This is it, the big one. The grand winner. TheSixthAxis’ Overall Game of the Year 2011. For this award, we took a separate poll of our staff, asking which was their overall game of the year for 2011. Every staff member got to pick a top three and the results were charted and used to generate the graph below.
It’s always great to see the less mainstream games getting some attention in these votes. So, the inclusion of the excellent iOS game, Jetpack Joyride, alongside some of the year’s best downloadable games on PSN and XBLA, is lovely.
Of course, the big multi platform games are always going to be hard to beat and this proved to be the case again with the top three all being games which are available on both HD home consoles as well as the PC. It’s not until fourth place and Uncharted 3 (in itself an indication of how strong this year’s field is) that we get a console exclusive.
Microsoft’s limited exclusive range is represented in sixth by the fantastic Gears of War 3 too, although it only received just over half the votes of Sony’s best performing platform exclusive.
So the top three, then, took us to Gotham for third place, the northernmost reaches of Tamriel for second and for first place we made a return to he inimitable testing chambers of Aperture Science.
TheSixthAxis’ Overall Game of the Year 2011 is Portal 2.
samiro05
I’d have voted for Skyrim, it is just such a pleasure to play and it has 100s of hours worth of gameplay. My second vote would have been for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This game was outstanding for me, I loved the way you could stealth through the entire game. Portal 2 was great but only third in my eyes.
ron_mcphatty
Superb choice, it’s a deserving winner! Happy New Year folks, hope you h r a good night if you’re out!
The Lone Steven
Portal 2 deserves that. Tis an excellent game and i plan on getting it at some point. Imo, it’s improved everything about Portal. :) I was expecting Skyrim to win but i’m glad that Portal 2 won.
CrawFail
For me..
1) Minecraft
2) Skyrim
3) Portal 2
This year has been most excellent for gaming.. It’s made all the other stuff like hacks and online passes be forgotten.
Arcadian1
How could Portal 2 be the best of the best – please its Uncharted 3 all the way no matter what anybody says. Best game this year
Jim Hargreaves
Good to see all three of my noms got into the top 7 :)
Just playing through the latter half of Portal 2 as I type.
TSBonyman
For me the top three would be ME2, Skyrim and Portal 2, in that order.
ME2 was quite simply the best game overall that i’ve played for several years.
Skyrim really sucked me in which was weird as i thought i would just try it out and end up trading it in a week later like i did with Oblivion.
Portal 2 was superbly entertaining and funny but i didn’t find it very challenging, speeding thru most of the levels with only a handful really making me pause to work them out.
cam the man
I haven’t played any of those games.
Hur4d
Skyrim and Portal 2 have both had tonnes of effort poured into their storytelling and for that they should both be applauded (Skyrim possibly more so through sheer volume, they have hundreds of literal books/short stories throughout), but the finesse of Valve with Portal 2 just shines through ahead of Skyrim in my personal opinion. Whereas Uncharted 3 just astounds with it’s brilliant production. Although at times slightly linear even the camera angles give that extra something to the quality. Sadly yet to own Batman: Arkham City but the ole birthday is coming soon so more gifts ahoy!
2ofclubs
While I’m in no doubt that Portal 2 is a great game at what it does, I just couldn’t stand it. The story seemed decent enough and the humour was solid but I just couldn’t care less about the portal mechanic. I got no fun, just frustration from it. Guess it’s just not for me.
The rest of the highly voted games I would have to agree with though.
2ofclubs
My top 3 would be:
Skyrim
Battlefield 3
Uncharted 3