What have we gone for? Rest assured they’re not all ‘Skyrim’, and there are some genuinely surprising choices to find when you read on below!

Rikki Wortman (Staff Writer) – Portal 2
Maybe not as great as its predecessor, the game took what was an accidental miracle and crafted it into a finely tuned game, with a fantastic storyline, mind-boggling puzzles and co-op content that I still play today. With the possibility of more DLC for this game, it only gets better. Not to mention Valve managed to make Robots show more emotion than any human NPC to date. That’s a definite plus.

Top all that off with some amazing scenery, beautiful art work, unexpected twists, an eery atmosphere, time runs and an active community making its own challenging puzzles, and there isn’t much room for error.

Runners up: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Mario Kart 7

Paddy X (Community Manager) – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
I know there may be many of you who read this and not believe what I’m about to say, as this actually wasn’t my first choice and I agonised over whether people would think my choice was based on simply “following the pack” with regards to how many ‘Game of the Year’ awards this is already garnering.

Here’s the thing, though. For me, what I look for in games is immersion. Above all else, that is the one crucial and deciding factor in whether a game gets my thumbs up. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to have the latest graphical sheen; does it take me there? We are all more than aware that Skyrim has not been without its problems since launch, but they’ve yet to sully my experience of the game.

Knowing that after a hard day at work, I can come home and relax by taking my time to climb a mountain top just for the view, plunder a dungeon for loot, or assail a dragon or three, well… that gets my thumbs up.

There are few games that take you there. This is one of those few.

Runners up: Portal 2, Saints Row: The Third

Trent Pyro (Staff Writer) – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
After waiting over two years for it, Skyrim surpassed my high expectations to become my GOTY 2011. It improves upon everything from Oblivion and goes steps further, presenting a highly immersive and massively enjoyable fantasy world to explore. The plot is exciting and engrossing and there’s so much to see and do I’ll probably still be treading the tundra of Skyrim this time next year!

The unprecedented level of detail and difference in every building, town, weapon and location offer a world so rich and involving that it’s impossible not to marvel at its majesty. The soundtrack is Hollywood-quality fantasy gold, effortlessly haloing each battle, trek and epic set-piece and the new engine allows stunning vistas and incredibly lifelike creatures and enemies.

Bethesda have achieved the impossible. They have created a huge world full of endless enjoyment and tied it together with compelling quests and a beautiful levelling and combat system. More so than any title this year it’s proven that our beloved games can still take us far, far away and allow us to shed the shackles of reality for the comfort and excitement of the virtual world.

Runners up: Gears of War 3, L.A. Noire

James Ireland (Staff Writer and Video Producer) – Rayman Origins
Forget about the big guns this year. My game of the year was Rayman Origins. A game that has seemingly put the 2D platformer back on the map. The game was charming, challenging and contained possibly the most beautiful musical score this year.

It was though the drop in four player co-op, effortless controls and the totally astounding Ubi Art engine that made this game from Ubisoft Montpellier so impressive. It is not one to be missed and should be in everyone’s collection.

Runners up: FIFA 12, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Matt James (Staff Writer) – Gears of War 3
Gears of War 3 is game of the year for me because, simply, it was a beautiful conclusion to one of the best and most important gaming narratives of the past few years. Ever since I first played as Marcus Fenix, my gaming life led up to this.

The gameplay offered the same tried and tested run, duck, shoot, duck, shoot, run method that we all know and love so, there was nothing, admittedly, ground-breaking there. However, it was the narrative that did it for me. The soundtrack accompanying Dom’s sacrifice brought many of us back to the heady days of Gears of War but it also reminded us all of the great narrative that was pulsing through this game.

This beautifully constructed narrative finished in a way unlike other Gears games. You knew that this symbolised the end. You knew that your days as Fenix were over. However, you were so happy with the conclusion, you just didn’t care.

Parting, as they say, is such sweet sorrow.

Runners up: FIFA 12, Batman: Arkham City

Phil Ubee (Staff Writer) – RAGE
It’s taken some deliberation but ultimately decided on my time spent playing, I am just edging for Rage. Since picking up a copy for just £20 I have barely been able to tear myself away. The story may not be up to much by comparison to some of the other big titles released this year, but for pure enjoyment and diversity there simply cannot be a better game on the market.

It looks incredible, it sounds awesome and the weapons are both inventive and fun throughout. I love watching bandits explode in a pool of blood and tissue and I have not laughed out loud playing any other game ever as I have playing this.

On top of the good humour and fulfilling shooting sections, the driving is smooth and enjoyable and at no point do even the most menial of tasks feel tired or boring.

You simply have to own this game.

Runners up: Deus Ex: Human Evolution, Outland

Michael Charge (Staff Writer) – Battlefield 3
Battlefield 3 is the return of the ever conquering FPS. Long absent from the main series while it delved in Bad Companies, looked to the future and tried to make us all wear pirate hats, Battlefield 3 is a return to good old Battlefield; jets, focus on Conquest and large-scale mayhem.

The single-player is an average excuse for people to shoot enemies in foreign locales and for the player to be treated to some terrible quick time events. There are one or two stand out levels towards the end of the game but the rest of it is really just an average first person shooter.

However, multiplayer is where the game is really at and I haven’t had this much fun shooting fellow humans since Battlefield 2 was the hot, online game. The classes are well-balanced and fun to play, the unlocks keep you interested, the graphics are amazing and the sound is terrifying.

Anyway, I’m back off to Karkand.

Runners up: Portal 2, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Ray Willmott (Site Manager) – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Truly immersing yourself in a game world is rare. On few occasions can your mundane, routine-filled existence disappear, enabling you to completely lose yourself in a fictional, fantasy world filled with Skeletons, Vampires, Werewolves, Dragons and Khajits. Skyrim sucked me in the moment I first put it into my Xbox. Unwittingly, I committed over thirty hours of gameplay within a week, and in that time, hardly touched the main story.

In fact, I’d hardly attempted any quests at all. The whole time I was discovering this luscious new World, exploring ruined castles, delving into dungeons, wandering into small towns, and interacting with travellers like myself who I’d found walking off the beaten path. I stood on top of mountain peaks, taking in glorious views, and at the base of waterfalls, watching nature unfold in its elegance.

Skyrim isn’t just a game, it’s an experience. It’s a whole other world full of wondrous landscapes and incredible detail. It’s unlike anything else I’ve played this year, and, indeed, this generation. There really is no other choice for my Game of the Year.

Runners up: Portal 2, Batman: Arkham City

Andy Corrigan (Editor in Chief/Owner) – Shadows of the Damned
Oh man, that time already? This was a tough year for me personally, as there are many games I’ve yet to play (Deus Ex, Dark Souls, Gears of War 3 etc), and I’ve also not yet put anywhere near enough time into Skyrim to declare that as my game of the year, despite its class already painfully evident.

Shadows of the Damned, then. It might seem a left-field choice for some, what with Portal 2 and Arkham City also being massive highlights for me. Hell, I’ve listed at least four games that are better on a technical level and are at least twice as polished, but none entertained me as much as the twisted journey I undertook with Garcia Hotspur and his gun, Johnson.

Dark, sickly, but charming and B-movie by design, Shadows of the Damned appealed to the same part of me that instantly fell in love with cheesy, b-horrors like Evil Dead, among others. Not many other studios can successfully blend and perfectly balance elements of horror, comedy and random silliness with this degree of confidence, let alone have the balls to just revel in it too. Grasshopper Manufacture did just that. A criminally underrated game.

Runners up: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Portal 2

Stephen King (Staff Writer) – Gears of War 3
My game of the year is an easy pick. Gears of War 3 was hyped up to bursting point and yet still managed to deliver on all promises. Not only is it a big jump for the graphical look of the game, it also has an amazingly written story to make it stand out proud with the best. With more than just a great campaign, it also provides near endless fun in terms of multiplayer, and if anyone should know it is me, since I played Horde mode for 48 hours straight! As an aside, the special edition package was pretty cool too.

I have been limited to the games I have managed to find time to play this year, but I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Gears 3 would still have managed to be my favourite. On top of the disc based content, there are regular updates for DLC content making the experience last even longer. You do have to pay for the extra content, but it is worth every penny.

In conclusion: great single player, potentially limitless multiplayer, great musical score and incredible graphics. What more could you really ask from a game?

Runners up: L.A. Noire, Aliens Infestation

Jesper Hauerslev (Staff Writer) – Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Deus Ex might not have been the loudest shooter or the most silent sneaker to hit the shelves this year but it was certainly the one that left the biggest impact. It was both a powerful reboot of a much-loved franchise and a great start-off point for new players as it laid bare a dark and twisted future, bathed in gold and black, where the value of a human life is measured by the quality of cybernetic augmentations.

Rather then shoehorning the player into specific play-styles, the game presented plenty of different options on how to approach any situation. This gave you, the player, a great sense of control that could be further augmented (or indeed hindered) by the cyber-implants you chose thereby adding a great deal of replay-value.

Yet, for all the freedom the game still managed to guide you through a gloomy and engaging plot that foreshadows an ethical debate that will undoubtedly start to grab headlines in the years to come. Add great shooting and stealth-mechanics to the mix, ignore some questionable boss battles and you have the years strongest game in terms of gameplay, story and overall message.

Runners up: Batman: Arkham City, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

James Sheppard (Reviews Editor) – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
I imagine I’m not alone with my selection of GOTY. I honestly couldn’t give a mudcrab though, because I’ll happily follow the crowd and lavish praise upon Skyrim. I’ve adored the Elder Scrolls series since Morrowind, and as such its fifth instalment was my most anticipated release over the last few years. It’s all too easy to get over-hyped over anything and ultimately set yourself up for disappointment, but Skyrim has truly lived up to my excitement.

