The Fifth Annual Coint and Plick Poll for Best Video Games of 2011 - Part Four: THE TOP TWENTY

i wasnt disappointed in skyrim but it wasnt that great a game

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#20: L.A. Noire – 360 / PS3 – 53 pts – 6 votes - 1 top game vote
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Jeff: I got really tired of playing this game near the end. It was sort of repetitive: go to crime scene, look for stuff, ask questions, interrogate. The side missions were not compelling. Too many Mad Men actors. Wait, I sound like I didn't like this game. I really did like parts of it, I swear.

methanietanner: Basically, a point and click adventure game with the most unstable and unlikable lead for a AAA game in a while. A sterile and oddly lifeless overworld combined with an increasingly tedious story made this one that I never finished, but still, it was pretty awesome when I first found the Intolerance set, anachronisms be damned.

Will M: There are a few (okay, a LOT) of problems with this game, but I love a lot of the things they tried to do. The space was amazing (if not a little underused), the plot was fun (even if it was linear to the point of near-pointlessness) and the facial stuff was really cool (if not, at times, facile). The whole Team Bondi rigmarole is unfortunate but I hope Rockstar does something with the IP in the future.

Salsa Shark: For me, L.A. Noire took Rockstar's biggest asset (ability to create sprawling yet detailed open worlds) and made it enjoyable on a much wider scale (I've never been interested in the GTA games). Yes, some of the interrogations had nonsensical truths/doubts/lies or evidence. Yes, it was completely ridiculous the way Cole Phelps would sometimes fly off the handle when accusing a witness of lying. And yes, the process of gathering evidence was way too strictly controlled, lacking the red herrings and dead leads that any normal investigation would come across. But this game was was always going to be a bit of an experiment (an experiment in new technology, an experiment in a largely untouched style of gaming on a big scale, an experiment in recreating a city as it once actually existed rather than creating one loosely based off a contemporary urban conglomerate), so I'm willing to be a bit more forgiving towards its shortcomings. And the game isn't without its strengths. The characters are generally well-developed. Dialogue is well-delivered. The face-scanning technology made the human graphics look far more believable than any other game. The city, its landmarks and its neighbourhoods are fun to explore. Gun fights and shooting scenes can be dumbed down for people like me who want to spend time solving crimes and getting on with the story instead of dying over and over. But my favourite part of L.A. Noire was Los Angeles itself and the era and atmosphere its storyline captured. On the surface it's the Los Angeles of the American Dream; underneath it's a world of crime, drugs, Hollywood sleaze, and corporate profiteering that foreshadow the state of the country 60 years later and the ruin of whatever 'dream' may have existed.

LA Noire was a huge disappointment for me, but I agree with Salsa about it being a very cool experiment with some strong positives. But it's a terrible video game.

There's a lot of complaints about the illusion of choice in Mass Effect 3, but for me LA Noire is the real sinner. It's a choose your own adventure story with only one possible outcome. But the storytelling of that one story was very strong.

i have LA Noire sitting at home waiting for me to play it. probably the biggest release of the year that i just haven't gotten to yet - and i was really excited for it too! but then i read the reviews... and the comments...

i played it for an hour. that was about enough. reminded me more of heavy rain than anything else

press X to climb the wet muddy hill.

oops, you slipped. try again.

I got no satisfaction out of the interrogations because I never knew if I was throwing the right dude in jail. And I don't think I ever found out??? It was unclear.

per the skyrim critique, bethesda's gameplay componenents have always been shit but 95% of my fondest memories are always drawn from the transversing - first encountering vivec in morrowind, progressing up those steps to the throat of the world in skyrim, doing..um...nice grass in oblivion. really, when i pick up those games to replay it's never for reason that i want to replay a particular quest or experience a specific moment: i just want to walk across the land, wonder what's behind the trees, over the hill, and continue forth w/ the same sequence ad infinitum

watching a sunrise across grass hills in morrowind and having a netch slowly float into my frame of view is likely one of my greatest gaming memory's. bethesda's games have always been about these solitary moments you can actually go so far as to considering exclusively your own.

