2011 has been an astonishing year, bursting with amazing games, strange tales and unbelievable foul-ups. IGN has chronicled the whole shebang – the best and the worst. Use this guide to navigate the strange byways of 2011.

What have been the best games, comics, TV shows, movies and gear of 2011? After much lobbying, arguing, and attempts to bribe each other with hot wings and bounce houses, we've emerged with a list of this year's most excellent achievers of 2011.



Read this opinion and analysis piece from Colin Campbell, our Head of News & Features, on why 2011 really mattered...




Violence in games is not a singular phenomenon but contains multitudes of different experiences. 2011 reaffirmed that we are not destined to be changed in one way or another by video game violence, but can still appreciate a vast capacity for new emotions and ideas in them that others might dismiss.





Everything was in line for Sony to turn the tables in 2011. To finally come from behind, sell more units, and reclaim the core gamer conversation. But none of that happened, and if Sony couldn't pull ahead with the deck stacked like it was in 2011, then when?



It should have been easy. Transitioning from the Nintendo DS to the Nintendo 3DS should have been a mere formality. But it took time to get things right. IGN looks back at the launch that shuddered and recovered.



Saying Wii had an anemic year in 2011 is like observing water is wet. It's a fact, undeniable to anyone looking objectively at what the system had to offer. But there were some highlights and, boy, they were high.



In 2011, the PC re-established itself as the most flexible and innovative platform, offering everything from monster high-end graphics to free-to-play social experiences to enormous multiplayer adventures.




Mobile devices are always on, always connected, and always with you. That makes them pretty great as games machines. But it's taken a few years for the smartphone to fulfill its potential, as games have struggled to cope with the confusion of a rapidly evolving consumer behavior and technology. In 2011, game developers finally delivered.



A lot of games were released in 2011. Unfortunately, not all of them came with awesome box art. Frankly, some games came packaged in absolutely abysmal video game box covers. Here are IGN's picks for the 12 worst examples of box art for the year.





With magnificent blockbusters like Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, Portal 2 and Uncharted 3, 2011 has been a huge year for great video games. As much as we would love to spend all our time with the hits, there were still plenty of terrible games that had to be reviewed. Here are ten of the most awful games that we here at IGN have had the displeasure of reviewing this year. Avoid these duds when holiday shopping unless you're out for gaming revenge against your absolute worst enemies.



No doubts about it, 2011 was one of the best years in gaming history. Great games released consistently throughout the entire year, with many stretching their legs with awesome DLC. Despite the nonstop onslaught of impressive releases, there's been a dark fog looming over 2011 since it started; the death of development studios. The industry lost a lot of game developers this year. For many people working on the games we love, this year sucked.



2011 was an absolutely incredible year for videogames, but it was dominated by sequels and series iterations. So bravo to those publishers and developers that sought to try something new and different by introducing wholly new ideas Unfortunately, many of these games, even the good ones, were destined to fail.



Nintendo's success with Wii was bound to fuel speculation and interest in its next console. Whether wondering about a new controller or how Nintendo would embrace HD, the entire industry seemed fixated on the Wii's successor. As rumors and leaks emerged earlier this year, that fixation reached a fever pitch. Whatever Nintendo revealed at E3 2011 would have to be tremendous to live up to the hype.




Ah, December. What a lovely thing you are. It's that wonderful time of year where we fondly recall the year's best. Awards are doled out along with handshakes and hugs and the year is wrapped in a neat little bow. At least until we realize that 2011 also held its fair share of idiocy and mind-numbing botch jobs from gaming companies. So let's take a little time to celebrate the year's biggest gaming screw-ups.




2011 was a bumper year for racing games across the entire spectrum, from the instantly accessible deep-fried genius of Mario Kart 7 to the celebration of the cult of cars that is Forza Motorsport 4, and everything in between. The hard-nosed F1 2011 and its relentless demand for consistency. The brilliantly oddball Driver: San Francisco and its wildly unique multiplayer.



It's been an amazing year in gaming. To celebrate, we've picked 30 people who made a big difference. The IGN team huddled together to choose 30 people we believe best represented the past year's achievements in games. Plus, each IGN Platform Channel - PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo, PC and Mobile - picked a Nomination for IGN Games Person of the Year, including Satoru Iwata, Amy Hennig, Erik Wolpaw and Mikael Hed. Ultimately, Markus "Notch" Persson won the title of Person of the Year.

Find out why Notch won our Person of the Year award.




2011 was one of the highest scoring years for sports games. No matter your game of choice, there was a solid title there to let you live out your sports fantasy. Basketball, soccer, hockey, golf, baseball, tennis and boxing highlighted this year with standout titles. From hitting home runs in MLB 11: The Show, to hitting long drives in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12, sports games were all up in 2011's business.



