1. Minecraft
It's a big, low-res world in which you walk around, pick things up and make other things out of them. Meanwhile, animals will try to eat you. The end. The complexity comes from you: Minecraft's universe is endlessly reconfigurable, reflecting your own imagination.
--LEV GROSSMAN
2. Portal 2
The first Portal delivered an AI antagonist for the ages in the moody GLaDOS; the follow-up peels back the layers of her psyche to show us, poignantly, how she got that way.
--EVAN NARCISSE
3. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Top-shelf game mechanics, the sharpest motion controls yet on the Wii and a watercolor aesthetic that evokes a journey through an Impressionist masterpiece.
--E.N.
4. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
Series developer Naughty Dog peers into history's cracks and teases out the conspiracies; here they involve Lawrence of Arabia, the Rub' al-Khali desert and the lost city Iram of the Pillars.
--MATT PECKHAM
5. Batman: Arkham City
Epically scaled with ferocious fight sequences and spot-on characterizations, this Bat-artifact ranks among the best Dark Knights any medium--film, comics, television--has yet offered.
--E.N.
6. Bastion
Civilization lies fractured in this bluesy science-fantasy adventure, which commands nostalgia and metaphor so deftly, you may feel you're coming of age all over again.
--E.N.
7. Skyrim
Take one part George R.R. Martin, two parts Beowulf and a dash of Grand Theft Auto and out pops Skyrim, a breathtaking role-playing game in which you play a zero-to-hero type with evolving dragon-powered abilities.
--M.P.
8. Dark Souls
A brutally difficult--and hugely satisfying--old-school action game that forces you to choose between cashing in eponymous "souls" (hoovered up from the bodies of slain enemies) and losing them if you die before doing so. Every death is a wager.
--M.P.
9. Sword & Sworcery
Maybe the most beautiful mobile game of the year, Sword & Sworcery (that extra w isn't a typo) is a slowed-down, chilled-out D&D-type adventure: imagine Georges Seurat trying his hand at a fantasy role-playing game.
--L.G.
10. Battlefield 3
Darker, grittier and more novelistic than the fall's other big first-person military combat game, Modern Warfare 3. If they were Spielberg movies, MW3 would be Indiana Jones and Battlefield 3 would be Saving Private Ryan.
--L.G.