im done.

you weren't alone, kelpolaris. i too was at the beautiful netch-laden sunrise, 2 feet to your left. i said "hello there traveler" but you continued to stare blankly forwards, as if you were only a computer of sorts, or an avatar controlled by a distant person relaxing between work and sleep.

la noire looks sooooo unappealing to me

but i hate dialogue stuff and cut scenes in video games more than anything so a whole game of them was just

if it helps you to feel ok about that, its the worst game in the world

i love that shit! gotta crack that bastard open.

almost kinda intolerable waiting for this to hit top 5. i'm loving the picks so far and desperately want a new game, despite not having finished the last 3 i've bought

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#19: Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together – PSP – 55 pts – 3 votes - 2 top game votes - Top Exclusive PSP Game
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lamp: in the late 90s tactics ogre was the ambitious but flawed second album to final fantasy tactics 'commercial and critical darling' third album masterpiece. in this analogy ogre battle is the first album with a limited pressing that indie snobs claim is far superior to anything that came after. in the year 2011 its just another srpg rerelease. and while the years make cashgrabs of us all theres still a lot to praise about yasumi matsuno's underloved middle child and the psp remake does an excellent job of streamliningthe job system and the decluttering the battle screen. the game has a tremendous amount of depth and requires real mental skill to master.

Will M: I think this game left me practically bedridden in my last winter semester. I barely moved -- it was just me, and this game, and sometimes food. It's maybe better than Final Fantasy Tactics. It's probably my favourite game, in my favourite genre, on one of my favourite systems. I don't like giving top honours to a remake but I'd be lying if I didn't #1 this game.

wow i know that i am out of the loop wrt psp stuff but i have never actually even heard of that

these gifs have all been totally amazing btw ZS!

xp lol, i had a similar reaction

pocket system games always sound so cool and I'm like sigh I will never play you.

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#18: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective – DS – 55 pts – 4 votes - 1 top game vote
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Ian F: Just when Ace Attorney had started to lose its charm as a result of the same old gameplay and increasingly annoying puzzles, its creator goes and makes a game that solves the problem. Even if you didn't know their common maker, you'd realise as soon as you hit your first 'that event, -x- years ago...'. It has all the same unique humour and charm, a new art style to match, an even more breathtakingly convoluted plot, and a clever new puzzling mechanic operated through satisfying little swishes of the stylus.

Salsa Shark: Loved the art, the colour palette, and the oddball humour. The trial-and-error nature of the puzzles might be dull for some players but I thought the devs made a decent effort at adding new elements to them to keep it interesting. I also found that I actually cared about the characters and how their stories would unfold and come together. It's an interesting concept with a well-conceived story and well-written dialogue.
Also a super handy game if you want to practice vocab and reading in another language because it's so easy to switch to/from English on the start menu.

jamescobo: The DS has had a bunch of great point-and-click adventure games, but Ghost Trick is the first one which actually deserves to be mentioned alongside LucasArts' and Sierra's early/mid-90s output. Is it as great as Maniac Mansion or King's Quest 6? Well, I mean, uh, no, but at the very least it's good enough to be worthy of the comparison, which is more than I can say for (say) 999 or any of the Phoenix Wright games. It's gorgeous, it's clever, it's a great use of the stylus as an input scheme - I don't know what to say. GOTY.

abbott's #1?

DJP’s Biggest Disappointment
Street Fighter IV Volt (iOS)
If I could give this negative 100 points, I would. What MORON thought it would be a great idea to implement a fighting game on a platform with a touchscreen-based control scheme???????? A big part of correctly pulling off SF moves involves the tactile response from the controller, ensuring that you are doing the right thing at the right time. Take that out and you take out the heart of Street Fighter; how do you reliably chain together combos if you can't actually tell what position your controller is in? Just fucking stupid, plus the touchscreen control takes up half the screen real estate; sometimes covering vital action. I would like to find the genius who pushed this through and punch them in the nuts until they die.

