The front page of disorderly messageboard hang-out QuarterToThree has news of journalist TomChick's 'Quarterlies' Awards for 2005, described thus: "For the 2005 Quarterlies, I took each game's score from Gamerankings and Metacritic, weighed them according to the 7-9 scale, entered them into an Excel spreadsheet and arranged the list from top to bottom, adjusting them by fun factor and innovation. Then I deleted the file and made a list of my ten favorite games, as well as my choices for most disappointing and most surprising."

We won't spoil the entire thing for you, but a particularly interesting pick is Call Of Duty 2 for 'Most Surprising Game of 2005', as Mr. Chick notes of Activision and Infinity Ward's WWII shooter: "Call of Duty 2 is a perfect storm of noise, effects, scripting, and flexibility that manages to balance it all just right. It hasn’t been done this well in a long time." And it's true - CoD2 is definitely one of the most refreshing titles couched in conventional flesh this year.