At this point, I’m sick of writing about 2011 games, and I’m sure you’re sick of reading about them, so I’ll wrap it all up. I did a best of 2010 post last year, and now here’s this year’s best of 2011 post.

In my number five position is Bastion. The game had stellar music, some very nice retro gameplay with a great mechanic for adjusting difficulty, and a compelling story. If you’ve not played Bastion, jump on it.

Number four is Portal 2, which if you’d have asked me earlier in 2011, I’d have sworn would be in my number one slot come year end. That speaks to the awesomesauce that was the 2011 video game release schedule. Portal 2 was damn funny and had some excellent puzzles. I plan to go back to it when my Skyrim frenzy cools, both to finish my second playthrough and to finish the co-op levels.

The third slot is claimed by an unexpected gem: Atom Zombie Smasher. I love this game, and I go back to it frequently when I’ve got fifteen minutes to kill. It’s not quite tower defense, not quite real time strategy, and not quite a board game. But it is fantastic.

Number two? Skyrim. Big surprise. Not much more to say here – I’m sure I’ll fill up many other posts with Skyrim blabber.

And my favorite game of the year? Batman: Arkham City. The context-sensitive combat, the open world navigation, and by Grabthar’s hammer, the characters! Epic voice acting, well-written story, incredibly fun set pieces, and one of the best endings of any video game I’ve played make Arkham City my personal game of the year.

Here’s a summary of how I rated all the games throughout my posts

Atom Zombie Smasher (A)
A Boy and His Blob (B-)
Batman: Arkham Asylum  (A)
Bastion (B+)
Batman: Arkham City (A)
Beyond Good and Evil HD (B+)
Dead Nation  (C)
Dead Space 2  (B)
Dungeon Siege 3  (C+)
Dungeons & Dragons Tactics (B)
Fallout: New Vegas  (C)
Limbo   (B)
Mass Effect 2   (B)
Metal Gear Solid 1  (C-)
Metal Gear Solid 4  (C-)
Metro 2033   (C-)
Metroid Prime   (C-)
Osmos    (B)
PB Winterbottom  (B)
Peggle Android  (B)
Pixeljunk Monsters Deluxe (A)
Plants vs Zombies Android (B+)
Portal 2  (A)
RE: Darkside Chronicles(C)
Sacred 2  (D)
Shadow of the Colossus HD (B)
Skyrim   (A)
Starcraft 2   (B)
Steel Storm   (B-)
Super Mario Galaxy 2  (B)
Wind Waker   (A-)
Zuma’s Revenge  (A-)