I spent the better part of a week sorting out my lists, only to find nobody had made the topic yet. So I'll play Angela this year.

2011 was the pits on a personal level, but a very entertaining one gamewise. I was largely my usual terrible self at finishing what I start (, but I have some serious matters I can fall on as an excuse.

Anyway, categories. As ever, these are the ones I usually use, but you're free to make your own.

Top 10 Games I Played From 2011
Top 10 Games I Played From Before 2011
Most Disappointing Games
"I Love Videogames" Moments of 2011
Things I Hated About Games This Year - Game-Specific
Things I Hated About Games This Year - Industry-Related

OK, lots of typing ahead. Everyone else who likes making lists, feel free to jump in.

I want to start this year's Game of the Year rundown off with some fun statistics.  I obtained 60 games in 2011, 45 of which were released in 2011 and 15 of which were released prior to 2011.  Of the 60 grand total, 26 were free due to Sony's hacking apology and Nintendo's Ambassador program and other 3DS and Zelda promotions.  Of the 34 I actually paid for, the average price I paid was $23.48.  Of the 60, 41 were digital releases and 19 were physical releases (if you take out the 26 free digital games, the numbers come down to 15 digital vs. 19 physical).

For the 34 paid games, the system breakdown goes as follows:

360: 10 (6 Digital + 4 Physical)
PS3: 9 (6 Digital + 3 Physical)
3DS: 7 (3 Digital + 4 Physical)
DS: 4 (0 Digital + 4 Physical)
PSP: 2 (0 Digital + 2 Physical)
Wii: 2 (0 Digital + 2 Physical)

TOP FIVE GAMES OF 2011

5. Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)

A mostly successful merger of 3D Mario mechanics and 2D Mario sensibilities, Super Mario 3D Land is the first 3DS game to really take advantage of the system's 3D capabilities and should be part of every 3DS owner's library

4. Kirby: Mass Attack (DS)

A unique and creative take on the Kirby franchise, Mass Attack puts you in control of up to 10 Kirbys at once.  As the Master of Kirbys, you command your pink puff army to swarm and destroy all who stand against you in a wide variety of clever levels.  Addicting and fun, Mass Attack is one of the most surprising mainstream releases in some time.  If you haven't already, give it a shot.

3. Portal 2 (PS3/360/PC/Mac)

Great writing and acting accompany refined gameplay and the best co-op experience in recent memory.  While Portal 2 lacks the originality of its breakout predecessor, it's a great time and shouldn't be missed.

2. Ghost Trick (DS)

Beautiful art and animation, catchy tunes, a touching story, and interesting gameplay make Ghost Trick the best new IP of 2011.  Point and click adventures don't get better than this.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)

After three subpar handheld releases, the Zelda series makes a stunning return to form on the Wii with Skyward Sword.  Packing dozens of hours of exploration, puzzle solving, and fighting alongside lovely art design, great music, and excellent characterizations, Nintendo delivers a cohesive, immensely enjoyable experience from start to finish.

