As part of our annual Buyer’s Guide to Games, we present our annual awards for Traditional Game of the Year, Electronic Game of the Year, and Best New Game in various categories. Here are the most recent winners, announced in the December 2011 issue of Games Magazine. Previous years’ winners can be found here.

Traditional (Nonelectronic) Games

Game of the Year: Tikal II: The Lost Temple
(Asmodée Editions; designers: Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling) Read review.

Best New Abstract Strategy Game: Confusion: Espionage and Deception
in the Cold War
(Stronghold Games; designer: Robert Abbott)

Best New Advanced Strategy Game: Die Burgen von Burgund
(The Castles of Burgundy)
(Alea/Funagain; designer: Stefan Feld)

Best New Family Game: Lemming Mafia
(Mayfair Games; designer: Michael Rieneck)

Best New Card Game: Hey Waiter!
(R&R Games; designer: Anthony Rubbo)

Best New Strategy Game: Glen More
(Rio Grande Games; designer: Matthias Cramer)

Best New Party/Manual Dexterity Game: Funfair
(Eggertspiele/Funagain; designers: Inka and Markus Brand, Peter Eggert, Philipp El Alaoui, Friedmann Friese, Michael Rieneck, Martin Schlegel, Stefan Stadler, Tobias Stapelfeldt, and Birgit Stolte)

Best New Puzzle: IQ Twist
(Smart/Tangoes USA; designer: Raf Peeters)

Best New Word Game: Pathwords
(ThinkFun; designer: Derrick Niederman)

Best New Historical Simulation Game: Command and Colors: Napoleonics
(GMT Games; designer: Richard Borg)
 

Electronic Games 

Game of the Year: Portal 2
(Valve, Xbox/PS3/PC, Rated: E10) Read review.

Best New Action/Arcade Game: L.A. Noire
(Rockstar; 360/PS3; Rated: M) 

Best New Adventure/Role-Playing Game: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
(Square-Enix; Xbox/PS3/PC; Rated: M)

Best New Sports/Driving Game: Dirt 3
(Codemasters; Xbox/PS3/PC; Rated: T)

Best New Strategy Game: Shogun 2: Total War
(Sega; PC; Rated: T)

Best New Mobile/Handheld Game: Cut the Rope Series
(Zeptolab; iOS/Android)

In 1999 and 2005, our Games of the Year were Torres and Australia, respectively. Superb design partners Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling have again found the key to success in a very competitive year. Their latest multi-choice masterpiece has that wide appeal we demand from our top selection.

Your archaeologist starts outside an emerging Temple with several outer hexagonal rooms already excavated. Incongruously, you need keys matching door colors to enter recently excavated rooms.

Seed the six sites along the board’s flanking river with facedown random tiles. Sail clockwise on the river. Collect a tile where you stop, and use it. Tile awards include: (a) Keys. Keep them to open doors, or permanently store them to earn end-of-round points for sets. You must discard any key to sail around the river’s toll corner. (b) A Secret Passage, which may be spent to enter a room you cannot otherwise access. (c) Examine the top three facedown room hexagons and add one to a vacant Temple space. (d) Choose one of the top three Treasure tiles. (e) Select one of the top three Special cards. These offer privileges or ways to score extra points. (f) Add the top faceup Sanctuary hexagon to a vacant space. These are accessible from adjacent rooms’ doors.

Continue turns by moving your archaeologist to a room and put your flag there, scoring extra points if no other flags are there. The doors in that room, plus doors of matching color elsewhere where you have a flag, earn points equal to their total. Placing a flag at a sanctuary’s vacant space earns the illustrated reward.

Temple placements often allow attentive puzzle-minded players many opportunities to reap benefits long before opponents. Optionally, sell Treasures for current points when you sail around either of two specially marked corners. Selling amends the point values of all Treasure categories. This patient, long-term stratagem can thrust seemingly lost players to victory in thrillingly close contests.

The first round ends with all tiles taken. Reseed them for a second and final round. Highest score is Excavator Extraordinaire.—John J. McCallion (originally reviewed in May 2011 GAMES)

Portal 2
Valve, Xbox/PS3/PC, Rated: E10

Portal started as a school project, and was published as added content for Valve’s Orange Box compilation. These humble origins belie the heights to which it eventually would rise, and the original is now considered one of the classics of game design. Every inch of Portal was meticulously crafted, from the levels and puzzles to the outstanding storyline and voice acting. Although the game could be finished in about two hours, they were two of the best hours in gaming history.

The premise was loaded with potential. As in most action games, you run around a threatening landscape carrying a gun in a first-person perspective. The gun, however, doesn’t shoot bullets—it shoots portals. The first shot opens an entry portal. The second shot opens an exit portal. You can then walk through the first portal and emerge from the second. This simple element, when combined with carefully constructed environments, sets up an astonishing array of puzzles.

Portal 2 builds upon all of these elements to create a far more elaborate set of challenges. There is a heavier emphasis on story and humor, with outstanding voice acting matched to terrific comedy writing. It’s a larger, longer game, with fresh ways to interact with the environment. The new features include “excursion tunnels” to transport objects on a kind of enclosed conveyor belt, “aerial faith plates” that bounce you around a level (they require a “leap of faith” because you’re never quite sure where they’ll leave you), and various gels to boost speed, add bounce, or create portal-friendly surfaces.

The designers had a tough act to follow in creating Portal 2, and they accomplished the task with wit, style, and imagination. The game is just different enough to make it more interesting and challenging, but the solutions are never overly complex. They require analysis of the environment and the goals, and then a logical application of the tools at hand.—Thomas L. McDonald

Previous Game of the Year awards