GMRFM Game of the Year 2011

2011 was a quality year for games and it made making a final decision on many of the categories in game of the year pretty difficult. Top quality games were bolting out of the gate almost immediately and things only really let up for a month or so over the Summer; even then downloadable titles coming out at that time of the year made sure we had something on our plates. We won’t blow the lid on our actual overall GOTY right now but here are the nominees and winners in our other categories:

Worst Game of the Year

• Call of Juarez: The Cartel
• Duke Nukem Forever
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Winner: Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Best Graphics (Art Design)

• Bastion
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Winner: Bastion 

Best Graphics (Technical)

• Battlefield 3
• Crysis 2
• RAGE
• Uncharted 3

Winner: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

Sound Design

• Battlefield 3
• Dead Space 2
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Winner: Battlefield 3

Best Music

• Bastion
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Winner: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Best Individual Song

• Build That Wall by Darren Korb (Bastion)
• Exile/Villify by The National (Portal 2),
• Want you Gone by Johnathan Coulton and Ellen Mclane (Portal 2).

Winner: Build That Wall by Darren Korb (Bastion)

Best Narrative

• Bastion
• L.A. Noire
• Portal 2
• Uncharted 3

Winner: Uncharted 3

Best New Character

• Charlie Cutter (Uncharted 3)
• Rucks (Bastion)
• Wheatley (Portal 2)

Winner: Rucks (Bastion) 

Best Multiplayer

• Battlefield 3
• Forza Motorsport 4
• Gears of War 3

Winner: Battlefield 3 

Best Indie Game

• Bastion (Supergiant Games)
• Minecraft (Mojang)
• Ninjamurai (Open Emotion Studios)

Winner: Bastion (Supergiant Games)

Most Overlooked Game

• Bulletstorm
• Dead Space 2
• Resistance 3

Winner: Dead Space 2

Overall 2011 Game Of The Year

• Bastion
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Uncharted 3
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Winner: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Where do you start with Skyrim? Aside from one universal experience every player will sit through the game can be played in a ludicrous number of different ways from the get go. Some might just follow the quest line and head right to where you were told to. If you are me you will chase a deer and stumble across a bandit hideout and then a group of standing stones before heading off onto the business of saving Skyrim. Our editor Lee ignored both and made the massive journey North to the magic college in Winterhold. This freedom of choice will persist for the entire time you play the game, be it for twenty hours or two-hundred hours and that is one of the reasons The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is our game of the year.

Skyrim is an incredible game for many reasons be it the epic fights against dragons, every dungeon containing something worth seeing and a procedural quest system that always makes sure that you have something to do. Throw in crafting systems, an improved levelling system and a world more detailed and open than any other around right now and you have a recipe for RPG success that is finally the realisation of what Bethesda started with the first game in the series.

While there are some bugs (I should mention this award is for the Xbox and PC versions of the game, not the PS3 release) that crop up from time to time the world is generally stable and consequently becomes really good at pulling you in. Neat graphical tricks such as snow blowing off of banks in a powdery mist or that the rivers actually have currents all make this dangerous, beautiful and huge fantasy world come to life.

The stories anyone who has pumped into the game could tell are probably the best way of selling it and I have already recounted how I spent much of the game indivertibly ruining a wedding. One of my other favourite moments came after scaling a massive mountain before realising I was standing in front of a sleeping dragon. My stealthy character stands a good chance of killing some creatures in one shot if they don’t realise I’m there so I readied my two daggers and prepared to strike. I barely time to react before I found myself under attack from a bear and a newly woken dragon. The next several minutes descended into complete chaos as my horse, a dragon, a bear and a hunter all duked it out on this small cliff. I eventually won out after knocking the dragon out of the sky and proceeding to slash it to the death while it was dazed on the ground.

The encounter was not scripted, had no bearing on a quest and had just come about because I had figured the bear would not be able to follow me up the mountain. The appearance of the hunter is probably related to the bear but I’m certainly glad it happened. There have been hundreds of other encounters of equal absurdity posted all over the internet and they are all aside from some of the excellent stuff deliberately in the game.  It’s this balance that makes me really appreciate Skyrim. Bethesda have created good scripted experiences but they are also not arrogant enough to assume you need to see them. You can do whatever the hell you want and that’s something that isn’t common enough in games anymore. Simply put no game did what Skyrim did so well this year, none even really tried. An achievement on the scale of Skyrim deserves recognition and that is why it is our 2011 Game of the Year.