Let me get the negative stuff out early, so it doesn't linger too long.
Things I Hated About Games This Year - Game-Specific
5. Catherine - Yo No - I like Catherine. I like Shoji Meguro. But that opening rap is an embarassment to both. Worst song I heard all year.
4. Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection - Scratching the Monkey - I understand why Snake vs Monkey wouldn't be in the 360 version, but having it cut from the PS3 version, because MS throws a fit over Sony's version having something theirs doesn't? That's over the line. You know what else the PS3 version has that the 360 doesn't? The right controls.
3. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Freedom Isn't Fi - A lot of hay has been written over Nintendo's longstanding war with sequence-breaking, but Skyward insistence on just-so playing is ridiculous. Here's an actual scenario that happened to me (spoiler-guarded):
I'm informed that I need to complete an incomplete Faron symbol to gain access to a new location. No problem, that symbol has been visible on my Gear Menu since I started, so I don't need to compare it to the point they marked on my map. Only I don't get to draw said mark until I go to said point. Fine, I go over hill and dale, walk over the symbol they want me to see, and return where I was. Nothing. After a few more exasperating runs, I realize the game wants me to call out Fi so that she can tell me what the thing I've now seen several times looks like. Finally the other location lets me do what I could have done myself nearly a half-hour ago if it weren't for the mandatory boondoggle. And I just sigh.
2. Final Fantasy XIII - Shut Up, Lightning - All the complaints I'd heard about focusing on Hope and Vanille left me unprepared for what an unlikable,  selfish, petulant, whiny little crab Lightning is. She just may be the worst RPG character since Shion Uzuki, and I think Squix knows it. Why else would they set up a chance to give her a richly-deserved beatdown in the sequel via DLC?
1. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - Now You Don't - Foolishly I decided I would try, for the first time ever, to get 100% on Ocarina. The original version had a glitch where you could collect a particular Skulltula's medal infinitely. Unbeknownst to me, Nintendo 'fixed' this by making the game save that particular Skulltula's collection outside of the saves you activate ingame. Now, when I was doing a handful of sidequests together (including getting said Skulltula) I quit the game in a huff because I was having trouble with the damned horse race. But when I went back to reclaim that Skulltula, the programming said that one was already gotten, even as my map and inventory said it was not. Essentially if I wanted all the Skulltulas I'd have to start all over because Nintendo was concerned about cheating in a port of a 13-year-old game with no Achievements whatsoever. That's lunacy, but at the time I'd called it something worse.
Things I Hated About Games This Year - Industry-Related
5. The Death of Manuals - Let me get out my walker and dentures for this one. Why, in my day, manuals were a game's proper preamble: the crisp paper, rich with New Game Smell, detailing instructions with icons and screenshots, as well as often providing extra lore that the game itself would gloss over. Today's manuals are a sham, from the wispy foldouts of Super Mario 3D Land to the download-only pranks of the Gears of War Triple Pack. Add to this the news that all physical Vita games will lack physical manuals, and I wonder where the pride in product has gone. Do we really want a future of nothing but in-game tutorials? Really?
4. The New 360 Dashboard - Ugly, unuseful, and ads on every page. It's New-Coke levels of horrible.
3. Restrictions - Hello. regional lockouts on portables. Hello, new limits on PSN downloads. Hello, mandatory agreements signing away your legal rights. I suspect the next gen of console will have hourly fees and pay-as-you-go memory, like cellphones.
2. Giving Up on Bringing Games Over - Apparently translation teams are finicky rock stars, demanding billions of dollars (and hand-picked candies) before they can set their talents to work, because money was cited as the reason a lot of otherwise-would-be-here titles got canceled, like Valkyria Chronicles 3 and Ace Attorney Investigations 2. And then there's Nintendo, who thought it wasn't worth bringing over an already-translated RPG a lot of people went to a lot of trouble to make plain they wanted, and handed us some Mystery Case Files pap instead (I know about the limited release through Gamestop in April, but why limit the release at all? Is NoA sitting on a boxful of upcoming Wii games I don't know about? Is there a stigma in making it wiely available?). Thank goodness for the likes of Atlus, Nisa, Aksys and XSeed.
1. Capcom - Seriously, has any other company blown through nearly thirty years of goodwill so quickly? No matter what series you like, Capcom bent you over this year. Like MvC3? Surprise, it's already obsolete! Like Ace Attorney? Surprise, it's not getting translated anymore! Like Megaman? Surprise, it's canceled because you don't love it enough! Like Monster Hunter? Surprise, you're getting Dragon's Droga instead, with a Western focus (read: dumbed down to make it sell better). And so on and on. The lowest point for the company is either when they asked people to wave twenties to will DarkStalkers into being, or when just after canceling MML3 for perceived lack of interest they insist on continuing the DmC project in spite of overwhelming disapproval. Nearly all the talent is gone, replaced by accountants trying to figure out what to excise for DLC. The company is just a husk now, and I never thought I'd be writing that.

OK, that's enough for tonight.

Also need to add some of the changes made to Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. Just about everyone agrees on several things in the original: Certain characters were way too powerful and X-Factor is just way too good. So naturally, they do nothing to tone down Wolverine and Wesker, while whacking She-Hulk and Amaterasu with more nerfs than you can swing a bat at. And X-Factor is STILL as bad as it has ever been, giving people access to a crazy stupid comeback mechnanic that actually rewards bad players for losing two characters off their team! All this, after months of data from people who actually play the game religiously, giving us a game that is just as broken as the original. So close to being a great game, but too busy stumbling over its' own feet.

