The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Nintendo) You'll feel like you have to pick an errant dragon's tooth from your punctured knight's armor when you're done fighting - Skyrim feels that fantastic. It's crazy long it's exceedingly romantic just as it's rife with anarchy and ethnographic detail. with some Ursula Le Guin thrown in for good measure. When you ply your trade of swords and sorcery in Skyrim, it's like you're seething with panic and courage within one of the lurid Game of Thrones novels. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks) And even if you don't live in New York, this simmering, evil, dirty Gotham City is somehow the most attractive of tourist destinations, more appealing than anything Mayor Bloomberg could envision for Manhattan. This wonderfully dark game fills you with unease and tension just as it amazes with pitch perfect game design. Whether you're a Dark Knight fan or one who dates back to the Golden Age of comics, Arkham City will satisfy all of your superhero fantasies. They lifted me from the day-to-day doldrums, widened my eyes with excitement, assuaged my anger at the plethora of terrible games that are out there, and generally entranced me exactly in the same way a trip to a faraway, exotic land does. What I can say is that these are 10 games that called out to me like Sirens.
I'm no great fan of placing the best games of the year in any sort of numeric order (though I can tell you that my own great passion of the year was Batman: Arkham City). A screenshot from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, one of the best video games of 2011.