PC VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009 - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 30 December 2009 / 13,108 Views
Remember back in the day when games were made on the Apple II? Those games of the past were great, but missed out on one thing - the ability to earn Game of the Year awards! Another year has past, and it's that time again. Many indie developers had a strong showing this year, while many mainstream devs have released sequels to phenomenal titles of years past. Without further adieu, here are the winners of VGChartz' PC Game of the Year awards.
Best Indie Game: Machinarium
Follow the story of a little robot through this multi-award winning puzzle adventure game. Make your way from the scrap yard far beyond the city. See this amazing hand-drawn adventure unfold. Take part in confronting one little robot's problems in this work of art is truly inspiring and definitely deserves VGC's Best PC Indie Game of the Year Award.
Runner-Up: Trine
Reader’s Choice: Machinarium
Best MMORPG: Aion: Tower of Eternity
Take flight in a world divided. This is a stunning MMO with an elegant design. Enjoy the thrill of flight and adventure. Play the innovative PvPvE system, battling humans and AI enemies. Aion is a fantastic new MMO that forges new paths in the genre. The fact that it is both unique and fun earns it the VGC Best PC MMO Game of the Year Award.
Runner-Up: Champions Online
Reader’s Choice: Aion: Tower of Eternity
Best Shooter: Left 4 Dead 2
Left 4 Dead 2 is the sequel to last year's VGC Best PC Shooter winner, taking the prize once again. Despite being released so soon after its predecessor, brand new features and the vastly improved AI Director 2.0 takes the game to the next level. New enemies bring new challenges, changing environments warp our minds, and night settings bring in a new sense of horror.
Runner-Up: Borderlands
Reader’s Choice: Left 4 Dead 2
Best RPG: Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age comes from BioWare, the premiere RPG developer who brought us Mass Effect and Baldur’s Gate. Thus, Dragon Age: Origins has a lot to live up to. Luckily, the game manages to continue the RPG greatness that BioWare is so well known for, earning it our PC Best RPG of the Year Award.
Runner-Up: Borderlands
Reader’s Choice: Dragon Age: Origins
Best Strategy: Empire: Total War
Empire: Total War is probably the deepest strategy game available to date. Control everything from vast armies to single units and battle on land and sea. The new interface system allows for easier control of Trade, Diplomacy and Espionage, as well as the enhanced battle system. Declare war in the 18th century in VGChartz' Best PC Strategy Game of the Year.
Runner-Up: Plants vs. Zombies
Reader’s Choice: Plants vs. Zombies & Empire: Total War
Best Simulation: The Sims 3
Electronic Arts has always managed to capture the hearts of millions of simulation lovers with their Sims franchise. The Sims 3 is no different in that respect. It continues the franchise's base principle of playing god over the people living in your residences while adding many new things to see and do. No one can ignore The Sims 3's charm in being a unique simulation of everyday life. Due to this, The Sims 3 has won VGChartz' Best PC Simulation Game of the Year Award.
Runner-Up: Anno 1404
Reader’s Choice: The Sims 3
Best Racing Game: Dirt 2
Dirt 2 is by far the best racing game released in the last year on the PC. It's visually stunning, with damage and environmental effects to die for. Dirt 2 shows how off-road racing games should be. Destructive, well controlled, and bug free. There is no other racing game that deserves the Best PC Racing Game of the Year Award more.
Runner-Up: Need for Speed: Shift
Reader’s Choice: Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box
Best Sports Game: Football Manager 2010
Have you ever wanted to manage a football(soccer) team? Football Manager 2010 lets you be the couch, and control every aspect of your team from players to strategy. After setting up your team, get a game started and see how they measure up when it counts. This game is very detailed and definitely a fun way to test your management skills. Due to all the features and abilities you have at your disposal this year, Football Manager 2010 wins our Best Sports Game of the Year Award.
Runner-Up: PES 2010
Reader’s Choice: PES 2010
Best Action-Adventure Game: [Prototype]
Action-Adventure games have been gaining popularity as of late. There have been quite a few games released in the last year, but none of them can match [Prototype] in terms of quality on the PC. Be ready to destroy everything, and discover who created you. [Prototype] is loads of fun, and a quality open-world experience, making it VGChartz' Best PC Action-Adventure Game of the Year.