So yeah...Ultimate Marvel 3. My 2011 Game of the Year and also my 2011 Disappointment of the Year.

To be honest, I can decide who is worse, Shion or Virginia from Wild Arms 3. I guess I have to say Virginia's worse, at least Xenosaga surrounds Shion with much cooler characters.

This is the reason I wouldn't get rid of the PS2 versions of God of War even if I got the HD re-release.

While I don't really come across their work anymore now that Wild Arms is dead, I do like this company.

I tend to look at this more as a win anymore. Yeah, I was down about canceling Legends 3 (although I wasn't thrilled when I heard he'd be sharing the spotlight with a new character) but at least they can't do anymore damage to the namesake for a while. Capcom really was their own worst enemy with this one.

I gotta say, that damn kid who was the main character in Wild Arms 4 was probably worse than Virginia. At least Virginia had a cool design, the kid was pretty much stock, generic anime. He was a big reason I just couldn't get into the game at all (as compared to Wild Arms 3, where I was just praying the entire cast would show some personality at some point, to go with the cool designs).

As I recall, they never did.

Favorite Games of 2011:

1: Xenoblade Chronicles: Best JRPG of the generation. Nothing else touches it and as far as sheer joy goes, it easily eclipses everything else I played this year. 85 hours of perfection.

2: Red Dead Redemption: Despite a somewhat sluggish mid-section, I had a blast with this game and that's something I didn't expect as sandbox games tend to wear me out. I credit the sympathetic, well-crafted main lead as well as the storytelling in general. I felt invested in John's adventure to save his family. It also didn't hurt that the world-building was top-notch, with appropriate music and a thrilling combat system (which probably could have been challenging but that's just a quibble).

3: Skyrim: Endless. I'm 35 hours in and out of the 9 (or so) towns, I've only fully explored 2 and barely touched a third. The rest, I haven't even been to. As you get most of your quests from the towns, you can see how long this game truly is, if you're willing to go that far. My biggest complaint is one I share with all Bethesda games and that's the storytelling, or lack thereof. It's fortunate the game excels in other departments because there's very little of an interesting story here and virtually no interesting NPCs to talk to. As this is something I need in all of my games, it's to Skyrim's credit that I've gotten this far without needing much motivation. It's just FUN to randomly explore the world and its dungeons.

4: Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Still haven't beaten this one but I've had a great time with it (even though I have restart it as I switched versions). For the most part, I'm burnt out on FPSs but this game makes them fun again.

5: Arkham Asylum: Obviously, this was released a while ago but I finally got to it in the last few months of 2011. What can I say? I devoured it. A good challenge (especially in the last half), interesting areas, wonderful sense of atmosphere... and so many Riddler challenges to hunt down! For the record, I got 100%. I can't wait to play the sequel in 2012!

Most Disappointing Games:

1: Dragon Age II: Crap. BioWare has a spotty track record with me but I greatly enjoyed the first Dragon Age and was expecting more of the same (but better) with the sequel. Instead, they tossed out everything good about the original, dumbed down the characterizations, almost completely ditched an interesting story and turned it into an endless hack and slash. That *might* have worked if the battle system had any depth but it was DOA.

2: Zelda: Skyward Sword: I'm about 30 hours into it and not feeling the urge to continue. Just burnt out on the bland story, disappointing, recycled level designs and endless fetch quests. The motion controls are actually pretty good now. I just wish they had been put to use in a game that was fresher and more inspired.

3: Uncharted III: This is actually a case where the game is actually pretty good but it had unfair expectations put on it. We always expect sequels to be better and in this case, Uncharted II is practically perfection so where do you go from there? Turns out, a slow start, terrible aiming controls and a disappointing ending top the list. Still a great, excting game once you get to the midpoint but my least favorite of the trilogy.

4: Portal II: Again, nothing wrong with the game. It just really pissed me off. I found the first Portal to be a relaxing, short and perfect experience. The sequel more than doubles the length and with it, doubles the frustration.

Games Pending:

Arkham City, Dead Space 1 and 2, God of War III (which I'm near the end of. Just lost interest in it).

Things I Hated About Games This Year - Industry-Related:

They're an easy target these days but Square-Enix. What was the last good game they made, Dragon Quest VIII? Which was seven years ago? Now, they're endlessly churning out remakes or ports of their classic games in lieu of actually making new ones that stand the test of time. Final Fantasy VI will likely last forever but do you think anyone is going to give a damn about Final Fantasy XIII in a decade?

