Yes, it's the end of another year down here in the basement office of Cracked LCD, Bill Abner said that the Radon test came back "ok", (What? You want a guarantee, Barnes? - ed) and that of course means it's time to parade out the honors for Gameshark's Board Games of the Year.

I have to say that this year was pretty unremarkable, by and large, and I think I played a lot more games that I wished that I hadn't than in previous years. 2008 was very much, I think, a year of mediocrity. It wasn't until December that Fantasy Flight got out of an expansion-releasing rut and unleashed a fourth-quarter salvo of great games. Thinking back over the games I bought during the year I'd be surprised if I still own half of them. I sold, traded, and gave away an awful lot of 2008 releases it seems, and some very high profile ones at that. I think it's telling that aside from this year's Gameshark Game of the Year, the two games that really excited me the most were a couple of years old and from more unusual countries of origin (THE WORLD CUP GAME from the UK and MAGICAL ATHELETE from Japan).

Aside from a relative sense of repetition and mediocrity, this year's trends were definitely toward cooperative games and I think we'll see that trend continue at least through the first half of 2009. Science fiction themes also became hot after many, many years of being relatively cool save for a couple of big titles. Production values in board games continued to skyrocket despite flagging economies and increasing production costs. And of course, the cost of board gaming rose dramatically in 2008, with companies instituting across-the-board price increases sometimes to the tune of ten dollars a title or more. The Great Board Gaming Awakening that many gamers have predicted for years would happen when SETTLERS became more accessible didn't happen, even though it did very well on Xbox Live.

It was a good year for actually playing games though, at least for my part. Even if the 2008 releases were largely characterized by lackluster designs and the hobby continuing its shaky, uncertain wobble toward whatever it is it is heading to, at least there was some great friendship and good times to be had over the gaming table. That's one of the nice things about the hobby- even if the game sucks good friends are always close at hand. At least if you're doing it right. So without further ado, let's get the awards underway…and I like to start with the bad one.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: BLACKBEARD (GMT GAMES)

It may come as a surprise to readers of last week's ANDROID review that I didn't pick it for this "award". However, I do think that ANDROID, for better or worse, did deliver on at least some of its promises in terms of providing innovative, interesting, and progressive game design concepts. Maybe it fumbled a couple of times along the way, but at least it was aiming for something that board games haven't really gotten to just yet.

GMT's reprint of the classic Avalon Hill title BLACKBEARD, designed by the nefarious Richard Berg, was probably the most disappointed I've been in a game in a long time because it seemed like everything was in place for a good, old fashioned pirate romp with the right amount of detail to make it something into which you could sink your rotten pirate teeth.

The original design was a little clunky and cumbersome so it was kind of exciting that the game was getting an update to increase its playability. Somewhere in the development cycle as the game was being retooled and redesigned, the designer and developer decided to throw all the really cool stuff overboard (a lot of pseudo-RPG material) and reframed most of the action as a sloppy, cumbersome, and utterly excruciating pick-up-and deliver game. Theme in BLACKBEARD went from simulating a pirate's life to rolling on a series (yes, a series) of tables to determine what happens when you try to do anything. An interaction mechanic where players play cards on each other just wound up feeling messy, tacked on, and slow. The game was almost literally painful to play, and even more so because it was a great opportunity to improve an already good game. It was a beautiful production too, so BLACKBEARD is this year's real heartbreaker.

BIGGEST SURPRISE: AGRICOLA (Z-MAN GAMES/LOOKOUT GAMES)

After all the hype over AGRICOLA from idiotic internet board gamers who believe that simply parroting back something they heard someone else say at a game event is "criticism", I was completely shocked when I discovered that I actually really liked the game. I had read some translated rules after the European release last year and I didn't think much of it- it looked like a pretty standard Eurogame with a bunch of cards and I wasn't very interested in it at all. However, I'll play any game once and when I decided to drop nearly $70 to get a copy of AGRICOLA for review here at Gameshark.com, I was sure that I could at least unload the game on eBay if it sucked as much as I thought it would. After a couple of games though, I was surprised at how thematic and fun the game turned out to be. It does all the things that Eurogames do extremely well but that also means that the type of gameplay that entails is also fairly non-interactive, non-competitive, and processional. Some gamers won't be able to get over that part of it or the agricultural theme, but I was really shocked that it was a solid game and not the usual empty internet that whips the internet board gaming community into a frenzy every year as the "hot" game emerges.