My vote is for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

Not too impressed with the other games I’ve played here like Twilight Princess and Oblivion. Persona 3 is probably my runner up but it’s bloated. A few games I’d like to play at some point though, Dead Rising, Company of Heroes, Dwarf Fortress, Hitman: Blood Money, Mother 3.

Oblivion for me.

I'll have to contemplate this, although I'm not sure there's a clear winner for me. Oblivion is probably the game I've enjoyed the most from 2006, and it has its impact as well, but it's still quite flawed. One thing that's missing is Total War: Medieval II, which seems to generally rank very highly among the series, and it would probably be a strong contender for me as well, had I played it. And Dwarf Fortress came out as late as 2006!? Wow. Probably another strong contender... had I spent the time to learn it but alas, spending months to learn a game with a terrible UI (that's probably better now with the Steam release) hasn't seemed to appealing despite the appeal of the game itself.

I'm giving it to Wii Sports for its impact. Despite being almost 20 years old, the game is still a household name.

The game is also simplistic family fun.

Otherwise, I'd have given it to TES IV: Oblivion.

Twilight Princess. Not one of my top Zelda games but still better than anything else this year for me.

Oblivion was a lot of fun. The ~ command options were great lol





Good times playing with the physics engine.

Quite a pretty game too



Fun quests as well, too bad the leveling system was fundamentally broken. I waited far too long to do the story quests and all the enemies were wearing glass armor already while the allies that were supposed to help me died instantly.

Gears of War is the first game I played on my then brand new 52" 1080p LCD tv, it still works, mostly. It's now sitting in the living room next to the 4K HDR tv for playing while watching TV. Gears of War was good. I still preferred FPS over TPS but was now used to analog controls for shooters and Gears handled very well. That last fight was hard though, RAAM I think.

FF12 was a favorite even though I never got to finish it. I love the gambit system as a programmer. Creating my own AI routines and watch the party handle different fights all by itself while taking notes and further refining my gambit setups. Quite a unique way to play an RPG, hands-off battles. Why I didn't finish it? I played it on PS3 through BC. To do that the game used a virtual memory card stored on the HDD. I must have turned it off too soon after saving one day as the next day it informed me the memory card was corrupt. I lost all my saves on the way to the final sequence :( I watched the rest on you tube ugh.

On the 360 Dead Rising was a pleasant surprise. Awesome game with another unique time mechanic. Prioritizing what you can do in a single run, and what to leave for repeat runs. Mowing down zombies with a lawn mower was awesome.

I never really got into Dead Rising 2 though, one hit wonder to me.

Of course I played Twilight Princess as well. I was looking forward to it for a long time and finally my wife managed to find a Wii in all the shortages. I should have just bought it for GameCube :/ The Wii motes weren't great to play a game like this with, worse I didn't really enjoy Twilight Princess anyway. I quit, picked it up again later, quit again, never finished. The Twilight sound was so grating it made me hate the game. I didn't like those sections at all, nor got much into the story either. One of my least favorite Zelda games.

The game that surprised me the most and quickly became my goty is Okami.

Ironically this is the Zelda game I was looking for. Despite a slow long winded start, the game grew more and more on me as it kept going. And keeping going it did. What seemed like the final boss wasn't even halfway in the game. The paint mechanic was brilliant as well. Gesture control much better executed than Black & White and fun to use in combat. An epic adventure with many twists and turns with an awesome visual style.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

It felt like the true successor to Ocarina of Time; a moody, epic adventure with a style reminiscent of the then recent Lord of the Rings movies.
It has some of the best dungeons in the series, the best companion to date in Midna, and it refined the formula pioneered by Ocarina to a fine art.

Another semi-close one between Twilight Princess and Persona 3, but I gotta go with Twilight Princess. I'm fairly sure the P3 Remake can surpass TP for me, but while the original is amazing on many levels it just has too many gameplay flaws. My top 5 for the year:

1. Twilight Princess
2. Persona 3
3. Okami
4. Mother 3 (It's pretty damn unique for being essentially an SNES game in 2006)
5. Oblivion

Wii Sports, because it was a nice introduction for a very fun console.

Other Dead Rising it's one of the better early 360 games and one of the first console games that needed to be played on a HD TV to fully appreciate it.  Also, honorable mention goes to another Capcom game in Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams which is my favorite game of the franchise and one of the best late PS2 games.