And the award for Most Obviously Wrong Decision in 2008 goes to...
 

Edge, for this:
I've never heard of Edge before and now I never want to hear of it again.

I mean seriously, I'm not one to dock a game for being just like a previous game with some more polish and an extra bell and whistle, but I ain't giving such a game an award for innovation over motherfucking Portal either.

Portal-wanking aside, Halo 3 does not deserve any kind of innovation award ever. If this was opposite land and innovation actually meant "same old same old" then Halo 3 might be able to grab the silver or bronze.

I'm of the opinion that Galaxy is more innovative than Portal, but the point still stands. Halo 3 over those two? Moneyhats, anyone?

The only slightly innovative game in that list is Wii Fit.
That says enough.
They just looked at the sales ratings and went with that.

As much as I do love the crap out of Portal, I'm not sure if I like it quite as much as everyone else seems to.
It was a great game but not quite as revolutionary as people seem to believe it is. Really, the portal is a neat concept, but it's a series of linear puzzles in which there's only one definitive manner to get from point A to point B. In that sense, it's every other puzzle game out there, with a "unique" gimmick in which the teleportation messes with one's orientation yet gravity remains constant. I'd be more interested in playing my copy of Portal if it was less linear puzzles and more freeform multiplayer FPS aciton. Think Team Fortress 2, but one character can use portals as a weapon, enabling other team members to go all sorts of crazy ways from point A to point B.

Portal was also way too short to achieve the kind of greatness people seem to think it has.
That being said, Portal definitely deserved to beat Halo 3. Then again, so did GTA IV, Wii Fit and MGS4, which wasn't even nominated.

I don't know what you guys are talking about because Halo 3 has vehicles.

How to make a Game of the Year candidate!

1 - Look at sales numbers
2 - Find the top one that sounds familiar
3 - Get to awardin'!

If someone tells me that Shadow of the Colossus did not win this award back the year it came out there would be hell to pay.

Well there's a difference between Game of the Year awards and Innovation awards in my mind.

One is more about the success (i.e. sales) of a game in a given year, but innovation...

Well hell, just fuck Halo 3? Yeah the online community and forge and blah-de-blah-blah is cool. Other stuff is cooler.

I don't even care that much about who actually deserved to get the award. It just reeks of incompetence to pick Halo 3 for like fifteen reasons I don't even have to explain because you all know them.

EDIT: Let's be honest here, you can staple whatever Game of the Year award you want to on any popular game and I don't really care. Halo 3 is a fantastic game and it's a horrible game and whatever, but when you have an award tailored for innovation the last thing you get to award that to is a game that Microsoft forced squeezed the sequels out of for years that made it's claim by being "a really good normal FPS."