Knights of the Chalice, a great Temple of the Elemental Evil-like indy game.

Defense Grid.

Dragon Age is definately the best this year.

baldur's gate

Probably Half Life 1, which I finished for the first time early this year. As for time spent playing this year, Team Fortress 2 wins by a landslide. I won't play Dragon Age until I can get it for $20 or less, which means probably next year this time.

Not wanting to pick fights, but .. how can you people like dragon age: origins so much ?
I thought the story was exceptionally well done, but the fact that enemies level alongside of your team just ruined the whole experience for me.
A drunkard in a tavern puts up a semi-challenging fight against you, who killed over a thousand darkspawns ?
The "weak" darkspawns in the beginning of the game are exactly the same that you fight 35 hours into the game, just magically stronger ?
There is no explanation or reason why the darkspawn later in the game are somehow stronger than the darkspawn that you fought in the beginning of the game.
Also, I found that the difficulty curve doesn't change at all and combat is virtually unchanged from the beginning of the game, to the end of the game. Every combat I had in dragon age origins almost felt like something out of a MMO - tank and spank.
I agree that the story is great, but I found that:
1) Combat / Battles don't evolve, don't change and don't differ. The battles in the marches are exactly the same as the battles before the landsmeet.. The only changes in strategy is when new spells or something becomes available to you.
2) The enemies leveling up with you is utterly ridiculous in this game. There is no reason why you should still be fighting the weak darkspawn so late in the game and have them always be as powerful to match you.
I guess what ruins it for me is that there is no sense of progress, I don't see myself or any of my characters actually become more powerful as they level up. It seems retarded when a drunkard in a bar is as strong as a seasoned warrior who has felled over 1000 darkspawn.
I couldn't stand it anymore and stopped playing that game at the landsmeet. And went back to playing Risen. Where you can actually notice a improvement in your strength and become powerful enough to challenge stronger creatures.
Again, I'm not trying to bash your choice, I just want to know how you were able to deal with it and whether it bothered you at all or not ?
As for my game.. Demon's Souls and Persona 4.

Killing Floor

Brütal Legend

I agree. DA:O is just the mainstream hit. It's just Mass Effect with a new setting, just as Mass Effect was Jafe Empire with a new setting, just as Jade Empire was KOTOR with a new setting.
And games for windows live? NO THANK YOU.

Eternal Darkness
.....What?