Didn't play Skyward Sword and I don't have a 3DS yet so there's zero Nintendo here..

Top 10 Games I Played From 2011

Sonic Generations (PS3)
Dead Island (PS3)
Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (PSN)
Shadows of the Damned (PS3)
Sonic CD (PSN, Android)
Daytona USA (PSN)
The House of the Dead: Overkill - Extended Cut (PS3)
Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection (PSN)
ChuChu Rocket! (Android)
Hard Corps: Uprising (PSN)

Top 6 Games I Played From Before 2011

Alan Wake (360)
Splatterhouse (PS3)
Yakuza 2 (PS2)
Dead Nation (PSN)
X-Men (PSN)
osu! (Android)

"I Love Video Games" Moments of 2011

Every minute I spent playing Sonic Generations.

I'm well known 'round these parts for not actually playing games, but 2011 I actually played a fair amount. I won't bother categorizing because I don't have anywhere near enough room to fill the categories.

WoW: Cataclysm:  Anyone who knows me knows I play wow almost to exclusion of all other games.  The changes they made for Cataclysm were really good changes but they were not well received by the self-entitled "i just want to face roll and get my items" community, so Blizzard has been on their heels the entire expansion trying to cater to retards who shouldn't be playing the game.  It's unfortunate but this is what modern day gaming has really come down to.  Except those ridiculous top down JP shooters.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (and the DLC pack): Loved the 2001 game and the sequel, but this wasn't nearly as good.  It was much better than Bioshock 1 and 2, though.  The game itself was about the same in terms of story as the first one, and about as linear in terms of story progression, but the real shame was the lack of variability in play style.  The original had the 3 main paths you could choose to do pretty much any objective: stealth, cyber (hack) or brute force (guns akimbo, baby).  This sequel maintained all that throughout the level but it was more like "level" and then "get fucked by a really strong boss head on with no alternatives to fight him other than weapons".  I played the game stealthly and had a bitch of a time trying to kill any of the bosses.  The augmentation progression path was both confusing and meaningless.  Confusing insofar as it didn't really give you a clear aug path, you could make some pretty stupid mistakes and get boned for them early on, and meaningless insofar as later on in the game you end up just filling out things you don't have even though you'll never use them.  I wish they were more like talent trees, in WoW (if anyone is familiar), where picking a particular tree would eventually get you some really cool theme based ability.  There are very clear balance and game design issues with doing it that way, though.  I did get a fair amount of game play out of the game by playing it "stealthy" and trying to non-lethal takedown everyone, though. 

Bastion: I saw my brother playing this game on Christmas break and picked it up off Steam.  The colors and art are absolutely f---ing phenomenal, the action rpg style of gaming is really what I enjoy these days, and the narration is just mind-blowingly good.  This game plays like a western Zwei!! or Oath in Felghana and it has some pretty cool replay value with being able to do a new game+, level up to max level, upgrade weapons, beat arena style scenarios and some different endings and stuff. 

Zelda: Skyward Sword:  This game is f---ing awful and an absolute disgrace to the Zelda and Nintendo franchises.  I don't know what the f--- they were thinking.  Seriously.  No left-handed Wiimote mode? I guess I can live with that, it's not a huge impedance but still annoying and one of my biggest pet peeves with gaming community these days.  The text scrolling speed, even holding down 'A', is SO BAD.  The annoying "Here's a hint shoved down your throat because we think you are a monkey" shit is really annoying.  I don't think I'm even going to bother finishing this game.

Dragon Quest: Swords: This game is so cool.  The linear map-to-map zones and straight path-with-a-few-splits dungeons is kind of lame but understandable given the Wiimote functionality.  I don't really mind it, though, it reminds me a lot of Shining in the Darkness.  The combat mechanics are really cool.  The new game+ feature is cool.  The replay value seems high up there with being able to temper weapons, do side games, attempt timed challenges on dungeons.  Overall I think I'm going to really enjoy this game for a long while.  Although I wish nothing but death on the person who decided to make Fleurette have a French accent.

