The 2011 ZZoMBiE GotY AWARDs. Sponsored by Phenotrans

Like most of us, I had a pretty busy gaming year in 2011. Mostly at the end of it, but many games were great all throughout. Here are the ones I wanted to recognize for excellence, infamy, and even downright holding back the industry. Let's get started.

First up, I want to acknowlege a game that had a lot to prove. It came in with a legacy as diverse as a YinYang symbol and lived up to it's name:

Next, I'd like to honor one crazy piece of software. A game that made me laugh, cry with shame, and generally made me as joyous as it made me uncomfortable:

From there, I need to show a little humility in my, and many others, choices. So here we go:

For this next one, I'd like to add a little personal background. I LOVE the Dead Rising games. But regardless of that, this one deserves a dubious mention:

And as long as we're pointing the finger at a certain "Activision of Japan" developer/publisher, let's get this one out of the way:

Now, before I start kissing any games ass, Here's a double up for collective awesomeness, and deep seeded loathing all in one:

I've never liked an MMO before. WoW, City of Heroes, all good games but not my cup of tea. So to my surprise, they finally made one I enjoy this year (barely):

Now, if I may, I want to acknowledge a game that literally came back from the brink and restored a near dead franchise to it's former glory:

And finally, my most loved, most played, and most adored game of 2011 by a mile. A game I have almost no criticisms for. None other than:

I'd also like to take a second to point out of couple of great games that didn't get much love in the bloated 2011 GotY scene from many of the other publications. First of all, Dead Island. Now I know the zombie thing has been beaten to death like a... well like a zombie in an island breakout. But Dead Islands unique melee system was more fun than it had any right to be. And shame on Techland for not even making it a bullet point on the box. If it weren't for GB's QuickLook, I would not even have known about it and would likely have skipped Dead Island altogether.

And lastly, I want to mention InFamous 2. The game isn't really deserving of any awards I can think up, or really any at all given how packed the PS3's exclusive catalog has been this year. But it was still fun and exciting and it had one of the better endings I've seen in games. At least the "Light Side" Cole ending. I couldn't make it very far into "Dark Side" Cole's story because the choices were so stupid. But I still loved it and it's my most enjoyable PS3 game this year. Maybe not the best, but the most fun I've had with the Dual Shock controller since ReZ packed in a trance vibrator.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed making it.

Like most of us, I had a pretty busy gaming year in 2011. Mostly at the end of it, but many games were great all throughout. Here are the ones I wanted to recognize for excellence, infamy, and even downright holding back the industry. Let's get started.

First up, I want to acknowlege a game that had a lot to prove. It came in with a legacy as diverse as a YinYang symbol and lived up to it's name:

Next, I'd like to honor one crazy piece of software. A game that made me laugh, cry with shame, and generally made me as joyous as it made me uncomfortable:

From there, I need to show a little humility in my, and many others, choices. So here we go:

For this next one, I'd like to add a little personal background. I LOVE the Dead Rising games. But regardless of that, this one deserves a dubious mention:

And as long as we're pointing the finger at a certain "Activision of Japan" developer/publisher, let's get this one out of the way:

Now, before I start kissing any games ass, Here's a double up for collective awesomeness, and deep seeded loathing all in one:

I've never liked an MMO before. WoW, City of Heroes, all good games but not my cup of tea. So to my surprise, they finally made one I enjoy this year (barely):

Now, if I may, I want to acknowledge a game that literally came back from the brink and restored a near dead franchise to it's former glory:

And finally, my most loved, most played, and most adored game of 2011 by a mile. A game I have almost no criticisms for. None other than:

I'd also like to take a second to point out of couple of great games that didn't get much love in the bloated 2011 GotY scene from many of the other publications. First of all, Dead Island. Now I know the zombie thing has been beaten to death like a... well like a zombie in an island breakout. But Dead Islands unique melee system was more fun than it had any right to be. And shame on Techland for not even making it a bullet point on the box. If it weren't for GB's QuickLook, I would not even have known about it and would likely have skipped Dead Island altogether.

And lastly, I want to mention InFamous 2. The game isn't really deserving of any awards I can think up, or really any at all given how packed the PS3's exclusive catalog has been this year. But it was still fun and exciting and it had one of the better endings I've seen in games. At least the "Light Side" Cole ending. I couldn't make it very far into "Dark Side" Cole's story because the choices were so stupid. But I still loved it and it's my most enjoyable PS3 game this year. Maybe not the best, but the most fun I've had with the Dual Shock controller since ReZ packed in a trance vibrator.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed making it.

Yeah, I want to like inFamous 2 so much more than I actually can.

The story is weird and disjointed and the characters are so incongruous. They actually made Zeke bearable but man Kou was the worst.

Nice unique list. I enjoyed it. I hope you posted this to ZombiePie so that it can be mentioned in the next community thread. Keep it up.

Very cool thread, That rayman picture made me laugh, good variety of awards.

@EightBitShik said:

Nice unique list. I enjoyed it. I hope you posted this to ZombiePie so that it can be mentioned in the next community thread. Keep it up.

First, I say thank you. Second, I'm kinda new to these forums so I'm not entirely sure what you mean about a community thread. Would you have the time to enlighten me?

@ZZoMBiE13: Yeah, when you click on forums and you pick newest topics one of the threads that is stickied is by "ZombiePie" once a week he posts a thread where he gathers all the best wiki's, user reviews, lists and other fun stuff. Right now if you post your list url on his thread he will post on his twitter account (which he has a shit ton of followers) and put the list on his next Community Spotlight.

Welcome to the community we have a bunch of great "Duders" and some dumb ones but it's one of my favorite places to be on the net.

@EightBitShik said:

@ZZoMBiE13: Yeah, when you click on forums and you pick newest topics one of the threads that is stickied is by "ZombiePie" once a week he posts a thread where he gathers all the best wiki's, user reviews, lists and other fun stuff. Right now if you post your list url on his thread he will post on his twitter account (which he has a shit ton of followers) and put the list on his next Community Spotlight.

Welcome to the community we have a bunch of great "Duders" and some dumb ones but it's one of my favorite places to be on the net.

OK, cool. Thanks for the heads up and the welcome. I'll do that right now.

@Doctorchimp: Regarding InFamous 2, It is an odd mix to be sure. I love the gameplay. And even the story was pretty good. I liked the comic book styled cutscenes and the GOOD ending was pretty entertaining.

I think the game as a whole was hurt more than helped by it's "moral choice" thing. And I'm not one of those people who hates the "moral choice" systems on merit alone. I enjoyed it in KotOR and SWTOR and most of BioWare's games have entertaining options that do a decent job of giving the player a sense of agency. Ultimately though, Cole's need to remain a blank slate to accomodate a "2 sides of the coin" approach left me wanting a little more. I'd almost have rather had several cutscenes that relayed a sense of where you were on the morality meter. But of course that would have been a lot of work for some poor cinematic designer somewhere.

All this didn't stop InFamous from being a fantastic game of course. But it's still fun to discuss the posibilities with like-minded fellow gamers. :)

Love the Rayman award. I really need to play that game.

Haha, pretty good.

Nice work on the list but regarding your Why does this exist? award I would say; better late than never to release the proper Dead Rising sequel. This award would be much more suited to the guy in the yellow motorcycle jacket.