What makes a great game, you will probably get every different answer possible from every different gamer and judging from my list of games I’d give half of them myself. I guess this will go in no particular order but I’ll start with my favourite because it’s the first that springs to mind.

Portal 2 (PS3)

Portal 2 had a lot to live up to, the first Portal was just a little bonus on Valve’s Orange Box which stole the show with its dark sense of humour and mind bending physics puzzles, and when you stand out against Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, two games which are often considered as best in genre, you know you have a winner on your hands. So after a short but sweet first game, which seemed just the right length, not over staying its welcome and using a wide range of puzzles you would have been forgiven for wondering what else they could possibly do with Portal.

Portal 2 picks up many, many years later, your character has been in stasis and you’re awoken by Wheatley, an AI core who is responsible for looking after the test subjects. There has been a problem and he’s helping you to escape Aperture Science, and a wonderful introduction sequence which shows off the vastness of Aperture and the state which it has fallen in to since you destroyed GLaDOS in the first game, and shows despite its age the Source Engine can still manage to give us fantastic gaming environments.

From here you are thrust in to the puzzle solving and mad humour of the world of Portal all over again, but this time with a much deeper and fleshed out story, and plenty of new elements to keep you entertained and challenged for the duration. And once you’re done with the single player story there is a co-op multiplayer mode for you to enjoy with a friend, which isn’t just the usual single player with an extra person co-op, it is an entirely new game, and with the recent addition of a Downloadable add-on, free of charge, there’s hours more fun to be had. Wonderful game, well worth a purchase if you’ve not yet played and worth seeking out the original Portal too.

Bulletstorm (Xbox 360)

Now Bulletstorm is one of those stereotypical video games, full of shooting, gore, bad language and juvenile humour, but you know what? It’s bloody good fun. The story isn’t original, it isn’t clever, but it does what it does. A group of mercenaries on a mission of revenge, attack the ship of the person they’ve been pursuing and in the battle they both crash land on an alien planet and you have to fight your way across the ruins of this baddie infested world to find and kill him, so far so whatever right? Well the fun lies in the creativity of the kills, the stupidity of the dialogue, the crassness of the insults, you can just have a laugh playing this game. Yes, there are beautiful graphics and well designed areas, and all of that, but this isn’t a game where the story or the design matters that much, you’re just there to kick some arse and have a laugh doing it.

The multiplayer has more of the creativity and fun in the kills, get online with some friends and laugh as you gang bang a corpse in to a Venus fly-trap for extra points.

Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)

So how do you follow up Super Mario Galaxy, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 it seems, which improved on the original, so Super Mario 3D Land had a lot to live up after those 2 games. Did it manage it? No, of course it did, did you expect it to on a hand held with a tiny screen, even if it is in 3D? So despite having a difficult standard to live up to Super Mario 3D Land acquitted itself rather well. They were clever in designing this game, it doesn’t have the expansive worlds of the home console siblings but it does have levels which you can complete in a couple of minutes while on the bus, or in a waiting room, it does have cleverly designed platforming and good use of 3D. It manages to feel retro and modern at the same time, taking design elements of everything from the very first Super Mario games, with a lot owing to Super Mario Bros. 3 from the NES, and melds it with the elements that have been dominant in the series since Super Mario 64. I wouldn’t call it an entirely new experience but it does do what it does extremely well.

As a game play experience, after recent Nintendo 2D platformers, you may be left wondering where the hardcore element has gone. New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns both became so difficult it had many hardened gamers pulling their hair out, but fret not, Super Mario 3D Land may start off very easy, leaving you feeling bereft of challenge, but it soon gets back to the hair pulling difficulty. I used perhaps 50 lives between the start of the game and finishing world 8, after world 8 this has spiralled to almost 500, so give it a go and the challenge will appear.

Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360)

Another game that had a lot to live up to. Batman: Arkham Asylum was widely seen as the best Superhero game ever made, so how Arkham City fare? Well it made everything bigger, we went from an enclosed Asylum to an open world city, it added more villains, more side quests, a bigger story and a second playable character in the form of Catwoman. After a brilliant start where you get to play as Bruce Wayne you dive straight in to being Batman fighting crime in the newly formed Arkham City which takes in mates from the former Arkham Asylum and the Blackwater Prison. You can stealth or fight your way through crowds of bad guys, come up against supervillains aplenty with some very well thought out fights, on in particular has you having to think your way through using all the weaknesses of the character to defeat him.

There’s also a lot of great voice talent on show here, creative character designs and a wonderfully realised city. Overall it’s very near the top of my list of games that must be played this year.

Dead Space 2 (PS3)

Dead Space 2 has probably my favourite start to a video game this year. You’re in a straitjacket, helpless and then you’re attacked by necromorphs, all you can do is run and run as these alien creatures try to kill you. Tense and scary, a wonderful start to a survival horror game. Dead Space vastly opens up the world of the game, from the tight claustrophobic spaces of the original the sequel has a whole world, though in reality you’re back in the tight spaces a lot, but there are more varied environments, great action set pieces and some great scares in this improved sequel. I have to admit I had my worries when they said they were going to focus more on the action than the first game but it really didn’t disappoint. With the bonus of Dead Space: Extraction on the PS3 version, and the add on which shows you what comes of the characters from that game it was a great experience and one I hope continues in style with a third game.

Right now that’s all that comes to mind as my top games, 5’s enough to be getting on with anyway. There are other games which were good but didn’t live up to their predecessors, Uncharted 3 for example, good game, but didn’t reach the heights of the second one. Gears of War 3, technically I would have to say it was a better game than either of the previous two, but despite that, despite actually having some character in its characters, despite looking better and being of a better technical standard it was repetitive and dull. Dead Island promised a lot with it’s cinematic introduction to the world, but when you get to the game itself, it’s badly put together, rather shoddily done, and for a game with a zombie horde that you can, supposedly, kill in very creative ways, it was boring as hell.

Any more I should have put on the list? Some that don’t belong?