From the literally daunting scope of available quests and locations, to the beauty and wonder that awaits around every corner, to the best damn inclusion of dragons I’ve seen in any game ever; the adjective that most frequently reiterates itself in my mind whilst playing Skyrim is ‘astonishing’. I am genuinely in awe of the accomplishments of Bethesda; they’ve proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that single-player is not dead and multiplayer is utterly non-essential, and that several years of quality development can make something truly special. I used to play other games like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

Runners up: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Portal 2

Neil Hughes (Site Manager) – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
For the last eight years the masses have enjoyed Call of Duty and FIFA over the Christmas festivities, so it’s of no surprise that people are ready for a change and the realm of fantasy has once again hit the cultural zeitgeist. Non believers only have to google the phrase “I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee” to see just how much this game has captured everyone’s imagination.

Immersion is a word that we hear far too often these days, but the breathtaking environments of Skyrim are a perfect example of how you can immerse yourself in another world. Where your game experience feels unique and has prompted countless online communities to share their experience too.

In a world where single player campaign lengths of 4-6 hours are the norm, it is somewhat refreshing to announce that I’ve not scratched the surface of my game of the year and will be spending my Christmas exploring the tundra plains, forests, highlands and mountainous regions dressed in a onesie to protect me from the cold Skyrim wind this Christmas, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

Runners up: Gears of War 3, L.A. Noire

So, which games let us down? What surprise selections are list? Don’t forget to let us know yours in the comments below!

Rikki Wortman (Staff Writer) – Rift
This may be a slight bit biased, as I’m an MMO fanboy, but Rift was definitely the sour taste in the mouth of 2011. The first thing it got wrong was to over-estimate its place in the genre, taking on the gigantic World of Warcraft with a slogan “This isn’t Azeroth any more”, implying that Rift’s universe was going to be a much better place.

It wasn’t. With boring, ironic locations, stereotypes as far as you could throw an elf, confusing character trees with no explanation, static areas that bored players to tears and community/guild options we’ve seen time again, it’s not a surprise that Rift’s 1 million starting players very rapidly dwindled to half that. It still attempts to cling on, but with little hope. I’m still ashamed I took a month from WoW to pay for it.

Paddy X (Community Manager) – Brink
Oh, how vocal I was to all who would listen about how this was to be a game-changer for the industry and would surprise people. Well, it surprised people all right, because what we got was not what we were promised.

I and many others lapped up all the hyperbole from the developer’s mouths without considering for one moment they were maybe glossing over the realities of what they could (and would) deliver.

What we received was a broken and unfinished game, with the slimest of single-player story-lines; it’s grandiose ideas sadly sullied and buried beneath a virtual unplayable mess.

I still admire the idea of the dystopia they intended to create, I’m just sad I didn’t get to experience it.

Trent Pyro (Staff Writer) – Duke Nukem Forever
After playing this at Gadget Show Live 2011 I was considerably excited to see how the old dog would handle the 21st century. Like an old dog, it seems.

Duke Forever’s problems are myriad, but the biggest one for me is the lack of considered progression and modernisation that’s gone into it. We all expected Duke’s trademark humour; a heady mix of light-hearted mysoginism and bull-headed arrogance. We didn’t expect it to feel so unnecessarily over-the-top and badly implemented. Video-game humour has come a long way, so far that Duke’s brand feels tasteless and crude in comparison. While chucking shit around a toilet may have raised a laugh in 1995, in 2011 it seems pathetic and childish. Duke has aged about as well as Jim Davidson.

The game itself plays like a car-crash of the old and new, mixing sketchy and cheap FPS combat with modern-ish graphics and mechanics. Zooming and regenerating health are in but so is getting shot from every angle, enemies spawning behind you and shit-awful checkpointing. It fails to do justice to both time periods and generally fails to be an enjoyable game at all. The king is dead and the blood is on Gearbox’s hands.

Andy Corrigan (Editor in Chief/Owner) – L.A. Noire
Okay, most would probably list technically terrible games here, so I’m expecting Duke Nukem Forever to feature at least a couple of times. The thing is, that didn’t disappoint me; I expected it to be terrible, and it was.

L.A. Noire is my choice. I agree that it’s a very technically sound title, not the worst by a long shot, but the one that disappointed me the most. Yes, the technology behind the game was amazing. Yes, it was a new and unique experience to try and read a character’s facial expressions and body language, as was it to investigate crime scenes, but it needed more.

The story, in spite of what initially appeared to be grown up and enthralling, it only served to let me down come the end. There’s no denying that Cole was a complex character and his personal journey was excellent, but the game teased bigger revelations. It left you expecting a puppet master or major event of some sort, one that had a hand in everything you had done; tying it together and shaking everything you thought you knew. Instead it went nowhere and ended with a flat whimper, leaving loose ends and providing zero closure.

Phil Ubee (Staff Writer) – Call of Juarez: The Cartel
Call of Juarez: The Cartel is just about the worst game I’ve played this generation, never mind this year. Not only is it graphically on a par with a steaming pile of turd, but the gameplay is a repetitive process of “shootout, move to new area, shootout, repeat”!

To top it off, if you are standing right next to an NPC but facing the other way you wont hear a word they say and in a final sign of the crass, cheap attitude throughout, there is an achievement for watching a computer generated pole dancer strut her stuff. Awful!

Matt James (Staff Writer) – L.A. Noire
L.A. Noire is my disappointment of the year. I actually loved playing it and finished it in three days after playing it solidly. However, in retrospect, this was because I was desperate to say that I’ve finished it (also, I think that GAME were doing some trade in offer if you traded in Noire within a fortnight).

The promise of reacting to characters’ facial features was a big let down. Too often I thought that my suspect was lying due to his eyes looking shiftily to the left, only to find out I was wrong and have to restart my interview with the exact same question!

The plot did little to engage me too. Rockstar haven’t, Vice City aside possibly, ever been narrative experts but GTA hasn’t ever really needed thick plot with the enticing gameplay on offer. Noire, with a hugely GTA feel about it, needed a stronger plot with many more twists and turns. I felt, from the very outset, that I knew how the game would pan out and end. Apart from my erratic interviewing of suspects, I was right!

Michael Charge (Staff Writer) – Brink
It shows just how good this year has been when my disappointment of the year is a game that I thoroughly enjoyed playing through.

Brink, Splash Damage’s latest game, is a game where I enjoy the gameplay style, the back story, the characteristic art and the sound, but somehow it just felt disappointing. I loved the close matches I played in co-op. I love sitting down and making a character in the editor. I love making stupid guns in the customisation.

Personally, I blame a series of mistakes made during the game’s release; dodgy net code at launch, crappy bots, its non-appearance on Steam during its launch month and some marketing mistakes. It is truly a shame that a game with so much potential kind of failed at its first step.

Ray Willmott (Site Manager) – Dragon Age II
After all this time, perhaps I demand too much from Bioware. Perhaps my expectations have reached a point no game developer in the world can ever attain. Then again, I know I would have been satisfied by a level of quality I know the company have achieved in the past. Sadly, I did not find that with Dragon Age II. Origins is one of my all-time favourite RPGs, it had the Bioware stamp of excellence on it, and was a world so rich with content, character and quality that I fully indulged in it.

Yet, Dragon Age II seemed to lack all of those qualities. Instead of a wide-open world, I was restricted to Kirkwall and its slight surrounding area. I found the characters to be a mish-mash of meh, and the storyline a political bore. While the combat was improved, and some of the new concepts fresh, the game just didn’t resonate with me. I struggled to make it all the way through to its conclusion. The first time I can say that of any Bioware game in over a decade.

Jesper Hauerslev (Staff Writer) – RAGE
It looked good, sounded good and even played good and yet, for all its hype, potential and pedigree, RAGE squandered it all away. The story and setting was riddled with all the worst clichés, the characters were hollow and you never even got to fight the main bad guy.

RAGE might have looked good on paper back in 2007 when id Software started designing it but it was outdone and outshined twice before it was even released by Fallout 3 and Borderlands. Rather then admit defeat and change its tune, RAGE arrived too late to its own party and while it wore the sexiest dress of them all, there just wasn’t much underneath the skirt to make you want to start a serious relationship.

Stephen King (Staff Writer) – Duke Nukem Forever
I can’t think of a time when I have ever been more disappointed by a game in my life. I remember when the announcement was made stating that the fabled game was actually to be released. A massive shock to the system, considering the game had been in development a hell for longer than a decade. Even better was that it was to be brought to light by the visionaries behind Borderlands.

Sadly, what was released was a first person shooter that would probably have been out of date at the time the first Halo was released. Combine that with a sense of humour that I apparently stopped subscribing to when I was seven-years-old, and you have a soul-destroying experience.

I can only hope that Gearbox bought into this to get a hold of the license and not because they saw potential in the product. Getting this in your Xmas stocking is somewhere along the same line as getting a lump of coal; only it won’t burn quite as well.

James Sheppard (Reviews Editor) – The 3DS
For years now I’ve been disillusioned with Nintendo, despite being a devout fanboy in my youth. What started gradually with the DS and snowballed with the Wii was their focus towards casual gamers. This alone isn’t the end of the world for me, as I can often enjoy quality casual titles, but there’s arguably been far too much shovelware and not enough juicy gaming goodness from the Big N lately.

In blind faith I trusted them with the release of the 3DS; I really did. ‘Perhaps they’ll win me over again’, I thought. I hate to say it, but I was so, so wrong. Not only was its launch plagued with mediocre games, the majority of which were ports from other consoles, some really awful mistakes started to rear their ugly heads. The initially absent features, rubbish online integration, lack of a second analogue stick and dreadful battery life were all condemned. Even the entire concept of the console itself, its 3D visual effect, was poorly received.

Ever since, there’s been a frantic back-pedalling from Ninty to try and correct their misguided design decisions, and refocus marketing strategy, topped off with a hefty and practically unheard of RRP-slashing.

Neil Hughes (Site Manager) – Dead Island
Could a game really live up to the hype of the infamous trailer? Probably not, and unfortunately I felt I was left with a mediocre open-world hack and slash zombie game that had me feeling a little underwhelmed. It’s what many have called a “marmite” experience.

There have been much worse games out this year for sure, but nothing promised me so much and let me down so heavily as Dead Island did in 2011. Maybe zombies have become so passé after years of overkill?

