GiantBomb, or if these are just the caliber of mutants that only emerge from their lunacy cocoons for meaningless - albeit fun - game of the year awards.  Anyway, great work this week fellas. I appreciate your efforts. Just two things, should a similar approach for game of the year be taken in the future; 1) if something similar like this happens next year, can you put the game of the year podcast up well before the the article? Nice to hear the discussion without knowing the verdict. And 2) I'd prefer it if the console-specific awards had been spaced out over the week like your individual choices were, as well as their accompanying podcast segments. Would've been nice to have a bit more content every day this week - excluding today - and to have this 3 and half hour podcast be a more reasonable 1 and a half, as well as every other podcast this week being bumped up from 10 - 15 minutes, to 30 - 45.  Hopefully this doesn't sound "complain-y." I love the site, loved all the content this week, clicked every link, listened to every podcast, made my list, checked it twice... awesome stuff. Thanks. "

"I was expecting Batman, but this is totally deserving. It's nice to see the PS3 figuring stuff out, it did really well this year "

Yep.

Good choice GB, not my personal goty, I was way more in to Batman than U2 but still a game well worth the award.
If nothing else people cant argue that this wasn't an awesome year for games, especially ps3 ones.  

"
Yeah I completely agree. So what if Uncharted 2 got GotY, I absolutely hated it, but am not going to let it "annoy" or "frustrate" me. I know what my GotY (and my site's one) is, and everyone has their own opinion.  It pissed me off when people on our site went nuts because we didn't choose their GotY game. Like seriously, it's just a recognition, nothing else. "

Uncharted 2, not surprising. I still say Batman wins it though.

booo uncharted sucks my opinion is the only right one

WTF!!!!!!!! y n0+ Dr@g0n @g3????
 
While Dragon Age was my GOTY (though I am never 100% sure), Uncharted 2 was a worthy choice. Am just finishing up the campaign myself and, although I think it gets unnecessarily hard towards the end, it looks brilliant and plays pretty well.

While I personally enjoyed DA: Origins and Batman AA more than Uncharted 2, it is definitely worthy of the game of the year title.

this makes me want to get a ps3!

It could have been Batman, but in my opinion, Uncharted 2 was absolutely the right choice.

" I really want to play this game, yet I don't have a PS3.. damn, I wish that console wasn't so useless in the presence of a 360 I already have. "

Fantastic choice, easily the best game of the year.

The correct choice (other than SF4 anyway)

" I really want to play this game, yet I don't have a PS3.. damn, I wish that console wasn't so useless in the presence of a 360 I already have. "

Definitely the right choice, no other game demanded my attention like Uncharted did this year. I think I went through it in two days, and it takes a special game to hold my interest enough that I want to see it through immediately just to take it all in.

I like how Uncharted 2 was totally expected, but at the same time there was incredible suspense about who is gonna win after the cast's "best of" lists and the general love for games like inFAMOUS, Batman, Shadow Complex, Borderlands or Assassin's Creed II.

Great awards. Although next year, I'd divide Best Graphics into Best Technical and Best Artistic. Because some games deserved recognition because of the art style (Zeno Clash, Brutal Legend).

Oh, I'm kinda sorry for Killzone 2 getting neglected in most categories, but that's just my private whining.

IMO Batman is the more fun game. Every time there was a gunplay sequence in Uncharted 2, I felt as though I wanted to hit a magic skip button because it was so bad. Nothing like emptying a whole clip in a dude to have him not die. Plus the controller just isn't shooter friendly, at least to me. I never got frustrated with Batman for anything, so for my own little one-on-one of these two games, I'd go Batman. Just sayin'.

I thought they were going to give it to Batman but I think Nolan North gave Uncharted the edge.

And yet after playing the first one - even if I owned a PS3 - I still wouldn't buy this game...

