I'd be a lot warmer and a lot happier with a belly full of mead.

Humean_Nature: PC Gamer voted Skyrim GOTY, in case any of you Nords are feeling distraught.

The Imperials think we need Kotaku's rating to validate our existence. I'm proof their wrong.

/is that how it goes?

hubiestubert: I'm still leery of Skyrim. On the strength of replaying Fallout 3, and the annoyance at the Wandering Damage Table encounters.

I'm telling you - there's nothing to worry about. Big damage enemies are concentrated in small areas and you'll know before you get there. Also, like I said, you don't have to repair weapons/armor like in Fallout.

ThatGuyGreg: Kotaku doesn't pick Skyrim, wins nerd rage page hits.

Film at 11.

They should have led with "Paul Christoforo hates Skyrm, thinks you're stupid for playing it".

hubiestubert: It is new, therefore I fear it...

LOL. I told my boyfriend that if Skyrim was all I got for Christmas, I'd be happy. He got it for me.

/wasn't all I got

The Witcher 2 was better than Portal 2.

Portal 2 was good, but its only an evenings worth of entertainment.

ShawnDoc: Portal 2 - Good for 5-10 hours
Skyrim - Good for 70 million hours

The value for your dollar goes to Skyrim. Plus, Portal 2 felt like it was really stretching to extend game play and started to get really repetitive towards the end.

Did you hear about that cave north east of town? Its fully of Draugr & Spiders, Falmer & Spiders or Bandits/Forsworn.
Totally new and cool, every time.

/I can't really hate Skyrim though but yah as usual Beth's designers should invest in an AD&D creature compendium or something.

ShawnDoc: Portal 2 - Good for 5-10 hours
Skyrim - Good for 70 million hours

The value for your dollar goes to Skyrim. Plus, Portal 2 felt like it was really stretching to extend game play and started to get really repetitive towards the end.

fark, couldnt i just go outside?

Jammybee: Portal 2 was good, but its only an evenings worth of entertainment.

I wish I had 10 hour evenings.

Language NSFW (new window)

Seth'n'Spectrum: The Witcher 2 was better than Portal 2.

except Portal had an ending

ShawnDoc: Portal 2 - Good for 5-10 hours
Skyrim - Good for 70 million hours

The value for your dollar goes to Skyrim. Plus, Portal 2 felt like it was really stretching to extend game play and started to get really repetitive towards the end.

Cut and pasting content doesn't a good value make, if you want to talk about stretching. Raiding a dungeon with slightly different configuration with different skinned monsters is repetitive.

Portal 2, is really game of the year. Might be the best game since Half-Life 2.

My fear of Skyrim is that it will be just as much of a letdown as Fallout New Vegas. That game farking sucked. Added it to my Gamefly queue but it's probably going to be a while...

ShawnDoc: Portal 2 - Good for 5-10 hours
Skyrim - Good for 70 million hours

The value for your dollar goes to Skyrim. Plus, Portal 2 felt like it was really stretching to extend game play and started to get really repetitive towards the end.

Quantity is not the same thing as quality...

And really, how does Skyrim not get repetitive? Ok, I haven't played it yet... but every sandbox game I've played eventually reaches a point where you realize you're just doing the same things over and over again....

Actually, that's pretty much all video games. It's the way you do things that counts. By the end of Oblivion I was just running through the towers to get the artifacts... then I realized the gameplay had gotten a bit stale.

Must suck to win Game of The Year and have the announcement be an explanation of why the other game didn't win.

Not really a gamer, but I understand the "took an arrow to the knee" is from Skyrim. What's the context of the joke though? Why is it funny?
/well, why WAS it funny.

Shaggy_C: My fear of Skyrim is that it will be just as much of a letdown as Fallout New Vegas. That game farking sucked. Added it to my Gamefly queue but it's probably going to be a while...

10x better than Oblivion, IMO. It's got Fallout beat hands down, if for no other reason the scenery actually changes.

Humean_Nature: Beerguy: Blocked at work for me.

Can some one give me the bottom line of the article please.

Kotaku editors voted Portal 2 game of the year. There was some argument for Skyrim but Portal 2 won it in the end, mostly on strength of the story and characters.

I think I agree that Portal 2 is the most entertaining story experience of the year, but open-world games like Skyrim will always win the day for me. I played Portal 2 once through on single player and then two or three times on multiplayer and I haven't touched it since. It's been almost two months since Skyrim came out and I'm about 70 hours into it and have no plans to stop. For me, that matters.

PC Gamer voted Skyrim GOTY, in case any of you Nords are feeling distraught.

Agreed for the most part. I haven't been able to get my paws on Skyrim yet, but I do generally enjoy Bethesda's other RPG catalog items. Incredibly long playing time, and stories that make you discover a little bit about yourself when you play the game.

Portal 2 probably wins on one big factor, which is fan service. It's hard to beat Valve's catalog when it comes to that quality, especially on Portal 2, where you had characters like Wheatley and Cave Johnson. So much damned epic in that game's dialog. It's also a relatively new game concept, so that probably helps as well. The multiplayer co-op is fun not just for its interactive mechanics, but also for how the two little cores interact... polar opposites that come together. In a time of nearly identical FPS games, Portal 2 just seems incredibly fresh.

To anyone, including Subby, whom happens to think the forced 'arrow to the knee' meme is funny, IT'S NOT farkING FUNNY. (new window)

/now I'm off to read TFA, as apparently it has something to do with Portal 2 (which had many moments and memes which were actually funny).