My trip to the island of Banoi was made worse by being stuck with lazy and annoying characters who deserved to be left as zombie food, so this is one package holiday from hell I won’t be returning too and it isn’t because of the zombies but the bugs wont be missed either.

Wish you were here… instead of me.

With that, the site closes its doors to regular content over the festive period, but fear not if you’ve got nowhere to go, we’ve still got plenty to keep you entertained.

The last part of our epic 24 day Advent Calendar Giveaway will still go live tomorrow, and on the 30th and the 31st of December we’ll be unleashing our annual ‘Year in review’ articles; two collaborative articles offering our opinions on the most disappointing games of the year, and then our picks for ‘Game of the Year’ respectively, before throwing both open to a forum poll for you guys. Of course, you’ll still find many of our regular reprobates slinking around the forums to keep you going with engaging chat until we return.

Normal content output will recommence on the 9th of January, when we’ll all be refreshed and ready to take on the new year which, providing the world doesn’t end, will be another important step in the development of your favourite gaming website… No, not them! Us!

Until then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at This Is My Joystick!

We all have them. Those big games that are so inexplicably popular to everyone else, but you can’t help but wonder how the chuff they garnered the acclaim that they receive.

So, which games made our staff member’s shit lists… You know what to do to find out!

Jesper Hauerslev (Staff Writer) ~ FIFA/PES
I hate football and everything about it. I hated playing it at school because I was never fast enough to keep the ball for longer then a few seconds when a teammate finally did kick the ball to me. I suspect that was always more an act of sheer desperation then team-spirit.

I hate how everybody expects you to love the game. I hate how your are defined by what team you support and how the answer (or lack thereof) will equally define you and stigmatise you to the end of your days.

More then that, I hate actually playing it and I hate the fact that year after year, new games are spat out that are basically last year’s version with a new cover slapped on to make the cash-registers go “kerching!”

What is the point of that? Give me innovation and cool new features that go beyond an updated roster, slightly crisper graphics and more crowd-roars? I want a Rooney Rage-meter, I want to pick a fight with the referee and I want to fake an injury and see if I can get away with it. I want to booby-trap the ball with dynamite, pick-up WAGs, fool around with busty Page 3 girls and issue gagging orders to the press while having an affair with my brother’s wife.

Give me that and maybe I might actually consider playing a football game.

Trent Pyro (Staff Writer) ~ Call of Duty
Since the biblical success of COD4, Activision have essentially hired monkeys to update the story and throw in a couple of new features for each new release. All the campaigns are short and uninspiring, the multiplayer is repetitive and the fanbase are a bunch of irritating wankers. It sells like sun-cream during a supernova but loses GOTY every year because everyone knows it actually sucks. Activision make their billions then close studios and sack people. COD and Activision can fuck right out of it.

CoD = Corny old Dross?

Paddy (Community Manager) ~ Halo
Halo. Two things always really bugged me about the series, and as time wore on, I just couldn’t ignore them anymore. The first was that for a franchise that boasted a story that was epic in scale, it hardly ever seemed to match the lofty heights of its marketing hyperbole. As someone who has read and seen much in the genre of Science Fiction, I wasn’t impressed. In fact, if I’m being truthful here, frankly speaking I was always left wondering what all the fuss was about. For three games I handed over my money, wanting to give it the benefit of doubt, only to come away continually disappointed. Don’t even get me started on the fact that the whole thing hangs on a rip-off of Larry Niven’s excellent ‘Ringworld’ saga from the 1970’s…

The second issue I had was with the media marketing blitz. Every gaming magazine I picked up seemed to have Halo splashed over its cover. Magazines were chomping at the bit for any and every piece of Halo information, no matter how small because they knew it would shift magazines. Whilst I can understand this from a financial standpoint, the sheer volume of far more worthy games that were smothered in the mêlée doesn’t bear thinking about. Crackdown was one such example that only just managed to keep its head above water long enough to eventually prove the naysayers wrong who dismissed it upon release.

There is more to gaming than Halo and CoD. I’m not saying there’s not a place for them, but when the marketplace becomes this saturated with similar products, and starts dumbing down games like Mass Effect 2 in favour of bullets over narrative, I have to stand back and question the bigger picture. Herein lies the problem. When is a franchise too successful? Too powerful? It’s one thing to garner great sales, pad out the pockets of your shareholders, maintain a dedicated demographic and make a name for yourself in the Gaming world. It’s quite another to be the one in the driving seat that everyone else is avidly watching due to the sheer amount of money you’re making.

What can I say? Halo just really grinds my Gears. (See what I did there?) Feel free to send hate mail. I can take it. I’m a big boy.

Same game different strips for two of our guys...

Neil Hughes (Site Manager) ~ Mario
Nintendo have been milking this cash cow with over 200 games since 1981. Although I am happy to admit Shigeru Miyamoto deserves his legendary status, and I have very fond memories of the cheeky plumber and his spreading of communist propaganda; I often find myself pondering if we really need this ageing franchise in the 21st century.

I have been fortunate enough to have seen video gaming grow from its humble beginnings with Pong into the behemoth of mainstream entertainment that is has now become. Games now have similar budgets and profits to rival Hollywood movies, so do we really need yet another tired Mario platform game in our lives?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all about the graphics with me. My biggest idol is Jeff ‘Yak’ Minter who gave us the randomness of Sheep in Space, Attack of the Mutant Camels and Llamatron, to name but a few, which illustrates the power of his imagination. 200 variants of Mario games, however shows a complete lack of imagination which Nintendo have been dining out on for thirty years.

Phil Ubee (Staff Writer) ~ Halo
It seems Paddy has, to some degree, stolen my thunder here, but I honestly believe that the Halo series is the single biggest, over-hyped, waste of time since home consoles began. The first game was an ‘okay’ shooter in its own right, at a time when the genre was only just starting out on consoles. The second game was hyped beyond recognition and was again, no more than an average title, yet is somehow claimed as the game that has defined a generation.

Halo 3 is one of, if not the most underwhelming games I have played on current generation consoles. The story was ridiculously short, the gameplay predictably repetitive, and the graphics decidedly average. Even the multiplayer, hailed as the best thing since sliced bread left me feeling incredibly blasé.

Since then we have had a number of similarly over-hyped spin-off titles, which have once again failed to deliver. So much so that I simply refuse to even rent Reach in order to avoid tarnishing my Xbox 360. Now to make matters even worse, we have the news that Halo 3 wasn’t the last game in the series after all. I for one have chosen to ignore the passing bandwagon titled ‘Halo 4’ as it gathers momentum. The build up to which will, inevitably be, another over-hyped, average shooter.

You say Halo? Phil, Andy K and Paddy say 'Goodbye'...

Debbie Lloyd (Staff Writer) ~ Call of Duty
As I write this I am actually sat on Wikipedia and staring at a list of gaming franchises, trying to think very hard about which ones I hate the most. From memory there is not really any franchise in particular that gets my blood boiling. I’m not a hater, I’m a lover of all things, but I suppose that Call of Duty is a massively over-hyped franchise for me, so that’s close enough to hatred.

It is common knowledge that I am a bit of a fan of the FPS genre regardless of its setting, but I just find Call of Duty to be an ultimately dull experience through-and-through. It is a franchise that hasn’t really moved forwards at all in my eyes, only going for shock value with its realism, topical and heavily political subject matter.

Video games should not be political; they should be fun and not weighed down with heavy topics from the news. It’s like playing through the reels you see on the news of war and destruction.

Call of Duty is not a bad franchise; it is just one that I find terminally dull and at times depressing to play. No doubt that it is action-packed, but the massive political agenda is just too much sometimes.

James O’Leary (Staff Writer) ~ Call of Duty
It may seem like the fashionable choice at the moment to dislike the Call of Duty franchise, but hopefully this point of view is a slightly different view on the hate that gets directed towards CoD.

My issue with Call of Duty lies within the competitive scene of the franchise, specifically with regards to the announcement of Activision’s $1,000,000 tournament for Call Of Duty: Black Ops. Wait, isn’t Black ops getting replaced by Modern Warfare 3 in just a short few months? Seemingly Activision-Blizzard have decided to sprinkle a little of their oceans of money back on to a select few professional gamers.

What’s wrong with this you say? It dumps all over everything that people have tried to build for FPS competitive gaming, and with long-standing favorites like Quake being phased out of the e-Sports scene slowly and reluctantly, the annual replacement of one of the larger games in the e-Sports world leaves a somewhat bitter taste in this gamer’s mouth.

As for the recent games in the franchise, they’ve all been mediocre in innovation when compared to other games like Battlefield, with its immersive and destructive frostbite engine. Unless Modern Warfare 3 is a gigantic leap forward for the series and sticks around for longer than 12 months without a replacement, I may change my mind.

Unfortunately I’m more convinced that the next installment of Duke Nukem will rear its ugly, unwanted head within the next year than Activision not making money angels with their next Call of Duty game.

Neil shudders when he hears 'It's-a me!'

Andy Corrigan (Editor) ~ Resistance
This was a tough choice as there are a number of contenders. Special mention has to go to the tedium of the Call of Duty annual update, and I could rant at some length as to why the Metal Gear Solid series has been a bag of unintelligible crap since its decent PSOne debut. Just for a change I’m opting for Resistance.

When I got my PS3, I looked to the exclusives to make it feel like a worthwhile purchase. While the likes of Uncharted, Little Big Planet and Killzone duly delivered, one of the titles people were telling me to buy into was Resistance: Fall of Man and its sequel. With all the praise I expected something special.

What I got instead, was two dull-as-dishwater, derivative games that bored the living shit out of me for the entire combined playthrough. If I was to describe my experience in one word, it would be ‘blank’, as in that’s how I felt when I played them. I felt nothing for setting or the characters, the combat was boring and by-the numbers, and the action was painfully uninspired. If it wasn’t a PS3 exclusive, it would have passed without a murmur.

Andrew Knight (Podcast Editor) ~ Halo
I’m so glad to see a few of my TIMJ colleagues agreeing with me here. I’m usually lambasted by the guys for my negative and cynical view on games, so to see Phil and Paddy (wow, never saw that coming) with me on this one, is something of a relief.