Maybe Street Fighter was meant to be played with the iCade?

it's just kind of a neat "hey wow you can do combos on this iphone!" gimmickry type thing, and pretty far from the DS/PSP-style ports

Feeling a little embarrassed abt my writeups, Lamp does an awesome album metaphor and I say "I LAID IN BED A LOT"

nah, that kind of thing is the best thing about ilx polls

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#17: Dungeon Raid – iOS – 56 pts – 4 votes - 0.5 top game votes
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polyphonic: The iOS game I played the most this year, easily. Perhaps inspired by Puzzle Quest, but I prefer this game.

Euler: iOS gaming was where it was at for me in 2011, mostly for practical reasons: I'm on the road a bunch & don't get much console time even when I'm at home, max 1 hour a day & for long stretches none. But my iPod & iPad are with me always. Also I AM A CHEAPASS & don't buy new console games e.g. in 2011 I spent most of my console time playing Assassin's Creed & Tales of Vesperia & the Saboteur & Dragon Age: Origins why because they were cheap! & looked & played great.

& really I'd be happier polling games on a rolling 3 year timeframe b/c who can keep up in a calendar year? & who can afford it? because in 2012 I'll be playing DA 2, Mass Effect 1+2, Arkham Asylum, & El Shaddai, because I got them cheap late last year & that'll get me through another calendar year

but Dungeon Raid! o blissful drag & match & level level level o you turn my compulsive need for progress into something that lets me touch & drag & yes this sounds ridiculous but it was the best & still is, c'mon finish charging blasted iPod so that I can finish this present match

i spent a lot of time playing Dungeon Raid this year. Roguelike Puzzle Quest, pretty much.

Crap, I forgot to vote for Dungeon Raid.

two-way tie for #15:

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#15: Terraria – PC – 57 pts – 4 votes - 1 top game vote
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fennel cartwright: Terraria was the most fun of any game I played in 2011. While so-called open world games push you further and further into their artistic paradigms, giving you the illusion of choice while restraining you to what they want you to think (SR3: "You ran over a virtual hooker! LOL!" LA Noire: "This virtual hooker got beat up! Try really hard to think deeply about it"), Terraria has the most creative gameplay experience of any game I've ever played. I did not run out of stuff to do, ever, and I probably won't. And despite all this, it maintains a fundamental gameness which I find Minecraft lacks.

Will M: It may be a Minecraft knockoff but I had a lot of fun with this game (especially after my computer stopped letting Minecraft work, for some reason).

i have that and have never played it, i probably should

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#15: Radiant Historia – DS – 57 pts – 4 votes - 1 top game vote - Top Exclusive DS Game
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Ian F: A colourful RPG on the DS with no random encounters and a battle system which is turn-based but has some great new combo mechanics? It's about time travel? Yes, I did vote Chrono Trigger DS my favourite game of 2009, why? Radiant Historia differs in using time travel not in an era-to-era sense, but in a Doctor Who wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey sense, requiring you to dash backwards and forwards across its different narrative threads to resolve their problems in a very satisfying way. The game perhaps takes itself just slightly too seriously, but its battle mechanics are a major strength, requiring planning and invention but not in too heavy-handed a manner, and I did really want to see the story through to the end.

lamp: with radiant historia i think of that old vaudeville joke that the simpsons ripped off where homer tries to by the monkeys paw: it has an innovative and reasonably challenging battle system! thats good! but it still requires some tedious grinding! thats bad! it tries to tell an ambitious, complicated story about the cost of war! thats good! it does so with dialogue shorn of any nuance or ambiguity! thats bad! &c &c &c.

jamescobo: God bless any game that actually gets the Chrono Trigger time-travel your-actions-affect-future-
generations trope right, and despite its flaws Radiant Historia gets it RIGHT. It's rare now, so steal it if you have to (steal everything forever [never stop stealing{but seriously, play this game unless you're completely allergic to JRPGs}]).

