GOTY 2012
A few points about lists and this year's games in general:
1) A kind of "top etc" lists are useless without some kind of context, that is, just listing stuff out without any kind of explanation. This seems like an obvious point, but it took me a while to accept. I loved Rock Paper Shotgun's advent calendar style list of best games of the year, a good example of doing it right.
2) Should games be judged by how well they actually work as well the merits of the game itself? This came up this year with X-Com, which I loved but the PS3 version is buggy as shit. There isn't really a comparison to make with other mediums. You don't go to a movie theater and the movie keeps freezing up and needs to be restarted (and if it does, it's probably not the directors fault). In the individual case of X-Com, I've decided to judge it on the game as a whole and not the technical issues.
3) A lot of 2012 games I haven't played yet. and that's just ten of them...