Skyrim is my all time favorite game, no contest (Which is no surprise as Oblivion sat in that seat before it). We all have our own personal favorites and I bet mine would differ greatly from anyone else's. Here's mine.
As for the other games:
I found Arkham City to be super disappointing.
The Witcher 2 wasn't really my kind of RPG.
I loved Dark Souls, its definitely on my all time favourites list.
Bastion was also great but not perfect.
Portal 2 was fun but could never replicate the surprise of the original.
Saints Row was fun but I don't think I enjoyed it on the same level as Jeff, Ryan and Vinny.
Though some people might not like it. Though it might not be the best "game". I still think it's impotent to mention LA Noire. The facial tech is better than anything before, and it doesn't seem like any game in the near future is even trying to do something similar. The game was also pretty revolutionary in the way it dealt with historic accuracy. And it's story telling is pretty different from most games.
When looking back at impotent moments in any media or art form, be it books, films, music or videogames, it's not always the "best" pieces that stand out, as much as it is the ones that try something new and changes the ways of the media. When looking back at 2011, in 20 years time or so. I don't think we will be remembering Batman AA or Portal 2. Sure these were both great games, also better than LA:N. But they didn't really do anything new, just build upon the original games. More likely, we will be reminded of the creepy faces of that super long and weird film Noire game published by Rockstar.
...it is the only game from 2011 that I still play regularly. The game's gotten so much more stable smoother balanced - it's unbelievable really. Still my least favorite Battlefield game of recent years, but damn it's a lot of good game regardless - and outside of personal preferences and dislikes, it's jawdropping what's happening moment to moment on the Battlefield.
...with my roughly 400 hours of playtime (with many untypically long breaks inbetween), I've still only scratched the surface of BF3's gameplay depth - and apart from the shitty HUD and GUI, there's little wrong with the game that's not a matter of taste.
...Battlelog is likely the most groundbreaking and generally overlooked innovation in gaming that's happend in 2011 - and I absolutely love it. The one stop web-destination for all things Battlefield on the frontend of playing Battlefield 3? Genius. Wish more games did that.
So yeah - it's got to be Battlefield 3 for me. Though really it's more of a contender for 2012's Game of 2011.
ehh I don't really rate Dark Souls, after playing a ton of Demon's souls before it I just felt like it was more of the same, didn't really bring anything new to the table and since beating it have had no urge to go back to it. I think it's too early to really see what impact any of 2011's games had right now though.
My problem with this is that some of these games will have sequels that will almost inevitably end up trivializing them, much as they did to their predecessors. Does anyone want to return to Saint's Row 1 or 2 for anything other than nostalgia? What about Oblivion or Morrowind? To me, I say yes to the latter, no to the former. So, yeah, I'm on the "wait a few more years and see" boat, but I'd definitely say we could start talking about the best of early and mid-generation X360 and Ps3 games. I'm certainly going to revisit games like Oblivion, Red Dead Redemption, Portal 1 & 2, and Shadow Complex.
Maybe we could get someone who's great at compiling list data to figure some of this out and start a yearly thing of games two to three years beforehand going into some sort of Hall of Fame?
No because all greatest of "X" lists are stupid and pointless because it's only representative of an individual or a small group of peoples opinions and outside of them it has no meaning. It all comes down to personal opinion. Most of my favourite games of all time are games people ether hate or never heard of while the games most people have as the best ever I think are terrible or not interesting. Personally nothing of the last few years has been that great or worthy of the best of all time for anything.
Portal 2, The Witcher 2, and Dark Souls are great games.
The Witcher 2 stands out as a great achievement. When everyone else was saying branching stories all had to collapse to one storyline CD Projekt RED wasn't listening.
Really just Witcher 2. Arkham and Souls are fantastic, but essentially upgrades of their previous incarnations in a lot of ways, which would already be on "the list" so to speak. Portal 2 probably deserves a spot as well, it is far and away better than the first in my opinion. Saints Row is up there, since it is probably the best open world game ever besides Red Dead Redemption.
I don't think we can canonise any of them, except for, maybe by a slim margin, Bastion.
Why? Because I don't think any of those games beside Bastion (with its narration) have done anything notable or revolutionary with their specific genres. They are all very much evolutionary steps.
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but I think the most recent game we can canonise with really strong justification is Call of Duty 4.
EDIT: Super Meat Boy and Red Dead Redemption (barely) also spring to mind.
Skyrim, Saints Row The Third, Portal 2, Dark Souls, Bastion, Batman: Arkham City, and The Witcher 2, which are probably the games that were primarily nominated for GOTY, right?
