There's already a thread dedicated to last year's most disappointing games... I'd like to counter this with 2011's most surprisingly good games.

Now, this doesn't have to be the best of the best of the best, but these were games you didn't expect to be very good, or games that other people or critics said were bad, and yet you gave them a try and walked away rather impressed or with a new personal favorite.

I'll kick start this list off with MY personal best surprises of 2011.

Shadows of the Damned-

The creators of Resident Evil and No More Heroes team up with the revered composer of Silent Hill for one of the most original games of the year. And yet it was a colossal flop. Now, I certainly don't think it's as good as, well, Resident Evil 4, Silent Hill, or No More Heroes, it still oozed a style and passion all its own. Shadows of the Damned's take on limbo, and love, was an odd mix of crass dick jokes and loving sincerity and drama that was both emotional, fun, funny, scary, and much more. It was simply an experience unlike many other games and it left a lasting impression on me.

El Shaddai-

How many Bible games exist? Like, two or three? How many are good? Yeah, I didn't think so. El Shaddai is a work of biblical fiction derived from the non-canon Apocrypha tomes that tells the story of Enoch and a pre-fall Lucifer tasked with seeking out and bringing seven fallen angels to justice for misleading the people away from God. The game is not preachy, but rather introspective, and the combat system is great, but the real beauty of the game is its utterly unsurpassed visual style. Everyone MUST play this game, if only to see one of the strongest examples of games as art the medium has ever produced.

Alice: Madness Returns-

The original American McGee's Alice was a cult hit on the PC, though many blew the game, and its sequel, off as "Alice in Wonderland... just darker" and called it a gimmick. Those people are idiots that most certainly never experienced the games and peeled back the layers of some of the most lurid, thought-provoking, complex, and mature writing in any video game. Alice: Madness Returns is a very compelling look at the psyche of a woman who underwent great trauma and is trying to solve a murder mystery, yet the only way to do so is to journey into her own mind and sift through her disjointed memories and fantasies to piece together the puzzle of who killed her family. This is done against a backdrop of jaw-dropping artistic visuals that truly let the artists go wild, along with some highly clever puzzles and platforming sections. While the pacing is a bit hit and miss (most levels last far too long), it's still a journey packed with memorable set pieces, memorable characters, memorable twists, and a memorable ending, and it quite nearly became my favorite game of the year (if a few late entries didn't dazzle me just a tad bit more).

Two Worlds II-

You know what sucks? Two Words 1. I mean, really, that's one of the worst games ever made. If Skyrim was considered buggy, TW1 was in a league all its own, to the point that it was SO badly made it was both charming and depressing. It was a pitiable game that you could tell they had so much passion for, yet so little talent. It was the equivalent of a child's macaroni necklace for their mother... gaudy, broken, yet their heart was in the right place.

Enter Two Worlds 2, a game that, silly name notwithstanding, is so much better than its predecessor that comparing the two is like comparing Michael Jordon to Stephen Hawkings on the athletic ability chart. Two Worlds 2 is an improvement in every last single aspect of the game; it's music is phenomenal, its story is epic, its quests are memorable and often hilarious, its characters charming and witty, its graphics lush and vivid, its gameplay deep and refined, its magic crafting system possibly the deepest ever invented, and its world is vast and nearly overwhelming. While the main character sounds a bit silly (growl more, why dontcha) and combat is a tad sloppy, it just is jaw-dropping how much better this game is, enough so that I honestly enjoyed my time with it more so than with Dragon Age 2 and even Skyrim. It has some major flaws, mind you, but it also has that same sense of earnestness the original game had, but now it's just far more easy to forgive the flaws because the rest of the game is so much more competent. Give it a shot!