2008 Game of the Year, Day 3: The CG Awards

And on the third day Uncle Crispy created a winner, and he saw that it was good.
12/23/2008 6:14 PM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 13

Read Day 1 and Day 2 of our 2008 Game of the Year coverage.

What's your pick for Game of the Year? Sound off in our Groups.

Remember the late '80s and early '90s, when it seemed like a new game only came out once every two or three months? If you were a Nintendo fan, that was basically true. You'd buy The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and you'd get stuck because you couldn't find the Slingshot or the Tunic of Delight or whatever (this is before the age of gamefaqs.com, mind you), and you had no choice but to keep playing, keep trying different strategies, perhaps even taking careful notes on the subject and sketching out entire dungeons (though we will never officially admit to keeping a gaming notebook, and should you find a gaming notebook in the basement of Mom's house, it's totally not ours) until you'd finally, finally, finally figure it out.

And you did this -- you endured -- because you had no choice. There wasn't another great game due for, well, who knew how long? Flash forward to the present. Now it feels like more games come out in one week than they did in an entire year back then -- especially this time of year. You damn kids today; you don't know how good you have it. Damn you.

But the current deluge of videogames makes it exponentially more difficult to 1. ingest/digest them all, and 2. settle on a Game of the Year winner. After spending hundreds of thousands of man- (and woman-) hours playing these games, we've managed to whittle the field down to three finalists.

So what does the winner win? The developer of this year's Game of the Year gets:

(1) Oversized sweepstakes-style check for $48.62

(1) Autographed copy of Scott Steinberg's "Get Rich Playing Videogames"

(1) Coupon entitling the holder to an oil change at any Pittsburgh-area Jiffy Lube ($24 value)

(1) Serenade "Say Anything"-style with us standing outside the developer's office with a boom box playing "99 Luftballons" held over our heads

(1) Hefty dose of Crispy Gamer's undying respect and admiration ($11 value)

Suspense killing you? Here are CG's second- and third-place winners, followed by the game that received the most votes from the Game Trust, a.k.a. The Almighty Game of the Year. Enjoy.

Editor's note: Each writer in the Game Trust was asked to nominate three games for Game of the Year. Using a weighted voting system -- three points for a first-place vote, two points for second and one point for third -- the top five nominees were chosen. From that list, the writers were asked to vote again for the top three, using the same weighted voting system.


Read on for Third Place...