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Looking for categories like Best PSP Driving Game? Greatest Achievement in Control Layout, Artistic? Eastern European Developer Most Worth Watching in 2011? Then our end-of-year awards might not be for you.

GamesRadar's Platinum Chalices are different. We're not interested in checking off a massively tedious list of genres, platforms and technical subdivisions… we'd much rather focus on the stuff that makes this hobby, you know, fun. And reward whichever games delivered the most of that stuff.

So if you're looking for the best fan service, most satisfying gore or greatest achievement in old-school kickassery in 2010, you've definitely come to the right celebration. Let's get it started…

Have you ever heard someone say, “sometimes words aren’t enough?” That person was probably talking about books. Yes, books may seem like nothing more than a primitive ancestor to videogames, and in some ways, they are. Books are linear, non-interactive, and require little to no skill to write. They might even be obsolete today if it weren’t for people with no reflexes. But books aren’t entirely without merit, because occasionally they're adapted into some really great videogames

To celebrate Independence Day (the holiday, not the movie), we’ve scoured our encyclopedic minds for the most patriotic games to be developed. But that wasn’t funny enough. So, we dug deeper to find the most rabidly patriotic games every developed. Ya know - the ones with so much love for Old Glory that it starts to get a little ridiculous. Behold - our results!

America's ArmyUS Army | 2002Any game can add the word

Some games are upfront about their morally dubious nature, but others pretend to be innocent while  hiding their corrupting content inside sinister subtext. Join us as we blow the lid on that whole den of depravity.

E3 is upon us again, flaunting its wares like a Victorian hussy baring an ankle to titillate the gentlemen of the day. But what if said ankles were bogus? What if they were wooden mock-ups of ankles? Or worse still, what if the ankles were real, but the lady was offed before we ever got to see some thigh? This analogy's getting disturbing, so let's just get this straight. There are no ankles in this feature - only games. Games that were shown at E3, got us all excited, then vanished without trace.

There’s something very special about the process of old-fashioned, frame-by-frame, 2D animation. In the old days, the only way to get your animated character to wave his or her arm was to spend hours upon hours painstakingly crafting each frame and constantly readjusting your work to make sure everything flowed correctly. Now you just set a couple of keyframes and let a computer do it all for you.

Considering all the attention being directed toward huge, marquee juggernauts like Uncharted 2, Modern Warfare 2, and Beatles: Rock Band, you’d think they were the only games at E3. Not true. Sure, those look fantastic, but we also saw piles and piles of great games that nobody is talking about. Nobody but us, that is.

E3 2009 was a monster. A huge, massive, face-eating beerdemon that erased the agonizing memory of 2008’s meager, emaciated E3 from our minds with a flood of great-looking games, earth-shattering announcements, and a few quizzical oddities we never want to speak of again. After this, we mean, because some things are so good, bad, or just bewildering that you just have to tell people about them.

New Super Mario Bros Wii

Getting one of the best platformers of all time with four player support should be a godsend, right? Sorta. And even though the game retains the DS’s impeccable tight and intuitive, the characters goofily occupy a physical space in a relatively small field. “Up To Four Friends!” can now halt your movement, ruin timed jumps, and even swallow you while riding on Yoshi. Furthermore, one player