All Skyrim-comparing aside, I couldn't get to care even a tiny bit about the story, and I didn't like the combat either (yes, I think Skyrim's combat is ten times better than the mindless button-mashing of Amalur), so the only two good points of the game are not even there, as far as I'm concerned.
Then, as the review said, the grindy, MMO quests really ruined it for me.Them, and the terrible graphics.

Maybe all these are true, but, as others have said, the issues in Skyrim can be fixed with mods, and frankly, Kingdoms isn't very good.
The combat is alright, but the whole thing feels waaay too much like a console-adapted single-player MMO, if that makes any sense.
Yes, I know that it was originally meant to be one, but that doesn't excuse the horrifyingly bad camera controls that look like they're MEANT to be used with dual sticks, the average voice acting, the dated graphics (First thing that popped into my mind: Guild Wars, and that's a four-year old MMORPG) and the whole..empty feel this has.
There is a lot to explore, and the environments are creative enough, but..I just feel like there's no point.
I just think that it would be better off as a DMC-GoW fantasy clone rather than an epic, open-world RPG.

There's also another issue with difficulty: what actually gets harder if you crank it up?
Most of the time, the answer would be that you have less health/ammo and that your enemies can take more damage...but is that REALLY harder or does it just take longer?
Personally, I think that the AI should also get smarter if you raise the difficulty.
Take CoD games for example..the enemies have the tactical knowledge of a frog, no matter how high the difficulty is.
With all the billions that IW/Activision have, can they really not afford to spend some more time into making the enemies do something as basic as TAKING COVER?

A choice can be biased even if you "clearly and rationally" explain how you came to that choice..especially if half of what you say simply isn't true, and frankly, I think my arguments are far more and make far more sense than "Our version of Skyrim had bugs and we're Portal 2 fans so we chose that one".
And, you bloody idiots, if you're a journalist of any sort, YOUR personal enjoyment of the game counts for nothing.
You have to look at them in an objective way, I thought that much was obvious.You don't see sports commentators going "ooh nooo!" when their team loses a match, do you?That's what fans are for.
Plus, there's the 'personal' games of the year category if you want to drool over YOUR favorite game.
If you look at it objectively, you have endless hours of gameplay that SOMETIMES don't work (I still maintain that it's not that buggy, I never had a game-breaking bug) versus a few hours of polished gameplay that is EQUALLY fun.
Just by taking into account the hours of fun you get per dollar there's no comparison.And yes, that is something important.
If all games were like Portal 2 (aka a few hours of great fun for quite a few dollars) the game industry would be deader than an exploded zombie.

DMC4, "woefully stale"?
What?Didn't you give it a 9?Are we still talking about the game that let you transform a suitcase into a magic-powered minigun-equipped gunship?
I can't take your arguments for the new DmC game seriously if you say things like that..

Oh come ooooonn!Meters?Pausing time?Are we still talking about a STEALTH game?
Hitman games have always been about stealth...the originality came from the fact that you couldn't go run n' gun, but had to use your brain and not your reflexes to finish every level.
Why would they have "room cleared" messages?That's just stupid..guards have intercoms, you can't just make the other guards forget about you.Having different levels of alertness is fine, but when everyone goes back to "basic guard mode" after you shoot everyone inside a room is just silly.
I get it, everyone swarming on me after I was exposed annoyed me a lot too, I admit it.But this is not the way to deal with it.
Dammit.And I was looking forward to this

I'm pretty amazed at how nobody noticed how the Last of Us trailer was so..well, good.
It's certainly better than the GTAV trailer, in my opinion.
From the moment I watched "I am Legend" I knew that, sooner or later, they were going to make a game about one or two people trying to survive in a city where no other human beings could be found.
If they manage to pull this off right (and, keeping in mind that ND are the creators of the Uncharted series, there's a pretty high chance that they will) I'm going to be very happy.

Whaaaat?Oh come on.
Portal 2 gets way more credit than it deserves.
It's just a friggin puzzle game with a backstory.
It does everything it's supposed to do right, no doubt about it, BUT would you ever consider a cooking sim with huge levels, shiny graphics, ambitious design and superb voice acting for Game of the Year, even if it was the most perfect cooking sim of all time?

And yes, lenght IS an issue, especially when you consider the cost.
In my eyes this is simply not a full game, multiplayer or not.
Portal 2 was very enjoyable, but the other games on the list were epic, in the real sense of the word, not the "omg epeeeec" sense.
Plus, you can't just blame Skyrim for having bugs, that's just weak.

Of course it has bugs, it's twenty times the size of Portal 2 and it is, you know, open-ended (Portal 2, on the other hand, is quite linear, so getting anything wrong there is really hard), any game has bugs when it has that much content (and, worth noting, I didn't come across ANY problems with it in 150+ hours).
Glorified puzzle game < Huge epic RPG

Honestly, I'm not being a fanboy here, any other game on the list would've been fine by me, but this choice seemed to be a little biased to me.

Maybe the fact that Rayman costs (almost) as much as its competitors was a contributing factor to the game's poor sales..
Which would you rather buy if you only had money for one: an epic, open-world RPG that lasts hundreds of hours or a hardcore 2D platofrmer that lasts..well, much less?
Just sayin'

Very nice guide, although the game's weird lack of scaling means that now my character can actually one-hit dragons even on Hard, so sadly now nobody poses a challenge to him anymore..
Also, the Blades tell you to kill Paarth?How?Why?