I don't know about you, but this is the moment I've been waiting for -- the unshaven, surly man in the mirror to our Best ofs, the Best Worst of 2009 Non-Award Awards! Winners of the whiffy chalice include such "good" games as Uncharted 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age: Origins, and Punch-Out!! And some genuinely not-so-good games and things (and people, in tomorrow's part two!) also receive a nice kicking....

Oh, look, a handy way to navigate through our Best of posts, because we don't have a better way of doing it:

Bitmob's Best of 2009: Part 1
Bitmob's Best of 2009: Part 2
Bitmob's Best of 2009: Part 3
Bitmob's Best Games of 2009
Bitmob's Best Worst of 2009: Part 2 (you are here)
Bitmob's Best Worst of 2009: Part 2Â Â

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Best Worst "Accomplishment": Batman: Arkham Asylum
By Evan Killham
With equal parts surprise and relief, we gamers discovered that Batman: Arkham Asylum did not suck. It was, in fact, quite good. But we were at a loss to find some way with which to quantify its awesomeness. Luckily, we didn't have to: The good folks at Guinness World Records stepped in to make some shit up. And so it came to pass that Arkham Asylum became the official world record holder for the "Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever."

Really, Guinness? The cogs of the marketing machine would have been less audible if you gave it the record for "Best Game Called 'Batman: Arkham Asylum.'"

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Best Worst Use of the Word "Taint": Dragon Age: Origins
By Kris Pigna
"So it was, that the first Grey Wardens drank of Dark Spawn blood...and mastered their Taint." -Duncan

"You are called upon to submit yourself to the Taint, for the greater good." -Duncan

"Those who survive the Joining become immune to the Taint." -Alistair

I'm immature? Very well then, I'm immature. But the unintentional hilarity this created in Dragon Age's pivotal "Joining" scene kind of ruined for me what should have been a kick-ass moment.

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Best Worst Boss Battle: Borderlands
By Demian Linn
After traipsing around the Skag-infested wilderness for countless hours, you finally find this damn alien vault you've been looking for -- and the opening thereof couldn't be more anti-climactic if Geraldo Rivera himself were on hand to MC.

Out pops a Cthulhu-inspired squid that wanly gestures in your direction a few times with its tentacles before succumbing to a hail of bullets (unexpected twist: shoot the glowy bits!). Then the blue-eyed phantom lady chats about how great it was that you were on hand to kill the squid, and that the vault will open again in 200 years. Yay? Mark your calendars? What a horrific ending to a kind of great game.

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Best Idea, Worst Execution: Scribblenauts
By Andrew Hiscock
The premise behind Scribblenauts seems amazing when you first read or hear about it. Type anything, make it appear, and solve puzzles in any way that you see fit? Fantastic! The controls, however, are so bad that they dealt a serious blow to any attempt to like the game.

It doesn't help that the player can best most of the puzzles through a series of "win buttons" (such as a jet pack, black hole, toaster in the water). If a sequel is in the works, I hope it doesn't need "10,000 more items" as a selling point -- and that the developers work on improving the controls and creating some clever puzzles.

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Best Worst Level: 3-5, Splosion Man
By Evan Killham
Splosion Man is often difficult. Splosion Man will occasionally enrage you. But at no point during my playthrough did I consider giving up...until I reached level 3-5. This stage rounds up every irritating thing in the game and packs it into a single room, and unless you do everything exactly the way the developers want you to, you will fail. This level is like hatred distilled through impossibility and left to ferment behind The Worst Toilet in Scotland.

It was so bad that at their PAX booth, Twisted Pixel had a punching bag with a picture of level designer Sean Conway's head taped to it with a sign reading, "I Made Level 3-5."

"Challenging" is one thing. Level 3-5 of Splosion Man is effing evil.

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Best Worst Most Offensive: Punch-Out!!
By Suriel Vazquez
Punch-Out!! wins this category simply through ignorance. While everyone was up in arms about Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" level, Punch-Out!! successfully got away with being offensive to almost every culture out there. The Indian fighter wears a turban and invokes mystical powers, the Japanese fighter expels sushi when hit, and the Russian character is named Vodka Drunkenski in the Japanese version. Let me repeat that: The Russian fighter's name is Vodka Drunkenski.

And no, being an equal-opportunity offender doesn't make it right. It just makes your game that much more insensitive of other cultures, Nintendo.

