Hey, nice to see you again.  How have you been?  Oh, me?  I’ve been good.  Thanks for asking.

But I’m better now that the release date has been announced for Borderlands 2.  Here’s the delightfully long trailer:

There are so, so many things to love about this trailer.  It’s nice to see a company truly have fun with its game.  And make fun of the over use of dubstep in recent trailers.

And damn does this game look amazing.  Cel shading like that makes me really want another Jet Set Radio.

Here’s the second half of my list without further ado!

#5: Dirt 3 / Portal 2

I sort of forgot about Portal 2 until we started recording, so I had to shoehorn it in here somewhere.  But what can I really say about Portal 2 that hasn’t already been said?  It’s a fantastic game with great characters, a good story, fun puzzles, and fantastic co-op.  And Valve somehow managed to make a sequel that didn’t feel unnecessary.

On the other end of the spectrum, Dirt 3 is another fantastic game in that series.  The first Dirt was great and the second improved on nearly everything (except for the horrible menus), but Dirt 3 really improved on so much.  Naturally there are more of everything, with more cars, tracks, and events.  Then Codemasters added snow (which, thankfully, isn’t cosmetic) and the gymkhana events, which were far more fun than they should have been.  And if you have a good PC, Dirt 3 looks spectacular.

#4: inFAMOUS 2

I somehow keep forgetting about the inFAMOUS games, even though I enjoy the hell out of them when they come out.  And inFAMOUS 2 is no exception.  Improving on some of the frustrations of the first, while keeping the best elements of the original, this was one hell of a sequel.  Moving the game to a New Orleans setting also helped, allowing for a bit more diversity in the environments.  I’m also a big fan of having the main enemy looming in the distance for the better part of the game.

#3: Xenoblade Chronicles

The JRPG that changed JRPGs.  That’s monumental enough to get this high on the list, but making a game that is actually fun and has enough content for over 100 hours?  That’s just incredible.  In a year that has seen the JRPG struggle against shooters with RPG elements and big-budget Western RPGs, it’s nice to see that at least one developer wants to keep moving the genre forward and fighting against the stagnation that can plague JRPGs. Thankfully it’s coming to North America so I don’t have to keep hoping that everyone else can play it.

#2: Dead Space 2

TVGP’s Game of the Year for 2011.  While maybe not as naturally scary as the first (likely because Isaac speaks), DS2 is a fantastic game.  It looks better, the combat is more fun, the weapons more varied, and the upgrade paths for weapons felt much better.  I wish I had more to say about the game, but I spent the entire year talking it up.  Go check it out (and if you haven’t played the first one, play that, too)

#1: Gears of War 3

I didn’t expect to fall in love with Gears 3, I really didn’t.  I had fun with the previous two Gears games, but never really fell head over heels like so many others did.  But the combination of everything in Gears 3 was too much for me to resist.  Each and every mode in the game is fun and/or fresh.  Of special mention is Arcade mode, where Epic has figured out how to get you to help and compete with your friends in yet another way.

The highest praise that I can give Gears 3 is that since it has gone into my 360 it has spent very, very little time out of it.  No game has done that for quite a long time.

That’s my list for this year!  Like 2010, 2011 was a hell of a year for games.  I sincerely hope that 2012 continues the tradition of delivering tons of great games that drain my wallet completely.

Looking forward to next year, I will have a post up soon about the changes I’m making to Pile of Shame.  The first experiment was successful, but I have a different way of doing it that takes all the guesswork out of it and cleans up my pile a bit faster.

And here we are, to the meat of the list.  I’m done with all the secondary games, so let’s hop right into the main event!

#10: Dragon Age II

I know I talked a lot of yang about DA2 this past year, but most of it revolved around my frustrations with its seemingly forced ending.  Like Catherine, DA2 seemed to have a distinct story to tell and some of your decisions wouldn’t have affected that at all.

But as I play through the game again, it becomes more apparent that DA2 is a lot like one of my favorite games of last year: Alpha Protocol.  They’re both, at their core, not terrible games, but they’re not terribly good, either.  The very definition of flawed gems.

And DA2 had two good pieces of DLC that came out this year, which definitely helped.

