This one was a surprise. I thought that Excite Trucks was not only the Wii’s best original launch game (I count Twilight Princess as a Gamecube port), but one of the only titles that showed any promise for the system’s motion controls. When Excitebots was announced, it looked way too silly and a little stupid. Upon trying it, however, it proved to be an incredible amount of fun and, obviously, very addictive.

One of the clinchers for this win is the game’s steady difficulty ramp. The racer has a pleasantly challenging difficulty curve for a Nintendo game and once you’re into the insane style, you’re hooked. A few people panned the game for its small selection of maps, and while that is an ultimate detriment, it made it easier to get intensely familiar with the course layout to repeatedly try for that S ranking. And man, some of those S rankings are tough to get. But that’s what made the game fun and addictive.

Ironically, the game’s insane mechanics that initially made me hesitant about the title became the other clincher. Since the racer is unique in that the rankings are actually based on a points system and not necessarily the placement in the race – although that helps – the race becomes a tactical frenzy to find the best way to get a lot of points which are, in this case, stars.

The point is that I played this game nonstop for a very long time this year, and that’s more than I can say for most games in a year packed full of some great ones. That’s it! ‘Till tomorrow!

Runner up: Peggle (XBox Live)

Big surprise, folks! Well, actually it might be. There were a lot of pretty games this year. If only for their art style. Downloadable games like Flower and Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias look great even if they don’t have the same complex graphical power behind them compared to games like Assassin’s Creed II or Modern Warfare 2. But nothing took everybody’s collective breath away as much as Uncharted 2 this year. The game is an absolute delight to look at. Naughty Dog was able to cram as much beauty into their gem of a sequel as they did action.

The best part, though, is that Uncharted 2 isn’t just a great looking game, it also looks great in an impressive number of locales. From the familiar jungle, to icy mountains, and a cursed paradise, Nathan Drake takes you to new gorgeous locations all the time to make sure you haven’t seen it all. Couple all that with solid animation, fluid cutscenes, and a practically nonstop framerate, the visuals in Uncharted 2 draw you into the experience and never let you back out. An easy win for this category in my books.

Runner Up: Flower