To me, Halo is the most over-hyped franchise today, even more so than COD. Okay, so it showed the way for the FPS genre on consoles back when the original Xbox was launched, but almost a decade later, the ‘Combat Evolved’ really hasn’t developed much since that first title. Admittedly, they have mixed it up with the last few games featuring more of a squad-based experience, but that was more to accommodate the growing trend for a multiplayer story experience. That was more necessity, not pushing the gameplay to new, groundbreaking areas.

The new forthcoming anniversary edition to be released later this year only serves to prove my hate for this franchise to a tee. It’s the old game, but now doused in full HD graphics. Thing is, playing the old games with the new graphical upgrades on, you’ll easily start to get confused to which game in the franchise you’re playing. The Halo universe is all very samey, to the point of set-pieces and backdrops becoming redundant.

So little mechanically or design-wise has changed the gameplay. It’s gone from what was once the premier console shooter, into a stale, outdated and boring experience. It baffles me that so many people still play the games. Oh and I loath the look of the Grunts; least scariest enemy in gaming history!

World of Borecraft more like! Am I right?!

James Sheppard (Reviews Editor) ~ World of Warcraft
I’m a gentle soul, so thinking of a franchise which I actually hate enough to rant about is a difficult task for me. Instead, I’m going to opt for the next best option, which is a hugely popular game that left me underwhelmed. World of Warcraft has subscribers in the millions, all more than willing to hand over their £8.99 fee to Blizzard every month.

In fact, World of Warcraft is infamous for practically taking over peoples’ lives, ruining their education, and destroying relationships. A quick look at my Xfire profile revealed one ‘friend’ who had sunk more than four-and-a-half-thousand hours of their life into the MMORPG. Naturally, I was quite curious to try it out, albeit a little apprehensive, lest I was also sucked into its dark void of addiction.

So, full of optimism, I bought the game along with all expansion packs up to Cataclysm. To make the experience more enjoyable and give me an edge in combat, I purchased a Belkin Nostromo speed pad and 17-button Razer Naga mouse, placing a dearth of fully-customisable hotkeys at my disposal. Heck, when my initial impressions were positive, I even bought a SteelSeries World of Warcraft mouse mat.

However, it didn’t take too long for the novelty to wear off, and I don’t mean the novelty of my nerdy peripherals and merchandise. After a while, the repetition of the game’s quests started to grind (no pun intended). “Bring me twenty wolf skins, mighty warrior!” “Slay twenty-five of these dinosaurs, then twenty-five of these slightly stronger dinosaurs, then twenty-five of these, the strongest dinosaurs of all!”

What existed of the story was completely dull and uninspiring, to the point where I started skipping almost all NPC dialogue just so I could be handed my samey quest quicker and get on with it. Joining a guild and playing with others redeemed it a little, but almost any game can be enjoyable when cooperating with other people, no matter how shoddy. As time progressed, I found less and less incentive to play, and subsequently didn’t bother to renew my subscription when it ran out.

Literally boring.

Ray Willmott (Site Manager) ~ FIFA/PES
Like Jesper, I’ve never been a Football fan. I’m more actively interested now than I was back when I was fifteen, but my thought is still generally the same. As such, this makes for a bit of an unfair vote for both the FIFA and PES series. Here you have it, though. Dating as far back as FIFA 95 to present day, the thought of playing football on a computer screen couldn’t be less appealing to me. Management Sims are different, and I’ve always felt quietly sad that I’m not into football so I could enjoy the delights of Championship Manager. Alas…

You know the ones; games that are so undeniably awful, yet somehow, in spite of all the valid reasons that you shouldn’t play them, you find a way love them regardless.

Make sure you let us know what yours are in the comments!

Neil Hughes (Site Manager) ~ Lips

Try not to laugh childishly at the name...

I am going to regret confessing this, but when I have the house to myself (not very often) I lock the door, ensure the key is firmly in the lock to prevent anybody walking in on my guilty pleasure. Once the perimeter is secure I crank up the Xbox and insert one of the Lips games.

If I’m feeling melancholy I will put on my best tortured soul voice and sing “Sometime Around Midnight” by The American Toxic Event. I have even been known to don a black cowboy hat and take a sip of Jack Daniels before launching into “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” by Poison and blast it out with all the wannabe rock god that dwells within me. Equally, sometimes a little cheese is required and dog walkers may be walking passed to hear me singing “Take On Me”, all while I’m in my pants with a pile of biscuits by my side.

After a crappy week, nothing is more therapeutic than belting out a few tunes, but this you understand, is my dirty little secret so please; don’t tell anyone.

Andy Corrigan (Editor) ~ Raven Squad

Crap name, crap game, but Andy loved it!

I’d never heard of Raven Squad before I’d taken a gamble on a secondhand £5 purchase in the back-end of last year. It had all the hallmarks of a terrible game; cheesy title, crap box art, topped off with a ‘Best of E3 99’ badge of honour on it, yet there was something that just made me want to try it. The game promoted itself as one that crossed the FPS genre with the RTS, letting you change your perspective (and therefore play style) at any time to take full tactical advantage.

It didn’t start very well, with the sluggish and finicky controls in the FPS mode reminding me of Hour of Victory. After playing through two levels and damning it ‘the worst game evaaar’, something strange happened, I started really enjoying myself. It was still terrible in every which way, and if I was reviewing I would have quite rightly panned it, but it had this charm that carried me through to the end. One of those where the developer’s good intentions made up for some of the poor execution.

Paul Clark (Staff Writer) ~ Facebook Games

Paul likes Facebook games? Where's the dislike button?

Yes, I said it; Facebook games. I think part of me tries to justify playing these as some kind of research, but in truth, these things are just addictive. Whilst most don’t have a great deal of staying power, and what begins as a simplistic joy becomes an arduous slog where the game is practically mocking me for not investing real money into it, nothing seems to sway me from trying the next game, and the next, and so on.

From Army Attack to Cafe World, from Farmville to Dragon Age: Legends. I even played Jollywood. The list could go on all day, but I think it may be time to slink away knowing my secret shame is now public.

Trent Pyro (Staff Writer) ~ Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance

Some will never have heard of this game...

My guilty pleasure is Beat Down, which had me wandering around a dank city at night, beating the shit out of other hoods and recruiting them. Story-wise it’s a shoddy mess, never deciding if it’s a gritty urban thriller or an exaggerated comic-style beat em up.

The gameplay is pretty good, with combat handled in two ways; one-on-one Tekken style or street brawl Double Dragon style. Both work well, although the single fights are more intense. As you go through the game you get more objectives and see little cut-scenes; it all moves along well enough, but the problem is that it’s all wafer thin.

The characters have about as much personality as a Ritz cracker and even though the locations are different they all feel like new skin on an aging set of bones. All the elements are there, but they’re held together so incredibly lightly, a single breath could pull it apart.

It didn’t sell well, nor did it deserve any awards or classic status. It’s just alright, but for me, aged 14, it was one of my favourite games on PS2. I’d still play it today and it still holds some value, but really it’s a pretty piss poor excuse for a game.

Phil Ubee (Staff Writer) ~ Carcassonne

For most, this was yawn worthy...

I Picked this up on XBLA when it was offered for free back in 2007 and despite the fact it’s very basic, looks rubbish, has the most annoying soundtrack ever and you’ll never actually find anyone on live to play against leaving just the average (at best) A.I. for company, I can’t stop firing it up on a regular basis.

Basically it’s a turn-based strategy game that was originally a board game. Each player (up to four) has seven followers and on your turn you place random pieces on to a board. The idea is to create Roads, Monasteries, Farmland or Cities and “own” them with a follower. When all the pieces have gone, you are scored on what you have with more points gained for larger areas. You can place a follower as soon as you lay the first piece of a plot but they will be lost to you until that is complete, adding an additional strategy element to the game as you can potentially steal a plot started by your opponent. It’s awesome, I promise!

James Sheppard (Staff Writer) ~ Katamari Damacy

They see me rollin', they hatin'...

I know I’m not the only fan of the cheeky little green Prince and his love of balls, but when I’ve admitted this in this past I’ve always received a thorough heckling from my mates. Katamari Damacy is a ridiculous game series, involving rolling up everything in sight to make your (Katamari) balls grow as big as possible. The presentation is equal parts camp and childish, with flamboyant, brightly coloured cartoon graphics and a joyfully cheesy J-Pop soundtrack.

I’ve gleefully rolled around in Katamari games across the PSP, Xbox 360 and PS3. The essence of the series never changes from release to release, starting you out in small houses gathering up toys and food and culminating in enveloping entire cities, and even planets. It’s all obscenely good fun, and beating your previous high scores can be an addictive fixation, if only to make the absurd and ungrateful King of All Cosmos throw some praise your way for a change.

Paddy X (Community Manager) ~ Bejeweled Blitz

To many, this game is a gem!

Based on the early 90’s DOS game ‘Shariki’ by Russian programmer Eugene Alemzhin, ‘Bejeweled’ and its many imitators is the simplest of gaming pleasures. Create a chain of three or more identical coloured balls or jewels across an evolving grid during a limited time frame. Personally, I always go for the ‘Endless’ option. After all, why on Earth would I want all that candy-coloured fun to stop?

It’s all the shiny that does it, I’m sure. Maybe it’s the sense of smug self-satisfaction I gain from the explosion of yet another four or five jewel chain. Don’t even get me started on what I’m like when I hit a chain reaction, taking out numerous jewels at once.

This game should come with a government health warning, it’s the gaming equivalent to Meth. I can often be found staring at my Android phone with a manic grin on my face, much to the chagrin of my boyfriend.

What can I say? Ours was a love was born in the stars.

Andy Knight (Podcast Editor) ~ FIFA Games

Same game, new clothes!

I love sports! There isn’t a sport in the world I can’t watch or get emotionally involved in. This follows over into my gaming world too, and you can guarantee whenever there is a big sporting event going on in the real world, I’ll be recreating the action in video game form on my 360. However, I play one game more than others purely for the love of the sport, rather than the quality of the video game. That game is EA’s yearly FIFA release!

