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-)

Lots of good games in 2011, and this portion of the list has some of the best. Picking up where I left off on Monday, Bastion is a game I took no notice of during its previews during Pax East 2011 when I was there, despite my friends’ enthusiasm over the game. After all, it was an XBLA game, and I had no XBox. By the time the Steam version was announced, the game had already gotten a lot of praise and I picked it up. How awesome was it to have such an excellent story in what appeared like such a retro-style game! The music was stellar, and the gameplay had a lot of nuance. B+.

Batman: Arkham City is very possibly my own personal game of the year. Skyrim is very good, Portal 2 was awesome, and I’m really looking forward to Skyward Sword, but Arkham City had excellent gameplay along with a good story that had an ever better ending. A.

I’d been looking forward to Beyond Good and Evil HD since having first heard of the game. If you haven’t yet realized it, Beyond Good and Evil is just about my most favoritest game evar. It should go without saying that I was a fan of the HD remake. Sadly though, the controls on this version were seriously subpar. B+.

Well, I’m finished with Bastion and I’m playing Skyrim – my Bosmer elf Leroy is already 11th level. But enough about Skyrim – I want to talk a bit about Bastion. I’ll say right out that I loved the game. Its music is one of the best parts of the game, but I also enjoyed the story and the unexpected twist. It’s no Heavy Rain twist, but I love when the story takes a turn that you never saw coming.

The gameplay and combat are very old-school, although they’re thankfully a great deal more forgiving than many other old school games. You may have heard about the game’s dynamic narration – the narrator will comment on actions that you take in the game as you take them, and his narration is keyed to certain progress points, so as you progress through a level, he’ll continue his progress in segments as you hit certain points. It works very well, and the guy is a great gravely-voiced voice actor who sounds like he’s stepped right out of a western.

It’s no Skyrim – you won’t be spending 50 hours in the game, but it is very good. You should buy the Steam version if you don’t own an XBox 360.