• Posted December 20th, 2011 at 01:57 EDT by Don Oliveira
• 4 Comments

The puzzle genre isn’t strong enough to hold its own category, and neither is platformer, but that’s not why we merged them. Take a look at the nominees and you’ll notice that almost every game on this list is both a puzzle and platformer in genre. That being said, we’ve seen some of the most innovative, inventive, and downright intense games this year belonging to this category.

The nominees for Best Puzzle/Platform game of 2011 are:

Portal 2:   Developer: Valve   |   Publisher: Valve

LittleBigPlanet 2:   Developer: Media Molecule   |   Publisher: SCEA

Patapon 3:   Developer: Japan Studio   |   Publisher: SCE

Limbo:   Developer: Playdead   |   Publisher: Playdead

Catherine:   Developer: Persona Team   |   Publisher: Atlus

 

…and the winner is:

 

Portal 2 - with 45 out of 71 community votes

I hate to call it a landslide, but our community has clearly chosen Portal 2 as the dominant Puzzle/Platform game of 2011. LittleBigPlanet 2 followed behind, but it seems that Portal 2 is still being talked about to this day—and with good reason. This sequel to Valve’s hit 2007 single-player first-person puzzle-platformer upped the ante in every way. The single-player campaign was twice as long, and we even got a whole separate cooperative multiplayer campaign to play through online, or in split-screen with a friend. The PlayStation 3 version even brought with it SteamWorks functionality to a console for the first time. Add in the return of GlaDOS, a standing ovation-worthy performance by Stephen Merchant  as Wheatley, and even crazier puzzle design, and it’s no wonder why Portal 2 is the best Puzzle/Platform game of the year—and probably this generation.

We would like to congratulate the team behind Portal 2 for creating the best Puzzle/Platform game in 2011 as voted by the PSU community.