In continuing with last year's list, the premise for these game of the year awards is simple: Absolutely every game that's come out within the past year is a winner in some regard if you think hard enough. It doesn't matter how arbitrary or inherently uniquely tailored to the game the award is; deep down, there's something every game does to merit an award, good or bad. This list takes a yearly ritual that can already be pretty trivial, subjective, and has little bearing on anything at all and makes it even more irrelevant and irreverent. If there's any game of the year award list that recognizes it's bullshit from the get-go, it's going to be this one.
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Award: "Game of the Year Before the Year Has Barely Begun," for being such an apparently awesome game that people were already declaring it their official game of the year before, you know, the next 11 months of 2010 had actually come to pass. It either takes guts or foolhardiness to immediately presume that no other game is going to match or exceed it at such an early point in the year.
Award: "Most Japanese Game to Not Resemble Anything From Japan At All," for taking the Warring States Period, an era in Japanese history that is as pivotal to the country's direction as the Civil War was for the US, and making it completely unrecognizable... and then getting people to believe it was based on real events. Sure, the actual people involved are there, but when you have guys like Tokugawa Ieyasu riding around on Gundams in what is supposed to be the early 1600s, you should probably presume that some liberties were taken in adapting the era to video games.
Award: "Most Forgotten Single-Player Campaign By Its Own Developer," for featuring a completely separate mode from the multiplayer that was being exclusively marketed and hyped heavily by the Ubisoft PR machine. Rarely does the inclusion of a single-player mode catch anyone by surprise, but given how the game had been presented in the months leading up to its release, somehow Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood manage to make it something entirely unexpected, despite the series' penchant for being a solo affair.
Award: "Most Relevant Game A Year After Its Release," for being able to utilize DLC well and keep the game in the public's consciousness well after it had come out in October 2009. Not all of the scenarios were winners, especially Mad Moxxi, but Borderlands continued the trend that Fallout 3 started and helped prove that, you know, when EA isn't handling it, DLC isn't always so bad. Maybe.
Award: "Most Spoiled Ending Prior to Release," for Microsoft unwittingly letting Reach's ending slip in a Halo novel published nearly 10 years ago. People already knew what was coming before the game had even been announced. Talk about broadcasting your game plan well in advance of enacting it.
Award: "Most Anti-Gravity Game," for letting you use a grappling hook to pull yourself to the ground while you're falling and not result in any damage being taken. Only people who truly hated physics and everything it stood for would dare to implement such a brazen and misleading feature in their game.
Award: "Most Consonants Bought Without Also Getting a Vowel," for saying suck it to Pat Sajack and his Wheel of Fortune and just buying six of the same letter to complete the puzzle that is the game's title.
Award: "Straightest Game Ever," for being such a literally straightforward game in both narrative and level design, arguably to its detriment. The second year in a row it's won this same award, Square-Enix should actually be pleased to get this redux, as it means one less joke about sexually ambiguous character designs in its games. I TOOK THE HIGH ROAD ON THIS ONE.
Award: "Most Relevant Use of Yoshi Since Yoshi's Cookie," for giving the fruit-eating dinosaur an actual purpose in life that didn't involve just being the condescendingly cute mascot people play when Mario and Luigi have already been taken. Sometimes we all need our time in the sun to be reminded that we're still appreciated by someone in the world. Next up: Shy Guy?
Award: "Best Use of Glitches to Enhance the Gameplay," since things like the donkey lady and the flying bird people must have been intentionally designed into the game, right? Right. And they help make the tale of John Marston and all the more surreal, moving, and engrossing.