#7. Resident Evil 4 (GC, Wii)

When I heard the Resident Evil series was going in a brand new direction I was intrigued. What I read from preview articles had me dying to play that game and when it came out I was rewarded with one of my all-time favorite game. In the past, part of the tension in RE games was helped by the fact that the tank controls and dodgy aiming made sure even only a few zombies could pose a problem.

Resident Evil 4 changed all that. For the first time you were in full control of your aim and it was now possible to deal with zombies more effectively. To counter balanced this new freedom, Leon now faces much more capable "zombies" and a whole lot more of them.

I was hooked from the first action sequence in the village. This game feature incredible pacing, when you start getting sick of the village you move on to the castle when the castle gets old you move on to the island. The boss fights are inventive and some of them are just plain scary (Salazar's Left(Right?) Hand always made a great impression on me).

While the game retains it's cheesy storyline, I can still get into the story and Leon and Ada are two of my favorite RE characters.

I think I'll post my #2 and #1 at the same time. Really, they're my favorite 2D and 3D games of all time, and every other day I change my mind on which I love more. Both are timeless classics and remind me why I love this medium we call video games. ^_^

#2: Sonic & Knuckles (Genesis/GameCube/DS)
Release Date: October 17, 1994
Last Year: #1

When it comes to 2D games (if you haven't gotten it by now, I think they're pretty great), I think that Sonic & Knuckles is the greatest of the great. Words cannot begin to describe what this game has meant to me over the years that I've been a gamer... but I'll try to explain what makes me love this game so much. Perfect controls, stellar and diverse level design, superb physics (a necessity for a platformer), an engaging story (that is actually told during gameplay. A hidden art to many game developers), characters that you care about, goregous sprite based graphics, a killer soundtrack... Like I said, this game really does it all for me. No other game will have a single moment that means more to me than Sky Santuary Zone does. The atmosphere, level design, and music come together so wonderfully... it puts a smile on my face just thinking about it. I play this game every year, just to have a taste of something that is so great. A true masterpiece.

This is My Ringtone: Sky Santuary Zone
Favorite Robotnik Battle: Giant Eggman Robo. Truly an Epic battle!

#1: Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
Release Date: May 23, 2010
Last Year: #2

Wii had a pretty rough year this year. The first half was devoid of any games that I really wanted... so instead I went back and played games on my backlog, or games I wanted to play all over again. So I once again inserted my Super Mario Galaxy 2 disc... and I fell in love once more. I think this game is one of the extremely few games I've played that is absolutely perfect in its execution. And with its plethora of brilliant new ideas and gameplay mechanics... that's quite an incredible feat. It was easy to underestimate this game before its release, as we all wondered what more the team that gave us the brilliant Galaxy 1 could offer us... but this game both expands and perfects the ideas of old, as well as introduces us to brand new features that once more give a breath of fresh air to the supposedly faltering Platformer genre. But it's more than that too... with the soundtrack (now my favorite video game soundtrack ever) and artstyle (the mixture of Mario and Outer Space give them no limits at what they can present us) create something that is magical... Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a game that doesn't come around very often... but it's brilliance cannot be denied. The game is a wonderful example of what this medium is capable of. I tip my hat to this incredible game.

Favorite Music Track: The Credits
Daredevil Run GrandMaster Galaxy: Punch-me-in-the-Face-Difficulty, but I loved every second of it.

Also, I'd like to thank you guys for participating. I know that this website focuses on the sales of platforms and their games, but it makes me happy to see all us just talking about the games we love. 2012 is going to hold some great games (and hopefully some great new hardware!), so I can't wait to see what this upcoming year has in store for us!

So I hope you all had a great 2011... because 2012 is only a day away. But always remember the games you've come across in the years you've spent as a gamer, and never forget the great times you've had with them.

Cheers!

Don't worry, I had fun reading it, good review. Now I feel even worse for skipping it at the time :)

I have a good excuse though, I was all consumed by my nr 1 game at the time. After playing Deus Ex Hr it's definitely on my to play list. If dark souls will release its grip on me.

#1 Everquest played on PC, released 1999

The best game of all time? For me it is. It is the game I have played the most and the game that has had the biggest impact on my life. The short story: I met my beautiful wife while playing Everquest.

I had been playing everquest for a couple months already, not really getting anywhere. Life past lvl 10 was hard and unforgiving in Norrath back in 2000. I was on my fourth character, an enchanter named Gazzook, this time carefully planned out from the beginning. At lvl 10  I decided to move to Freeport, a dangerous 40 minute journey on foot from Qeynos. In west commons I met up with a high elf wizard, recently moved to Freeport from the greater Feydark. From there I started to see her more often in groups in east and west commons killing orcs and bears trying to get a grip on the early teens.

