Written by: Jason Pitruzzello

In some ways, 2011 was the year that kept on giving. If you are a PC gamer with console playing friends (or a console jockey with PC gamer friends), it was the year of cross-platform fun. Love it or hate it, Skyrim became the common language of PC and console gamers. Limbo ported over to the PC this year, and I was even more impressed with playing it on PC than when I first saw my brother-in-law play it on Xbox. Aside from the common ground PC and console gamers shared, we had some much anticipated strategy titles appear on PC. Total War: Shogun 2 was a pretty good release for those who love tactical battle. Sengoku was a great budget title in the tradition of grand strategy games. 4X gamers found themselves finally getting the SOTS II (and all its problems). Heck, it wasn’t a new game this year, but new to me was Torchlight, which I purchased in May. This little gem reminded me why I invested hours in the original Diablo.

With all that being said, it almost seems anticlimactic to talk about the titles we can expect in 2012. But since gamers are insatiable in their appetites, and since developers and programmers need paychecks, new games are going to show up on our virtual doorsteps. What am I looking forward to? Let’s take a look.

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Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays to you and yours this holiday season. 2011 has been a big year for new games and sequels, and we here at the Vault thought we should share our top picks with you. Below this post you’ll find several Game of the Year entries to keep you busy during the holiday.

The blog posts below will give you plenty to read, so I’m going to keep my picks short.

Game of the Year
Batman: Arkham City
(Honorable mention: Skyrim)

Motion-Controlled GotY
Child of Eden
(Honorable mention: Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest)

Written by: Ed Humphries

Damn this assignment.

While I always look forward to these year end “Best Of” blogs, this year’s deadline put me at a slight disadvantage as my favorite game of the year wasn’t slated to hit shelves until three days before the Editors’ concrete due date. Yeah, that’s right – I’m planning on picking a game I haven’t played one second of as my favorite game of the year. I’ll get to that in a moment.

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Written by: Michael Rabalais

My Skyrim story starts with my inability to spend money wisely. I found Fallout 3 and New Vegas drab. Oblivion failed to grab my attention. Naturally, when I found myself paying $60 for Skyrim on day one, it seemed like another instance of my own piss-poor judgment. I had read A Song of Ice and Fire, and thought hanging out in the Arctic with dragons seemed like a pretty cool thing to do.

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Written by: Simon Moore

This is always a hard decision in my books – there were so many fun and great games released this year. I’ve decided to cheat a little. Being the iPad reviewer, I thought I could get away with telling you what my favourite two iPad games of 2011 were. iPad games are smaller than regular games, so I’m picking two. Ladies and gentlemen, cue the tiny iPad drum roll. In no immediate order, these are the games that keep me amused on my travels and between sessions in Skyrim:

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Written by: Mindy Hartman

I have to give my 2011 game of the year to Dragon Age 2. I have played through it 3 full times and I have enjoyed each and every moment of it. I liked playing as the witty noble, the heartless bastard, and the greedy, achievement whore. Now, I have to be perfectly honest. I didn’t go running to get the game on release day like I did with Dragon Age. The whole Awakenings disaster really turned me off to the Dragon Age series. There was also the problem of the reviews that cited dungeon crawling and map recycling as major negatives. However, Steam had the game on sale one weekend and I decided to give it a shot. I think the game is beautifully rendered, the cut scenes were very interesting (the first time through) and I really felt like my choices impacted the outcome of the story. Given the hours I’ve logged, let me formally say: Bioware, I forgive you for DA: Awakenings, and praise you for Dragon Age 2.

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Written by: Ian Davis

Interactive storytelling is the red-headed stepchild of the gaming world. Perhaps John Carmack (all devout of that ancient rite genuflect) was right: story is to games as plot is to porn. Despite how much we talk about it, only rarely is story the driving force that keeps gamers coming back. Strategy, socialization, acquisition, exploration, and sheer visceral thrill are gaming senses which seem more developed than storytelling. Outside of the decade-old Half Life and Bioware’s take on the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure formula, how far have we advanced from the static cutscene and babbling NPC?

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Publisher: Nicolas Entertainment Group
Developer: Intoxicate Studios
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, 2 GHz Intel Core2Duo/AMD Athlon 64 X2 or better CPU, 256 MB graphics card with Shader 3.0 support, 2 GB RAM (Windows XP)/3 GB RAM (Vista/Win 7), DirectX 9.0c
Genre: Third-person shooter
ESRB rating: Not rated
Release date: Available now
Written by: Michael Smith

It looks like we’re not gonna survive December 2012 no matter what we do. If the end of the Mayan calendar doesn’t get us on 12/21/2012, then the accidental detonation of a fusion bomb on the same date will surely put most of us toes-up, according to indie developer Intoxicate Studios’ debut shooter, Afterfall: InSanity. This post-apocalyptic mashup of several FPS classics has high ambitions, but falls just short of delivering on its promises.

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Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: BioWare
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.0 GHz Core2Duo/Athlon 64 X2 4000+ or better CPU, 1.5 GB RAM (XP)/2 GB (Vista/Win 7), 256 MB Nvidia 7800/ATI X1800 or better graphics card with Shader 3.0 support, broadband Internet connection
Genre: MMO
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: December 20, 2011
Written by: Michael Smith

There really is no honor among thieves, even in a galaxy far, far away. Minutes after the smuggler arrived at her destination with a load of weapons stashed in her ship, someone at the spaceport hopped in and took off with it when the now-furious captain was off trying to collect her fee. The war between the Sith Empire and the Republic was heating up, so it wasn’t easy for her to finish her run, and there was no way that she was going to let some light-fingered bantha jockey deprive her of her hard-earned commission.

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Written by: Chip Henson

Action/RPG Bastion is now available on your Chrome browser. The developer promises that this is not a watered-down version of the game, and gamers can expect everything they loved so much about the XBLA and PC versions of the game. Bastion is available now and includes a free trial. If you pick up the game before tomorrow night, you can save 50%.

Written by: Chip Henson

PopCap Games continues its war against productivity with its latest releases. Bejeweled is now available as a free download in the Chrome Web Store. To further lessen your desire to get any work done, PopCap has also released Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies onto the Android Marketplace. This release marks the first time PvZ is available in the official Android Market.

Written by: Chip Henson

Nintendo is close to releasing a new peripheral for the 3DS. The Circle Pad Pro adds a second analog nub and extra shoulder buttons to the handheld. Nintendo has announced that GameStop will be the exclusive carrier of the new attachment, and it will retail for $19.99 when it releases in February.

Those of you with FPS gamers on your Christmas lists can save a little money today on Amazon. The shopping website is featuring sale prices on every Call of Duty game for one day only. Honestly, though, with Modern Warfare 3 already hitting the billion-dollar mark, everyone you know probably owns it. Maybe your gun-crazy little cousin would like a $15 trip down memory lane with World at War.

Moogles, the plush, adorable creatures of the Final Fantasy universe are rarely, if ever, viewed as the enemy. Online MMO Final Fantasy XIV plans on changing your perception of the delightful creatures in the next expansion, “Good King Moggle Mog XII.” Check out the video for some battle scenes and a shot of the king himself.

Recently, Steam hosted a free weekend for Brink, giving gamers the chance to play the game all weekend and then purchase it for a whopping 70% discount. That formula must have done wonders for Brink‘s sales, because InterWave Studios’ Nuclear Dawn is getting the same treatment. Starting this Thursday, gamers will be able to log into Steam and play Nuclear Dawn for free until Monday, December 19. Gamers interested in purchasing the game after the extended free trial can do so for 20% less.