GOTY 2011:

Place 1: Duke Nukem Forever
I don't care what people complain about it, since he can wear four weapons at the same time (as opposed to two as it was before), the Duke kicks ass. Although I think Duke and Weapon Limit don't fit anyway.
Yes, it is no Duke 3D, the level design is linear, but the humor is so juvenile it's fun, and the gameplay actually was pretty nice and challenging. Although the final boss was a pain even on Hard, and it got worse on Insane.

Place 2: Portal 2
The spiritual successor of Narbacular Drop gets even better in its second incarnation. Prerelease I had a lot of doubt that this game could be any good, or the multiplayer could work. It does! The greatest FPS puzzler I played this year - or probably ever.

Place 3: Sequence
Yes, the game is short. After ten hours one has fully beat it, but being impressed by a press-this-button music game as someone who passionately hates press-this-button music games is a great achievement in itself. The RPG part is nice, the songs are nicely chosen and the overall atmosphere is great. Did I mention the game is only 3.99€?

Place 4-5 ex aequo: Costume Quest / Cave Story +
Costume Quest
Well, we don't need to discuss about the qualities of Tim Schaefer - he is a greedy bastard! So I got Costume Quest a few months ago for a few bucks on a sale and the gameplay - while just mediocre - was so crazy it was still very fun. The complaint is that the story is very short.

Cave Story +
The game is hard. At least on Hard Mode. It is unforgiving - one hit kills you -, but has lots of save points so one doesn't lose much progress.
I think everyone knows Cave Story by now. I admit, I never got into Metroid, Mega Man or similar games - although I loved VVVVVV - but that has changed with getting older, I suppose. Cave Story + has real difficulty, not fake difficulty, and that makes it great. If you make no mistake you get through, even if sometimes it is incredibly hard to avoid mistakes. For those who don't like as much of a challenge there are Easy and Normal mode where you can get health capsules so you can permanently sustain several hits, making the game probably a much less frustrating but also less motivating experience. :-)

Special Place for multiplayer fun:
HOARD
Ten minutes per game, but ten very enjoyable minutes. Although one must like that kind fo game, admittedly.

Special Place for a massively multiplayer online game:
Test Drive Unlimited 2
For me this is the definite racing game, although it has several flaws like the absurd difficulty spikes in some missions and they get repetitive. The graphics are awesome, there is a wide variety of cars and two big islands to explore. If you like sandbox racing games, this is the one you need. If you want mission based ones, get Trackmania United Forever instead.

Special Place for a not-so-massively multiplayer online game:
Dungeon Defenders
An original twist on Tower Defense, although it has a lot of flaws. Most of these are because the developers probably did not care to test it before release. The translations are an insult, the difficulty changes crazily. However, the game itself has an interesting concept and works pretty fine at that, although one can only really enjoy it with other people.

Special Place for a card game:
Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
The Archmage mode is a beautiful addition to the gameplay of Magic. The only issue I still have is that the deck DLCs are ripoffs - why can't they just let me create a deck? Shandahar was much better in that regard - for me Shandahar still is THE Magic game.

Special Place for craziness:
Back To The Future - The Game
The worst piece of shit was the game to Back To The Future... on the NES. It took 25 years to get a game that lives up to the greatest time travel trilogy you can ever see on Tv. I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. Yet, it kept me motivated to see what's going on through most of it.

1. Trine 2
2. Dungeons of Dredmor
3. Dawn of War 2: Retribution

Oh yes, I forgot about this one.

Glad to hear this one was good, I hope to pick it up in the near future.

1) The Witcher 2
2) Skyrim
3) Deus Ex 3
4) Dead Island

Nothing beats Witcher 2 in quality of writing, design and graphics though.

Skyrim is definitely my 2011 favourite of the ones I've played (I stil need to play Dark Souls, Batman, Rayman and Zelda). It's the first Bethesda game that I've really gotten into, I can just lose myself for hours and hours in the world they've created. The only bad thing about it is that it caused me to completely abandon all the GOG's I was playing through.

Other new games I played and greatly enjoyed in 2011 include: Portal 2, Bastion, Deus Ex 3, Bulletstorm, Renegade Ops and Jamestown.

Of the ones I have played so far, these are my top 5. I always count down when doing lists.

5 - Orcs Must Die!
I enjoyed this much more than Sanctum. I got bored of Sanctum quickly, but Orcs Must Die! stayed fresh through the entire game.
4 - Anomaly Warzone Earth
Innovative, addicting, exciting, and just a great overall production. The price is a freakin' steal, IMO.
3 - Bulletstorm
Just plain awesome, badass, brutal, hilarious fun. The skillshot system was excellent - one of the most enjoyable features I have ever played in an FPS.
2 - Portal 2
The single most hilarious game I have ever played. Best co-op game I have ever played.
1 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution
The few quick and easy boss fights can't bring this game down from my #1. This is the closest game to Deus Ex since... Deus Ex. I love it. I can't wait for the inevitable sequel.

