A problem I always have with picking my top 10 games of the year, as I'm sure most people do, is narrowing it down to simply ten. I have played plenty of great games this year and there are still a good few I need to get my hands on, such as Skyward Sword, Rayman Origins, and Renegade Ops. I wish I had put more time into Battlefield 3's multiplayer or Gears of War's horde mode, but it just didn't happen. So enough with this rabble, here's my top ten games of 2011.
Saints Row is a game that knows what fun is and wants the player to have gratuitous amounts of it, and that is a design philosophy I adore. When one plays urban-sandbox games there are always the tools available for the player to divert their attention and go cause chaos, but in most cases it seems that the games don't really want you to. Saints Row on the other hand provides the player with a constant amount of absurdity that any chaos the player would try to produce themselves would be unable to match the missions the game throws at you. Mixed with some characters (I'd vote for Mayor Reynolds any day) just as ludicrous as the universe they occupy and Saints Row is an experience designed for pure enjoyment. The game actually forced me to put down Skyrim and play it in its stead. For this reason alone Saints Row is my number one game of 2011.