#9: Dungeon Siege III

Alas, DS3, we hardly knew ye.  Mostly because you were so short.  What was there was an incredible ride: great console controls, an interesting story, decisions that seemed to matter, and great loot progression.  Hell, the game looked amazing, too.  But as much as I love Obsidian, a great hack ‘n’ slash is always welcome, but an eight-hour-long one just isn’t going to cut it.  This would have easily been much, much higher on my list had it been a meatier experience.

#8: LA Noire

LA Noire was originally much, much higher in my list because of its entirely appropriate ending.  For a game that claims to be noir-styled, the ending fit perfectly.  After sitting back and looking at the game as a whole, though, I couldn’t put it higher.  Beyond the ending, the revolutionary facial animation, and the fantastic music, the rest of the game was just okay.  It wasn’t bad by any stretch, but for something to be higher in my list, it has to be extraordinary.  But, man, what a ride LA Noire was.

#7: Bulletstorm

This pick probably won’t make me any friends (and likely will make some new enemies), but I don’t care; Bulletstorm is a dumb, fun game.  There’s something so charming about a classic styled first person shooter, where the name of the game is running forward and shooting dudes instead of hanging back and crouching behind cover.  Adding Skillshots to the game only made it that much more fun.  I couldn’t help but grin like a dumbass every time I kicked a guy into a cactus and bonus points flew out of him.

#6: Bastion

For an XBLA game to show up in my list in a year of amazing games, that really says something.  Bastion is a fairly straightforward game, but combining an amazing and fresh art style with the brilliant narration really made something special.  I can’t recommend the game enough.  Now I hope the industry can stop themselves from copying the narration in everything.

Check back tomorrow for the rest of my extended thoughts on my list this year!

With the TVGP 2011 Top Ten released, I figured I’d share some extended thoughts about my picks in three posts.  First up to bat are the miscellaneous categories: the failures, the almost-greatest, and last year’s best.

Honorable Mentions (In no particular order)

Catherine: I think quite a few people were expecting this game to rank pretty highly in my top ten, especially since I couldn’t stop talking about it.  I had a lot of fun with it and it was a great ride, but not an especially great game, overall.  I didn’t mind the block pushing, either; my main fault was with the rigid storytelling in the main story.  It was a fine story, but it had one story to tell with no variations.  I would have like to see the story allow for some branching other than the ending.

Tiny Tower: This is in here for sheer amount of hours played, honestly.  It’s rare to find a free game that uses microtransactions but doesn’t beat you over the head with it (I’m looking at you, certain Facebook games).  Sure, you can spend real money to buy in-game currency (in the iOS version, at least.  I have spent little time with the Android version) but it’s never a requirement.  You can easily get both types of in-game currency in reasonable amounts of time.  And I’m a sucker for the weird pixel art.

Crysis 2: Having never played the first Crysis (sorry!) I didn’t quite know what to expect.  Crysis 2 wasn’t my favorite shooter of all time, but it was competent and a fun ride.  I wish the story had been presented a little better during the intro sections, but once the training wheels get pulled off, it’s a fun shooter with few issues.

Pokemon Black/White: It’s a bit cliche and possibly a bit flippant to say, “Well, it’s another Pokemon game,” but Black and White are.  And that’s not really a bad thing.  There are more Pokemon to catch, a different environment, two rivals, and some crazy dragon things.  So, yeah, it’s more Pokemon, but the formula isn’t broken, so it’s alright that we get Another Pokemon Game.

Radiant Historia: It’s a shame that RH came out in the same year as Xenoblade, otherwise RH would be a shoe-in for my top ten.  An RPG hasn’t done time travel this well since Chrono Trigger (at least, that I can remember).  It’s always a welcome change to play an RPG with a time traveling mechanic that actually makes a difference in the game’s story.

Let Downs (In no particular order)

Dead Island: I may have been expecting too much out of DI, truth be told.  The game promised to be an open world, zombie killin’, loot grabbin’, four player questin’ RPG.  What was released was a flat, dull, repetitive RPG.  It’s by no means a bad game, per se, but certainly not one that clicked with me.

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon: If there was a possibility of me expecting too much out of Dead Island, I was certainly expecting more than EDF: IA could deliver.  Which, honestly, is a bit odd.  IA is very clearly a game that plays better than its predecessor; controls are better, shooting feels more responsive, and the framrate is far more solid.  But something feels off about IA.  The cheese factor than 2017 had was a bit phoned in and the ending on the easier difficulites felt a bit frustrating.  I know most people enjoyed it, but I couldn’t help but pine for a cheesier time.

