Game Of The Year 2011: Editor's Choice

So, here we are at last: after twelve epic months of video gaming, bringing us a wealth of fantastic titles that will long be remembered by their players, I've finally elected to name Batman: Arkham City as my Game of the Year. Believe me, it wasn't an easy choice- Portal 2 is a more accessible title for those unfamiliar with its predecessor's lore, and Skyrim has a longer extent of replay value than City holds, yet neither of those titles for me provided such an engaging, cinematic experience as Rocksteady did in October. From the moment you are placed in the shoes of Bruce Wayne, Batman's human guise, thrown into the walls of Arkham City and forced to make your way to the rooftops to start your most dangerous night ever, to the final moments where one of DC's most legendary characters meets his dramatic end and life for the Dark Knight will never be the same again, Rocksteady keep you constantly guessing as to what is going to happen next, and better yet when they do reveal what's coming it is never a daft pay-off that feels anything less than brilliant! No games developer I've ever encounted can maintain such a great focus on storytelling while keeping the superb combat, stealth and detective mechanics both intact and developing throughout the campaign. Then, when you look at the sheer attention to detail Rocksteady still have managed to put into the huge open-world city, throwing in constant hardcore and notable references to the comic book lore, and the huge number of side missions players can either partake in while they're moving to the next story event or after the main storyline, it becomes clear that Batman: Arkham City just has to be Game of the Year. Not once did I come across a sequence of events which felt dramatically duller than the rest of the game as I did with the Aperture undergroudn in Portal 2, or a game-breaking bug which totally disrupted the beautiful immersion as I have on several occassions in Skyrim. Perhaps it seems obvious for me to award it the award when I called it my second most anticipated game of 2011 in January, and the Most Anticipated (Mass Effect 3) was delayed to March 2012, but I'd wager that even had ME3 released this Winter, I still would have given Arkham the award. And to be fair, while I called the final Harry Potter my Most Anticipated film of the year at the same time, it's not going to be the movie which gets the award because I didn't feel it fully lived up to my expectations. That's where Arkham City differs from so many of the other titles on the list- it fully matched what I expect from a present day action-adventure title, totally immersing me in the world of Gotham, granting wider access to characters like Catwoman and Robin yet maintaining an effective focus on the titular Knight himself, and best of all providing one of the greatest comic-book storylines ever not drawn, rather built as a video game instead! Batman: Arkham City stands as the defining achievement of this generation of consoles, tapping on the vast potential hinted at by Arkham Asylum back in 2009, but ultimately making that look like a trial run and becoming the ultimate showcase visually and mechanically of what developers can and should do with their video games in the future!