Ten for 10

At first, I was not a fan of many of the changes made to Mass Effect 2 from Mass Effect 1. The focus from RPG to Third-Person Shooter slightly annoyed me but as I got deeper into the game that slowly went away and all that I was left with was a sense of awe.
 
Few games can make me replay them straight after completion, fewer can make me replay them on the hardest difficulty and even fewer can make me buy all the DLC (not counting item packs).
 
BioWare are masters of creating engrossing stories and deep, fleshed out universes. Reading the codex you get a real sense of the care and effort that was put into making the world as believable as possible.
 
What really put ME2 in the top spot was the crew members. Each of them had a unique personality as well as convincing motivations for why they were joining Shepard's suicide mission. When I heard Lair of the Shadow Broker gave a deeper insight into the backstory of the crew I bought it immediately. I can only hope Mass Effect 3 retains some of these characters that I've grown to love (I'm looking at you Mordin) instead of bringing in a whole new cast but I trust BioWare to deliver the goods.

Super Meat Boy was very close to clinching the top spot in my list. To me, it's game design at its purest: simple to play but with infinite challenge. Unlike other games on this list, I never once felt cheated by SMB. If you die in the game it is entirely your fault, you weren't good enough.
 
The genius of SMB is that you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even the most difficult and rage-inducing levels can be overcome if you replay it enough time. It may be 10, 25 or 500 tries but eventually the level will become second nature to you. That is excluding The Kid warp zone which I will NEVER beat, ever.
 
Team Meat need as much praise as they can get. It's rare to see a game with such heart and I have a lot of appreciation for that. How many other developers would get into a twitter argument with PETA and then proceed to put a character called Tofu Boy into their within a day.
 
I don't normally buy games twice but I made an exception for SMB because I wanted to support the developers and the promise of level editor was too strong to resist. Who knows, if user created levels are any good then this could well be my 2011's 2010 game of the year.

I'll start out by saying that I don't think Civ V is as good as Civ IV. The lengths they've gone to simplify some aspects of the game are good for the series as a whole but as a person who spent ridiculous amounts of time in the previous iterations of the franchise, the changes are not for me.
 
That doesn't mean it's not a fantastic game. The UI tweaks that they made are brilliant and give the game a sleek, boardgame aesthetic which works perfectly. One more turn addiction is still in full effect as you watch minutes turn to hours trying to win a war against Ghandi. Damn you Sid Meier!

I'm only on chapter 4 but I already know that Brotherhood surpasses ACII in every aspect, that's without even touching the multiplayer. Ubisoft Montreal have once again created a beautiful city for Ezio to run, jump and face-stab in. Seriously, the kill animations in this game are astounding. Seeing people get stabbed in the face should never be this enjoyable but it is.

Class-based shooters are a genre that I can always get into because of the inherent variety they have. Monday Night Combat adds an additional layer of complexity with the waves of robots coming towards your base and upgradable turrets scattered around the map. All that combined with a TF2-like art style made MNC a fun multiplayer game in which there was always something to do.

This is probably the most surprising entry into my list. From the outside it looks like another tower defence game, which it is, but it's the best tower defence game I've ever played. I only learnt about the game after watching the QL but seeing the table-top style made me want to find out more. The core tower defence gameplay is solid but what Toy Soldiers excels at is giving you greater control over individual pieces, which can be they key factor in a level.

Hearing the Tested crew continually go on about Minecraft, I had to go find out for myself what all the fuss was about. The answer: Lego. I think every person, to an extent, has a childhood itch of creating things with building block and Minecraft scratches that itch with full force.

Not a fan of the singleplayer campaign and having little interest in getting slaughtered online, the reason I still play the COD games is that it's one of two series' my brothers are willing to play (the other being FIFA which I don't care for). Playing co-op zombies or playing split-screen multiplayer is a hell of a lot of fun when you can shout at the person your playing against.

Another great platformer with a killer soundtrack, VVVVVV's gravity-reversing mechanic set it apart from many games in the genre.

I haven't really played many games that came out this year as I was busy clearing my backlog from 2009 (something that will continue into 2011) so Chime is here to fill my tenth position. A nice little puzzler with an impressive music selection.