I try to take Metacritic scores with a grain (or pallet) of salt. The new Hitman was by far the best game of the year IMHO...very fun to play with plenty of replayability, great story (by video game standards) and good realism (again, by video game standards). Metacritic gave it an 83 with people bashing it for their own mistakes. One guy complained it was like COD...obviously he never figured out how to hide. Another complained that it was buggy because when he killed someone a nearby guard heard the body hit the floor...I'd complain if they didn't hear that!

Meanwhile, the winner list has two different sports games that are just rehashes of the same games that have been released every year of the current generation, that got good scores because the people who bought and played them already knew exactly what to expect and didn't buy if they didn't like the last 5 identical games with (some) different characters. Then there were 4 games (actually, 2 versions each of 2 games) that were nothing but overpriced DLCs...same deal there. I don't think many people bought Mass Effect 3 if they didn't like Mass Effect 2.

Then you have The Walking Dead for 360 at the top of the list...it was on 3 platforms and only one version made the list? I don't care how much you like the game, if one version got the #1 spot and the other two didn't make the top 18, you know something is broken there.

All that said, I'd not say it was a good year for games...other than DLCs, I really only enjoyed one game released this year...not too optimistic about next year either. Right now the only game I would be willing to pre-order is GTA5...and that might not even come to PC this year (GTA4 didn't play very well on 360 and PS3, so I wouldn't even consider getting GTA5 for either of those.)