Runner-Up: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed - Ultimate Sith Edition
Reader’s Choice: [Prototype]
Best Adventure Game: Batman: Arkham Asylum
Take control of Batman as you battle the Joker and his minions throughout the halls of Arkham Asylum. Take on amazing challenges and solve confusing puzzles as if you were Bruce Wayne. This is Batman's ultimate adventure, and VGChartz is happy to award it our Best PC Adventure Game of the Year Award.
Runner-Up: Tales of Monkey Island (franchise)
Reader’s Choice: Tales of Monkey Island (franchise)
Best Graphics: Dirt 2
This year, if you want to see the best visuals possible, you want Dirt 2. Its the first Direct X 11 game on the market and shows it. This visuals are stunning. This game actually puts Crysis to shame on many levels. If you own a system the can run this game, or are waiting on newer, more powerful GPUs to be released, consider this game a must just to simply show off the power of your PC.
Runner-Up: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Reader’s Choice: Batman Arkham Asylum
Best Music Score: Plants VS. Zombies
In terms of music in games this year, nothing tops Plants vs Zombies. It has some very charming music for a game featuring zombies attacking a house. None of the music is overpowering - it's just simple, and very easy going, like all the music in PopCap's games.
Runner-Up: Left 4 Dead 2
Reader’s Choice: (4-way tie) Batman Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age Origins, Blueberry Garden, Plants vs Zombies
Most Innovative: Borderlands
Borderlands takes the cake this year for being the most innovative game. Its innovation comes from mixing RPG and FPS elements perfectly together without messing with either genre's base principles. Having characters level up to gain an ability point with which to customize them, as well as the ability to find random weapons with totally random specs, make this game stand out among the rest.
Runners-Up: Left 4 Dead 2 & Blueberry Garden
Reader’s Choice: Machinarium, Batman Arkham Asylum
Biggest Disappointment: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a great game, but highly disappointing when comparing it to the original Modern Warfare. It has the nuclear explosion scene in it, but they overdid it by redoing it multiple times. They also didn't fix a lot of the gripes about the different abilities you could unlock, some of which are downright overpowered. The other thing was the poor decision from Infinity Ward to not have dedicated server support. PC games rely on dedicated servers for their low ping rates, so removing them was basically losing a standard feature for online PC shooters. It's still a great game, but it falls far short of its potential, earning it our Biggest Disappointment of the Year Award for the PC.
Runner-Up: Wolfenstein
Reader’s Choice: Resident Evil 5
Best Game No One Played: Plants VS. Zombies
Plants VS Zombies winning this award can be a bit confusing, but it does make some sense. While it sold pretty well, it didn't sell as well as people expected of a game from PopCap. Considering it's from PopCap, and that millions of people normally buy their games, this game hasn't been played by enough people.
Runner-Up: Anno 1404
Reader’s Choice: Tales of Monkey Island (franchise)
Most Anticipated Game: StarCraft II
PC gamers seem to have Blizzard in their hearts, considering that StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 are the most anticipated titles. While StarCraft 2 takes our award for Most Anticipated Game, it is important to stress how close it was between Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2, and I'd like to take the time to just congratulate Blizzard for making gamers sit on the edge of their seats in anticipation of their two great upcoming titles and World of Warcraft expansion pack. StarCraft 2 is the most anticipated RTS games announced this decade, and will most likely re-define the genre for the next.
Runner-Up: Diablo 3
Reader’s Choice: Diablo 3
PC Game of the Year: Left 4 Dead 2
The newest entry to the Left 4 Dead franchise has earned its spot as our PC Game of the Year. Valve has yet again brought us a true masterpiece. Is it much of a surprise, considering Valve has created some of the best games to ever appear on the PC platform? I think not. This year there was some stiff competition, mostly coming from the casual giant PopCap and Bioware's triumphant return to classic D&D RPGs, but in the end Valve came out on top with Left 4 Dead 2.
