I can't help but be confused that Final Fantasy XIII was not only not nominated for best graphics technical and especially best graphics artistic, but also not even on the vote list for readers. Am I missing something? Is that game somehow much, much less beautiful than I remember it being? Was I crazy for thinking it was the best looking current generation game I had laid eyes on to that point as a hybrid between excellent tech and outstanding art direction?

Odd. Final Fantasy XIII may be something of an odd duck in its franchise (rollercoaster streamlined gameplay is not something most fans are used to, especially after the extremely lacksidasical XII) I can only conclude that GameSpot's staff does not play role-playing games, generally. They might as well change the name of the RPG award to the VanOrd category, because as far as I can tell, he's the only staff member that really cares about that genre.

To be fair, BioWare seemed to have an impact with Mass Effect 2, but egads, did anyone pay much attention to this year's crop of JRPGs?

As an aside, I think Final Fantasy XIII is (based on fifteen or twenty hours of play), much like Final Fantasy XII, a misunderstood genius of a game, only it's even mor jarring, because its design principles jumped to the opposite end of the spectrum of where XII sat. Really need to go play more of that game...