Well, I’m done with this year’s Games of the Year posts. Here’s a quick lowdown post with links to each post!

I haven’t made “Biggest Surprises” and “Biggest Disappointments” posts yet, not sure if I will… So here’s what we have right now! Again, no overall GotY post, but I don’t think it’s really needed, I think all the posts as a whole display a large variety of awesome games we got this year. Sadly we had to skip over a bunch of great games, otherwise we would have had 5-15 winners per category (other than Wii and 360), and I just decided to highlight my personal favorites. I’m sure other people/everyone else have different winners, and that’s obviously fine too.

So here it is:

2011 DS winners
2011 3DS winners
2011 Wii winners
2011 Xbox 360 winners
2011 PS3 winners
2011 Downloadable winners
2011 Multiplatform winners

jobocan 3DS, Console, ds, Game of the Year, Games of the Year, Handheld, independant, PC, ps3, PSN, wii, XBLA, xbox 360

With the industry being super weird right now and making it almost pointless to own multiple consoles, a lot of high-budget/really good games end up on PS3/360/PC (or any combination of that… yes, that means games that come on 360 and PC are NOT 360 exclusives as morons will try to make you believe), and thus a lot of the best games every year end up being playable on everything. This was especially true this year, with TONS of high-quality multiplatform titles coming out.

So let’s go right at it… Here I’ll go for 4 winners due to the high number of candidates. As a precision, 2 of the choices are mine, one is Dave’s and the other is some british guy’s. Heck, even with 4 winners, we’re missing a couple games I wanted to highlight.
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jobocan Console, Games, Games of the Year, PC, ps3, xbox 360

The world of downloadable games… it brings some of the most interesting gaming experiences in modern days, due to generally being made by small teams with low budget, with said smaller teams being more willing to experiment with interesting gameplay ideas, or throwbacks to older games/genres. They’re also a very good bet for any gamer to get since they’re low-cost.

To highlight the high variety of great downloadable games and genres that it represents, I’ll go with 5 winners (seriously, I had, like, twice the number of candidates than Multiplatform… so the extra winner is warranted )
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jobocan Console, Games, Games of the Year, independant, PC, ps3, PSN, XBLA, xbox 360

The PS3 had a bit of a rough year due to the unfortunate and badly handled (by Sony) PSN hacking, but, despite that, it still managed to have a good showing game-wise. Mostly sequels, rather unsurprisingly, but still high-quality games.

Continue to see our 3 winners! Read more…

jobocan Console, Games, Games of the Year, ps3

Earlier this year, I got rid of my 360 because no good games were coming out for it, very few older exclusives on it were any good, and nothing down the pipeline was any good. Turns out that was a minor mistake, and I rebought a 360 a few days back (on boxing day) to get the few good games that came out (see: 2 of the winners) and a variety of XBLA games I missed.

Not a whole lot of good 360 exclusives came out this year, so I tried desperately to find 3 winners, and I’m kinda winging it at this point (most of the “obvious” winners (see: Gears, Halo) are games I don’t want anywhere near this list). Anyways, here’s my 2 winners and a third sort of random choice!
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jobocan Console, Games, Games of the Year, XBLA, xbox 360

I would just write “insert obvious choices here”, but I guess I’ll go with the standard “name game and explain why it’s there” concept… just because. Sadly the Wii got very few good games this year, so this isn’t just a “Best Wii Games of the Year” post, but rather a “here are the only good games that came out on the thing” post.

So… let’s go for the 2 obvious choices and the only other worthwhile game. (note: I was thinking of including Fortune Street here… but I won’t… not because it’s bad, but because it’s not too fun alone and it’s not terribly easy to rally 3 people to play with you when the Wii has many better multiplayer game choices)
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jobocan Console, Games, Games of the Year, wii

Ah, the 3DS, the little console that could. It may have had a mildly rocky start, I won’t deny it, but in the end it had some of the funnest gaming experiences of the year (and it IS kicking ass at the moment). The winners are, however, quite obvious, and even my original idea for a “WTF is that” winner was just not as good as I was expecting (note: it’s Nano Assault… a great game well worth playing, but not as good as the winners here… I may review it soon), so it was left out…

Time for 2 obvious winners and one personal choice (though also fairly obvious)!
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jobocan 3DS, Games, Games of the Year, Handheld

The Nintendo DS is the console that I had pretty much the lowest expectations for due to the 3DS coming out early in the year, but it turns out a good number of great games came out for it. A lot of RPGs, but also a couple unique games. Overall not a bad year despite the low overall amounts of releases.

So here are our choices for this year’s best DS games!
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jobocan ds, Games, Games of the Year, Handheld

Just a little note before talking about the Games of the Year:
Okay, I’ve been lazy for the last couple weeks/months/most of the year in regards to posting, due to having a bit less free time than before because of a new job at some of the local museums (and being too busy AT work to even write stuff there… I started working there in March, but the workload massively increased in the last few months). I do plan on keeping this place up as much as possible, as I do want to keep on writing about games.

So I’m changing the focus from before. Rather than reviewing any and every game I get my hands on, I’ll just review games I enjoy (as I’ll most likely not get time to review everything I get my hands on). Yay!
For example, I’ve recently played Dead Island and Uncharted 3, amongst a few more, but not enough to review either of them and… well… both of them would have been negative reviews (not that Uncharted 3 is bad at all, just that it’s by far the worst in the series). I may make small posts to mention games I didn’t like, but I don’t want to focus on those too much.

This means fewer posts, but I’ll put more work in each individual review since I’m gonna be less rushed to post about any and every thing I play.

Anyways:
Games of the Year 2011
Doing a “Game of the Year” award doesn’t really feel like the best way to go, EVER. It always felt to me like it makes more sense to do a “GAMES of the Year” award, since there’s frequently a high amount of games that deserve praise/recognition and limiting myself to one winner per category just… doesn’t work. Also unlike other websites, I tend to go not just for the most popular games as winners (with some obvious exceptions *looks at Wii winners*), which means you won’t see Skyrim in here, and go for the more original awesome games that no one know or care about.

Due to some quirks this year and high amount of quality games, each category will have from 3 to 5 winners (yay random numbers). Basically, 1 category per console, plus one for multiplatform games (each console will only get winners that are exclusives) and 2 categories for “Biggest surprises/disappointments”. No overall Games of the Year though, I feel that this category is always too hard to choose so… fuck it! Also, no PSP category just because… well, I didn’t play a whole lot of the thing, and none of what I did play really got to me enough to warrant me putting them in there (not that there weren’t good games, just… meh).
And I’m currently deciding on whether or not I’ll have a PC category… I haven’t played a whole lot of PC exclusives this year, but there are a few games worthy of mention.

Anyways, I’m starting these posts really soon, hopefully today, and I’ll try for one post a day until I’m done with them.

jobocan Announcements, Games of the Year