Terraria is so much fun, but you can run out of things to do.

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#14: Jetpack Joyride – iOS – 57 pts – 6 votes
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tomofthenest: sat with my daughter taking turns on her ipod at the weekend for hours completing all the challenges. very addictive and well balanced game.

Nhex: A perfectly executed, achievement-addiction iPhone game. It had to get my vote over Temple Run.

CraigG: These running games - I have no idea what the genre is referred to - are just so hypnotic to me. Other than Drop7, this is what my iPhone gets used for, game wise. If I weren't too cheap to pay £2 for Canabalt, that might get played more, but I do like the relative depth of Jetpack Joyride - plus it's free. I'm still not sure whether it's a *good thing* when I scorch the poor little scientist dudes with my jetpack, or if I'm supposed to avoid them, while still trying to stay afloat though...

the genre comes from canabalt iirc

Heh, I do admittedly kind of love that the scientists are used both as avoidance and attack goals in the game. Poor little burnt dudes.

Dungeon Raid, eh? I'll look into it.

Radiant Historia, another DS game to buydownload onto my flash cart in the last several years... looks awesome though, seriously....

ZS are you creating all these GIFs? nice work!

can I just say these animated images are A+ more more more!!!

ok, i finally died after an epic realm of the mad god 40/40 run (almost made my first level 20 character before dying in the pits of hell at level 19.666/20

now i can get back to the srs business of continuing the results!

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#13: Super Mario 3D Land – 3DS – 63 pts – 4 votes – Top Exclusive 3DS Game
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CraigG: This is everything a Mario game on a modern handheld system should be - while I'd love a truly 2D mario game to capture the feeling I had for Mario Bros and Mario Bros 3 back when I was a kid, this comes pretty close to capturing how I felt about Mario 64 when I first played it. I've only played it 3 times, but I've already done every level, and got every star for the first 5 worlds because once I pick it up I play it for at least 1 full world.

jamescobo: For the first time, a 3D Mario which actually emphasizes running and jumping as opposed to 3D itself (despite ironically being the best 3D showcase that the 3DS has yet to yield), and SUPRIRISE: it's great. It's still not as satisfying as the lowliest of the 2D Marios (World? The Lost Levels? idk) but anyone who would deny that this game completely owns can go fuck themselves with great vigor.

Ian F: Being a mixture of New Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Galaxy meant that it never quite claimed its own unique identity, but it was still a fine Mario game with a couple of great new ideas (replaying the same levels in hard mode, shorter and harder levels) which I'd suggest came from Super Meat Boy if that didn't sound so ridiculous.

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#12: Bastion – XBLA / PC – 65 pts – 7 votes - Top Downloadable PSN/XBLA Game
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Ian F: I loved the atmosphere, loved the constant introduction of new weaponry, loved the fact that the narrative and gameplay co-existed perfectly without ever getting in each others' way. Most of all, though, I loved the music. The perfect fit of the old western/futuristic combination to the narrative! The bit with Zia's song that made me write inappropriately long gushing praise for a Jukebox review to have another avenue to talk about how fantastically well realised and beautiful the whole thing is! (pre-edited version: I've been playing this video game called Bastion, in which you play a survivor of some mysterious calamity who is trying to piece together what happened and rebuild his world, accompanied only by an ever-present narrator. Mechanically it's a fairly fast paced action game, but what it's really about is discovering and rebuilding its magical but precarious world. The best bit so far is the sequence where you drop through a hole to a new location and soon faintly hear a strange humming voice. Then, as you make your way across the landscape, you begin to hear that (female, smoky) voice singing a haunting song about building walls, and how someday those walls are going to fall. It sounds steeped in history and loss and, while you progress and try in vain to concentrate on killing monsters and not on the overwhelming melancholy, the song becomes louder and sharper until, eventually, you find a woman, lost in this wilderness, who has been singing it from the start. It really brings home the desolation of the game and is a beautiful moment.)

fennel cartwright: Bastion was really not much, but when it was something, it was polished. It was almost too stripped-down for its own good - the gameplay could have been a little more adventurous - but I have no significant complaints. Plus, it was beautiful, and the music ruled.