In 2011 video game sex was mostly defined by coyness, melodrama, slapstick fantasies, but there was also brief and promising crackles of life, suggestive hints that there is more to making whoopee than mechanical action.



Despite the fact that 2011 saw numerous shooters spanning multiple timespans, themes, and perspectives, gamers seemed focused on just two: Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The debate between the two raged all year, and turned many a comment thread into sometimes vitriolic exchanges. Whichever side of the debate you were on, it's time to shut up for a second, because we're going to talk about some other shooters, maybe even some better ones.



Hardware wars, massive games, crazy goofs. This is gaming and the game industry every year. But 2011 also offered up the unexpected, the insane, the joyous and the sad. Our News Desk has been looking back over the events of the past year and has picked and ranked 50 stories that we believe stand out.



Skyrim was the highlight, but the role-playing scene in 2011 was about a lot more than dragon shouts and bucket-based thievery. Role-playing games offer up vast, detailed and complicated worlds, meant to be explored for tens, sometimes hundreds of hours. The emphasis on story and dialogue allows for rounded personalities, more believable virtual worlds and a greater personal investment in the play experience. 2011 turned out to be a milestone year for the genre, filled with some of the most memorable role-playing games of all-time, but it started with disappointment.




We were going to write a retrospective about the state of fighting games in 2011, and talk about all the big games. But you know what? F#%$ that. Fighters are too cool to waste with pontification. Instead watch this badass montage of all the best parts of your favorite fighting games.





Even the most fervent fanboy will agree that 2011 was an amazing year for games, regardless of your platform of choice. Gamers across all systems had at least one game that they can truly be proud of, that offers an experience you can't find elsewhere, and that will stand the test of time as a true classic.



2011 was a fantastic year for Xbox Live Arcade. Not only did we get an awesome Summer of Arcade, every month seemed to deliver new quality titles to the downloadable service. Check out our ten favorite games and some honorable mentions that shouldn't be missed.



IGN's PlayStation Team recently sat down to pour over everything the PSN offered in 2011. We cut the list down to the ten best games, which we've presented below. All ten games are worth being in your PSN library, though the further down the list you go, the better the games get! So if you only have a limited amount of funds but want to sample some of PSN's finest, here's a great place to start.



All title screens tell us to "push start," but the best ones make it seem like a privilege instead of an order. Maybe they present stylized versions of the game's heroes fit to frame (Batman: Arkham City); maybe they foreshadow a key scene in the plot (Portal 2); maybe they cleverly display high scores and seamlessly transition into gameplay (Jetpack Joyride). Here are the title screens that made us want to push start this year.



2011 was a banner year for game trailers, with companies pitching a range of games across the industry's most diverse group of platforms since the mushrooming of personal computers in the early '80s. It was a year of terrific highs and bizarre lows, of selling cinematic fantasies that would never match gameplay and capturing gameplay in the most evocative and excitable moments. These are the five best and worst video game trailers.




This time of year, every gaming site is offering up the top games of 2011. While IGN is also taking this approach, we also decided to do something a little different. Who better to call out some of the best games of the year than the people who are actually making the games. We asked some of the top game developers (at least those who had time to take a breath fromtight production schedules) to name their top three favorite games of this year. The only caveat was that they couldn't name one of their own titles. Any platform was open for discussion.



2011's biggest blockbuster games kind of kicked our asses. We fell off cliffs in Uncharted 3, had our squads blown to bits in Battlefield 3 and were burned to death by lava in Super Mario 3D Land. That's right, even though we're supposed to be pros, we aren't afraid to admit that we sucked at video games in 2011. What about you? Do you have the guts to admit you sucked, too?



Some game developers like to push the envelope. Others prefer to light it on fire and dance around chanting unintelligible tributes to eldritch deities. We appreciate both methods when the end result is a heaping pile of cool insanity. The usual glut of vanilla gaming offerings made an appearance, but 2011 didn't skimp on the bizarre either. In a year full of risk taking and wild experimentation, developers churned out a bold sampling of the weirdest, most unusual projects we've seen yet. From the risque and profane to the outright peculiar, here are eight of the oddest games of 2011.



Just because gamers generally consider the peak of fashion to be whatever shirt is on Woot.com today, doesn't mean we can't recognize when our gaming heroes are dressed like garbage. Here are 2011's video game fashion catastrophes.





Welcome to another edition of IGN's annual Console Showdown. What's the deal? Each year we pit the games of each console in a battle royale to determine which system had the best line-up over the last 12 months. To be very clear – this analysis is not about hardware or services, it's about games and games alone.

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