Special shout out to Atom Zombie Smasher - for being the only game last year that I played for 6 straight hours without leaving my chair... I probably shouldn't mention that... Oh well...

I haven't played The Witcher 2 yet, but I am going to guess that when I do, it will take over one of the top 5 spots. I also have a good feeling about Trine 2. I hope to buy these next month.

I can't decide on the BEST, as I haven't played that many 2011 games. Got my PC 3 months ago and since then I've been playing older stuff.

But I'll say Dark Souls, Orcs Must Die, Terraria, BF3 and Bulletstorm for the sake of it (I've played them).

PS: Still haven't played TW2.

Skyrim (there is still dungeons that needs clearing out, and different char builds to try)
Orcs Must Die (Fun factor 10)
Minecraft (The game that never stops)
Bastion (This is how to update and old formula)
Trine 2 (The most beautiful game I have seen, don't hurt that it is extremely playable to)

This are my 5 GOY from 2011, the ranking changes as to which game I a currently loading up...

And i just noticed that 3 of them were (officially) released just before Christmas.

I would finally give honourable mentions to SpaceChem. (And maybe New Vegas)

I have an aging computer, which sadly can't handle The Witcher 2, or else it would probably have been on this list. Surprisingly enough, it could handle Skyrim & Deus Ex HR. So here is an attempt from me to name my favourite games of last year:

1: Skyrim. I am a sucker for open world CRPGs (but not GTA style open world games). With the disappointment that was Oblivion, and general annoyance over Bethesda's legal department, I was close to not buying this game, but luckily I did. And what a game! Yea, it had a few flaws, the removal of some skills was in my mind a bad move (even though perks somewhat made up for that), the voice acting was still not top notch, and a huge pile of bugs made some parts needlessly frustrating. But with all that said, Skyrim still stands as my favourite game of last year. The world was well craft and interesting to explore, the radiant AI actually managed to do a lot of cool things, I enjoyed lot of the background information that could be found, I liked its art style, found most of the quests to be fun... and the list can be made a lot longer. And there was a lot (and I really do mean a lot) of content in this game. I'm also eagerly looking forward to what the modding community will do to the game (this is usually where Bethesda games really shine).

2: Dungeons of Dredmor: If we talk about amount of fun per € spent, this game tops the list. I bought it on release, and I loved it. I have replayed it many times, tried many different builds, and died in some rather humiliating ways. And I just keep coming back! It is a rogue like, and like all rogue likes part of the fun is to go in with a crazy build and just see how far you can get (this is why I love the randomize button).

3: Frayed knights: Another indie CRPG (and the 3rd CRPG in a row), frayed knights takes the wizardry approach to game design. You have a party of adventurers who you control through a first person view. Combat is turn based and for the most part quite fun, and the humor, while a bit juvenile at first, actually grew on me as the game progressed.

4: Deus Ex: Human revolution. I'm going to make a lot of enemies for saying this but: Deus Ex Human revolution was more fun than the first game. The stealth mechanics worked better, the voice acting was better, the hacking was better handled. Overall I just thought that it was a better game. Then again, I never thought that the original Deus Ex quite deserved all the praise it got (but that is a topic for another thread). Yes the boss battles were annoying, but they were not very hard, even as a stealth character, and there were easy ways to get around most of them without having to stand and unload clip after clip after clip into them (by the end I had so many augmentations that I ended up having most of the combat augs as well, the game rewards you for playing stealthy with more experience).

5: Portal 2: Entertaining monologues, fun (if a bit easy) puzzles and a bit more meat on its bones than Portal 1 made Portal 2 a rather memorable game. You could see that they spent a of time creating this game, as every level was well crafted and seemed to work as intended. The game always managed to draw your attention to the right things, which might have made it a bit too easy, but it also prevented frustrating puzzles where you fail to spot a certain key element.


Honourable mentions: Bastion, Frozen Synapse, Magicka, Jamestown, Space pirates and zombies

To be honest Skrim pips the top spot for last year. Portal 2 comes a close second.

Agreed.

This year #1 for me has been Skyrim, #2 was actually Gothic 2. Few other games have held my attention as much!

For me it was Portal 2, followed by Witcher 2.

Still, I have yet to play some of the little gems like Bastion, Trine 2, Book of Unwritten Tales.

Bastion
Catherine
To the moon
SpaceChem
Frozen Synapse
Portal 2
Trine 2
Dark Souls
Zelda: Skyward Sword
...many good games, but at the same time, there isn't one really standing out in my opinion... Nothing revolutionnary this year...

With the world the way it is, I can easily see Skyrim getting GOTY. There's no way in hell it should, but that's the way the cookies crumble these days....sycophantic reviews and brown-tonguing to "earn" back-handers of one form or another...

The game's so bland it makes Oblivion look positively enchanting!