Unfortunately, you didn't play any of the following games, but you should have. Okay, maybe you played one or two. Big whoop, what about the other eight or nine? I'm still disappointed in you. Each of this gems deserved more attention in 2009 than it got. And it's your fault, because you were probably playing Halo 3: ODST or World of Warcraft instead.

After the jump are 10 games you didn't play, you jerk.

10) Flower, Sun, and Rain
This is Suda 51's true follow-up to the unhinged creativity of the whacked out Playstation 2 cult classic Killer 7. Flower, etc. makes no sense and it doesn't have much gameplay, but it's intriguing, puzzling, and maybe even a little disturbing. It's also on the DS and easily mistaken for - oops! - something you'd buy your tween daughter.

9) Half-Minute Hero
Can a joke about other games still be a game? The funny and subversive Half-Minute Hero thinks so. Calling it "Wario Ware meets Zelda" is just the beginning.

8) Clutch
This lively and only slightly underdeveloped game is the spiritual successor to Carmageddon. It combines great driving physics with running over people (or zombies, in this case). With a solid car upgrade system, good graphics, and that same Carmageddon glee, this should have been a contender. It's also probably the worst named game of the year. "Clutch" is not a game; it's something you have to pay $300 to fix. A simple "...of the Dead" would have worked wonders, guys. (Read more here.)

7) Eufloria
I never thought a real time strategy game could be relaxing, but Eufloria proves I was wrong. It could use an AI upgrade, or better yet multiplayer support, to really shine, but it works just fine as a haunting strategy puzzle game that - don't let this scare you - makes me think of what island-hopping naval combat would be like if it was fought by magical space birds. Weird, huh?

6) Defender Chronicles
Tower defense games have been around for a while, most of them strongly resembling each other and mostly unchanged since they began as a Warcraft 3 mod many years ago. Finally here's one that stands out not necessarily for the gameplay, but for the way the gameplay is driven by an RPG system. The main drawback? It's on the iPhone where console and PC gamers can't play it. (Read more here.)

5) Swords & Soldiers
A cool splitscreen strategy game for the Wii that will appeal even to people who don't play strategy games. So I'm not going to tell you that it has everything you'd also get in a serious real time strategy game, because that would give you the wrong idea. It's played in short gratifying burst with a friend on the same couch, with whom you will later share the inside joke of proclaiming, "I luuuuv gold!" (Read more here.)

4) Wipeout HD Fury
Holy cats, who knew the creative team behind the superslick supersexy Wipeout HD still had so many great ideas in them? You haven't seen the best of sci-fi racing until you've download Fury for Wipeout HD. If it wasn't for Sony's shenanigans sticking advertisements into the game, this probably would have been on the list of my favorite games of the year. (Read more here.)

3) Gratuitous Space Battles
Last year, I wrote an article on games to help you get over the end of Battlestar Galactica. This spectacular let's-get-right-to-the-spaceships-blowing-each-other-up belongs high on that list. Come for the exploding spaceships; stay for the DIY spaceship creation.

2) Burn Zombie Burn
Action games about zombies don't have to be dumb. What looks like a two-stick shooter no more demanding than the deliciously dumb Zombie Apocalypse is actually an intricate and smart scoring puzzle. (Read more here.)

1) The Path
Games don't always have to be games as we know them. The Path, for instance, is one of the year's most memorable stories, and it's not even a story in the conventional sense, much less a videogame in the conventional sense. Think of this as six evocative character sketches about femininity, a topic relevant to everyone in the world but alien to most videogames. (Read more here.)

Up next: the most disappointing games of 2009

(Click here for the 10 most overrated games of 2009.)