Runner-Up: Dragon Age: Origins
Reader’s Choice: Plants Vs. Zombies
There you have it, folks, the final platform specific game of the year awards. Check out all of our other Game of the Year Awards and stick around for our Overall Game of the Year Awards!
More Game of the Year Awards:
Playstation 3 VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
Nintendo DS VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
Xbox 360 VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
PSP VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
Wii VGChartz Game of the Year Awards 2009
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So even after the PC gamers' criticism in the PC games voting thread, VGChartz still thinks Batman Arkham Asylum is an adventure, not an action adventure? Thank you for listening to your members...
This happened of course because the catgeory adevnture was not named point'n'click adventure, which would have been much better to distinct it from the action adventure category.
Mentions in category best game no one played:
Plants VS. Zombies, Anno 1404, Tales of Monkey Island
=> Not only Plants vs. Zombies was a success (as you stated in the article yourself), all 3 games were successes. Telltale themselves said that the ToMI episodes are by far their best selling franchise to date, according to Ubisoft Anno 1404 sold more than 200.000 copies in Germany alone. "Ceville" would have been a much better choice for best game no one played. It's a great game, unlike other games from continental Europe it was also released NA/UK as well, no one bought it, no one played (except me and probably ~2000 other guys around the world).
The majority of NA and UK gamers and websites don't really care about PC gaming anymore and this fact is represented in every "best PC games of the year" from English speaking websites I saw this year. As English speaking gaming media don't also care about PC gaming in continental Europe (there are countries where PC gaming still matters), I think it would be best if NA and UK websites should stop making "best PC games" lists altogether.
This comment may sound harsher than I planned due to my limited vocabulary, so please don't take it as an offense. I can certainly live with your choices, it's just a list of opinions after all. The general state of PC gaming in NA/UK just makes me a bit sad at times (and more and more in the rest of the world either).
This was the best year for PC since 2004. In 2009, PC had so many great games that it's impossible to count them.
PC easily crushed any console in 2009, in terms of quality games.
PC fail
Good year for PC defiantly bought more pc games this year than ever before, Mainly because Steam is awesome but still got Batman and Dragon Age from retail
Oh, and Im glad that Machinarium won something... that game is simply brilliant :-D
Dirst 2 with DirectX 11 still doesnt looks as good as Crysis IMO.... I loved the lightning effects and such, but IMO the many years old Crysis is still the king of graphics ;-)
Except for Dragon Age a very poor year for pc imo
You guys don't event track PC games sales... Why do all this?
Meh I bought maybe 4 new PC games this year.
This was probably the worst PC year I can remember.
Hopefully next year will be better again.
And no Starcraft 2 won't be bigger than Halo Reach, GT5, FFXIII, GOW3 & Mass Effect 2 combined LOOOOL
Blizzard just shatters the competition.
Next year we gotta have to change the list a little, it'll have two different entries:
- Most Anticipated Blizzard Game
- Most Anticipated non-Blizzard Game
Plants Vs. Zombies was the top PC game, the top Strategy game and the top game no one played this year. So much value for less than $8 on Steam. You really cannot go wrong with this game.
Who cares about Starcraft 2 besides Korea? Glorious Diablo III should have won that one!
Might want to look at your 'more games of the year awards' at the bottom there, unless vgchartz had two sets of awards for the DS and nothing for the Wii :P
I think DIABLO III deserves the most anticipated game for the PC more than star craft 2.
I'm protesting!!!!
Every time you wrote "football" with meaning of Association football, you add "(soccer)" after it, but you never add "(gridiron)" after "football" with meaning of American football.
Left 4 Dead is the best PC had to offer this year? Oh man... Atleast with Dragon Age: Origins you can see the difference between PC and console versions.
Who said PC is dead? It has great games and you can play them with max settings.
Starcraft 2 is the biggest game of all games in 2010. Its bigger then GOW3, Halo:Reach Mass Effect 2, FFXIII, GT5 and e.t.c. combined. Its even a national sport in Korea and a restart to the classic legendary game.
