GOTY 2011
[shameless plug will go here]
List items
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To say that everyone will love Bastion would be a lie, but...they should. Great gameplay that you can customize to make it more enjoyable for you (you could technically beat every enemy with your SHIELD. That's CRAZY.), a wonderful world, a great story that deals with some big boy issues, and Rucks the narrator tells that story and accompanies you through the game making that whole experience even better. The last half hour or so is a great moment in gaming. Not a "classic", but a great moment. I think what makes me most excited about Bastion is that the end opens the door for an even GREATER Bastion 2, should that ever be made.
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It took me a while to formulate how I feel about this game (even once The Gamer Access' top ten were being decided), but I've got it now. They did the impossible and expanded perfectly on a gaming phenomenon. I, along with a few others, think that Portal was perfect for what it was. The idea of expanding that into a $60 product made it seem like Valve was setting itself up for failure. Nonetheless, I was excited, and man, did it pay off. A beautiful game, amazingly funny characters, fun puzzles, great new mechanics that perfectly fit contextually into Portal's world, and an amazing ending wrapped up another game I can declare...PERFECT.
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C'mon. C'mon! I got sucked into this world, as everyone else did. I enjoyed fighting dragons, exploring caves, talking to ghosts, learning shouts, attending the Mage College, and allllll the stuff I still have to do. It's broken in multiple ways, but for the most part, it has not ruined my overall experience with everything in Skyrim. It's comforting to know that if I ever run into a drought, I have this to go to.
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I'm no good at fighting games, but this had the world and characters that kept me interested as opposed to the other franchises. This time, they had the best single-player mode a fighting game has ever had, making it wonderful for me, along with other great single-player fun that can last for hours, days, maybe even weeks depending on how fast you move through everything. The online is also great, specifically King of the Hill mode, which is how the arcade fighting game works. Because of the single-player stuff, I learned to play every character, and playing long enough led me to teaching myself how to use that character. What a great fighting game.
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This is the point I start to get real proud of my list, and where I start to get more positive in regards to how I felt about this year. Saints Row, the original, caught my eye a few years ago, and it certainly deserved a couple sequels, but I was playing Crackdown then. This year, they caught my eye again, and this time they said "Hey! We're hilarious! And stupid fun!" And god dammit, they were right.
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I personally believe that this game is just as great as Batman: Arkham Asylum. But the reason it's not as high as I would've put B:AA is that in changed in ways I did not care for. The one thing they needed to improve from before was its boss battles, and they did that VERY well. Their early dropping of Two-Face was an issue, The prison in the middle of the map, making it hard to go around the map, was a problem, and the Riddler's significance in the first one was completely diminished in this installation, but everything else continues to be great, to the point that it makes this list.
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This game is just god damn crazy. The entire game is kind of an in-joke between true hardcore gamers and those in the video game industry. The reasons that prove this game is great can't be explained to someone out of the loop in a small paragraph. The writer is crazy, the man responsible for the gameplay is also responsible for Resident Evil 4. There's more, but really, you should just play it. It's kind of beyond any words I know.
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Atlus pulling out all the guns for a big title, while still maintaining the uniqueness of games such as Persona 4 sounds like a god damn dream to me. In many ways, it succeeded. The part that was the whole gameplay bit was very different from anything else, which worked against me in that I couldn't wrap my head around it by the end, but to say I didn't have a good amount of fun from it would be a lie. Every single character was great, and while I had problems with the end of the story, this is a fresh breath of air in a world of sequels.
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The fact that Naughty Dog rolled with what set them apart in 2009 with Uncharted 2 and did it well puts this game on the list. They knew how to make a good ride, and it continued to be that. The reason it wasn't as big of a hit as the second installation, to me, is that it is very much like its predecessor. I also didn't care for the shooting, but the rest of the game was pretty much spot on what made UC2 great, but that's exactly what it's not higher.
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Dead Space was a bunch of rooms to shoot shit in, separated by train rides. It was a good game, but it was tough to go in and start playing. Dead Space 2 took some lessons from Half Life and made the whole game one ride, making it very hard to pause, save, and quit out. There were a few nice set pieces, the shooting continued to be fun, and what made Dead Space different from everyone else continued to be something to come back to, securing its place on my list.
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