Alright, so I might have been deep in nostalgia and beer when I created my first forum thread and I with a clearer mind I now realize that Mortal Kombat probably isn't second game of the year, but let me explain what I was thinking.

At the time I had not seen any mention of Mortal Kombat during several game of the year discussions and I felt that it deserved mention, especially because of its single player mode, which one could argue revolutionized the single player fighting game experience. My girlfriend was literally begging me to continue playing through the story when she usually loathes watching fighting games. The game's impact was all the more impressive considering how mediocre MKvDCU turned out to be (though you could see the promise) and how "just good enough" the previous generations MK's were. As a Mortal Kombat fan, MK9 was some of the most fun I have had with a fighting game since MK2 and was a return to form for the series, something I thought I would never see since renting MK4 for the N64.

Thinking back, I now realize that MK9's story mode was more "the best MK movie ever made" and less of a revolutionary single player fighting experience, let alone game of the year (behind Skyrim).

Sorry about the length of my previous post!

MK was pretty damn awesome and it's in my top 5 for this year for sure.

MK's single player is FAR superior than any other fighting game imo, the only negative is that the training mode/tutorial maybe isn't as good as it should be, but the positives outweighs the negatives for sure. Story mode and Challenge Tower are amazing. And quite honestly, Challenge Tower does kinda serve as a very lengthy tutorial for all the characters if you think about it...

Either way, MK is definitely one of my top 5 no question...top 3 even.

MK9 is the game of the 1st half of the year
there should be 2 games of the year. We always have like 40 games that come out in the first 3 months and 40 more in the last three months.

Unfortunately, I never really had any inclination to go back to Mortal Kombat after the buggery with the game's online that took time sorting out. (PSN shitting the bed didn't help, either.)

I couldn't put it above #24 on my list. While the game did a lot of good things to bring a resurgence to MK that was necessary and deserved, the game has to be looked at from two perspectives for me: casual and competitive. While the casual side works pretty damn well (as it's a very easy game to pick up and play for anyone to have some level of fun), the competitive side of it gets a bit wonky with too many infinite loops and terrible online connectivity issues throughout the entire year.

MK was my favorite game this year. Put more time into it than any other game in 2011.

It resurrected a long wayward franchise and set a new standard for what a single player fighting game should be...and the online was solid too once it got fixed up.

Skyrim, Battlefield, Portal 2, Saint's Row, whatever...they all took a backseat. No other game pulled me in like MK did. Game of the year, no question.

MK won best fighter in Spikes VGA 2011! yay lol

@jakob187 said:

I couldn't put it above #24 on my list. While the game did a lot of good things to bring a resurgence to MK that was necessary and deserved, the game has to be looked at from two perspectives for me: casual and competitive. While the casual side works pretty damn well (as it's a very easy game to pick up and play for anyone to have some level of fun), the competitive side of it gets a bit wonky with too many infinite loops and terrible online connectivity issues throughout the entire year.

are there still infinite loops? I was really into the competitive scene of MK up until the last major patch/the Freddy DLC. But from what I remember, NRS ended up patching out everything that was a major problem.

Jax and Cyrax are capable of killing you if they use 3 bars of meter. Kabal still has a block infinite but it's unfeasibly hard.

I've been a tournament player since release and I've been very happy with the game's balance. Character diversity at the highest level of play is good and all of the cast is at least solid. Even the mid tier characters have their dirt. Most of the complaints have always been exaggerated. At his peak Kung Lao was hyped to be god tier, yet Perfect Legend and Justin Wong were the only Lao's winning and between the two won 3 majors.