We are taking a new approach for GR's 2008 Awards. The 10 Best Games of 2007 were awarded by the people in the office not drunk at the time a select group of people. But since we forgot about Uncharted there were an insane collection of highly-marked titles in 2008, so much so that we - nay, the entire gaming press - have been accused of going soft, we have expanded our judging panel. And we have opted to use an intricate, no-fail system of ranked votes, ordinals, some Boomer zombies, and a dartboard with a picture of Belgium on it.

[Judges: Jesse Costantino, Greg Damiano, Duke Ferris, Chris Hudak, Blake Morse, and Nick Tan (that's me)]

Before we get onto the awards, though, let's take a breather and recap my opinions the unexpected greatness of 2008. If I were to point at anything as the highlight, it would be the high quality of downloadable titles. Not just Braid, but a host of titles available on the Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, and Wii's Virtual Console ascended to the top of the heap: Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars 2, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Eden, World of Goo, Art Style: ORBIENT, Rez HD, Bionic Commando Rearmed, N+, Wipeout HD, and the list goes on and on. It was enough that we actually decided to review them. 'Nuff said.

This rebirth of downloadable titles has as much to do about small developers trying to prove that low-budget games can be as enjoyable as high-profile blockbusters, as it does with the saturation of said blockbusters, developers realizing that casual market is just as lucrative as the hardcore market, and the government "bail out", Madoff-stricken economy. The closing of Free Radical Design and the soon-to-be-closed Ensemble Studios as well as the well-publicized financial struggles of Midway were mere bellwethers in the storm of corporate restructuring and layoffs (press included...).

But let's not be too sullen. What this has meant to players is the time to appreciate the rich cornucopia (and please imagine a horn of plenty with controllers and rectangular cases pouring out of it) of gaming. Where 2007 was the year of the first-person shooter and 2008's lineup has no shortage of them with Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2, 2008's list has no one-sided love to any genre.

Still, even with the balanced representation of each game type, 10 spaces are not enough. (Not even 20 spaces would be enough, really.) That we all came to a consensus is a miracle. Thus, the judges have picked an Editor's Choice from the litter of great games that unfortunately did not make the Top 10.