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Best Worst Sequel: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix/Prof. Layton (tie)
By Aaron Thomas
Both games were on my "most anticipated" list this year, and both were huge disappointments in my eyes. Let's begin the skewering with Galactrix. The first Puzzle Quest was buggy as hell and unbalanced, but made up for its problems with unique gameplay that was easy to learn but difficult to master. The second Puzzle Quest was unbalanced, the puzzle game was convoluted, and it was a pain in the rear to navigate the stupid map. I dumped a good 30+ hours into the first one and loved just about every minute of it. I bought Galactrix the day it came out, played it for four or five hours and never touched it again.

The highest score I ever gave while I was at GameSpot was a 9.0 to Professor Layton and the Curious Village. If I had to review the second game, I'd use the same text and score it two points lower, because as far as I can tell it's exactly the same as the first one. Tap a bunch of crap, solve the same puzzles, reset the game if I screw up to much...blah, blah, blah. If I wanted to play the same game over and over, I'd play the Phoenix Wright series. Thanks for nothing, Nintendo.

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Best Worst Box Art: Dead Space: Extraction
By Suriel Vazquez
It's bad enough when your box art looks bargain bin fare to being with, but it's even worse when said box art blights an actually good game. Dead Space: Extraction was a great use of the "guided experience" mechanic, and told a tightly-wound story that worked with the design; that's what makes Extraction's box art that much more of a crime. Other games had similarly bad or maybe even worse box art this year, but most of them deserved the awful photoshop graphics and extreme text on the cover. Extraction had it hard enough already, and I'm sure this atrocious box art didn't help.

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Best Worst Demo: Dante's Inferno
By Evan Killham
When I first heard about Dante's Inferno, I thought it was pointless. Then I saw some gameplay footage, and I thought it might be OK. Now I've played the demo, and I know that it is stupid.

Filled with shouting, gratuitous nudity, and violence that is senseless even by video game standards, the demo for Dante's Inferno is similar to watching the trailer for Smokin' Aces several times in a row, but it's worse because you're actually inflicting the stupidity upon yourself. None of it makes any sense; my theory is that when they tried to introduce logic to the game, all the boobs distracted it. And then Dante stabbed it in the face.

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Best Worst Lack of Controversy: The Red Ring of Death
"Is Microsoft managing the message properly? Did they actually fix the problem? Maybe we are just resigned to the fact that our Xbox 360s have a limited life. And maybe we are just sick of talking about it. Either way, The Red Ring of Death controversy is well past its prime." -Andrew Hiscock

Best Worst Boss Battle: Joker, Batman: Arkham Asylum
"Batman: Arkham Asylum was a well-crafted action-adventure that made use of all its licensed characters in a way that was reverent rather than exploitative. It was a slap in the face of Bioshock proportions when the adventure ended with an uncreative boss battle against the Joker."- Suriel Vazquez

Best Worst Dental Hygiene: Dragon Age: Origins
"Never has a game had such consistently substandard dental hygiene. The people and heroes of Ferelden were fighting to save the world from the evil darkspawn, but they had already lost the war to the dreaded gum disease -- gingivitis." -Nathan Vig

Best Worst Game to Review: Uncharted 2
"This is the review you dread. No matter what score you give or how thoughtful your points, your email will be filled with fanboy hate the next day. A 9 should have been a 10. Or an 8. Or a 5. The point is, your opinion is wrong." -Jeremy Watson

Best Worst 'Best of' List: Toys R Us Canada
"I was wandering around the Internet looking for some gift ideas for my daughter's first birthday, and I found a Best of 2009 list featured at Toys R Us Canada's website. Of the 19 games listed (with no rhyme or reason), 11 are licensed titles, including some Tinkerbell game." -Andrew Hiscock

Best Worst PR Moment: Wii Vitality Sensor
"When a company as successful and smart as Nintendo rolls out one of its most important executives and public figures, Satoru Iwata, to announce...well, we're still not sure what he announced, and that's the problem." -Andrew Hiscock

Best Worst Achievement Grind: Scene-It
"I have gone to ridiculous lengths for some achievements, but none have been as mind-numbingly mundane as these. A person can only hear Forrest Gump say 'that's my boat,' so many times before all the charm of that film is tainted forever." -Kevin John Frank