Thing is for me, the FIFA games aren’t very challenging. Each year when I pop the latest game in my machine, I set the difficulty to the hardest setting and it still isn’t testing for me. I have mastered EA’s game of simulation football, so it bores the hell out of me after short periods. Online isn’t much better, with a nightmare of quitters and “big team slags” ruining the experience.

Yet each year on release day, I am in line to buy my copy, because I love the sport… not the game!

Debbie (Staff Writer) ~ Boogie Bunnies

These bunnies dance! Sickening.

I don’t do guilty pleasures, but I suppose this one comes close enough. Perhaps a little-known game on the XBLA, Boogie Bunnies is like Bejeweled but with cute, colourful dancing bunny rabbits. What isn’t to love? Aside from its general addictive nature it is a pretty awful game with overly bright colours & ear-bleeding inducing sound, but there’s something I truly do love about it.

Being a massive fan of games like Bejeweled (read; huge time killers) I do so enjoy lining up things of the same colour and watching them explode into little bursts of colour to satisfy my OCD nature. The thing that I love about Boogie Bunnies though is the extreme rush of pure joy it can give you after a crappy day at the office.

Despite its awful exterior and gameplay, there is nothing I get more joy from in this world than watching brightly coloured rabbits dance for my amusement as I attempt to string an impressive chain of colourful explosions together. Oh, and they wear silly costumes too. It is a simple pleasure, but I believe those are the best in life, guilty or not.

James O’Leary (staff Writer) ~ Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero killed an entire genre!

My love for gaming is only equalled by my love for music, and as a young teen, the thought of a game that brought together gaming and rock music was a prospect I couldn’t ignore. I lined up at my local game store, pre-order receipt in hand and exchanged it for a small plastic guitar that I felt made me cool, because I could play all of these legendary songs. Oh, how I look back and feel stupid now. Everyone knows what Guitar Hero is now, and since its inception, the games have deteriorated and copied, with the franchise and concept milked dry for all genres of music. So much so, that the idea that brought the game to the table has been abandoned.

I put so much time in to Guitar Hero that I can confidently say I was good at that game. I was good enough at Guitar Heros 1 & 2 that I won a competition in my city that came with a prize of a week in a recording studio for my band. I loved, and still enjoy the game series, because it appeals to my ability to work with rhythm patterns, as the PC game Osu! does. Now I’m left with a stack of plastic instruments that I can’t even trade in, because all the game shops have stacks ten times as high. It saddens me that in ten years, there will be a landfill site that will be the graveyard for guitar controllers and drum pads, a memorial to a game series so big that it created the competitors that effectively killed it.

Ray Willmott (Site Manager) ~ LEGO Games

Ray can't LEGO of the LEGO games...

I put it in my disc drive one minute, then, three hours later, I’m still playing. It doesn’t matter if it’s Batman, Indiana Jones or Star Wars, I am a sucker for LEGO games. Travellers Tales create compelling, fun experiences, that blend action and adventure with easy-going, pick up and play mechanics. More devilishly than that, they are developers that are constantly evolving their product.

It’s not just the scenarios that characterise the experience, it’s the background tweaks that prove the series is always changing, always growing, always improving. If you played the original LEGO Star Wars right now, then played the most recent instalment in the series an hour later, you would notice just how blatantly different they both are. The split-screen that tracks individual player progress, the updated graphics engine, the more complex hubs and diverse ways of play; you will see how much work and effort goes into these games, and that they’re not just simple cash-cows.

So, yes, these are guilty pleasures, but no, I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a LEGO fan. I’m also not ashamed to admit I will continue to buy further instalments in the series. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

Jesper Hauerslev (Staff Writer) ~ Deus Ex: Invisible War

Many wished this game was invisible!

I have a fetish! Cybernetic body-enhancement! There I said it! The possibility of replacing parts of your body with high-class tech to enable it to do things it was never suppose to do is fascinating and Deus Ex from 2000 allowed me to entertain that dirty little fantasy. So did the 2004 sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War, although it didn’t really match the overall quality of its predecessor and crucially; it offered fewer options for cybernetic enhancements. This made it tricky to see through to its hidden qualities, which were there if you looked hard enough!

For instance, the game looked great (by 2004 standards!) but its overall gloomy atmosphere is what really stood out. Mankind is well and truly screwed in Invisible War and the possible outcomes range from bleak to less bleak, making your role in this all the more heavier to bear. This becomes abundantly clear towards the final act where the final choice proves much less obvious then you would want.

Rather disturbingly, I find myself, on occasion, returning to the gloominess of this Invisible War and indulge in it’s many choices of shades of grey, not black and white,  not to mention strapping on a new set of cyber-legs and kicking some ass. Well, I gotta have something to do, while I wait to join the Human Revolution…

In this edition, we all pick our personal highs and lows from the show. What did we like? What didn’t we? It all gets a bit contentious below!

Andy Corrigan (Editor)
Top 3 highlights:

1. The PS Vita: Security trust issues aside, Sony really made me take notice with the Vita. Despite all the new features that could lead for some truly original titles on the platform, I’m actually most excited for the implementation of dual analogs for some non-gimped gaming on the go.
2. Wii U: Who can’t be excited for a new machine with new possibilities? The new controller, as sceptical as I am with the size of it, could have us playing games in ways we haven’t before. What functionality will they add? A proper online mode? I’m excited to find out.
3. Uncharted 3: Just… wowza. Easily one of my favourite series’ this generation. That looks set to continue.

Top 3 Lowlights

1. Brothers in Arms: Furious 4: As a fan of the Brothers in Arms series and what it stood for, just no… NO! Bad Gearbox.
2. Console naming conventions: Whatever happened to awesome sounding console names? Wii U?! Sounds like something a fetishist with poor understanding of the English language would demand. Vita?! Isn’t that a butter substitute? If it isn’t, it should be.
3. Microsoft having nothing but Kinect to show: Okay, so the Halo/Gears of War stuff aside, where were the games for the rest of us who don’t think that motion control is the way forward? Where were the Earth shattering bombshells we’ve come to expect from them over recent years? Not quite as embarrassing as last year, but certainly disappointing for the second year running.

Paul Clark (Staff Writer)
Top 3 Highlights:

1. Bioware: Everything they showed just wows me, I can’t wait for more Mass Effect, and The Old Republic just always shows me in every clip, every cut-scene, every trailer, exactly what I want in a Star Wars game.
2. Tomb Raider: Now, this is a game I’m wanting to like, probably more than I’m expecting to like. It’s a classic franchise that has taken on a radical, and impressive new art style. Some are claiming too “Uncharted-esque” but hey, if it works, don’t burn it down and stick pitchforks in it.
3. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations: Assassin’s Creed has snuck up on me in recent years (you know, cause assassins are sneaky… shut up) as one of my favourite series’. Every iteration gets better, gets more interesting, and they are not afraid to add new and risky features into the games. So a new game is something I am very much looking forward too, and that cinematic trailer is just stunning.

Top 3 Lowlights:

1. Ubisoft presenter: It’s an easy shot to make, but a worthwhile one. All his jokes missed. He had a brand of energy that made him seem inept rather than up-beat. This was just a pain to watch every time he came on stage. They tried so hard to be witty, they forgot they don’t need to be.
2. Brothers in Arms: Furious 4: Now, there is something specific that bugs me about this, rather than an overall dislike of the product. The game looks fun, has a cool art style, variations in characters that could even mean local co-op; it seems a light-hearted baby of Team Fortress and Inglourious Basterds. That, I like. What I don’t, is the tacked on brand. Brothers in Arms isn’t this, is it? This strikes me as a new attempt at an IP that either the developer, the publisher, or someone involved to a significant level has little or no faith in the game selling of its own accord. If they have that little faith, I’m beginning to wonder why I should?
3. Fable: The Journey: I like the Kinect. I like the idea of the Kinect, the functionality of the Kinect and the things people are doing with Kinect. To me, one of the best quotes about the peripheral regarding the implementation of Kinect in games, comes from the purveyor of hyperbole Peter Molyneux, in which (and I’m paraphrasing here) he stated Kinect should not be looked upon as something to make a driving game from, or a strategy game from, it should be something that new genres can thrive in. Looking at how Kinect has been used for Child of Eden, Your Shape and even seeing voice recognition in Mass Effect 3 or some of the interesting things Kinect Fun Labs will bring, this innovation is being looked at seemingly everywhere… Except from the person who said it, who thought “Screw it, let’s just make an RPG with Kinect. Heyo!”

Wii U: Splitting team opinion right down the middle...

Phil Ubee (Staff Writer)
Top 3 Highlights

1. Wii U: New Hardware means new possibilities for the industry, not just in the games we play but how we play them. What I saw at E3 suggests there are some exciting options for Nintendo’s new kit and judging on their past I expect them to challenge the boundaries.
2. Mobile gaming: As someone who plays a lot of games on my Smartphone and someone who believes this is an important and growing area of our industry, it was good to see some showtime given to mobile games. Admittedly the coverage is still limited and most of the noise is around Apple, but it’s a step in the right direction.
3. Far Cry 3: Probably the only game trailer to really get excited this last week was Far Cry 3 and boy did it get me going. As a fan of the series I simply cannot wait for this now.

Top 3 Lowlights

1. Sony: I just don’t think they did enough. The past 18 months have been difficult for Sony to say the least and personally, I expected them to take this opportunity to produce something that made the gaming world in general, and  PS3 owners in particular, think “I’m glad I chose Sony” and I didn’t see that. Could this be the end?
2. Konami: When the most talked about part of your E3 presentation is a group of old games getting an HD remake, you know something is up.
3. Microsoft: I, like a lot of 360 owners, do not have a Kinect. I personally feel that Microsoft has let down conventional gamers this year by dedicating absolutely everything to Kinect. Have they not realised that Motion control is dead?

