1. Catherine ; I'm a bit of a tool for anything the Persona team releases, so I was bound to rank Catherine pretty high. It's a damn fine game, with some strong characters (much like the Persona games) and a weird story which, whilst going off the deep end, totally works. Has the right level of humour, seriousness, branching plotlines and scalable difficulty to be the best game I played in 2011. Bravo, Atlus: you've made one of the few games released this year that I'll actually replay.
2. Bastion ; I started Bastion expecting a damn fine game (I had, after all, played the demo). What I didn't expect was to be blown away. Tight controls, beautiful art direction and a great story told by Ruck (the game's narrator) seal the deal on this brilliant isometric action game.
3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ; I was performing an early Thieve's Guild mission where I had to burn down a part of someone's property. However, a rather mean-looking pair of guards were watching my target like a hawk, and were going to cause me trouble if I moved into their line of sight. "What I'd do for a distraction right now," I thought, when all of a sudden, a dragon swooped down onto the courtyard, and drew the guards' attention. Spotting an opportunity, I ran through the chaos and torched what needed to be torched, then high-tailed it back to Riften. But that wasn't the end of it: the dragon had followed me back to the town and began fucking up shit in the street, until the town came together and took it down. What a game.
4. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective ; I was actually reluctant to get this. I was hoping Shu Takumi would go back to Ace Attorney and sort out the mess the series was left in after Apollo Justice, and was not going to get Ghost Trick as some sort of stupid "protest" against Capcom. But I had £50 in reward points from GAME, and had decided that I wasn't going to buy stuff from them again, and proceeded to blow it on games I hadn't bought. Ghost Trick was one of them, and after finishing it, I regretted not buying it on its release date. A rather unique take on the adventure game, Ghost Trick brings a degree of game-ness to the genre that many people claim the genre needs in this day and age. Coupled with typical Takumi-esque characters and plot elements, and you have a winner.
5. Deus Ex: Human Revolution ; After the original, I had such high hopes for this one. And most of them were met. Eidos Montreal had, in my view, successfully kept the spirit of the original Deus Ex, but modernised it for the consoles whilst keeping it faithful for us PC users. I have two major gripes, however: the first is that there's only two hub worlds, and you visit them multiple times. The second is that the endings are rubbish FMVs with a different Adam Jensen voice over the top. So lazy, even if the MGS-like WTF moment at the end of the credits was the part that got the strongest reaction out of me.
6. Portal 2 ; Not Valve's finest game, but a very strong effort. Great voice work, especially from Stephen Merchant as Wheatley, made the game one I won't soon forget. However, the puzzles were a little easy, and I felt some of the gameplay magic of the first had been lost in the sequel. However, the game more than made up for its single player gameplay shortcomings with the co-op mode, which I enjoyed in one sitting with a good friend of mine.
7. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword ; I liked the motion controls. I wasn't bothered by the "long" introduction. I enjoyed the repeated formula. Still, something about this game just didn't gel with me as much as it should. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adored it, and Skyward Sword had my undivided attention, but I went in feeling I'd be playing my GOTY, and came out realising I hadn't. I think I've been spoiled by playing Skyrim, and having my expectations on what SS should be retroactively altered. I wouldn't change a thing about the game, but I guess I don't love the Zelda series as much as when I was a kid.
8. Pokémon Black/White ; I loved Pokémon as a young teen, but post-Gold/Silver, I've not had much to say about the series at all. Save for new Pokémon to catch, and "new" locations and a "new" plot, not much had changed from that game to when I started playing Diamond/Pearl. Black/White, however, changes all of that. The world has grown up a bit, with the game touching on subjects that, whilst not mature in any sense, are more grown up than previous games. Whilst the gameplay hasn't changed dramatically (but does have some very nice improvements, both technically and aesthetically), I feel that the series is finally growing up with its audience and is asking itself what it wants to be when it grows up.
9. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception ; Great setpieces, but as a whole product they felt disconnected and incoherent. It was like a bunch of level designers were told to work on their own in building cool things, and then Amy Hennig being told she had to weld all these pieces together with a story. The fact that the final parts of the game felt shoehorned in compared to the grand and exciting setpieces in the first 75% of the game solidifies my view that this is what was going on. Uncharted 3 doesn't hold a candle to its predecessor.
10. Batman: Arkham City ; I really enjoyed Arkham Asylum, but Arkham City was a game that was at a point where I'd decided I'd had enough with this gameplay. It wasn't boring, but I felt that it had run its course about 3-4 hours in and I only completed it because I thought I should. Catwoman missions shook things up a little bit, but not enough to stave off the fatigue. I'm just glad I got this for free with my GPU, as I would've certainly regretted paying full price for it.
x. The Witcher 2: Assassin's of Kings ; What I've played, about an hour or so, is stellar stuff. However, PC problems kind of killed the passion I had for this early on, so I've filed it high on the list on my backlog, and I'll start ploughing through it once the Xbox 360 version is out, just so I can have people going through it at the same time as I am to discuss it with.
x. Gemini Rue ; A nice adventure game that tries to evoke an old-school look and feel, but with some modern adventure game innovations thrown into the mix. On the most part it succeeds, and I'm very happy that the game is now on Steam for everyone to buy. Wonky voice acting aside, Gemini Rue is top indie game that really does shame anything that the bigwig adventure game house, Telltale Games, has released this year. Unfortunately, I can't put it on my main list as I haven't finished it yet (Skyrim basically sliced it down the middle, and I'll probably get back to it next month now), but it's very good and I felt the need to mention it.
2010. 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors ; Being in Europe, I had to import this wonderful game from the US. I ordered it in December 2010, but it arrived from VG+ in January of this year, and it's an awesome game. Interesting characters, an intriguing story and a great twist that ties all the different endings together. I highly recommend it, and were it released this year, it would most certainly be near the top of my GOTY list.
! Still had a blast.
