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-)

Looking back on my Games of 2011 preview from the beginning of the year, things don’t match up. I skipped Dragon Age 2 after playing the horribly disappointing demo, and The Last Guardian was pushed to 2012. I just bought two copies of the Steam version of Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, but haven’t yet started playing with my wife – I think we’ll enjoy that one.

Atom Zombie Smasher came from out of nowhere and stole my heart away. I seriously love the game. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Blendo is my favorite game studio since Troika went kaput. I’ve already finished a great many campaigns already, but I know I’ll be going back to this one quite often, if only for achievements.

It’s a fantastic game for when I just want to kill fifteen minutes, and I’d love to see a cell phone version, as I would play that sumbitch constantly. Atom Zombie Smasher gets a solid A.

I played A Boy and His Blob entirely in the presence of my four year old daughter, even letting her control things from time to time. While I understand it’s more forgiving that the old NES version of the same game, I got stuck on a puzzle midway through the levels at the city location, and never had the motivation to look up a solution on GameFAQs or the like. It’s a fun and creative game, but I’ve lost interest and haven’t played it in months. I give the game a B-.

I’m also including my replay of Batman: Arkham Asylum on hard difficulty as one of the games I played this year. It was more than 6 months following my initial playthrough, and I did go through the entire game and picked up an additional 5-6 Playstation trophies. the hard difficulty was indeed harder, but damn was it good. Arkham Asylum is still an A.

I’ll try to chime in here every week with three new games from my games-of-2011 list. I figure that we’ll be into 2012 by the time I finish.

I’ll stop right here for a moment and admit that all this preface about the Humble Indie bundles is so that I can write about Atom Zombie Smasher, but the bundles are good, and the background info is good info.

The first bundle included World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Penumbra: Overture, Lugaru, and Samarost 2. Of these, I enjoyed World of Goo and Penumbra: Overture and didn’t so much love the others.

The second bundle was much better. It included Cortex Command, Machinarium, Revenge of the Titans, Osmos, and Braid. By the time I’d gotten this bundle, I’d already played Braid, loved it, and written a hint series about the game on this site. The one from this bundle that grabbed me was Osmos, wherein you play a tiny amoeba trying to envelop and “eat” smaller amoebas and thus gain mass in order to eat increasingly larger amoebas. It’s a really good game, although the later levels get way too difficult. I believe that Osmos is now available on iOS, and I highly recommend it.

I never tried the unnumbered “Humble Frozenbyte Bundle” but I recently dug into the third bundle for the first time. I quickly learned that Hammerfight‘s controls were a bit wonky for my taste and And Yet It Moves didn’t hold my attention. I’d played the flash version of VVVVVV previously and didn’t feel the need to jump back in, although I’ve heard more than one person rave about that game. Cogs is one I played for about a dozen puzzle/levels before growing tired of the 3d puzzle-slider mechanic, and Steel Storm is a fun old school shoot-em-up that I continue to play bit by bit. Crayon Physics Deluxe is a game I took notice of long ago, when it was still in development. The premise was very creative and cool, much like Scribblenauts. But like Scribblenauts, the implementation somehow didn’t quite measure up.

Lastly, my favorite game in the bundle, which is my favorite game in any of the bundles. It might be my overall favorite game that I’m playing currently. Atom Zombie Smasher.

Atom Zombie Smasher is done by Blendo Games, who made the amazing Gravity Bone, which I featured long ago in Free Game Friday. After having seen what great stuff Blendo puts out, I’m going to have to revisit their catalog.

In Atom Zombie Smasher, you coordinate the response to a worldwide zombie outbreak. Your playing field is a map of multiple territories, and both you and the zombies score points on a victory track. The default setting has a 2000 point victory condition, but there are many settings to tweak. The zombies score one point per citizen that they convert into a zombie, and 10/20/30/40 points each round for level 1, 2, 3, or 4 outbreak areas. You score one point per citizen you rescue, and 20 points per round for each territory you capture. There are also certain milestones along each victory track at which specific events will occur – each side can unlock new abilities. For example, you can begin to rescue scientist and can gain access to orbital cannons and llama bombs. The zombies can increase their rate of infestation and begin to create super-zeds.

But this outer strategic level is only a housing for the meat of the game, wherein you evacuate citizens from the city. You first get a setup phase, where you can position snipers, ground troops, landmines, dynamite charges, and barricades. Then you click “begin” and the zombies begin coming. You set an evacuation point, and the citizens rush to it while the zombies pursue. You do your best to hold the zombies back while minimizing civilian casulaties, but the trick is that any citizen caught by a zombie becomes a zombie. Rescuing scientists can unlock new upgrades, and things like zombie bait, artillery, and the orbital catbird cannon help a lot. And if you take too long and night falls, even more zombies show up.

The game is very difficult, but very fun. I have yet to win a campaign, but I’ll be playing this one for quite some time.