Skyrim: I have never enjoyed an Elder Scrolls game, at all.  The open-endedness of them is frustrating and annoying to me.  I do not mind linear, I do not mind semi-linear, but I cannot stand open-ended games like this.  There is too much to do and not enough feedback about how or when to do it and I just get overwhelmed by that kind of thing.  Bleh.

Looking forward to FFXIII-2.  I loved FFXIII, I don't care how bad people think the linearity was, it was an enjoyable story, and enjoyable playthrough and provided a marginal amount of replay value with upgrading items and doing some of the optional stuff.

Oh and Chrono Trigger's iOS port is enjoyable but frustrating at the same time.  I understand some peoples complaints about "how many ports does one game need?", but I don't own any of the other ports so it's not really an issue for me.  The controls are really bad, though, so it makes doing any sort of coordinated stuff pretty hard.  I could not beat the 80 point House of Horrors challenge on it, and I could get max 6 beers down at the Millennial Fair.

Yeah, where the heck is Angie anyways? Haven't seen her around these parts for a while now...

Anyhoo, let's get down to business:

I should point out that the only 2011 games I'm interested in but haven't played yet are Skyrim and Skyward Sword. I'm sure I'll love Skyrim but I'm getting increasingly concerned about Skyward Sword from what I've read.

I should also point out that the best game released this year is Xenoblade Chronicles, as it was last year, and as it will be next year. I will omit it though, because I first played it in 2010.

And just to be annoyingly different: Here's a Top 9!

9: Mortal Kombat 2011: I was never a fan of this series in the slightest, even though I've played most of the games, but wow, they really nailed it this time! I'd name this the Best Fighting Game to Play Alone for it's extensive single player content, if it wasn't for the upcoming title on this list.

8: Final Fantasy XIII-2: Haven't quite finished it yet (goddamn cheap Final Boss), but everything in here is a gigantic improvement over the original. The fact that I'm at the end of the game and there's still a TON of stuff I've missed is a stark contrast with the original in itself. The writing is still absolutely asinine (seriously, they need to get some new writers at SQUEX), the poppy soundtrack is grating and battles still run on automatic (difficulty feels generally lower too, so less strategy is required), but there's lots of stuff to do and find, and it's actually FUN TO PLAY this time.

7: Radiant Historia: Atlus shows that they're still at the top of their game and that they're everything SQUEX can only HOPE to be. Great writing, lovable characters and a very clever time travelling system. Mix in a great soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura, and you've got a winner.

6: Dead Space 2: I loved the original, but it kicked my ass. This one felt a bit more forgiving, while still far from easy, and it has the advantage of not having a retarded meteor-shooting section. Fantastic atmosphere and sound, fun shooting mechanics and great graphics. I hate EA, but this is a series to keep an eye on. The last 2 chapters are horrible though...

5: Dissidia Duodecim: Again, I was a great fan of the original, and this one basically builds on it and improves it. The new characters are fun to toy around with (Yuna being surprisingly useful), and you even get all the story content for each individual character from the original game as well. Like the original, I spent over 100 hours on this just playing alone, which is just amazing for a Fighting Game. Some people might say it's more of an RPG though, and there's something to be said for that, but in the end it's all about beating people up, and it does that better than any other game this year.

4: Super Mario 3D Land: I think that, with this game, Nintendo has finally found the perfect 3D transition of the classic 2D Mario gameplay, and that's quite an achievement. I still like the Galaxy series better, but this is a great piece of work all the same. Hands down the best 3DS game this year, although that's not saying much.

3: Arkham City: I'm probably the only person in the world who thought Arkham Asylum was "just good" instead of "mind-blowingly fantastic", and in my opinion, the sequel blows it out of the water in every single respect. The open world is much more fun to navigate than the more restricted (and frankly kinda boring) environments of the original, but it's also not TOO big and travelling from one end to another never takes too long, not to mention it's a whole lotta fun to do. Some interesting side quests, cool boss battles and a surprisingly depressing ending make this pretty much the best experience I've ever had controlling the Bat.

2: Sonic Generations: It's a very VERY close tie with No.1, but I'm going to have to put it in the second spot anyway, mainly because of some sloppy design here and there (Crisis City and Seaside Hill come to mind) and an exceedingly boring and annoying final boss fight. Everything else is a complete and utter BLAST though. The soundtrack is fantastic, the level design absolutely shines (I'll drop this bomb right here: at its best, it easily stands on par with the old Genesis games) and exploring is just as much fun as it is just blazing through the levels at lightning speed. Only 2 games compelled me to go for the Platinum Trophy this year, this one and the No.1, and to me, that's about as big a compliment as I can give it.