Nhex: Points for style, basically. Or maybe just that narrator.

Didn't vote for it but I liked bastion ok although my pretty much constant inner monologue was "why won't this narrator plz just STFU"

same. i kept on asking my previous gf if she would like a glass of water in that voice, trying to imitate it, and i probably did that way too much tbh

possibly contributing to the downfall of our relationblablabla

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#11: Bulletstorm – 360 / PS3 / PC – 70 pts – 4 vote - 2 top game votes
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Embracing shame: BULLETSTORM is stupid as hell and also awesome
jjjusten: I know I have gotten semi-cartoony wrt my love for this game but it is
straight up the best shooter or shooter derivative I have ever played.
It's batshit insane in a way that normally is relegated to the weirdo
failed game gulag of shadows of the damned or no more heroes, but with
endless amounts of polish and precision. There is quite literally
never a dull moment in the entire single player campaign, and although
i am sure the servers have dried up quite a bit over time, the
multiplayer was also genius coop mayhem. Despite all the sprawling
fantasy epics and clever puzzlers and so on, this was a lock for my
GOTY from the first 15 minutes I played it. Oh and also don't get
fooled by the demo, i think they went for mass appeal and pulled it
from the least compelling part of the game.

Will M: This was the year of decent immature games. More of this type of UI in shooters would not be unwelcome.

fennel cartwright: underrated, super-polished, attractive, and fun. It's what Duke Nukem Forever should have been.

no bulletstorm?

i had to double-post that to correct the ranking on the gif, but hopefully a mod will fix it soon.
d'oh-dy-d'oh d'oh

3. Salsa Shark’s Biggest Disappointment:
999: 9 hours 9 people 9 doors (DS)
I have few good things to say about this game despite the rather confusing near-universal hype it's received. Here are the few good things:
- The visuals, while limited, did help set the atmosphere, along with some of the soundtrack choices.
- The puzzles were done well and their difficulty was nearly spot-on. This was the most enjoyable aspect of the game.
- The dialogue between the characters during the puzzle scenes was relatively interesting.

Most of my dislike for 999 stemmed from how useless and poorly-written most of the 'story' sections were. The writing is awful. The blocks and blocks of text, written (or translated?) in a dull, amateurish way, often repeat what other characters have said or done and are overly, unnecessarily descriptive. These sections take up a huge chunk of 'play' time without adding anything at all to the progression of the story. It's a shame because the concept behind the game is actually intriguing, but the only time you can start piecing together how the story might unfold is through character dialogue, especially during the puzzle scenes. It boggles my mind as to why the useless 'story' sections weren't heavily edited down in favour of a more dialogue-led approach. And for what it's worth, the character dialogue is slightly better written than the blocks of story, though there are a couple of characters who are a bit too unbelievable and the swearing is a bit too awkward and OTT. Which brings me to my next qualm: your character is a bit of a dick and his 'love interest' is uninteresting, which makes it difficult to really care about what happens to either of them. And then, to make matters worse, there are six (!) possible endings to 999; getting the 'true' ending requires two separate playthroughs through two specific paths which are nearly impossible to discover without a walkthrough. My first and second playthroughs both had dud endings; the thought of having to sit through the game two more times was just too much for me. The happy ending for me is that I sold the game on eBay and nearly broke even.

i've been drinking all afternoon and it's beginning to show, sorry. the 3. by Salsa Shark means nothing, i was just numbering them to see how many total disappoints we had so i could evenly disperse them throughout the top 20 (yes, i typed them out using a keyboard rather than just scanning the screen and counting in my head, i don't know wtf is wrong with me sometimes) (and yes, i realized that i didn't end up evenly dispersing them throughout the top 20 because i just totally forgot for the last 7 results or so, whoops), and Salsa Shark happened to be the third one down.

