Unfortunately, while 2011 was an interesting year for me for a lot of reasons (did I mention that I have published my book? Please buy it!), it wasn’t necessarily because I kept up with my usual music, movies, and video games. I was pretty lazy about picking up new media this past year. I did pick up some, and I will go ahead and choose my favorites of the year, just because it’s tradition. But aside from video games (which is basically my work these days), I only really can list the music (and books) and movies (and TV) that I liked in 2011, not any definitive list of the best of the year. Maybe that defeats the purpose, but I’ll go ahead and list a few of them out anyway.

Music

Radiohead’s The King of Limbs was probably the first new album that I got into this year — I didn’t like it nearly as much as their past work (I liked In Rainbows much better), but it was still a solid offering. Fleet Foxes’ Helplessness Blues was great, I really liked Jay Z and Kanye’s Watch the Throne collaboration, and M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming was another really great album.

Honorable mentions go to Cake’s Showroom of Compassion (a little disappointing, but any Cake album is great in my book), The Decemberists’ The King is Dead, and Childish Gambino’s Camp, which I think is great, but a little overrated, just because of how awesome Community and Donald Glover are even outside of the rhymes.

Books

Oh man — this is really embarrassing, because I didn’t read nearly as much as I was supposed to this year. All I really have for actual 2011 books are the ones I want to read: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, Lev Grossman’s Magician novels, and Ready Player One by the great Ernie Cline. I read Dance of Dragons and thought it was all right. But my favorite books this year, as I’ve said a few times already, are two Warhammer 40k omnibuses by Dan Abnett: Eisenhorn and then Ravenor. The Warhammer 40k setting is so awesome, you guys, and Abnett really knows exactly how to portray it in the most interesting way. Hopefully once I finish with my Warhammer 40k obsession I can get back into some more literary reading.

Movies (and TV)

There are so many great movies I haven’t seen yet this year (Drive, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Shame, The King’s Speech, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), so I probably haven’t even seen the top five movies from 2011 that I liked most. But I did like The Muppets, Source Code, Captain America, Super 8 (probably the best of the year so far for me), and X-men: First Class.

On TV, I did really enjoy The Walking Dead, though not as much as most people, I think. The BBC sitcom Pulling was probably the best thing I saw (it’s on Netflix — I’m not sure when it came out in Britain), but I also liked Community, Parks and Recreation, Damages, Sons of Anarchy, Archer, and Happy Endings.

Video Games

I’ll refer you to Joystiq on this one — my “Best of the Rest” picks will be up in a little bit, and I’ll link it right here when it’s out. [Update: And here it is!]

But in the meantime, here are my top five of the year:

1. Skyrim: I’ve told this story already, but I wasn’t a fan of Oblivion or Morrowind. In those games, the graphics and the bugs got in the way of true immersion in those varied worlds — I never stuck around in them long enough to really enjoy myself. But Skyrim’s revamped engine and interface smoothes over almost all of my issues with it, and what’s left, then, is a really fantastic, filled out fantasy world, one that’s living and breathing and gorgeous, in which I am the hero. When you bent Oblivion or Morrowind to your will, they usually broke, and usually in a way that ruined your immersion. But when you bend Skyrim, it bends beautifully, and meets you with XP and loot on the other side. Just a brilliant game, brilliantly done.

1.25. Batman: Arkham City: It’s almost too bad Skyrim did come out this year, because otherwise my GotY would be Batman, no question at all. I love Batman, as you might already know, and Arkham City is a great sequel to Arkham Asylum (which was my GotY the year it came out, even with Bioshock and Portal in the running). The way that Rocksteady took the closed-in, perfectly designed environments of Arkham Asylum and placed them outside in an open world is just plain genius, and the controls and setting are fascinating enough to me that I’m only about 20 Riddler trophies away from collecting all 400 to 100% the game yet again.

3. Portal 2: In the first game, GlaDOS’ character really made the whole show work. Yes, it was a great first-person puzzle game, and yes, the story and setting were well-done. But the first Portal was really about GlaDOS, a fully-formed, complete character that interacted with the player in a really meaningful and amazing way. How awesome is it, then, that Valve replicated that feat not once, not even twice, but three different times in the sequel. Not only did we get GlaDOS’ character redefined by placing her in a brand new spud of a setting, but we have the eminently quotable and likable Cave Johnson, and Wheatley, who is one of my favorite video game characters of all time. Stephen Merchant’s performance basically sets the bar for voicework in video games, as far as I’m concerned — every line is just delivered perfectly, and his work makes the story and the game a constant pleasure to play through time and time again.

4. Warhammer 40k: Space Marine: This was one of my favorite “video game” experiences of the year, and as I say in my Joystiq post, this was my favorite shooter of the year, even beating out bigger contenders like Modern Warfare 3 and Gears of War 3. As you can tell from my reading habits, I have fully fallen in love with the Warhammer 40k universe — I love the fantasy conventions translated over to sci-fi, and I love the scale of it: everything really is times 40,000, from the army size to the dreadnoughts and all of the various Space Marine powers and technologies. And of course Relic Entertainment loves this universe as well, and that’s evident in this game — everything from the architecture to the various Space Marine models and skins in multiplayer has been poured over and intelligently designed and laid out. From the over-the-top introduction of the dashing Captain Titus to the incredible climax of the story, this game is just terrific, and I hope it sets up lots of other, just as awesome Space Marine and Warhammer video games to come.

5. Jetpack Joyride: So many great iOS games this year, but this one takes the cake — it’s simple and fun, and yet also deep and rewarding. Halfbrick’s polish is astounding, from the amazing music to the various little animation touches (breaking the glass on the floor! High-fiving scientists for missions! And all of the various jetpacks and costumes are great too) and all of the missions and their various inventions and innovations. The game’s only one button (and there’s not even a button on the screen for it), but there’s so much addictive depth in the meta system that I’m still playing this one, and will continue to do so for a long time to come.

Whew. There you go. If I missed something (and I’m sure I did), let me know.