Red Faction: Armageddon: Boy, RFA is definitely the biggest let down of 2011, by far.  I absolutely loved Guerrilla, to the point where I played it a bit too much (it had a gun that melts things!).  I eagerly anticipated “the sequel,” where I’d be able to destroy more buildings with my ostritch hammer and wander around the surface of Mars for far too many hours.  All I got was the hammer.  What we were left with was an underground, corridor-filled shooter that barely resembled even the worst parts of Guerrilla.  The Red Faction franchise deserved better and deserved to go out with a bang, not with a flop.

Best Game of Last Year This Year

Deadly Premonition: Easily, right?  I think I’m the first to admit that it’s not a great game, but it’s one that I love.  Hell, I wrote about it on this very site for months and months while I slowly made my way through the game.  Deadly Premonition is the perfect example of why I fell in love with Japanese games in previous generations: they’re broken, they’re buggy, they’re often not fun to play, but they’re charmingly insane in a way that few others can replicate.

For my full playthrough of the game, see the Pile of Shame section.

In the next few days I’ll have my actual Top Ten up on the site.

Against my better judgement, I sat down last night to watch the 2011 Spike VGAs.  Little did I know, this inevitable train wreck of a show was over two and a half hours long, including the world’s largest amount of commercials.

If you haven’t watched the show, please don’t.  If you’ve watched it, I share your horror, like some sort of survivor.  We managed to survive the VGA Awards, against all odds, even if we’re worse for wear.

The largest offense of the night, hands down, was teabagging.  If an acceptance speech went on for too long, a gentleman in fatigues would come out, throw that person to the ground, and proceed to teabag them.  Amazingly, this somehow managed to make it past the “let’s kill this idea now that we’re looking at it after clearing all the smoke out of this room.  It’s a bad idea, guys, seriously.”  At a show that’s supposed to celebrate the people that actually make the games we enjoy (as Zachary Levi spent a few minutes saying at the top), why would we so horribly disrespect them?  Nobody likes that online, so why would a grown man enjoy getting an award, have it ripped from his hands, then some dude’s balls thrust into his face?

The conceit in the intro was that teabagging was a method to keep the show moving along since it’s totally live, dude.  But, why?  Other than the trending tweets (count how many times she says ‘tweet’ in one minute), what was the reason for the show being live?  To keep people around, hoping that something fascinating would happen, something that would only happen because this crazy show is live?

The other offender were the actual awards themselves.  There were maybe three, four at best.  For a show that’s supposed to celebrate the industry, the devs, and the games we love, the amount of awards given out on air was pathetic.  There’s something to be said for condensing the number of awards that one single game gets, but let’s give the games their fair shake.  Let’s not trot out another glass-eyed celebrity (I really wanted to put that int quotes) to talk about their new album or movie before they stiffly intro some category or trailer.

It wasn’t all bad, however.  Zachary Levi seemed to have fun hosting, taking the opportunity to take the piss out of the show when he could.  He seemed to know as well as we did that standing next to a live cow and making a FarmVille joke was likely the one thing that would kill his career, so he had fun with it.  He didn’t know what to do with a med pack, so he had a little fun with it.  I have to give him a hand for trying to make the mess of a show at least have a semblance of entertainment.  And, hell, he was better than Felicia Day.

The trailers, the apparent “real” focus of the show, were good as well.  There were a few surprises in there, a few exclusives, and some solid footage.

But couldn’t we do better?  Shouldn’t we expect better?  Shouldn’t this be the show that doesn’t make games look insane?

Instead of bringing up problems without solutions, I have some suggestions.  Let’s make the show into something like the Oscars.  Surely nothing that dry, but a show that celebrates the people that make these games.  There are so few opportunities for developers, composers, directors, and producers to get credit for working their fingers to the bone for a game that maybe stays on the shelves at Best Buy for two weeks.  Let’s let the person who wins for Best Composition get up on stage and thank some people.  Instead of continually pushing the next games that are coming out, let’s celebrate another great year for games.

We need to have a fun show, but one that celebrates rather than shames.  We should have a night that celebrates our favorite games, rather than one we have to apologize for.  We, as gamers, deserve better.  And the developers of our favorite games deserve recognition for their hard work without the fear of someone’s balls in their face.