I think Batman was better and was a more important game in the long run. But hey, Uncharted 2 is a fine pick too. Also Assassins Creed 2 would have been ok by me :P

totally agree, I really appreciate this choice. I've played all the other games that could be considered GOTY material but nothing drew me in more than uncharted and nothing came nearly as to blow me away with its stunning visuals, memorable-humour, wit, music, sound effects, believable characters and their motivation. just spectacular stuff.

I don't have a PS3 but was favouring Uncharted based on the QL's. I played the PC demo of Batman and didn't get into it at all. I'm going to give it another shot based on the amount of praise it received as I must be missing something.

" @Siris said:

" I really want to play this game, yet I don't have a PS3.. damn, I wish that console wasn't so useless in the presence of a 360 I already have. "

that is your opinion and your choice. PS3 had FAR superior exclusives in 09, it's only 299$, free online. keep on playing only on 360 but please spare us of your stupid comments. Don't comment on something you don't have...it only makes you sound biased. "

"Nothing like emptying a whole clip in a dude to have him not die."

I would've been happy either way, Batman or Uncharted.

I will never play it due to zero interest in the PS3, but it seems like a balanced choice. Well done.

"tactile feel" is a tautology, like "milky latte", or "infantile child". Both words have the same meaning, except one is of Latin origin while the other is Anglo-Saxon (or whatever). There is no tactile smell, look, sound or taste ... tactile is the adjective to the noun: "feeling", due to the lack of a word like "feely" or "feelicious".  
 
I understand that even when the only thing people feel in a game is a greasy controller, they can project themselves into the situation of the hero for it to be "felt", in the same way that amputees sometimes "feel" their missing limb. Our brains can do that to a certain extent, and this ability - learning through observation, imitation of others -  is vital in learning sports like skateboarding.

" And yet after playing the first one - even if I owned a PS3 - I still wouldn't buy this game... "

Batman and Uncharted 2 are such good games that either one could have won. Batman is my favorite game of 2009 but Uncharted 2 is the overall best game of the year.

I can't argue with the choice.  It was my number one, too although I am still not completely satisfied with my list.  I haven't played Dragon Age: Origins and I suspect that might supersede it in my book simply because I love a good Bioware RPG more than practically anything.  Well, I know eventually since I am downloading the game off Steam as I write this.

I suppose its probably the right choice but i would maybe say assassins creed 2 would maybe be my best game of 2009 With uncharted 2nd. 
I really dont know about batman as i played quite alot of it then all of a sudden got very bored with it but all this talk of it makes me want to go and stick it on now and try finish it.

props to the giantbomb team. Definitely the best GOTY display compared to other websites.
Fun categories, nice reveals and excellent choice to do a new quick look of all of the winners to give us an insight to why you chose the games you did!
 
Thank you.

Thumbs down for Giantbomb falling over themselves for graphics and presentation and picking a third person, cover-based shooter as game of the year.  Yeah, they had great mo-cap.  So what.  This game didn't REALLY do anything to advance the industry because only a handful of studios are even going to be able to afford that level of voice talent and motion-capture tech. 
 
Batman really brought things back to basics and put together an amazing gameplay experience.  So what if the predator stuff was a little easy?  It was FUN.  So what if there were a lot of gargoyles.  You know what?  I am GLAD they made it all gargoyles.  Would it have been better to put different looking rafters in each area?  They had a gameplay mechanic and they stuck to it, building it throughout the game.   They gave you options if you didn't want to use the gargoyles.  Uncharted was stop-pop-stop-pop, do some climbing, stop-pop-stop-pop, do some climbing, shoot an unarmored boss in the head 77 times, stop-pop, ad nauseum.   It didn't even get harder or develop the gameplay throughout the game, they just through more enemies at you and they took more hits.  There were character arcs, but no gameplay arc.  The most "OH SHIT THAT'S AWEOME" moment took place a third into the game.
 