MagSeven: Not really a gamer, but I understand the "took an arrow to the knee" is from Skyrim. What's the context of the joke though? Why is it funny?
/well, why WAS it funny.

"I was once an adventure like you, but then I took an arrow in the knee" is a repetitive throw away line from random town guards, much like "Let me guess, someone stole your sweet roll", "Hands to yourself sneak theft", etc etc.

It was never really funny IMHO.

pjfry: Jammybee: Portal 2 was good, but its only an evenings worth of entertainment.

I wish I had 10 hour evenings.

Took from about 6pm to 1am. Engrossing, but zero re-playability. Multi-player was good but even shorter.

Is Skyrim broken? Yes - it's Bethesda, that comes with the territory.
Are there a lot of "repeats"? A few, especially if you take the view of the guy above, in that all the enemies are just palette swaps of each other (something I don't agree with, mind)...that said, there is enough variety that it really doesn't factor, unless you go in with that attitude.
Is the game fun? Most definitely.

It's my game of the year, but I can see why others may vote something else.

/Arkham City - 8 hours, traded it in
//Saints Row The 3rd - 40 hours, still chipping away at it from time to time
///LA Noire - Completed the main game, just starting the DLC, GF playing through the main game
///Skyrim - 100 hours +, still not close to completing it

Pump_ThePurpleWarrior: Language NSFW (new window)

And I should have read the comments first I see. Oh well.

I haven't played enough games released in 2011 to pick a GOTY, but I did enjoy Portal 2 quite a bit. I just got DX:HR over the weekend, but am yet to fire it up.
GOTY for me based off what I've played so far is The Binding of Isaac. I've only had it for just over a week, and have had more fun with that game than I have with any other titles in a long time.

meat0918: I love Skyrim. My wife got it for me this year.

I've killed a couple dragons, and have like 5 greyed out shouts. I checked online today to see if I was bugged and I guess I was just forgetting to unlock them in the menu...

I'm trying to level my smithing so I can use the dragon bone armor. I'm sure there is better leveled items somewhere, but I am trying to not use UESP wiki too much.

Oddly enough, the daedric armor is just as good, and looks way better.

The story in Portal 2 blows Skyrim out of the water, "When life gives you lemons, demand to see life's manager!". The replay value of Skyrim is 100 time greater then Portal 2 though (but a RPG tends to have good replay value).

Jammybee: pjfry: Jammybee: Portal 2 was good, but its only an evenings worth of entertainment.

I wish I had 10 hour evenings.

Took from about 6pm to 1am. Engrossing, but zero re-playability. Multi-player was good but even shorter.

You are probably quicker at those types of things than me. Took me closer to 10 the first time. I'm actually in the middle of my second play through now... a few puzzles at a time. So, I'm going to politely disagree with the re-playability aspect.

Though, I have a hard time making it through just one play through of the main campaign of a Bethseda RPG, so my idea of what's an entertaining package that I'll want to play again is probably quite different.

Sumpinlikedat: I'm telling you - there's nothing to worry about. Big damage enemies are concentrated in small areas and you'll know before you get there. Also, like I said, you don't have to repair weapons/armor like in Fallout.

This annoys me. I feel like there's just no danger any more wandering the wilderness. I'd like to occasionally have to run like hell from a giant I didn't expect to be there. Hopefully it's not quite like you described; I'm not very far into it yet.

Re: the two games: Yes, Skyrim has higher longevity, but Portal 2 gives more joy for its lifetime. It feels more, I dunno, "gamey". It's all subjective, of course.

Skyrim is very pretty (the series's characteristically wooden facial behavior notwithstanding) and has an excellent musical score that rivals Morrowind. Apart from this, though, my initial impression is that it doesn't improve at all on its predecessors and lacks much of what I did enjoy about the gameplay experience of Morrowind and (to a lesser extent) Oblivion. I already had to mod the thing just to fix its icky console-oriented interface.

My only complaint about Portal 2 was that the end credits song sounded too much like they were trying to do "Still Alive II: I Can Has Meme Too?". I mean it--that's my only complaint about the entire game. And I whine like a caricature of a Jewish mother about video game shortcomings. Portal 2 wins hands-down. I'd have a much harder time comparing it to, say, Minecraft, as I got way more hours of high-quality enjoyment out of it than any Elder Scrolls game.

Shouting is a blast, though. I keep meaning to cut up Scooby-Doo doing a "RUFF-ROH-RAH!" and post it to YouTube.

envirovore: To anyone, including Subby, whom happens to think the forced 'arrow to the knee' meme is funny, IT'S NOT farkING FUNNY. (new window)

/now I'm off to read TFA, as apparently it has something to do with Portal 2 (which had many moments and memes which were actually funny).

I used to give a shiat if a meme was funny, but then i took an arrow to the knee...

envirovore: GOTY for me based off what I've played so far is The Binding of Isaac. I've only had it for just over a week, and have had more fun with that game than I have with any other titles in a long time.

That is a fun game. A little on the hard side for me, but I've only played it casually--maybe I need to hook up a controller and play it a little more seriously.

I spent a lot of time on Dungeons of Dredmor It's a fun diversion if you like roguelikes and don't mind their tendency to have a lot of gameplay bugs. Plus, it's very easy to mod, so it's a good platform if you want something like a roguelike construction kit and don't want to write any real code.

meat0918: I've killed a couple dragons, and have like 5 greyed out shouts.

You may need to kill more dragons? I'm not sure, but I thought you needed at least one dragon soul per shout. (Disclaimer: I've only gotten my first shout and haven't read the wiki at all.)