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We’ve finally arrived at the end of our Writers Choice Awards. It was no easy task to simply decide on a single Game of the Year, so each of our writing staff decided to say a few words about their favorite games before deciding on our Game of the Year.
We appreciate all of you readers who have taken just a little bit of time to read our content over the past few days and we look forward to doing this again next year (this assumes that the Mayans were wrong about 2012).
So hit the jump to see our Game of the Year for 2011.
Runners Up:
Batman: Arkham City
Many people, including myself, thought that Batman: Arkham City would be facing a tough road. Arkham Asylum was such a great game and it was hard to imagine that they would be able to reach such heights again. Not only is Arkham City better than the original, it has increased the scope of the game considerable by adding several side quests and hundreds of Riddler secrets to track down. Arkham City also took the main weakness of the original, the boss fights, and turned them into one of the game’s strengths, with encounters that I will remember for a long time. Add all that in with great presentation, storytelling and jaw-dropping ending and you have a very special game. – Kyle Orr
Gears of War 3
I’m a huge Gears of War fan. That is not to say I’m delusional though. I knew exactly what was wrong with Gears of War 2 when I began playing it. The “emotional” scenes were downright awful and the multiplayer was completely broken. Over time, the multiplayer got better but was never really solid. When Gears of War 3 was delayed from an April to September release, I was elated. I hoped Epic Games would use this extra time to give its fans the most polished Gears game ever. They delivered. The best campaign in the series, with the ability to play through it in four player co-op. Check. Vastly improved multiplayer. Check. Improvement to an already great mode in Horde 2.0. Check. Throw in Beast Mode, the best writing and voiceover work in the series and a true ending to this trilogy, and Gears of War 3 is one of the most polished games of the year. – Gustavo Ramirez
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Elder Scrolls fans were anticipating Skyrim long before they (or the developers) likely even knew the game was going to be made. No one may have known Bethesda would be visiting the land of the Nords, but we all knew long before any official announcement trailer that the word “epic” was going to be embodied. If you devoted several hundred hours of your life to Oblivion, likely the only reason you eventually put the game down wasn’t because you lost interest in what it had to offer but because you had genuinely exhausted all the opportunities to quest and explore. Time will tell how successful the new Radiant Quest AI will be, but Skyrim promises fans more than perhaps any other RPG ever has (obviously excluding any Fable game). – Patrick Cassin
Saints Row The Third
I will be the first to admit that I have never been a fan of the Saints Row franchise. The first game was little more than a poor man’s Grand Theft Auto. Saints Row 2, while pretty funny, had a broken mission structure that required you to play a lot of boring and uninteresting side missions before you could proceed through the story. Saints Row The Third realizes all of the problems that the series has had, fixes them and then goes completely insane. One quest has you jumping from a helicopter while Kanye West’s Power is playing and another has you beating up Luchadores with inflatable sharks. SRTT realizes exactly what it is and embraces insanity in a near flawless way. This is, without a doubt, one of the single most fun games I’ve ever had the pleasure to play in my life. – Addam Kearney
Winner:
Portal 2
Did it really surprise anyone that Portal 2 would be our Game of the Year? I mean, it’s a nearly perfect game. It’s got a surprising amount of content for a sequel to a 3 hour long game. There’s some fantastic dialog, some incredible puzzles and an extremely fun co-op mode that really isn’t comparable to most of the gaming market. Beyond all of that, though, is the amazing level of polish that Valve put onto this game. Everything feels right and that’s why it’s the Writers Choice for Game of the Year. – Addam Kearney
Portal 2 wins Game of the Year for me for one simple reason: it’s the closest thing to perfection this year. From start to finish in both single player and co-op I only have one complaint: I want to play more of this amazing game. – Kyle Orr
The original Portal was an excellent game. So excellent in fact that when Portal 2 was announced, my initial reaction was dread. Another unnecessary sequel to ruin a franchise was my expectation. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Crushing its predecessor in the content, writing and gameplay departments, Game of the Year seemed like an inevitability upon its release. – Gustavo Ramirez
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