Table of Contents
Welcome to GameSpot's Best of 2009 awards. This is it. The year is finally over, and all the big games and big news stories have come and gone and made their impact. Our 2009 awards feature is where these games and events get recognized for truly making the year what it was--a tumultuous 12 months that sadly saw the doors close for many well-known game studios but that also saw the release of a great many excellent games of all sizes, shapes, and colors for all platforms. The awards let GameSpot's editors recognize these outstanding games and also give you, the reader, a chance to weigh in with your own opinion and vote for the winners for the Readers' Choice awards.
In fact, this year, Readers' Choice voting has been expanded! While the standard categories all have five editorial finalists, you can now choose from up to 10 different games--that's the five editorial picks, plus five additional choices--as your pick for the winner of that category. In addition, the Game of the Year poll has been expanded beyond the editorial top 10 picks with additional choices for you to vote in. The additional picks we've added to the polls are not necessarily part of a larger editorial top 10 list. Again, GameSpot's editorial picks consist only of the top five games per category, along with a top 10 for Game of the Year--shown in yellow on the polls. The additional games we've added to each poll are games that we felt would give you, the readers, some more flexibility in your voting.
About the Awards
GameSpot's 2009 awards are the result of spirited discussion and input from editors all around the globe. The intent of the awards is to single out and recognize the very best games in their class. These include distinctions for specific special achievements, such as outstanding graphics, music, and game mechanics, and they call out individual games for being the best in class for their genre or among all other games on a particular platform this year. Please note that, as usual, genre awards are not given to the game that best embodies the virtues of a genre--that's where our special achievements come in--but rather, to the best game that happens to be in that genre. Please note: These awards will contain some plot spoilers! Please read at your own risk.
As always, every single one of GameSpot's award categories is limited to a maximum of five finalists, with the exception of our best game of the year, which includes a list of 10 finalists. And as always, we consider nominations to be high praise as well--it's an honor for games to be nominated as finalists.
Our awards cover the very best games on all platforms released in North America from the end of December 2008 through early December 2009, though the awards also include special allowances for our readers in Europe and the Pacific Rim. That's right: In addition to calling out the best game developed in the UK this year, as well as recognizing the most surprising game to get past the Australian Classification Board, our awards will now have separate Readers' Choice voting for those of us from Europe and the Australasia regions via the GameSpot UK version of the awards and the GameSpot AU version of the awards, respectively. Your votes will be tallied separately from the central GameSpot.com votes and will represent the best picks for your territory.
