for one dollar you can't go wrong

stacking, now that was a fun game.
Sonic Generations, i knew the game would be good, but damn. Even the crappy parts from past Sonic games are worked in well. Hub world, the friends hell even Knuckles segment

2 games have surprised me.

The first being Forza 4. Now I've always been a pretty big Forza fan but it's never really drawn me in that far and I wasn't really looking forward to the game, but my god was I surprised when I got it, it's such a polished game and unlike previous Forza's it has personality. If you like cars and videogames this is a must buy.

The second game was even a bigger surprise for me. And that is Skyrim....now don't get me wrong, I always kind of figured Skyrim was going to be a good game but it blew all my expectations away and easily stole GOTY for me. Games that capture my attention like that and leave me wanting more are far and few between now days. It's seriously as good as Mass Effect is to me, just pure perfection.

yeah i forgot about stacking it was great very unique game

i haven't played sonic generations but i hear good things about it i might pick it up in near future

I'll also go ahead and say Skyrim. I loved Oblivion (easily over 200 hours on it I have to think), but for some reason I wasn't as hyped for Skyrim as I should have been...didn't even buy it till over a week after release. But damn it's hella good. The characters look 150x better than in Oblivion, the Archery is actually good unlike Oblivion, the graphics are nicer than Oblivion, and there's lots of cool ass stuff. Great game. The only games I want now are GTA5 and a new Fallout!

The Third Birthday. (PE is one of my favorite games, PEII is the definition of deteriation for a sequal).

It got meh reviews... Had an extremely convoluted story, with some bad dialogue. and took liberties some characters Kyle and Maeda (I was entertained by new Maeda).

But, The game was really really fun and addicting to me. The story while not good, was well paced and the cutscenes were both gruesome and pretty and I was entertained my first play through (and skipped them on subsequent playthroughs). The Music was my favorite of the Generation until Deus Ex HR.
The RPG elements with weapons and special abilities, Diving Mechanics of Combat, the pervy but neat and ultimately satisfying detioration of the many armor costumes of aya.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts too.

Im still waiting for Skyward Sword to judge my GOTY though.

Not released this year but played by me this year.
Red Dead and Castlevania. I hade high expectations for both but still surprised at how good they were.

Also Dark Souls even though I had very high expectations and Demon's Souls was already one of my top 5 games of all time but I got surprised how much I enjoyed Dark Souls, simply how much true happyness it gave me.

Catherine. I knew I was going to like it. But damn, I never anticipated it to become one of my favorite games this gen.

It mixes unique gameplay/puzzles with an interesting mature story -two things that make a game fun for me.

Xenoblade Chronicles, I had no idea that it would be this awesome. It's easily now my RPG of this generation, just beating out TWEWY