I don't actually play many games, but when I do I usually play them in long marathon runs that last most of the day, and I tell you, it is really hard to find games that you can play in really long marathons like that.
Here are my top games of 2011, games that I was able to play in stupidly long chunks and was still left wanting more of.
I blasted through this game in 2 days, that is how much I wanted to keep playing. The cast of characters, the jokes, both subtle and not so subtle, and the mechanics of it all felt incredibly well made and solid, you could tell that a lot of hard work and dedication from people that really loved what they were doing went into this game. It was something I would never have expected from a Saint's Row game. My only complaint is that I wanted more.
For as much as I aggressively hate it for not being more Morrowind, I have to admit that Skyrim is a damn good game. The visuals, quests, world, music, and voice acting are all top quality and very compelling.
I hate closed area, first-person RPGs, I just do. I hated Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines for it, and I hate it here too, but that just shows you good everything else in this game had to be to keep me interested. While the visuals are kind of chunky, the stealth was extremely satisfying to me and the quick snap from third-person to first was damn nice. And don't forget the stupid-huge amount of books and emails littered around the world for you to read.
I liked the first Witcher, I thought the mutants at the end was a really stupid thing for it to go into, but it was still a damn good game. The Witcher 2 continues this, with a new combat system that, while very punishing at the start, is very satisfying once you get into it, and hey, boobs!
I have a problem with the Warhammer 40k universe, I love the fiction, setting, factions and lore, but I hate the shit out of Space Marines. And sadly for me, most games out there about 40k are about Space Marines, so whenever I get a chance to play something other than those bland walking-tank eunuchs, I jump at it as fast as I can.
A fetus, a fly and a cube of meat protected me from zombie blood projectiles while I shot urine at them and flew around the room.
Bastion is colorful, beautifully drawn, has great music, damn good gameplay and the best narration ever. I just wish the movement worked better with WASD controls.
Serious Sam 3:BFE starts out hard, not in game difficulty, but hard on your nerves. The jokes aren't funny, the characters look weird in the cutscenes, and the game takes such a long time getting started that I was left wondering whether I had bought the wrong game. It manages to redeem itself once it gets started later on, but come on people, all I want to do is move backwards and shoot, is that too much to ask?
Dead Space 2 is not scary. It just isn't. After walking down the corridors of a large alien-zombie filled spaceship in the last game, you start getting a sense for when the jump-scares are going to happen, and once you can predict those, any horror fades away. This doesn't mean that the game gets bad, not at all. Dead Space 2 has a very nice array of weapons, dudes to shoot and a fairly good story inside of it too. I just wish the character wouldn't talk.
Dragon Age 2 has many faults, the camera is sucky at times, the dungeons are repetitive to the extreme, dudes spawn from nowhere, Fenris is a moody twat, Anders keeps trying to stick it up your ass, the art style looks bad to me, the game should have ended half-way through, and all the women, no matter their age, have giant racks. But for all its failures I still think it deserves to be on here, part of it being because I found the combat okay and the Franken-Mom quest awesome, and part because I can't really think of anything else I played this year.