$50 to anyone who can read that paragraph without barfing

The best ending of 999 is very satisfying and you should look it up on youtube if you didn't get it. There are enough hints to its path that it's not so bad. The first ending you're required to get is more obscure, but if you do the "best" path first the game flashes the door numbers of its path on the screen.

I love that Portal gif! well done.

My Ballot:

Portal 2 - 30
Elder Scrolls - Skyrim - 30
Batman: Arkham City - 20
DC Universe Online - 10
Pro Evolution SOccer 2012 - 10

Mine:

30 pts for Tiny Wings

Arkham City - 30
Tiny Wings - 20
W.E.L.D.E.R. - 10
Mass Effect 2: The Arrival - 8
Temple Run - 6
Ticket To Ride - 6
Anomaly: Warzone Earth - 5
Groove Coaster - 5
L.A. Noire - 5
Where's My Water - 5

Pts: 20 Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

Pts: 15 Minecraft

Pts: 10 Terraria
Pts: 10 L.A. Noire
Pts: 10 Saints Row the Third
Pts: 10 Catherine
Pts: 10 Fight Night Champion

Pts: 5 Frozen Synapse
Pts: 5 Brink
Pts: 5 Bulletstorm

bnw: filled in so many of Oblivion's weaknesses. not perfect but is so much closer then any game around this genre has ever gotten. just imagine if they improve the combat system next.

this just blew my mind

whatever it'll be, it'll be an improvement - just an outdated one

lol skyrim

good work ZS, thank you!
GREAT gifs, particularly like the portal2 one

not much of a gamer but felt validated by portal 2 and skyrim placing (cuz they are the only two I put any time into)

heres my ballot btw:

01 tactics ogre: let us cling together - psp - 30
02 dragon quest vi: realms of revelation - ds - 20
03 radiant historia - ds - 15
04 the legend of heroes: trails in the sky - psp - 10
05 civilization v (updates + dlc) - pc - 5
06 witcher 2: assassin of kings - pc - 5
07 batman: arkham city - ps3 - 5
08 catherine - ps3 - 5
09 marvel vs capcom 3 - ps3 - 5

^^^ gets it

altho i couldn't get into legend of TiTS

oh god that skyrim gif is making me siiiiiick

i barfed twice while making it

Seeing as we are naming and shaming ourselves by posting our ballots:

1. Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D - 3DS - 20pts
2. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars - 3DS - 20pts
3. Super Mario 3D Land - 3DS - 15pts
4. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - PC - 9pts
5. Machinarium - PC - 8pts
6. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Wii - 8pts
7. ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection HD - PS3 - 5pts
8. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP - iOS - 5pts
9. Mario Kart 7 - 3DS - 5pts
10. Jetpack Joyride - iOS - 5pts

lol ballot:

portal: 30 pts
skyrim: 30 pts

(i promise to play more games this year)

thx zs & forks, awesome work! loved the gifs.

great job. but see this is why i didn't vote. the only game on that whole list that I've played is battlefield 3, and I wouldn't even rate that highly.

You guys have tempted me into Skyrim though.

oh and Saints Row the third, again wouldn't have rated it.

thanks forks and zs, great job. gifs were outstanding. results pretty abysmal tho. surprised solitaire didn't make the top 5.

I don't remember my ballot anymore but I'm pretty sure I voted Dungeon Raid #1

hoping in 2012 to finally catch up with gaming 2009

^^ should read "console gaming 2009" fwiw

great job forks and ZS.

1) Resident Evil 4 HD (25 pts)
2) Portal 2 (25 pts)
3) Deus Ex: Human Revolution (25 pts)
4) Batman: Arkham City (15 pts)
5) Wonderputt (browser) (5 pts)
6) Dead Space 2 (5 pts)

Biggest disappointment: From Dust

Portal 2 (ps3): 30
Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword (wii): 20
Arkham City (xbox 360): 15
Bastion (pc): 15
Superbrothers Sword & Sorcery (ipad): 10
Aquaria (ipad): 10

Like I said above I would probably have put Minecraft top if I'd played it before the poll ended.

