Dark Souls – Namco Bandai & From Software (10.04.11)

This game is insane. If you ever played dark fantasy action- role-playing game, Demon Souls, you’ll probably know exactly what to expect in the spiritual sequel. However Dark Souls is deliberately difficult; it may the toughest game out there. There’s no middle ground here. You will either turn it off after the first hour (because your nerves are totally frayed) or let the bad times roll with the good ones and play on. Where other games give you a fighting chance and hold you by the hand to get you to the end, Dark Souls makes you work like you have never done before. Are you tough enough to step up to the challenge?

Minecraft – Minecraft (11.11.11)

Minecraft is almost a household word.

The core gameplay revolves around construction and it is totally addictive. The game world is essentially made of cubical blocks arranged in a fixed grid pattern representing different materials such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, and tree trunks. While the players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. The player can gather these material “blocks” and place them elsewhere, thus potentially creating various constructions. Currently, there are no set goals to achieve in Minecraft, so the game cannot be won. The fantasy worlds you can create are the prize.

Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson the genius behind this says the development team will continue to update the game with new features after the official release (11.11.11). It is not your usual release knowing that it already has nearly 2 million people already enjoying the Beta game. Anyone can play!

Batman: Arkham City – Warner Bros & Eidos (10.18.11)

The demo released October 18th, giving us a pretty sweet idea of what to expect from “Batman: Arkham City” in terms of stealth gameplay, free flight and combat.

Rocksteady has done wonderful work with this engine. The outdoor environments are absolutely fantastic. You can see Gotham’s skyline for what looks like miles and miles. The animation is incredibly smooth, especially when Batman starts fighting off thugs in combat. The other characters, including Two-Face, the Joker, Harley Quinn and Catwoman are fully developed characters. The audio sounds terrific due to the professional voice cast of the animated series veterans.

Batman: Arkham City is, hands down viewed as one off the best superhero game so far, a solid contender for one of the best games this year.