My gamer of the year nominee would be Assassins Creed III. Although this may look like the most obvious and the least original answer, let me motivate my choice.
The space you get in this game is uncomparable with the previous games or other games of the genre, the opportunities of constantly interacting with your environnement is very well done and refreshing for the AC- series (I mention the series, but only in a wider aspect for motivating why I'm picking this game
)
You can pet the animals on the streets whole day long, you can go hunting for some easy cash, randomly storm a fort, help people on the streets. You are just free to go. Another thing is the smooth movements with the environnement; the tree- climbing, the climbing on buildings, dodging people and objects...
The people in the streets that you walk, or in the frontier also seem to have a goal in their life in this game. They're not just living objects that obstruct you when you want to get away, they have a life as well (although they still like to get in your way, trolls will be trolls I guess).
And then there's the nature and the cities, which were a joy to run around in just admiring the view with the sun glaring through the leaves... Beautifull.
The ship- combat was a nice add to the whole and kept the whole thing variated (and it also looked awesome)
The only thing that was a bit of a down moment with the game was the ending of the story- line. I can't understand that you end such a story with such a lame ending (not mentioning it because I don't want to spoil it for other people)
So as far as I'm concerned this game gets a 9,5/10. Because nothing is perfect (lame hippie talk, I would gave it a 10 but the ending wasn't good, so that's why it became a 9,5
)
