[blank] of the year awards tend to be rather cliched affairs at times, even if I'm not helping by making my own lists. To rectify that, the following is a list of 2009 games that would get more abstract awards from me. It doesn't necessarily take a whole lot to make it on this list, but you know a game is special when it gets me to use my creative writing thinking powers for good and (mostly) evil.
Showing 1-10 of 73 items
Award: "The Team Ninja Award for Excellence in Sentient Boob Artificial Intelligence" for their use of pioneering new ways to use the Sixaxis to make us all uncomfortable about our sexuality.
Award: "Best Game with Different Region Release Dates to Cause Forum Warfare," resulting in unnecessary anarchy over whether users should be allowed to include the game on regular 2009 GOTY lists because of the European release.
Award: "Best Game Inspired by the Spirit of Tim Allen's Home Improvement," for giving people everywhere (in Japan) the (Binford) tools to by and large make mediocre WarioWare games that can't ever hope to live up to the series' legacy.
Award: "2009's 2007 GOTY," for being the FPS that normally would have died off by now, but continues to live on with continuous updates because Valve feels guilty and needs to make up for so much lost time or something.
Award: "Best Atlus-like Localization that Had Nothing to do with Atlus USA at All," because Atlus probably would have gobbled this game up if NIS America didn't magically come into existence after Disgaea 1.
Award: "Best Game with a Long-Ass Title that Didn't Require the Words 'Shin Megami Tensei' or 'Raidou Kuzunoha,'" for also proving that you don't have to be Atlus to come up with such a huge, multi-syllabic title for a legitimate game.
Award: "Best Game With a Cover that Should Have Totally Been Persona 3's Instead," for totally embracing that whole evoker thing going on with that other game in the box art.
Award: "Most Relevant Free-to-Play MMO Ever to Catch the Attention of the 'Hardcore' Community," for unnecessarily giving people the hope that it would actually have a soul, what with the Shin Megami Tensei name attached to it and all.
Award: "Best Comic Book Game Since Spiderman 2 to Remind Us that They Don't All Suck," for actually being a game that knows how to translate the source material into something that doesn't reek of being licensing prostitution.
Award: "Best Game Depicting an Apocalypse that Had Nothing to do with Western Games Whatsoever," for being a game about a Japanese kid running around with a flashlight in a ruined Tokyo who also spends his time whacking hallucinatory ghosts while struggling with an underdeveloped combat system.