Uncharted 2 was a great game because of those production values, don't get me wrong, but they did NOTHING to advance the craft of making videogames, other than show that rich studios now have the tech to pull off some convincing cutscenes and backgrounds to wrap around their trite and tired gameplay.

"Uncharted 2 was a great game because of those production values, don't get me wrong, but they did NOTHING to advance the craft of making videogames, other than show that rich studios now have the tech to pull off some convincing cutscenes and backgrounds to wrap around their trite and tired gameplay. "

" Thumbs down for Giantbomb falling over themselves for graphics and presentation and picking a third person, cover-based shooter as game of the year.  Yeah, they had great mo-cap.  So what.  This game didn't REALLY do anything to advance the industry because only a handful of studios are even going to be able to afford that level of voice talent and motion-capture tech. 
 
Batman really brought things back to basics and put together an amazing gameplay experience.  So what if the predator stuff was a little easy?  It was FUN.  So what if there were a lot of gargoyles.  You know what?  I am GLAD they made it all gargoyles.  Would it have been better to put different looking rafters in each area?  They had a gameplay mechanic and they stuck to it, building it throughout the game.   They gave you options if you didn't want to use the gargoyles.  Uncharted was stop-pop-stop-pop, do some climbing, stop-pop-stop-pop, do some climbing, shoot an unarmored boss in the head 77 times, stop-pop, ad nauseum.   It didn't even get harder or develop the gameplay throughout the game, they just through more enemies at you and they took more hits.  There were character arcs, but no gameplay arc.  The most "OH SHIT THAT'S AWEOME" moment took place a third into the game.  Uncharted 2 was a great game because of those production values, don't get me wrong, but they did NOTHING to advance the craft of making videogames, other than show that rich studios now have the tech to pull off some convincing cutscenes and backgrounds to wrap around their trite and tired gameplay. "

Both are great games and they spent over an hour arguing who should win so I don't think anyone has the right to say they were wrong. In the end they had to choose one game and Ryan put up a better argument. 
 
And those who are saying they are wrong without even having played both games, shouldn't you be on Gametrailers?

"  This game didn't REALLY do anything to advance the industry because only a handful of studios are even going to be able to afford that level of voice talent and motion-capture tech.  "

I have to say a big congratulations to the staff for all this end of year review stuff and a thumbs up for picking Uncharted 2 as their GOTY. It isn't a game that does anything too ground breaking or new in regards to gameplay mechanics etc. But it takes all of what it has and gives it such an extensive and high level of polish that the overall resulting quality of the game is just utterly mind blowing. Games don't always need to be pushing some new ground breaking technology or gameplay mechanics to advance the industry, sometimes going back over what has already been covered before and improving on it so dramatically provides an overall superior gaming experience.
 
Uncharted 2 does that, it refines character animations, voice acting, visual quality and many other things to such an extent it feels like they've reinvented how best to handle these things. A shining example of a game which proves if enough actual effort and time is put into the design and development the resulting product can be, for lack of a better word, a masterpiece of engineering and artistic quality.
 
Congratulations to the runners up as well. I did think Batman: Arkham Asylum might steal the GOTY award away from Uncharted 2 but I'm even more excited to see it came in as a runner up considering this is a game that was released by a little known developer with next to no experience. And they provide us with this mind blowing game that truly shows how to handle the use of a creative license when making a video game. Great job to Rock Steady!

"

I suppose its probably the right choice but i would maybe say assassins creed 2 would maybe be my best game of 2009 With uncharted 2nd. 
I really dont know about batman as i played quite alot of it then all of a sudden got very bored with it but all this talk of it makes me want to go and stick it on now and try finish it.

 

"

 There isn't one element of originality in Batman Arkham . 

And somehow I think if Chair can afford Nolan North that means he's not particularly expensive or exclusive to hire. 

u mad? "  

Funny, I have the same thoughts about the Batman game. Strip away the comic license and Batman suddenly becomes a very standard game. "  

I am surprised Batman is runner-up.