The year is waning but the pile of games sitting in front of me hasn't shrunk one bit. So while family members guess at the games I would like the most and I play them because returning things makes me feel guilty, I might as well rank the games from the previous year to make myself angry in a few months that I got it so wrong.
All year long I had been struggling to find a nice balance between a punishing game and a rewarding game. I discovered things like Dark Souls and FTL that found their on balance but it wasn't perfect. Then XCOM came along and never made me feel like the game had beaten me but rather I had beaten myself. Nothing this year matches the level of polish, well thought out game design, and fun gameplay. I still need to go back and dive deeper into this game that seems to simple on the surface.
Borderlands 2 is less of new game and more of a perfection upon the previous one. With a story that now matters and refined gameplay, Borderlands 2 makes the first one look like a concept title than an outright game. I still get the itch to drop back in and see if I can make a run on the end boss or try and make it to level 50.
A come from nowhere game stole hours of time away from me. I still am struggling to figure which weapons I prefer and constantly seem to battle myself with which strategy will get me farther into enemy territory. Such a deep game with such simple concepts.
I was worried I wouldn't like a new, non-Bungie made, Halo. 343 took a behemoth of a challenge and did a great job with every aspect of the new game. They didn't reinvent the wheel but they did make it go faster and ride smoother. Everything still feels like Halo but with a new coat of paint.
Putting use to all that Rock Band DLC without pulling out plastic instruments and getting a bunch of my friends drunk enough to play is perfect for me. Even just playing a few songs at a time provided a great combination of challenge but never required enough focus of effort that I felt like I couldn't do something else.
I never played the original Trials beyond the demo. So sinking my teeth into the combination of hard and silly that is Trials Evolution for the first time was a great experience. Before Minecraft came to steal away the hours Trials was the game my friends and I would play too much of.
Despite the "controversial" ending and the entire feel of Mass Effect waning on me, finishing the fight was entirely satisfying for me. Seeing the end for so many characters, plots resolved, and old faces pop up all to face one massive threat made me enjoy defeating the reapers all the more.
I know Minecraft has been out for forever now, and I'm one of those guys who has been playing since alpha waiting patiently for this to become a game. Once this was released on XBLA and I could easily play with others in one house we focused our efforts, and spent 100s of hours, attempting to make some Minecraft city out of nothing. All that work couldn't not make this list.
An anime visual novel, how boring. But something about Katawa Shoujo hooked me and had me playing for hours at a time trying to play out the story in the perfect way possible. I felt for the characters like I rarely do in video games and just for emotional impact this game deserves a spot in the top 10.
Broken in some cases and infuriating in most, Dishonored raised my expectations for an approachable action/stealth game. It took nearly the entire game before I got a true feel for the combat and stealth mechanics but once I did it was like a light-bulb went on and everything was illuminated. No where near perfect but a nice bright spot among the year.