1: Rayman Origins: This year was a fantastic year for platforming fans with the revival of several classic series, and Rayman Origins was probably the most surprisingly tight and well-designed one of them all. Beautiful hand-drawn graphics, a quirky and fun soundtrack, extremely tight platforming with appropriately tight controls, covered in a sauce of surprisingly high challenge. In other words: a true sequel to the 1995 original. It also comes without any kind of install, patches or first-day DLC. It is, in short, a game made by and for people who truly love platform games.

Here's some more random awards:

Most Disappointing: Uncharted 3, Gears 3, Catherine and The Last Story. I'll admit I had expectations of Gears 3 and UC3 that were perhaps a bit too high, but on the other hand, they've only got themselves to blame, haven't they? Gears 2 and UC2 were fantastic and at the top of their game, and the devs just didn't really know what to do to improve on that, and it shows. Gears 3's campaign lacks the OMG moments of Gears 2 and dumbs down the gameplay by having your ally AI do most of the work.

UC3's first half is completely forgettable, and the second half is not without its faults either. It felt poorly balanced both in terms of shooting mechanics and pacing. It's like they wanted to please everyone and ended up just messing everything up. It's made me cautious of the series as a whole, which is a pity.

Catherine absolutely delivered in terms of writing and characters, but totally fell apart in the gameplay department. Extremely unbalanced difficulty and just core gameplay that isn't that interesting make this game more of a chore to play than anything else. I started dreading the block pushing sections like the nightmares that they actually were, and this is NOT a testament of quality.

As for The Last Story. Maybe I've been spoiled by Xenoblade too much. I went in expecting a game of similar greatness, but it's just boring, poorly written, repetitive and uninteresting. I've said it before, but I think Xenoblade has ruined my enjoyment of other RPGs...

Worst game of the Year: Duke Nukem Forever. I'm not even going to spend more words on it.

Most overrated Game of the Year: Portal 2. Seriously. I don't get what all the fuss is about. The first one was nice and funny and the length was just right (but MAN, did it get drilled into the ground by all its fans laboriously squeezing every last drop of juice out of the game's memes), but the chore gameplay is just not interesting enough to last 10 hours. The new Paint mechanic was okay, I guess, but I grew tired of it fairly quickly. Then there's the sections where you have to spot the only piece of...uh..."portalable"?...wall which were so poorly done I actually felt like I had cheated my way out of some situations when I had actually done exactly the correct thing.
As for the humor...Well, Wheatley was very well done, the Turret Reprogramming section was a barrel of laughs, and the over-the-top ending was hilarious, but other than that... Neither GlaDoS or Cave Johnson managed to tickle my funny bone in the slightest, and I couldn't see the humor in all this BS about potatoes and lemons either.
I think that Valve, as a company, have shown so much love and care to their fans that their games get sky-high scores by default, even if they're just kinda meh...

My Industry Report:

This year I played all the wrong games apparently. Really hated this year as it offered a lot of sequels for games I don't care for. The top games that seem to not get mentioned that look better than overhyped stuff I've played this year (Shadows, LA Noire, Batman, etc.) are:

1. Bulletstorm (360/PS3)
2. Arcana Heart 3 (Arcade/PS3)
3. Yakuza 4 (PS3)
4. Need For Speed: The Run (360/PS3)
5. Serious Sam 3: BFE (Win)

So I'll just leave it at that.

I'm shortening mine to 5 since I don't play enough games any more. 

Top 5 Games I Played From 2011
1. Zelda: Skyward Sword - I really didn't have a lot of expectations one way or another for this game - I went in more blind than I usually do regarding any game and came away very happy.  I loved the motion control sword fighting, the handling of the non-dungeon bits, the new items, and the general fun factor that elevated it above Twilight Princess.  Best Zelda game ever?  No, sadly.  There were still plenty of little nit-picky things that should have been resolved, like annoying hand-holding (ugh, Fi was almost as bad as Issun in Okami) and gimmicky motion control in areas that were NOT sword-related.  That said, the good far outweighed the bad and the game was still good enough to make me enjoy it more than anything else I played this year.

