Yes, it is finally 2012. The year that the Mayan calendar promises that we will see the end of all life on Earth as we know it. With that in mind, this will most likely be the last top ten games of the year list that I will ever get to post on this site, so I should probably try to make it a good one.

There are so many amazing games that were released this year, it’s hard to narrow it down to just ten, but I will try my best. So here it is: my top ten games of 2011.

Hit the jump for the full list.

Yes this is technically a game from 2010, but as it was released only a few days before the beginning of 2011 I feel safe including it. Released first on the Xbox Live Indie Channel and later on Steam, Cthulhu Saves the world is part Phantasy Star and part Lovecraft. The chaos bringer Cthulhu must regain his powers so that he may take control of the Earth once more.

The writing is extremely witty and the gameplay harkens back to early RPGs like Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy. It’s no surprise then that the team behind this game, Zeboyd Games, is taking the helm on the Penny Arcade game series.

Produced in 60 days, The Binding of Isaac is a masterful creation from the twisted mind of Edmund McMillen, half of the team behind Super Meat Boy. Playing as a Rouge-like Zelda-style rpg, Isaac has you traveling through the dungeon-like basement as the titular character tries to escape his insanely religious mother from killing him. As he travels down, you begin to understand the deep seeded psychosis that she has instilled in him. It comes off as a darkly poignant story, especially when you hear McMillen talk about his personal life.

The art style is amazing and the game is properly challenging. When you die, however, your character is permanently dead, meaning you have to start the game all over again. With randomly generated dungeons and a fairly generous learning curve, however, the game never feels unfair. It’s a game that you can die in and feel fairly good about it.

Visceral Games has a somewhat shady track record. Dead Space was an amazing game but Dante’s Inferno was, let’s say, not good. Dead Space 2 could have been a disaster but it turned out to be substantially better than the original. The action was more frenzied, the sound design was improved and the set pieces were a lot of fun. It proved the staying power of the franchise and, if nothing else, made me extremely excited to see what Dead Space 3 will have in store for us.

Of all of the games on this list, You Don’t Know Jack is probably the one I’ve invested the most amount of time into. Being a huge fan of both the original games and the web series that Jellyvision produced a few years ago, I was more than excited to play this new iteration. With a ton of episodes on the disc, and about 40 extra available to download, there is a lot of staying power to this title. Playing with friends is still a lot of fun and the questions are still hilarious. Even if there are a few problems with it, You Don’t Know Jack is still an amazingly fun time.

It’s no secret that I have a love affair with the Serious Sam series. It’s the natural evolution of the Duke Nukem franchise, only these games are actually funny. So, I was extremely interested when indie developer Mommy’s Best Games was signed on to help produce a game for the Serious Sam indie series. While all of the games in the Serious Sam indie series were fantastic, Double D has enemies who are composed of stacks of pancakes with vuvuzelas sticking out of them…Just think about that for a minute.

It doesn’t hurt that the gameplay is extremely addicting, as well. Stacking as many guns onto each other as you can helps to vary the gameplay up a lot and makes for a really addictive gameplay experience. Mommy’s Best Games is a developer that everyone needs to look into.

In this day and age, not a lot of people “get” the Aliens franchise. It was a series that started with one of the definitive horror films of all time and the sequel produced one of the greatest action films of all time. The last two pure Alien films were…less than perfect and from there the franchise has been spun out into so many directions it’s hard to follow. Aliens: Infestation, however, brings the series back to the roots, acting as a direct sequel to Aliens.

While developer WayForward had a less than stellar year with BloodRayne: Betrayal, Aliens: Infestation nearly makes up for it. With stellar level, sound and character design, as well as a clear knowledge of what makes Aliens such a brilliant franchise, Infestation is must own for any fan of the series.

This is an example of a game that had absolutely no business existing. The original Portal was such a brilliant game that only took a few hours to complete, that it didn’t need a sequel at all. Who really wanted to return to that world?

While we might not have realized it, Valve knew that we actually did. They took everything we loved about the original and amped it up. They created new characters like Wheately and Cave Johnson and made them into some of the most interesting and funny characters all year. The gameplay added a lot of new elements and there was more room to experiment. While we only got a glimpse of the background of Aperture Science in the original, Portal 2 showed us more than we could have ever wanted and I couldn’t be happier that they did.

Hear me out: your character, Tanner, is in a coma for most of the game. As a character, he doesn’t know that, but you as the player do. He’s created his own San Francisco in his mind to psychically jump between other drivers. As he’s lying in a hospital bed, he’s hearing all about the crimes being committed in San Francisco. In his minds version of San Francisco, he’s solving the crimes but in the real world, they are going unsolved.

Got all of that? Driver: San Francisco takes a ridiculous premise and makes it completely make sense. Yes, the story is absurd when you actually say it, but it is far more original than almost any other game released this year. After the abysmal failure of Driv3r, Ubisoft took some serious time off and developed one of the best, if not best, games in the series to date.

The mechanics of jumping between other drivers works amazingly and allows for a lot of smaller stories to be told along the way. The driving, while a bit rubber-bandy, works great and the world feels full, and it helps that the game has, possibly the best ending to a video game all year. Seriously, you need to see it to believe it. It’s not an easy task to bring a series back from the dead, but Driver: San Francisco pulls it off in spectacular form.

Shadows of the Damned production group is, essentially, the modern super group of video games. Directed by Suda 51 of Killer 7 and No More Heroes fame, produced by Shinji Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil and Devil May Cry, featuring a soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka, famed for his work with Silent Hill and published by EA, this game should have been an absolute hit…but in short, the sales were abysmal.

It’s a shame, too, because Shadows of the Damned is a game that most people could probably enjoy. You play as Garcia “F******” Hotspur as he travels through hell to get his girlfriend back. The gameplay is, essentially, Resident Evil 4, with a few tweaks that make it a bit easier to play. The writing is genuinely funny, though there are a few too many genital jokes at times, and the world is dark and gorgeous.

What makes it amazing, however, is how knowing it is about everything in the world. Shadows of the Damned realizes it’s a b-horror movie and it embraces it with total love. Suda 51’s style of humor fits perfectly within the world and the gameplay and soundtrack help to create a near perfect experience. While it’s unclear as to why it didn’t sell well, one could most likely infer that EA’s reluctance to push Shadows was the main reason for its sales bomb. That still doesn’t take away from it being a nearly perfect title.

A confession: I never really like the Saint’s Row series. The original Saint’s Row was, basically, a poor mans GTA with a slight difference in humor. Saint’s Row 2, while much funnier, was bogged down by poor mission design that required you to trudge through a series of monotonous side quests before you could actually advance the main story. If Saint’s Row the Third has been more of that, I would have found it nearly impossible to play.

Thankfully, Volition Games re-invented the series from the ground up. They changed almost everything that was wrong with the previous titles and created one of the best games of the year. Gone is the bad humor and boring mission structure. It’s replaced by a game where you can play as a toilet and use the Mega Buster from Mega Man as your weapon, while jumping out of a helicopter to Kanye West’s “Power”.

Saint’s Row the Third is insane, but in the best possible way. New characters keep things interesting throughout and the new upgrade system allows you to become a god amongst men. Even if your mission is a simple shoot out, Volition almost always tries to make the situation fun and exciting. Nothing is boring and we need more games like that.

Saint’s Row knows exactly what it is and doesn’t try to be anything else. SR3 has created a new bar for all open-world crime games and it’s hard to imagine anyone but Volition being able to trump Saint’s Row the Third.