Best Games of 2011
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
Batman: Arkham CityRocksteady takes a perfect corridor game outdoors and somehow keeps every corridor's precision intact.Read the review
Uncharted 3: Drake's DeceptionThe best individual set pieces in the series, wired together by a plot that keeps losing track of its own map.
Dark SoulsOne folded, continuous world that turns geography into memory and death into a currency you learn to spend.
Portal 2A perfect short story stretched into a novel without diluting the joke, and Wheatley is the reason it works.
Dead Space 2Visceral trades the Ishimura's slow dread for a louder, faster nightmare on Titan, and its set pieces make it one of the great horror sequels
L.A. NoireA technical marvel about reading faces, attached to a detective game that does not quite trust you to be a detective.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of KingsA branching second act so aggressive that half the game changes on one conversation, and almost nobody saw both halves.
Assassin's Creed RevelationsAn elegiac send-off for two assassins that earns its place despite visible franchise fatigue.
The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimLess a great role-playing game than a great place, and Bethesda knew exactly which one it was building.
MinecraftThe most influential game of its decade, built on deliberately cheap technology, which is exactly what makes it remarkable.