Andy Knight (Podcast Editor/Occasional Staff Writer)
Top 3 Highlights

1. Games: Gears 3, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Uncharted 3, Forza 4, Batman: Arkham City, Mass Effect 3… Yeah we have awesome games coming! Always a good thing.
2. Sony’s 3D monitor: If priced correctly, this will actually make me wanna play my PS3, maybe?
3. Erm… Err… Yeah?: I don’t have a number 3 which shows you the overall quality of E3 2011.

Top 3 lowlights

1. Ubisoft Press Conference: Instead of their usual off the wall craziness, this year they opted for a speaker who was so funny with his lines and delivery, that it was just plain embarrassing!
2. Disney Kinect Kids: Microsoft and Disney showed us that maybe, just maybe… child abuse can be acceptable in some circumstances (I joke, of course!).
3. Wii U hype: New console… Yeah? Does HD and we now have some third-party publishers… and?! They have a fancy controller… So?! Nintendo talked game, but had nothing to show for it at the conference. People getting excited annoys me.

Debbie Lloyd (Staff Writer)
Top 3 Highlights

1. Overstrike: This new game looks ridiculous amounts of fun, and looks like it will be just as comical as a favourite of mine; Borderlands.
2. Cross platform functionality between the NGP/PS Vita & the PS3: I’ve always been a Sony fan from day one, but have geared more towards Microsoft after the fail of the PS3. This new portable looks good though, and I like the cross-platform functionality.
3. Need For Speed: The Run: I’m not a huge fan of racing games, nor am I very good at them, but the trailer for this game looked incredible with some GTA & QTE elements included to make for a more exciting driving game experience. Definite purchase for me.

Top 3 Lowlights

1. Fable: The Journey: This just looked terrible. An on-rails, motion controlled Fable ‘adventure’ (I use the word adventure in its loosest sense). Mr Molyneux, what on earth are you thinking?
2. All of the Nintendo conference: It may have been because I was tired, and it may have also been due to the fact that I’ve given up on caring about pretty much anything Nintendo release, but the entire conference left me bored and just completely unexcited. I don’t want more remakes, I want something new & exciting & the Wii U did not do that for me at all.
3. Mass Effect 3 using Kinect: This may be exciting to some, but this has just turned the Kinect into a microphone. It just seems lazy to me to say out loud the speech option and not just press a button. Soon enough we’ll all just be sat on our sofas, lying down without a controller in hand & just issuing lazy orders at our TV screens.

Did MS bring too much Kinect?

Neil Hughes (Site Manager)
Top 3 Highlights

1. Call of Duty backlash: EA chief John Riccitiello taking great delight in pointing out that “Battlelog”, which is Battlefield’s very own social networking feature, will be FREE. The game also seemed to impress everyone at E3 and wonder if this will finally be the year that Call of Duty gets a beating, especially after Activision have put all their eggs into one basket.
2. BioShock Infinite: Okay, yes, it’s yet another sequel but I’m a sucker for this series and this does look quite ambitious. Moving from deep under the ocean to the clouds will hopefully ensure that it’s  even better than its award-winning predecessors.
3. Overstrike: Insomniac’s first multi-platform game looks fresh and intent on putting the fun back into gaming and that’s alright with me.

Top 3 Lowlights

1. Big business gaming: E3 has gone all Hollywood on us all by offering a staple diet of sequels, prequels and franchises such as Halo 4, MW3, Fable, Star Wars,Tomb Raider, Disney etc. Big studios seem to be too busy pouring millions into familiar titles for the dumb masses at the expense of innovation that brought us games such as Limbo or Braid.
2. Kinect overkill: Don’t get me wrong I enjoy a dabble on Kinect as much as the next man. However, to tag it on to every game possible just so they can display a little label saying “Requires Kinect Sensor” to encourage everyone to purchase it, is overkill. If it works then it’s fantastic, but I fear its being hurried on to future releases for all the wrong reasons.
3. Nintendo Wii U: After much hype we learned that the new console will be made up mostly of remade games and rather shockingly will only allow 1 touchscreen controller per system. Although the console is aimed at U, it would be nice to play multi-player games too, but then again waving a controller around the size of an iPad doesn’t float my boat either. Can they pull off a gimmick console again?

Michael Charge (Staff Writer)
Top 3 Highlights

1. X-Com’s second coming: The first person reboot of the X-Com franchise was shown last year and it was wholly underwhelming. The new version this year looks like a far superior game. With the improved enemies, better combat and a tighter design, it looks like a deep single player shooter that may live up to the themes of the old turn based games.
2. Battlefield 3 info: So I admit the tank demo was a little crap and didn’t show off what will make BF3 great. All the other info, however, such as customisation, the mix of close quarters combat and wide open spaces in the map, plus the announcement of the classes, is starting to make me really, really excited about its release.
3. Far Cry 3: Far Cry is going home to where it should be; the tropical islands full of mercs to hunt and kill. Combined with the tech, which looks like an upgraded version of the Far Cry 2 engine, we may have something that looks damn good, runs great and hopefully has that sense of freedom. Let’s hope we don’t get bloody malaria in the first five minutes.

Top 3 Lowlights

1. Wii U: Guess what? Nintendo now has a HD Wii! It has a super expensive extra screen/controller! It only has one playable game at the moment! I couldn’t care less.
2. The Ubisoft press conference: More accurately, the lack of Joel McHale. Although he lacked games knowledge, he was at least interesting to watch. This year was a little odd without a decent MC.
3. Everything is coming in 2012: Seemed like most of the games on show are coming out in 2012. This is alright but some (including the claustrophobia inducing Tomb Raider reboot) will have another E3 to strut its stuff. Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait a year? Rather than showing the early stuff that looks a little dodgy?

Looking forward to a new handheld?

James Sheppard (Staff Writer)
Top 3 Highlights:

1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: There were so many amazing game trailers and demos shown with the number ‘3’ in their name, such as Uncharted 3, Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3, and Mass Effect 3, but it’s the number ‘5’ which truly blew me away this year. A complete evolution of graphics, AI, interface and world detail show promise for Skyrim as the most immersive, compelling Elder Scrolls to date.
2. Sony PS Vita: This piece of kit looks fab, with enough power to essentially bring current home-console-quality gaming directly into your hands. Nintendo 3DS, I’m looking at you; you’d better shape up, otherwise a trade-in could be in order come autumn/winter.
3. Wii U: The first Wii lost my support for Nintendo, but the Wii U has definitely piqued my interest. The controller is an interesting idea (I never thought they’d be crackers enough to actually implement it when I first heard the rumours), and early release lists indicate a little more core gamer support this time round.

Top 3 Lowlights:

1. The Internet ruining all of the surprises: This has increasingly become a problem over the past few years, with the ‘information’ age we now live in perhaps giving us a bit too much ‘information’. Leaks all over the place ensured that E3 was still interesting enough, but lacking in shock-factor.
2. Microsoft’s focus on Kinect: Okay, I can understand that Microsoft want to trumpet their baby, but it’s not for everyone. I, for instance, wouldn’t even be able to use the thing in my small bedroom. It seems to have been shoehorned into absolutely everything, whether they needed it or not, and as a result there was too much focus on the casual gamer in their conference for my tastes.
3. Wii U: No I’ve not gone completely barmy; I’m well aware that this is placed both in my ‘highlights’ and ‘lowlights’ sections. I’m just left with so many questions that I don’t believe Nintendo themselves even fully know the answers to yet, such as price, power (the GPU is thus far undisclosed), how multiplayer will work with only one Wii U controller and a mish-mash of Wii Plus controllers and 3DS consoles.

Ray Willmott (Site Manager)
Top 3 Highlights:

1. Wii U: Perhaps the system will not fully live up to the potential I see in its future. Perhaps games won’t be revolutionised, but the foundations have been set and I am genuinely excited by the possibilities. Just hearing from Ubisoft about how it will work with Ghost Recon is enough to make me tingly with excitement!
2. TIE: Skyrim/Mass Effect 3 Kinect: The more I see of Elder Scrolls V, the more I want it! I am so ridiculously excited for November, it’s not even humane for a man of 28 years. I was already buzzed before E3, now I’m through the roof! Equally, I think Mass Effect 3’s voice activation could either be the best thing to come to the franchise or the worst. More specifically useful for shouting out team commands while you’re in the middle of battle. This is something I’ve not seen implemented to effect on a console to date, but it’s also something I’ve never seen in an RPG before. This could be a real turning point for the genre!
3. TIE: Ghost Recon: Future Soldier/Tomb Raider: The presence of both of these games was a surprise and a pleasure to behold. Tomb Raider looks stunning and truly seems to be an enticing reboot of a fledging franchise. Ghost Recon seems equally excellent and its future seems immersive and enthralling when combined with the forces of Kinect and Wii U. The shooting gallery in particular.

Top 3 Lowlights:

1. Microsoft went overly Kinect: I’m a Kinect owner and I’m excited to see what Microsoft will be bringing out for the peripheral over the next year, but this was simply too much. A lot of the IP was also overly familiar. They also managed to ignore the Kinect games people wanted to see. Gears Exile? Night Springs? Project Draco? No real details on Ryse? The only gaming highlight of the conference was the Minecraft announcement, a game which could redeem the peripheral in people’s eyes. Ultimately, though, it was a bit of a disappointing show for them and it does make one wonder what exactly is Microsoft’s focus for the next five years?
2. Fable: The Journey: After seeing the trailer and even after hearing the hands on and Molyneux describing the game for the core, this looks like complete and utter horse manure! Molyneux and Lionhead would have been better served developing Milo for Kinect rather than try to shoehorn their feature franchise onto Kinect. This will bomb. Badly.
3. Sony: I’m just going to come out and say it. I officially stopped caring about the Playstation brand after this years E3. I can never foresee me buying another Playstation product again. Sure, the Vita offers some wonderful features and seems like real bang for your buck, but I honestly didn’t care enough about what Sony were doing to ever warrant a purchase. With Microsoft focusing on Kinect and Nintendo’s main focus rolling into next year, they needed to shine. In my eyes, they didn’t.

Be warned; not all of us* have taken this seriously.

*None of us…

Trent Pyro (Staff Writer):

• Activision to explain why they took the hard work of Infinity Ward and hired other studios to finish it off to make another Modern Warfare title, despite the fact they have no right.
• Vince Zampella and Jason West to make assassination attempt on unlucky Activision lackey tasked with presenting the above.
• Portal 3 to be announced. Featuring Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington in unconfirmed voice roles.
• New FIFA Soccer trailer to be shown. New features to include slightly better ball physics and the option to bribe your team to the top of the league. Realism to be cited as chief reason for improvements.
• Game of Thrones: The Video Game revealed to be in production. Development began two days after the first episode was broadcast. Title is still subject to change.

Phil Ubee (Staff Writer):

• Seabass to tell the world that this year will see a complete overhaul of the gameplay in PES, that extensive work has gone into the online mode and there will be more licensed teams than ever.
• Nintendo to announce that Zelda: Skyward Sword will be delayed again to coincide with the launch of Wii2/Project Café.
• Peter Molineux will announce Fable 4 and claim it is the most immersive gaming experience he has ever worked on, with “limitless possibilities” and every act has massive consequences.
• Sony and Nintendo admit defeat to Smartphones in the handheld battle stating that they will focus their handheld energy on producing top class smartphone titles to rival Angry Birds.
• Sega reveal that they will re-enter the console market in the next generation with “The Moon Project”. Set to include separate segments for Blue Ray, CD, Hard Drive and a Cartridge slot for backward compatibility that stack like a Hi-Fi.

Delayed for Project Café?

Debbie Lloyd (Staff Writer):

• Microsoft will gloat for two hours about how their online system is flawless.
• Sony will spend two hours grovelling ,begging us all for forgiveness before announcing some shiny new toy their first-party developers were ordered to create over the last month.
• Nintendo will announce yet more remakes of classic games to cash in even more on their best franchises.
• Kinect will be heavily featured with some games that are actually designed for the ‘hardcore’ market..
• There will be something announced that doesn’t use motion control (maybe…).

Neil Hughes (Site Manager):

• Microsoft will be desperate to outshine everyone by announcing a new console but with very little actual specification, design or evidence. They will simply tease, leaving you non the wiser.
• In a desperate bid to make people dust down their neglected Kinect system that hasn’t been used since Christmas, expect lots of adult orientated games aimed at real gamers.
• Sony will be heard saying “sorry” repeatedly, before attempting to drum up excitement for Metal Gear and Uncharted 3, only to be by saying sorry once again.
• Nintendo will announce that motion control gaming was all part of a cunning plan to send the opposition down the wrong route and now everyone else has committed to it, they are dumping it for their new console because it’s old news. Probably not likely but would love to see Microsoft and Sony’s faces if it did happen.
• Countless uninspiring sequels such as Assassins Creed, Metal Gear, Resident Evil, Mario, FIFA, COD, Battlefield leaving the feeling that E3 has been the same for the last five years. Expect trendy types to mask this by saying “Project Café” and “HD” in every sentence.

Will Sony mention it?

Andy Knight (Podcast Editor/Occasional Staff Writer):

• Sony will offer up Kevin Butler’s ass to any Playstation Plus subscribers as part of the welcome back package.
• Peter Molyneux to admit he virtually abused Milo with Kinect during the development process. Thus explaining why Milo disappeared never to be seen again, and why Fable 3 was so bad.
• Activision will use the billions they’ve made off the CoD series to hire a private army to go all “No Russian” on anyone stood near EA’s Battlefield 3 booth.
• Nintendo will reveal the most powerful console on planet! For about five minutes until Microsoft unveil their brand new console.
• Gearbox and 2K games to make a sheepish and embarrassed announcement: That due to a last-minute technical hitch… Duke Nukem Forever is delayed once again!

James Sheppard (Staff Writer):

• A chuckling Microsoft representative admits that they were responsible for the Sony hack, and that they did it “just for the shits and giggles.”
• Activision cancel Modern Warfare 3, citing lack of profitability as the main factor behind their decision.
• Sony reveal a new scheme, involving the employment of a Playstation Gestapo, and additionally, rewarding customers with free games if they snitch on friends who attempt to hack any Sony network/console.
• Nintendo reveal that the Wii 2 taps into your brain’s synapses, using complete mind control and instilling mental visualisation, for the most exciting and immersive gaming experience ever known to man. Launch titles confirmed are: Virtual Poodle Groomer, Ultimate Frisbee Championship, and Dora the Explorer: Let’s Explore the Museum.
• Rockstar announce that GTA V will be set in The Lake District.

Is a Game of Thrones game in the works?

James O’Leary (Staff Writer):

• Everyone will mention the Sony hacking in their press conference in some way.
• Nintendo will announce Project Café, with the flagship game being Cooking Mama. Delia Smith will be launching a range of peripherals including cutlery and salt & pepper shakers. Jamie Oliver will be aiding Nintendo in creating the slimmest console to date, at just 2cm wide.
• Call Of Duty 9 will be announced, set in space with laser beams. You fight as the patriotic American Space Marines against the evil Space Russians in a super cold war over the moon. The game will be a subscription based game, priced at £1 a minute, and will contain three guns and just one map.
• Battlefield 1066 will be announced, promoting realistic graphics and an extras mode where you can stitch the Bayeux Tapestry from scratch.
• In all seriousness, the things I expect (and hope for) this E3 are: Sony and Microsoft announce no new hardware, Nintendo don’t announce another DS (we’ve only just had the 3DS for gods sake), Battlefield 3 and Batman: Arkham City will steal the show, and Nintendo will show us graphs… lots of graphs…. My biggest hope for E3 this year though is that we actually see the Star Wars Kinect game that Microsoft showed us last year…

Andy Corrigan (Editor):

• Microsoft to announce new hardware in some capacity; portable or otherwise.
• Halo remake confirmed and the next installment outlined.
• Sony to start their press conference apologising profusely for everything. The others simply point and laugh. Microsoft will thank them personally for the downtime.
• Nintendo to surprise everyone by getting major third-party support on Wii2/Project Café, with big franchises making the jump.
• Mirror’s Edge 2 and Borderlands 2 will be announced.

New Microsoft hardware?

Michael Charge (Staff Writer):

• Microsoft announces a wi-fi only device, running Windows Phone 7 that can play certain Xbox Live Arcade games.
• Microsoft also announces a large number of popular games (like Mass Effect 3 or the next Ghost Recon) will use Kinect in some capacity
• Kevin Butler appears on stage at the Sony Press Conference and apologises for the hacking instance. He then tears the head off of Marcus the PSP kid. Only half of this is likely.
• Nintendo announces Project Café is actually them releasing games on Sony and Microsoft platforms. Shareholders freak out.
• Battlefield 3 and Bioshock Infinite will be joint Game of Show.

Ray Willmott (Site Manager):

• Sony to offer a monster apology to the press and public at large. Even though they’ve already apologised once, the issues are still not fully rectified and there is no better platform than E3.
• Project Café to offer incredible third party support like no other Nintendo console before it and even manage to get a few exclusives which other systems won’t get til later on down the line!
• Microsoft to reveal a handheld and finally get into the handheld race vs Nintendo and Sony. You can’t tell me they’re not cooking up something big, they’ve been way too quiet!
• Sony make more of their collaboration with EA and announce some exclusive content for Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3. Move support for both? Both games in 3D? Additional missions and map-packs? The possibilities are endless.
• Microsoft announce a shock Kinect game, a reboot of an old classic. Magic Carpet once again takes to the skies, empowered by Kinect and brought up to a better standard than ever before with High Definition visuals but complete with the old vintage charm! (One can dream, right?)

There are some surprisingly big titles mentioned in the following article, so make sure you let us know what you make of it all in the comments!

Normal service will resume next Tuesday!

Well, this was pretty easy in the end, as to be fair, before I played my choice this weekend just gone I was struggling to think of three games that I was really disappointed with. Hell, even a game as revered as Mass Effect 2 nearly made the shortlist, as while I enjoyed it thoroughly, I was disappointed by the absence of the brilliant RPG elements that Bioware made so enjoyable in the first. Instead it’s a recent acquisition that started off so promising, but quickly ended up being such a massive disappointment that I just can’t bring myself to finish it. Step forward Undead Nightmare.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I love zombies. If I also mention that I was a huge fan of Rockstar’s DLC strategy for GTA IV then this should have been a forgone conclusion for a positive experience, surely? Sadly, for Undead Nightmare, I also loved the main Red Dead Redemption campaign (it was nearly listed in my runners-up for GOTY in fact) but where that had great mission structure, variety and lots to do; this just doesn’t. The characters are still brilliant, the b-movie vibe is fantastic, but this expansion is happy to stick with two samey mission types throughout, and that gets old, real fast. Throw in the fact that it won’t offer up the final mission until I’ve endured enough of the boring, repetitive bullshit it wants me to chore through before it gives me the green light, you have one unfinished game and 800 wasted Microsoft Points.

Runners up: Alpha Protocol, Heavy Rain.

My gaming disappointment of the year was a tough call to make. There were several that didn’t really live up to my expectations, but there was one game that I wasn’t expecting great things from as soon as previews started to crop up, and my doubts weren’t completely unjustified.

Final Fantasy has always been a franchise I have adored. Final Fantasy VII was my very first gaming experience so it’s extremely special to me. After being bitterly disappointed in all Final Fantasy games after X, I was really hoping that XIII would go back to basics and I could finally re-declare my love for the series.

Why on earth Square Enix thought it was a good idea to get rid of all towns, NPC interaction and physical shops I will never know. All my favourite things about this stunning series had been stripped away and replaced with bitter simplicity, a button bashing battle system and a plot that was like riding a train in a straight line to its final and disappointing destination.

There is no doubt that FFXIII is a visually stunning game, but give me sprites and good game mechanics over 3D rendered CGI animation any day.

Runners up: Fable III, Red Dead Redemption.

