[Question] The Gamingforce Game of the Year 2011: Time to Vote

I didn't have a lot of time to play any video games this year, but the games that I DID spend my time playing didn't disappoint me.

BASTION - 40 Points



I had no expectations when I played this game. I just heard it was pretty good and that Greg Kasavin from Gamespot wrote the game. I figured it was worth seeing if a guy who makes a living talking shit (badly, at that) about video games could actually put his money where his mouth is, and actually make a halfway-decent game. As it turns out, some people can actually write a damn good RPG when they spend all their time pointing out petty flaws in other people's work. Bastion was a ridiculously fun, lovingly-crafted and finely-detailed action RPG that takes place in a unique, visually-striking world, has an undeniably charming cast of characters—from the narrator on down—and had one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a video game, period.


L.A. Noire - 20 points



This game is totally not what I expected. When I picked it up for $20 while doing some last-minute Christmas shopping, I expected a Grand Theft Auto clone set in the 1940's with some pseudo-hard-boiled detective mystery spread on thin; and I would have been content with that, really. But it turned out to be an atmospheric and interactive noir flick in a faithfully-recreated Los Angeles that I would love to have witnessed with my own eyes. The cases are pretty much by-the-book detective fare, but the way you play them out requires quite a bit of cunning and deductive reasoning. I had almost finished the game, but lost my save and got right back up to where I was because I just can't stop playing this game. Oh, and the soundtrack. OH GOD, THE SOUNDTRACK! This game has my favorite soundtrack of any game in the last 10 years, and it's second only to Grim Fandango in rank of my all-time favorites. The combination of the fantastic gritty graphics, a vast and well-populated Los Angeles that wasn't copy/pasted together like the one in True Crime, the amazing Bernard Hermann-esque score and the overall noir-ish atmosphere made me regret I didn't pick it up earlier.


Gears of War 3 - 20 Points



The final(?) game in the franchise was the kind of fun and bloody, run-and-gun shooter that I've come to expect from the series. The dialogue was sometimes corny, sometimes good but it was always solid and the game gave me one of the best campaigns I could possibly have asked for. I wish I'd gotten to play it online a bit longer but, like I said, I didn't have too much time to play too many games.


ilomilo - 20 Points



(Yes, I realize that this game was available through a limited promotion in the closing days of 2010 but, since its wide release was actually the following January 5th, I'm including it in my picks for 2011. If you guys decide that it doesn't qualify, I'll shuffle the 15 points from this game around accordingly.)

Ilomilo was the kind of time waster that I love to play in short spurts. It was charming and had some interesting puzzles. The more you play it, you realize that it's quite a challenging puzzler with so much cuteness oozing out of it, that it makes kittens not giving a single fuck on grass fields on a sunny day look like alleyway runts fighting over fishbones and crackpipes. The wonderful fabric-textured graphics are reminiscent of LittleBigPlanet and lovingly dressed up a surprisingly clever puzzle game with original gameplay and a catchy-yet-understated soundtrack. To this day, it is the only console game I've ever been able to get my very-non-gaming-inclined girlfriend to play with me.

Jam it back in, in the dark.