October 28, 2005 - With all the videogames that are released each and every month, it can be quite a difficult task to decide on which title to spend your hard-earned money. Granted, you could go by our review scores alone and weed through the long list of names to find something that scored high or low, but what if you had somewhere else to turn?

Rather than wait until the end of the year like for our big award blowout, your incredibly masculine friends at IGN.com have decided to employ a monthly tribute to the weeks that were. We're resolved to illustrate to our readers what we thought was the very best game for each system over the past month, and tell you the reason why.

While some of us often chime in with our comments at the end of reviews, for the most part, the reviews on IGN are primarily written by one editor; in this feature we get all of the editors on a particular channel to vote for our Game of the Month. What better way to represent your channel than to speak your mind all at once?

How does it work? It's simple. Any game released in the past month is eligible for the award and is taken through a battery of tests by every editor on that particular channel. After we've finished evaluating each game that comes down the pipeline, we put our heads together and decide on a single "best of" winner that's worthy of the title "IGN Game of the Month." Pretty straightforward, don't you think?

Now that we have the guidelines out of the way, let's move on, and congratulate this month's winner...

Reader Review quote: "Let me start by saying, kudas to you Rockstar, thank you for being creative, hard working and dedicated to your fans (screw those politicians!). This game will revoulutionize portable gaming forever! When sitting on the bus playing this I kept thinking I'm at home playing my PS2. The graphics are damn near flawless, the voice acting and music are pointblank and the gameplay is everything you would expect from a GTA game!" (Read our reader reviews)
-- submitted by byrdman2

Runner-Up Virtua Tennis World Tour Developed by SEGA Published by Sumo Digital LTD. Why We Picked It: Virtua Tennis World Tour packs everything fans of the series could want in a portable package. It's fast, fun and thoroughly engrossing. Plus, the inclusion of well-designed mini-games pushes World Tour's intrinsic level of addiction to new heights. The graphics and sound impress as well, not to mention the somewhat slim, yet totally rewarding multiplayer mode. In short, one of best games on the PSP. So go buy it. Or borrow it. Or hey, steal it. Ok that last part was a total lie.

Yum!