My biggest disappointment of 2010 is unquestionably PES 2011. Now I know what you’re going to say, “PES has been poor for three years” and you’d be right but stupidly this year I fell for the Seabass charm. I played the demo, a lot, and honestly felt the game had genuine promise this time around. So much so that I went and bought the game on release day at the expense of the latest FIFA title.

Now don’t get me wrong here, there is a genuine improvement in this years addition of PES and as I stated in my review, I did get some enjoyment from the game (not least with the Master League Online mode) but overall I was disappointed that it didn’t reach the level that the demo and Seabass had promised. The biggest issue I have with the game is the fundamentals are all wrong; the basics of the game are missing. The inability to force your team mates to run ahead of the ball is, in my opinion the biggest single flaw of any video game because it continuously leads to a lack of flow and rhythm to the game which any football fan will tell you is probably the key feature of the sport.

Suffice to say have learnt my lesson and regardless of the claims of the developers I will not be fooled again next year!

Runners up: Crazy Taxi, Ninety Nine Nights II.

Over the Years the FIFA franchise has had a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows. It started off as a must have game when was first released, I remember FIFA 96 was pretty awesome back in the day. Just like in the real game, dominance is hard to maintain and that is exactly what happened as the dark days came in the form of ISS (or PES as it is now known), which became the must play soccer simulation. EA’s franchise was relegated to a bit of a joke such was its fall from grace, with hardcore console football fans laughing at its ridiculous fast pace, stupidly unrealistic gameplay and cricket like score-lines. The slump lasted until 2007, when FIFA had a major overhaul, and with PES struggling to impress (particularly on the Xbox 360), EA’s soccer franchise unleashed a wicked tackle on Konami’s genre leader and found itself back in the game. The rise has continued over the last few years and FIFA has turned the game on its head to go in front of its rival in almost every area on the pitch.

Sadly, though, last years FIFA game may have been EA’s last stroke of tactical genius, as this years edition seems to have pulled up with a severe looking injury. The problem with FIFA 11 is that it is far to similar to last years instalment and there is no obvious improvement one year on. They’ve added the ability to play as the goalkeeper in the “Be A Pro” mode and added a “Create Your Own Team” option (only if you do so on a PC and then port it your game though), as well as the tidying of a few glitches and issues. For me, though, it just isn’t enough to warrant the tag of a brand new title, and I hate having to pay another £40 for a game I seemingly already brought last year.

I have found FIFA 11 boring and so similar to 10 that I have had no enthusiasm to play it, and that’s really sad when you consider how much I loved last years version. EA need to go back to the drawing board and make that game changing substitution, otherwise they may well find PES drawing level or even going ahead once more.

Runners up: Smackdown vs. Raw 2011, A lot of Arcade titles.

There have been a lot of hyped-up titles this year, and to be fair, many have delivered. One game was really hyped up for one reason though, a number in fact: 256. This year’s biggest disappointment for me is MAG, an online shooter that promised a lot of things; to be a true MMOFPS with kickass tactical gameplay, and most of all to support 256 players at once. What’s more, this was to take place not on the PC but on the Playstation 3, and was in fact one of the main titles I was looking forward to trying out when buying the console as a late-adopter.

Well, they managed to make 256 players work at once, which is undeniably an achievement. The amount of work that they probably put into this was arguably to the detriment of everything else, however. The visuals are muddy and plain, controls and physics are clunky and the maps and weapons are appallingly unbalanced at times. To the developer’s credit, they continue to support the game with patches, new content and even Move compatibility, but to be honest I can’t see any amount of polish helping what is fundamentally frustrating, dull and flawed.

Runners up: Final Fantasy XIII, Bloodbowl: Legendary Edition.

So without much further ado, there’s some obvious, dubious and debatable selections in the articles ahead. Agree, disagree? Hit us up in the comments section. Make sure you check back in two days time to see which games managed to disappoint us the most this year!

Oh Bayonetta, you were so very close. You managed to hold off what the public might have thought to be ‘bigger games’ in my GOTY shortlist for most of the year, and just as I thought that you were about to clinch it, you were pipped at the post by Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. It was by mere chance too that I would end up with the review copy that would end your lengthy spell at the top of my list. I’m sorry it ended this way, but I’m happy with my choice.

Ahem… sorry about that, but Bayonetta was at least owed an explanation in this messy divorce. My choice for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was, in the end, a relatively simple one. This is a game so rich in content that is not only beautiful, but bold and significant. With this iteration it turned Assassin’s Creed from a series I merely enjoyed into a series I evangelised about. Offering not only a single player campaign that is as close to perfection as I’ve seen since Nathan Drake found himself among thieves, but also managing to provide a truly original multiplayer component that stands out masterfully in a sea of shooters. Easily the best, most polished and most immersive game I’ve played this year.

Runners up: Bayonetta, Splinter Cell: Conviction.

Being a huge fan of the too-often overlooked Mass Effect, pre-ordering the sequel as soon as possible was a must. When it came through my door a day before my 21st birthday, I could never have imagined how awesome it would be.

From the start, it reinforces everything that made the original so fantastic. The epic space opera, straddling Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica with ease and managing to create a huge, believable sci-fi galaxy to get lost in. The freedom of travel and choice running through every facet of the game, from how to react in conversations to where to start your journey and which planets to visit. The peerless ‘interactive cut-scene’ conversation system and the ability to truly create your personal Commander Shepard all back in force and enhanced for the new experience. Even the elements that failed the original have been brought up to scratch.

The somewhat flimsy combat of the first game has been hammered into shape, creating a cover-shooter experience to rival (and in some cases trounce) the competition. Planetary exploration is given a new lease of life with more missions to discover and wildly different locales to experience. The new plotline trumps that of its predecessor, twisting and turning while maintaining a solid structure and a constant level of excitement and enticement from the player. In-jokes and familiar faces, as well as the revelation of the consequences of your actions in the first game having an impact in this one, keep loyal players like myself feeling well looked after and immensely happy.

Mass Effect 2 ticks all the boxes, for fans and newcomers alike. It combines the depth and quality of an RPG, the thrilling and intriguing plot of a fantastic space epic, and the excitement and smooth playability of an advanced cover-shooter all comes together in perfect harmony to create one of the most complete, compelling and universally appealing games of all time. Bioware are at the top of their game, producing titles that are way ahead of the curve. Mass Effect 2 serves as a perfect example of this genius and that is why it’s my Game of the Year.

Runners up: Fable III, Red Dead Redemption.

My game of the year choice may come as something of a surprise. Initially I had to think about it as not many of the games I have played this year have really blown me away. I enjoyed Crackdown 2 and as a Sports fan have found some fun in the annual PES and Madden titles, but ultimately there can be only one winner.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane was released during XBLA’s “Summer of Arcade” promotion and is undoubtedly my most played game of the past calendar year. It boasts fast, high-adrenaline, good old-fashioned arcade racing and I love it.

Graphically, Hydro Thunder stands out not just against other arcade titles but also against some of the big full releases this year. There are an excellent variety of tracks and boats from the off and enough unlockables to keep even the most demanding gamers happy. What surprised me most is that in general I am not a fan of racing games yet I have been unable to put this down. It is definitely in the “easy to play, difficult to master” school of gaming and multiplayer, be it local or across xbox live, is as enjoyable as any game on the market.

In terms of pure gaming fun, I challenge anyone to find a game that surpasses Hydro Thunder: Hurricane and that is why it is my Game of the year.

Runners up: Madden 11, Sonic Colours.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of turn-based strategy games, but I’ve found Civilization V immensely enjoyable; accessible to the point I barely took any time to learn how to play, but also possessing tons of depth. Talking of depth, Halo: Reach has it by the bucketload in multiplayer and was a close contender for my no. #1 spot, but I found some aspects disappointing, particularly single player. My Game of the Year for 2010 then, is Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

I’ve loved the Battlefield series for quite a long time now, and Bad Company 2 certainly didn’t let me down. The campaign is surprisingly playable for a feature I expected to be a rubbish tack-on, and the online multiplayer is immense. Everything has been lovingly refined as the series has gone on from a tried and tested formula of gameplay, but it still feels fresh.

The destruction of buildings that the Frostbite engine allows is perhaps one of the most brilliant features, making Call of Duty’s comparatively static fields of play seem stagnant and archaic. The level of support that continues is great to see as well, with seven VIP map packs now released, along with the recent Vietnam expansion that expands the game even further.

Runners up: Civilization V, Halo: Reach.

I really dislike trying to choose a Game of the Year especially for 2010. We have had so many excellent games this year, from blockbusters like the thrilling Mass Effect 2 and expansive Red Dead Redemption, down to little indie games like the frustratingly fun VVVVV and the long-awaited Darwinia+. However, three games have stood out for me this year; Civilisation V (its way addictive!), Battlefield Bad Company 2 (its way multiplayer!) and ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead (its way realistic!). So out of those, my Game of the Year is Operation Arrowhead.

ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead is a game many of you won’t have heard of but it’s probably the game I have sunk the most of my time into. I’ve have spent several hundred hours flying over the hill of Takistan before piling out of a Blackhawk to doing several hundred different missions. It’s a game that let me play out my crazy military simulations with up to 50 human players and several hundred AI characters in a whole variety of tanks, cars, helicopters and fighter jets. However, it’s also a game that allows you and your friends to do stupid stuff like racing tractors away from attack helicopters or taking part in sniper battles at 5000m across valley’s and hills. If your PC supports it, and you’re willing to learn, this game is a ton of fun.

Runners up: Civilization V, Battlefield Bad Company 2.

We’re not closing down fully, though, as we have two excellent yearly review articles going live between Boxing Day and New Years Eve, so there’s still some of our excellent content to enjoy in the meantime.

We’ll be back with a vengeance in 2011, striving to do better, improving standards as we always have so that we can bring you some of the best opinionated content on the web. Not just that, though, it’s a year of change for the site, starting with an impressive redesign that we cannot wait to unleash. We’ll have the return of the podcasts, new features and more tricks up our sleeve to make sure you keep coming back for more.

Until then my friends, get merry, enjoy your holidays, have some quality gaming time and we’ll see you in 2011! Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year from all at This Is My Joystick!