Christmas time was there and I didn't see her for a while. In the new year we met up again in North Ro desert and Oasis of Marr while dodging deadly giants. From there we occasionaly took the boat to set foot on the continents of Velious and Kunark. Although the tower of frozen shadow looked very intriguing Velious was still out of our league. Kunark quickly became our favorite place to spend the early 20's. Lake of ill omen was the perfect zone with plenty of places to explore and hang out.

There was lots of downtime in Everquest, plenty of time for good conversation. Often we would simply sit around chatting instead of actively looking for a group. After mastering the Saenak fort in Lake of Ill Omen we moved on to the giant fort in Frontier mountains and after that to the Overthere.
As we got on in levels our relationship began to grow and before long we had our first phone call and started exchanging pictures. Quite exciting after only talking in text for months. Luckily she exceeded all my expectations.

By the time we got to the 40's and moved on to the dreadlands I decided to come over to visit for a week. After a 7 hour plane ride I arrived at 1 in the morning in a rental car in a foreign country in the middle of a snow storm, having never driven in snow before. Nerves aside it was one of the best weeks of my life and gutwrenching to have to go back. A couple of months later she visited me in Amsterdam and from there we kept going back and forth every couple of months.

Obviously this was not an ideal situation, so by summer I was looking into immigration. The whole immigation process from Holland to Canada took about a year requiring tons of paperwork, physical tests, and documents going through 3 countries. In july of 2002 all planning came to fruition and we were finally united forever. My life changed completely, it was the best decision I have ever made.

Not long after we got settled in we started playing Everquest again, this time side by side. This allowed for some interesting tactics, closely timing spells together. Our enchanter wizard duo became an unstoppable force, lag permitting. Shadows of Luclin had come out by then with some interesting zones, a hub to make it a lot faster to get around and a new graphical make over of the game. Yet Lower guk in old Norrath and Sebilis in Kunark became our favorite zones. Sebilis was the best. There we could round up and defeat up to 30 targets at the time by keeping them stunned with 2 enchanters while wizards blast them with area effect spells. A risky business but great fun.

Planes of power was another good expansion, however Lost dungeons of norrath turned out to be our best. The random generated instanced 45-60 min dungeons were great for a few rounds each night to earn points for weapon and armor augments. After the next expansion, Gates of discord, we finally got married. We wanted to do it sooner but getting family together from a different continent takes a while. In good tradition we decided to visit some of our other long time Everquest friends during our honeymoon on the west coast.

Omens of war was to be our last expansion. We were in the upper 60's by then and the game kept getting harder without raid equipment. We never did many raids since they tend to take anywhere from 6 to 12 hours at a time. Friends started leaving to Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft and by lvl 68, after 4 years and 8 expansions, we also made the switch to WoW.

WoW was great but never reached the same heights (and lows) that Everquest has. We met many great friends on Everquest, the forced grouping to get forward makes it a real social game. Everquest also has way more spells, alternate advancement abilies, augments, all allowing for a wide variety of tactics. With plenty of odd spells and items to have fun too. My wife still hasn't forgiven me for dispelling her floatation spell causing her to drop out of the sky after jumping off the spiral tower in greater Faydark.

Everquest is still going with its 18th expansion just released. It will be a while before we have raised our 2 gold farmers to high enough age to get back to it.

List

Great thread. I had fun revisiting all these great games and picked up some new ones to play too.

1998 wins in my list with 7 entries, followed by 2004 with 6 entries. I only included Portal 2 from this year, the rest needs some more time to mature to see if they fit in an all time top 50.
Although I play 95% of my games on console nowadays PC games still almost make up half my top 50 with 21 entries, followed by ps2 with 11.

For next year I'm most looking forward to Ni No Kuni (studio Ghibli!) and The last guardian with Ico and SotC on my nr 3 and nr 5 spots. Can lightning strike thrice? Yes it can.

Sonic Adventure 2 at number 2

There's really only one option at my number one, if you piece through games that are in my list and games that aren't, one franchise in particular remains unfinished

That was a beautiful story and I can definately see why you didn't play Deus Ex when it came out! Falling in love via Everquest! Amazing!

I used to play the facility level on single player and at the end when you are supposed to exit I would instead run up a flight of stairs across from where the guards come from and just mow them down with an AK47.  I believe I would go in the hundreds if not thousands after finally ending the level.