2. Portal 2 - The first game came out of nowhere and blew me away, making it one of my favorite games of 2007.  I was looking forward to but not SUPER excited for the sequel (I understand why people love Valve as a company, but I find the Half Life stuff overrated and I just don't get into their games in general).  That said, the finished product tickled me in all the right ways.  I played through it with some of my friends watching, which helped make the comedy work even better.  Funny writing, great characters, and solid gameplay without the need for killing and violence makes me a happy camper.

3. Mario Kart 7 - While I do find something to enjoy in every Mario Kart, the series in general is kind of hit or miss for me.  While Mario Kart DS seemed to have potential, I never got past trying to control a 3D game with a d-pad, and THIS game manages to nail the controls.  Course design is also pretty awesome (though I'm not as happy with the retro selection as I was in the Wii game).  I feel like item balance is better and the rubberbanding AI has been toned down.  Multiplayer is also phenomenal both on and offline.  Grand fun and a lovely new entry to the franchise.

4. Super Mario 3D Land - The Mario Galaxy games are pretty much my favorite video games in the last decade, so I was super excited about a new 3D entry from the same team.  I left fairly satisfied, but with a few caveats.  They definitely made a 3D game that feels like an extension of the old 2D Mario games.  It took some getting used to, but the controls and actual 3D screens worked together brilliantly.  That said, I feel this game was a bit too rushed, in the end.  I really got sick of seeing the same level layout over and over again with different enemy placement and whatnot for the second half.  It was also SUPER tedious going back to do some of the gold flags and whatnot to open the final stage.  Great game, not quite as good as I'd hoped for.

5. Professor Layton and the Last Spectre - Absolutely nothing new going on here, but I really like this series.  I totally understand why some people don't, but it's just so charming!  Plus, since I hardly make enough time in my life for video games these days, it's the perfect thing to just pull out my DS and solve a few puzzles before bed every day.

Top 5 Games I Played From Before 2011
1. Nier - HOLY CRAP I can't believe I almost didn't ever bother to play this game.  I picked it up dirt cheap on a whim and then stuck it in during the big blizzard in February.  SO glad that I did - this has become one of my favorite games of the generation, and easily the best thing that Square has put out on a console in recent years (I know Cavia was the developer, but still...).  Great characters, great voice acting, engaging story, and so incredibly different from everything else out there.  It's sad that Cavia has now been shuttered - we NEED more games - especially from Japan - that break the traditional mold and offer something so completely and utterly insane.  Do I see why a lot of people hated this game?  Sure.  But I loved it a LOT.  Also yes, the soundtrack is stunning, but I feel everyone pretty much knows that by now, while many don't realize how neat the game it's from is as well.

2. Fragile Dreams - I'll start off by saying that this one is hard to recommend due to some very unfortunate gameplay choices.  It's clunky and slow and sometimes generally boring to play, but if you can look past that it's a unique and beautiful experience.  I was also super impressed by a scene that was included (and left in for the U.S. version) that the publishers had the guts to leave in.  It caught me totally off-guard and just kind of made me smile because it's so rare to happen in games.  I want to avoid specifics due to spoilers, but I'll just say any possible LGBT reference (that isn't blatantly homophobic) is welcome, however minor.

3. Dragon Quest V - Okay so DQ4 was pretty okay, but I'm super glad I picked up and played the fifth entry.  I still don't find the DQ games as awesome as a lot of people, but this game had tons of charm and a pretty interesting story.  I liked it a lot!

4. 999 - Didn't expect to like this game, but picked it up on the recommendation of a friend (also to support the publishing of super niche titles in the U.S.).  Walked away very pleased with the experience.  I liked the story and I would like to check out more text adventure type games in the future.  May support Aksys again later this year with Hakuoki just on principle.

5. Sam & Max Season 3 - I'm actually not 100% sure how much of this I played in 2011 (I think I started around Christmas of last year and we played through into the new year), BUT another game I played with an audience of friends, which made it a total blast.  I'm really kind of upset that Telltale is ignoring a 4th season of this and instead doing licensed, less-funny material (BttF was kinda okay, but Jurassic Park looks pretty awful).

