#2 Bastion
Annie Dennisdóttir Wright, Features Editor: My runner-up GOTY for 2011 is Bastion, the first title from Supergiant Games. I played this game with a friend in my living room, all in one sitting. We passed the controller back and forth over the course of a handful of hours, because we knew that we could not leave The Kid hanging. The gameplay mechanisms are unique, the combat is actually fun, and there are just enough platformer elements to keep things interesting. The music is fantastic (so much so that I was compelled to record a cover of one of the songs which I will not link to here because it's hideously embarrassing to admit to being that much of a fangirl in the first place), and art is nothing short of breathtaking. This, of course, says nothing about the emotional impact of the game, the difficult decisions the player is forced to make, and the resultant finale.
So, why wasn't Bastion my GOTY? You know, I don't really have a good answer for that question, save that I just really love repeatedly murdering dragons, and that is pretty much the one thing that Bastion didn't give me.