30 points: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
16 points: Stacking .
15 points: Tiny Wings
14 points: Glitch.
10 points: Grand Prix Story
10 points: Elephant Quest
5 points: : LA Noire

Arkham City 20
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 20
Marvel vs Capcom 3 20
Portal 2 20
Bejeweled Blitz 10
Glitch 5
Monsters Ate My Condo 5

my Glitch vote would have gone to Ticket To Ride, Dice Soccer or Yaniv had I played any of them before I voted

that portal gif is brilliant! i kinda forgot that game existed. voted for skyrim, battlefield 3, tiny wings

Yaniv absolutely going on my 2012 ballot.

BALLOT

ASSAF

good job, forks and ZS! I look forward to whining about next year's poll!

here's my ballot:

Binding of Isaac - Mac - 20pts
Bug Princess iOS - 15pts
Jamestown - Mac - 15pts

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Xbox360 - 10pts

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Mac via Cider - 10pts

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - 10pts
Portal 2 - Mac - 10pts
Minecraft - Mac - 10pts

but if i'd gotten it before i voted, DARK SOULS would be my #1 by far

voted for: dark souls, skyrim, dead space 2, frozen synapse
forgot to vote for: outland
would have voted for if i had got round to playing it on time: dungeon defenders (PSN), portal 2
didn't vote for: pes 2012 (great game but online totally broken), fifa 12 (game is not the best but at least the online works), madden 12 (one 15y pass forward, one strip sack fumble returned for TD backwards)

Radiant Historia 26
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 21
Outland (PS3) 14
Escape from Puppy Death Factory 9
Marvel vs Capcom 3 (PS3) 7
Binding of Isaac 7
Where Is My Heart? 6
Tales From Space: About A Blob 5
Wonderputt 5

is Radiant Historia that good? kinda tempted to import before prices go crazy again.

If I had played the Ascension iOS card game before this past weekend I would have thrown it some points. Great fun.

15 Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS3)
14 Dark Souls (PS3)
13 MotorStorm: Apocalypse (PS3)
12 El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (PS3)
11 Dungeon Raid (iOS)
9 Rayman Origins (PS3)
8 Last Rocket (iOS)
7 Forget Me Not (iOS)
6 Radballs (iOS)
5 ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection HD (PS3)

Biggest Disappointment: L.A. Noire

requisites for contributing to next year's polling? did everyone w/ a write-up actually *play* all the games tallied here? i'd like to do at least one write-up... i'm opinionated enough about some stuff that i could write for pretty proper lengths and not concern myself w/ things like me3's intolerable ending. i am an a+ student.

I, for one, didn't play any of the games I wrote about

I only played the games everyone else wrote about.

i wrote the games that everyone else played

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VH2SVes0E8

*applause*

oh.

I don't really understand what you meant there, kel

1. Portal 2, 18pts
2. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, 17pts
3. Bastion, 15pts
4. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, 10pts
5. Radiant Historia, 9pts
6. Child of Eden, 8pts
7. Super Mario 3D Land, 7pts
8. Pullblox, 6pts
9= LA Noire, 5pts
9= StreetPass Quest, 5pts

Thanks to everyone who had a part in running this (even whoever it was who spelt my name wrong every time). I really enjoyed it.

is Radiant Historia that good? kinda tempted to import before prices go crazy again.

lamp's comments on RH are accurate:

with radiant historia i think of that old vaudeville joke that the simpsons ripped off where homer tries to by the monkeys paw: it has an innovative and reasonably challenging battle system! thats good! but it still requires some tedious grinding! thats bad! it tries to tell an ambitious, complicated story about the cost of war! thats good! it does so with dialogue shorn of any nuance or ambiguity! thats bad! &c &c &c.

I still liked it a ton.

(i promise to play more games this year)

this might be a lie btw