Most Disappointing Games (not necessarily from 2011, just that I tried in 2011)
Dragon Quest VI - Bloated and uninteresting, I unfortunately started this IMMEDIATELY after finishing DQ5, which I liked a lot.  It's not terrible, but it's definitely my least favorite of the Zenithia trilogy.

The Last Remnant - I finally got around to trying this and barely got anywhere before realizing that it was a SaGa game in sheep's clothing.  I'm sure it has fans, but I'm not one of them.  Anybody want a cheap copy?

Devil May Cry 4 - not super into this type of game to begin with, but after the hilariously over the top camp value of Bayonetta, I just couldn't stomach this one. 

"I Love Videogames" Moments of 2011
-The time crystal mechanics in Skyward Sword
-playing Dragon Quest on the trains in Tokyo and feeling like I belonged perfectly
-making someone toss their 3DS across the couch after a round of Mario Kart
-watching someone play through all of Nier 8 months or so after I did it and the realization of why I'd been recommending it so hard for so long

Things I Hated About Games This Year - Game-Specific
-The lack of Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Ace Attorney Investigations 2 in the U.S.
-The cancellation of MML3 - I've never played any of them, but this news was a BIG disappointment for some of my friends.  Plus the handling of it was just so atrocious. 

Things I Hated About Games This Year - Industry-Related
-Nintendo's gross mishandling of... well, everything.  The disastrous launch of the 3DS, the lack of nearly anything worthwhile for the Wii in its (presumed) final year, and the lacklustre unveiling of the Wii U.  That said, backed-into-the-corner Nintendo really is my favorite Nintendo (the Gamecube remains my favorite of their consoles, I think), so hopefully this forces them to be super awesome to gain back consumer confidence.

Great choices, Qui-Gon!
NieR and Fragile Dreams deserve all the love they can get, since they're criminally underrated.
The same goes for Rayman Origins this year.

Also, I've recently started playing Skyward Sword, and it looks like I'm going to have to adjust my top 9 to a proper 10, because it's certainly going to end up in there somewhere.

All the complaints I've heard about it are tremendously exaggerated.
I have the feeling that people are going in thinking "I WANNA PLAY DUNGEONS I WANNA PLAY DUNGEONS!" and end up hating the pace of the game because, surprise, Nintendo thinks that Zelda can be about more than just dungeons. And they're right.

To be fair, they proved that point with Majora's Mask over 10 years earlier!  And yeah, the non-dungeon/pre-dungeon bits of Skyward Sword are freakin' amazing.  I found the dungeons themselves a little lacking (especially after Twilight Princess, where the dungeons were the game's strongest feature).

Motherfucking Dark Souls. I've bought like a billion games in 2011, both new games and old titles, and I've logged nearly 100 hours into this beast (a number that is still climbing) to the complete exclusion of everything else. I think I said it before, but it honestly feels like Super Metroid mixed with Diablo 1. I absolutely love the haunting, suffocating atmosphere.

I was pretty disappointed by Skyrim. It has amazing scenery and music, to be sure, but everything else just feels really bland and lifeless to me. After playing a game like Dark Souls with its' masterful combat engine, fighting in Skyrim comes off as vapid and uninspired. The dialogue doesn't fare much better in my opinion. I just didn't like this one, though I completely understand why people do love it. I think that the best thing that came from Skyrim was this song.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution was fantastic for so many reasons. I loved the open-ended gameplay. The world and its' aesthetic design was awesome. I loved that they wove present-day dilemmas into the tapestry of the narrative and used it as kind of a backdrop for exploring the themes of trans-humanism that have been a staple of the series since the beginning. Yeah, it wasn't a perfect game, and it was pretty much impossible right from the get-go for it to be as big as Deus Ex was back in 2000, but for a company that really didn't have anything to do with the series before, I think they succeeded marvelously. Also, Dat Song

Unless my memory's failing me, didn't you award this one your GOTY for 2010?  Or was it just that good as to deserve a spot this year as well?

It might not be your memory. I'm having trouble remembering exactly when I played it. If it was in 2010, it's obviously disqualified because I wouldn't have touched it in 2011. It just feels weird because it seems like yesterday that I played it...

I'm feeling the same way this year (actually specifically in regards to that game, which I had to stop myself and say "wait no, that was last year...").  Where the heck did 2011 GO?