My favorite games of 2011

I was planning to do this anyway, but then Zack Hiwiller beat me to it and I got all jealous. Here’s a list of some of my favorite games that came out in 2011 (or at least the ones I thought of on my lunch break).

Murder Dog IV: Trial of the Murder Dog. I wrote at Paste Magazine about why I like it.
Crime Zone. Another game by the creator of Murder Dog, this is primarily an exploration of the psychogeography of a member of a police squad that enforces the will of a totalitarian state. For real.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It doesn’t innovate over the original Deus Ex. It’s pretty much the same game except not quite as good. I am completely okay with that because I’m a shameless DX fan.
Skyrim. This took me by surprise. I found Oblivion really boring, but I very much liked Fallout 3. I typically hate fantasy genre stuff. But I’ve logged about 40-50 hours in Skyrim, and keep coming back to it.
Vertex Dispenser. I wrote about this game as well. (It’s 50% off right now at Steam!)
Frozen Synapse. It’s the squad based battle planning stuff I love from Jagged Alliance 2. Runs like a dream under Wine on Linux, too. I had fun with this.
Soul Brother. Hands-down my favorite browser-based game of the year. Incredible soundtrack.

Unfortunately, most of the other games I enjoyed this year technically have not been released yet so I can’t talk about them here. Oh the trials of being an IGF judge and Indiecade-attending-person.

The unreleased game that stands out the most in my mind is Johann Sebastian Joust, which I played with my coworkers at our holiday party last weekend. Here’s a video of a test run: