What's wrong with NSMB Wii? Retarded Wii motion controls and lack of Classic Controller support aside, it's easily a top 10 game.

Retro Game Challenge was also awesome, nice to see it appear on someone's list. Spot #10 sounds about right with all the competition it has.

Exactly. RGC was a really good and unique game. I had forgotten it came out this year.

GameSpy.com GOTY:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

The inclusion of Plants vs. Zombies is

Added to OP:

gamespy - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

GameSpy.com GOTY

GOTY is Flower.

Gametrailers cheesed out this year, giving a "single player GOTY" and a "multiplayer GOTY".

The winners are the obvious titles (Uncharted and MW2), and both were nominated for both. Uncharted did win more awards overall though.

As much as I love Flower, for me the Game of the Year should, above all, be inarguably a game. I'm still not sure Flower is one.

It is a beautiful experience in either case.

I have no problem with this. How many people are talking about the single player CoD game? How many are going on and on about the Uncharted MP? They both shine in different areas for different reasons. It might be a cop out, but I'm down with it.

So give me a definition of "game".

Killin lots of Shit.

By this logic, Pac-Man is not a game, as they are in essence the same thing.

I actually played it a bit today...fun co-op. It probably is top-10, but it's not #2.

I'm sure it's a fine game. I just don't get how they could include it at the expense of Uncharted or MW2.

I guess sites do this kind of thing to be controversial and drive up traffic, but my guess is that it only works in the short term, as it makes it hard to take them seriously.

IMO, of course.

Pac-Man has scores, a leaderboard, objects worth a variety of points, an objective, the possibility of losing "lives". Flower has, maybe, an objective (to finish the level).

Look, I don't want to knock Flower -- I really like it. But come on, how could it be Game of the Year material? Yes, it does something different, but it really doesn't do much of anything gameplay-wise. It's sort of like picking a track off a Phillip Glass soundtrack recording as "Song Of The Year".

plus in Pac Man you do this ^
and eat a lot

Tracer has already indicated that his sole criteria is innovation, so by that measure it certainly makes sense.

Having finally gotten around to playing Batman: Arkham Asylum (about 2/3 of the way through), I can now safely say that Borderlands is my choice for GOTY.

I finished Uncharted2 and MW2 and I would put New Super Mario ahead of both of those - by far - I know I'll still be playing NSMB years from now while U2 and MW2 will be collecting dust.And I think it's pretty worthless as a co-op game - nigh unplayable with others - at least on the harder levels.

All window dressing.

Actually, I think one of the most wonderful things about Flower is the gameplay. In its control scheme it does something completely new, but more importantly than that, it works.

So will I. I'm a complete whore for Nintendo's big 3. My top 10 games of all time would be probably 60% Mario/Metroid/Zelda.

By that measure, Nintendo would win every year for me, as almost everything they make is evergreen. That said, it's to some degree "just another Mario game" with only iterative improvements/innovations.

I'll never play Oblivion (or probably Fallout 3) again either, but they are still better GOTY candidates for their years than say, Mario Kart DS.

I just got Demon's Souls for Xmas and am not that far into it, but I would say that from my experience so far it definitely seems worthy. Probably the most impressive 2009 game I have played from the standpoint of uniqueness and originality, not to mention it's wickedly addictive. Too bad so many people are missing out on it. Wish it had come out for the Xbox 360, more people probably would have given it a chance.

Sure, more would have given it a chance, but it didn't sell that well compared to other PS3 games either. Had they actually wanted to move copies of this game, they probably shouldn't have made it so cripplingly difficult. That's what turns me off, and I imagine many others as well. I don't enjoy cake walks and certainly never mind scalable difficulties, even with trophies awarded accordingly. But to have a game that is this hard just so they can brag about being "old-school tough" is stupid. They deserve their underwhelming sales if they choose to make a niche game that's this difficult.

Sigh, sounds to me like you have not played the game and are just repeating what you have read.

It's not cripplingly difficult, it's simply a different kind of gameplay, and people are applying expectations from other games. It takes some aspects from arcade games rather than adventure games, and is extremely refreshing actually. My GF got sucked into the game and played it for like 4 hours and she is far from a hardcore gamer or even into RPG games at all. It's very addictive and rewarding, and fun as hell.

I read somewhere that it was what 3D Castevania should have been...which frankly sounds pretty appealing to me. I'll check it out down the road.

Deamon's Souls looked good to me and I was interested, but after I heard about it's, frankly unfair level of difficulty, it fell right off my radar.

It's just that you seem to be completely alone in your assessment.