Through these awards we aim to recognize the best of them for a variety of achievements. Our editorial team, consisting of myself, Xav, Jeff, Alice, and Brian used a three-tier voting system to select the winners. For each category we ranked our top three, with first place getting four points, second receiving two, and third taking one. Points were then tallied resulting in a winner and runner-up. In the case of ties, and there were a couple, the title with the most votes at the highest rank prevailed. So, for instance, a game receiving a first and third place vote for five points total would win over one receiving two second and one third place votes for the same five points.

We start with some unique things that stood out to us, move on to the best of each genre, and name the top title for each platform, all leading up to our crowning the best video game of 2010. With such a strong list of nominees there are sure to be many opinions about our selections. We're making each award its own separate story to keep it easy for you to hit the comments to tell us what you think we got right, wrong, and what you'd choose. Please, remember to keep the discussion civilized. It should be a fun week ahead.