Game of the year

[Haly]

With a year full of a wide range of hits on all the systems, there's been plenty to choose from for your game of the year.
A few possible examples to get your brain ticking:
On the 360: Crackdown, The Darkness, Mass Effect, CoD4, The Orange Box, Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Forza 2, GH3 and many others.
On the PC: Crysis, The Orange Box, CoD4, Bioshock, Football Manager 2008, Unreal Tournament 3 and many others.

What would be your game of the year? I haven't listed wii or PS2/PS3 games as I'm assuming most people on here are 360 and PC gamers but feel free to suggest any

Also to make things slightly different, what would be your surprise hit of the year? A game you didn't expect to be amazing, possibly because of lack of hype or media coverage, but that you were pleasantly surprised by.
Again, feel free to throw anything in worthy of note about your gaming year


For me, my game of the year is a toughy. I really want to say Mass Effect or Eternal Sonata as I'm such a huge fan of RPGs and them both, but I can't. Eternal Sonata although extremely enjoyable was flawed and didn't really add a huge deal to the genre. Mass Effect is similar, an amazing game but still felt like Knights of The Old Republic but without the license. This isn't a bad thing, it just means I can't quite call it game of the year for me, but I do understand why people would say it is.
I'm extremely tempted by Call of Duty 4 as it has a long lasting multiplayer mode and a compelling single player mode.

But I think, I'll have to give it to Bioshock. Its story was surprisingly complex in my opinion, it managed to convey various messages and philosophy from modern day politics and politics from the 20th Century. I enjoyed the fact that it would scare me but not so much that it'd put me off continuing. And overall, despite its obvious flaws, I felt a part of Rapture throughout my playing it.
It may be a game that I'll only play once or twice ever, but to me, the single player experience is everything and it's admirably achieved that if you ask me.


For a surprise hit, it would be Bladestorm on the 360. A game I would never have played if I hadn't been sent a review copy, but it's great fun and underrated in my opinion. I recommend everyone goes out and at least rents it. It deserves some attention as it's great fun.


On another note, Final Fantasy 12 has been hugely deprived by me despite my excitement to buy it earlier in the year. I really need to rectify that in the New Year

Plenty of other amazing games this year but I'd never finish typing if I continued
Feel free to write similar length posts, hopefully it'll make for interesting discussion