This is really difficult for me to answer. For the most part the games I played didn't live up quite to my expectations of "utter awesome", but there were quite a few who fit in the "very awesome" category. I've played a vast number of games this year as well, so there's also the matter of me remembering the ones I played at the beginning of the year.
Looking at my neatly sorted but still somewhat cluttered desktop I notice a few strong contenders for the pole position. I'm deliberately excluding a few games I played since I either had most of my quality time with them in '08 (Fallout 3, not counting DLC, half of Chrono Trigger), because I only spent a few idle hours playing them (Portal, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions) or because I did not get enough play time to form a good opinion (Vagrant Story, Odin Sphere, Prototype at a friend's).
Now, let's see which games I can think of that I really liked...
Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC)
Deus Ex (PC)
The Witcher (PC)
Sacrifice (PC)
Zeno Clash (PC)
King's Bounty: The Legend (PC)
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS)
Freespace 2 (PC) (it just beats Freespace flat out, so no point in adding it to the list)
Dawn of War 2 (PC)
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (DS)
Braid (PC)
World of Goo (PC)
Bioshock (PC)
World in Conflict (PC) (think it was '09)
Assassin's Creed (PC) (same as WiC)
Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
Wrath of the Lich King (PC)
Grand Theft Auto IV (PC)
Well, that's all I can think of right now. Some of the games I'm not sure if I actually played in '09, but it will have to do. FFXII is on the list since I spent significant time playing it at the start of the year, but I'm still no closer to completing it. Bah. You can cross-reference the list with my "games completed in '09" list, but that's excluding a lot of games.
No Dragon Age: Origins on the list, as you can see. It's a solid game, but I expected much, much more from something hyped as deconstructing the fantasy setting. Instead we got... normal fantasy with forced British accents, a French neighbouring country and a bit of solid, but conventional, storytelling when the game designers ran out of combat juice.
Well, I'll go over the list and see what I feel like excluding. I have a strong feeling I won't consider a game unless it had a story that moved me - in fact, the first thing I'll do to thin the numbers is run the intersection of the list and games with good story. That leaves...
The Witcher (PC)
Sacrifice (PC) - actually, the story sucks, but the campaign structure is brilliant enough to motivate the game's inclusion
Zeno Clash (PC)
Freespace 2 (PC) - average story given depth thanks to a good soundtrack
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (DS)
Braid (PC)
Bioshock (PC)
World in Conflict (PC)
Assassin's Creed (PC)
Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
Grand Theft Auto IV (PC)
Not a huge improvement, but it's a start. It should be noted that all but the three last games on the list have remarkable soundtracks, but that's not enough to exclude those three from the list just yet. Final Fantasy XII merely has a soundtrack that's "really, really good", I'm not sure if World in Conflict has anything but ambience, and I think I was too busy leaping over roofs in Assassin's Creed to notice anything, anyhow. (GTA4 is a special case, since it's mostly licensed music. Plus I forgot to add it to the list when I first started this post).
Just for the record, Wrath of the Lich King was a weak contender for the list to begin with. Raids can be really fun and stuff, but the truth is that after about five years I'm not getting much enjoyment from the game any longer. In fact, at this point I think it's impossible to tell if it's a good game or not. It's certainly polished, but you probably need to not be me to really know if you're getting something out of it.
So I guess it's up to comparing gameplay. Drat. I guess I'll have to do a run-down to get through this without spending all my time trying to weave together a body of text that's readable.
First off we have The Witcher. Story opens up nice, there are emotionally rewarding side quests, an excellent manuscript, some really fine voice acting... And then it starts to lag. I don't know what lags. Maybe the game is just a bit too long. The second half of the game feels rather unsatisfying, and the climax isn't all that exciting.
Maybe you just start noticing how simplistic the combat really is. Or maybe it's just that even with the expanded edition some parts of the overall story have abrupt endings, either because of an abandoned build-up or because dialogue length is kept to a minimum in many cases.
But either way, it's a solid game. Not the "played game of the year", but still damn solid.
Sacrifice is special. The basic ideas of the game - powerful spellcasters as main characters, the tug-of-war-like gameplay, the branching campaign structure - are all executed brilliantly, but overall it's a game that never realised its potential.
I am mostly referring to how poorly the RTS controls meshed with the game. For the most part you'd just order everything to guard you; worked fine, except when you had to wait for some of the slower creatures to catch up. Clouds cropped up each time you had to order your creatures to do something else, however.
As it turns out, using standard RTS control mechanics from a third-person action perspective is clunky. It messes with perspective a lot, and causes problems when selecting targets. You can't coordinate several groups at once. Forget about micro-managing special abilities effectively. Oh, it could be done, but it was a hassle. Considering how fragile the Wizard is you shouldn't have to move closer to the action to get a good angle for selecting targets, really. Overall the control scheme could have used a lot more thought to it - autocast would have been a Godsend.
Ahh, but listen to me go on. Sacrifice is still one of the best games I played this year. Maybe it's because I haven't tried it in multiplayer, where micromanagement is more important, but the controls weren't actually all that annoying most of the time.
The game's just too much fun for it to be eliminated in this round.
...And I'll have to return for the rest tomorrow. Maybe I'll even reach a conclusion then. Will edit post or add new post as appropriate.

Super Castlevania 4

Demon's Souls. Nothing comes close except for maybe Uncharted 2. But Demon's Souls is simply glorious.
Dragon Age was a big disappointment. Way too short, generic and insipid dialogue and plot, and a combat system that is way too easy to abuse with the Cone of Cold.
I liked Risen a lot too.

Short ?
Mate, i don't know how you play your RPG's, but two playthrough's took me around 180H (that's with Warden's Keep and Shale). That's around 95H for the first and 85H for the second. And i haven't done every possible quest in either playthrough...
Myabe try not to press ESC so many times and actually take the time to read some Codex entries. Maybe that way dialogues will actually make sense and feel less insipid, the gameworld and plot won't feel so generic and the game as a whole will last a wee bit longer.

I've done every sidequest and I clocked in at under 50 hours.
I just found that there was so little content. I understand that next-gen assets cost a fortune to make, but the amount of areas to explore, and dungeons filled with treasure was abysmally low when compared to Baldur's Gate. Even most towns and other such areas are ridiculously small. The game lenght was artificially extended by making you fight the same enemies over and over again in the dungeons.
None of the plot appealed to me, honestly, although the game had its moments. For the most part it was typical fantasy trite, coupled with stereotypical, awkward BioWare writing and characters. I kept getting flashbacks while playing the game, wondering in how many past BioWare games I encountered the same thing.
Both the Shale and Warden's Keep quests sucked; short as hell, and completely uninvolving stories.