I don't think Saints Row: The Third should be touted as one of the best games ever for any reasons.
In fact, I don't think I'm with you on canonizing annual GOTY as best in field.
Are the best games of the last ten years really those which were awarded GOTY?
It's a pretty nebulous concept. Attaching these qualitative terms as definitive appraisals of a piece's worth seems pretty sketch.
Edit: Saying that, I've been pretty vocal as regards this sort of thing, so consider my opinion massively biased.
Don't fall into this elitist trap ... look at Rolling Stone when they do any Top 100 list. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Beach Boys dominate the top spot while Gen X music gets a quick look in and fuck the rest. Entire genres like rap or heavy metal are ignored in favour of 70s prog rock and British pop all because a select few tell the rest what is considered the best. Let's just have our own opinions. Personally if I made the list I wouldn't include Saints Row The Third - I thought that game was garbage. But I love Battlefield 3 - yet you could say it's just a derivative modern military game.
It's opinions, not fact. Canonisation (or with a z haha) is when you state a fact not an opinion. When a person is made a saint they become part of the canon and are a saint as a matter of fact not opinion. Take Star Wars - the movies are canon, 99% of the books are not. A band may have what they consider they canon of albums and a side project under a different name that doesn't count (U2 and the Passenger side project).
Canon for what makes the best video games is a flawed exercise.
Uh no, we really cant do that at this point. Especially with Dark Souls. I still to this day find it funny how so many people worship Dark Souls but either never played or think Demon's Souls is no good. Other than a few combat mechanics tweaks, the inclusion of more gear, and more enemy variety they are basically the same game.
@Little_Socrates: A lot of these will receive better versions somewhere down the line. When talking about games that will stand alone as one of the best ever made I think Portal 2 will fit that category. It's really hard to imagine a better Portal 2 while it's very easy to dream of a better Arkham City or Skyrim or whatever. (Btw, thanks for AGAIN not even mentioning Skyward Sword ...same thing happened last year lol)
@Karkarov: I think the most major change is the removal of the Nexus and making the game world feel more organic and open. For me, that's the number one reason I think Dark Souls is the better game. Refining inventory management helped a lot too.
After spending 400 hours with Dark Souls on PC and consoles, I still want to play more Dark Souls. Definitely my favorite game of this generation. Follow-up is RDR.
I would put Portal 2 and Skyrim in a best of all time list. I can see why people wouldn't choose Skyrim but for me it is such an amazingly designed and beautiful world that it would have to go in the hall of fame. Portal 2 is just a perfect game.
@Karkarov: Dark Souls has better music, better characters, better enemy design, better boss design, and much better area design. The argument for Demon's Souls revolves around The Nexus music and maybe Flamelurker; but World 5 doesn't just magically go away and stop being a horrible blight on its existence.
@Karkarov: Dark Souls has better music, better characters, better enemy design, better boss design, and much better area design. The argument for Demon's Souls revolves around The Nexus music and maybe Flamelurker; but World 5 doesn't just magically go away and stop being a horrible blight on its existence.
Dark Souls has better "opinion, opinion, opinion, op" you get where I am going. I also 100% disagree on the music, and characters for that matter. Music only plays in boss fights/firelink shrine and the boss fight music for half the Dark Souls bosses is downright par if not bad. Meanwhile was Patches really more fun in Dark than Demon's? I admit Seigmeyer is probably the best NPC between both at least but no one beats Little Allant for cheap laughs. I also have to assume you had problems fighting giant zombie snoopy.
@Karkarov: Oh right Demon's Souls also has the World Tendency system which is just plain terrible from any standpoint but "I like knives shoved up my ass." But I mean you could just play Battletoads if you're really a masochist, unparalleled bad design in that respect. I'll also say Dark Souls is far more difficult than Demon's Souls as I one shot 13 out of 16 bosses in the original and only a bit more than half in Dark Souls, playing completely blind.
@GetEveryone: @DeF: As for the specific mentions of games, I was naming what seemed like popular choices for Game of the Year as starting places for games people seemed to generally agree were pretty darn good. There were definitely people who chose Deus Ex HR, Uncharted 3, and LA Noire as their personal games of 2011, but I went for consensus for the sake of giving people a place to start. Avoiding the whole "what games actually came out in 2011?" thing that sometimes plagues these topics.
And, of course, this is not going to be something I tout as a "definitive list of canonized games" when we're done here. It's more of a thought exercise, and it's interesting to see who vouches for what games.
Also,
@Winternet said:
@BeachThunder said:
I would consider Ghost Trick and Binding of Isaac to be amongst my favourite games ever.
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