My favorite games of the year were Bastion, Skyrim, and the Witcher 2. Wow, that was easy. And hey, I already wrote extensively about all of them. Convenient! So, for the next few days, I'm gonna discuss some of 2011's lesser-known greats. Last week, I turned into a quivering pile of mush on BioShock 2: Minerva's Den, and today, I'm taking a crack at Team Meat teammate Edmund McMillen's blood-soaked solo smash, The Binding of Isaac.

The Binding of Isaac is the game that finally pulled me away from Skyrim.

Like any gamer in the target demographic of Bethesda's behemoth (read: “a human capable of drawing breath”), I pretty much sacrificed my every waking hour on Skyrim's altar. Sometimes, it was 30 minutes here or there. Other times, it was 30 minutes here, there, and everywhere until a family of mice had taken up residence in my flowing gray beard. Point is, that game consumed my life. 

That is, of course, until I bought Binding of Isaac and learned a very valuable lesson: Most modern big-budget games? Yeah, they're kinda crappy. 

Granted, Skyrim's not as guilty of the design woes Binding of Isaac so deftly re-purposes as, say, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, or numerous other games that treat you like you're a deaf, dumb, and blind kid in need of constant hand-holding. See, Binding of Isaac does the polar opposite: It doesn't tell you anything. 

So you, as Isaac – a boy being hunted down by his crazed mother thanks to an alleged “message from God” – fall into the game's hauntingly lonely dungeon. And then you fall on your face. Repeatedly. Isaac's diabolical gameplay concoction – made up of one part Rogue-like dungeon-crawling, one part Robotron-style twin-stick shootery, and zero parts kindness – doesn't leave room for mistakes. When I took my first wobbly, Bambi-like steps, it pounced and sank its teeth into my fluttery little heart. And then I had to start the game all over again. At first, I definitely didn't succeed. But I tried again. And again. And again.  

Other games make failure an absolutely dreadful chore. But in Binding of Isaac, that's the whole point, and – believe it or not – it's really, really fun. An arsenal of hundreds of incredibly varied (and absurdly demented) items can take a bow for that nearly unbelievable achievement. Some of them are so powerful that entire universes quake at the mere mention of their name. Others, er, kill you. And others still turn you into a rainbow unicorn of pure destruction. I'm not making that part up. 

The beauty of Binding of Isaac, however, is that I had to discover all of that for myself. If other games' items are willing to spill their guts at the drop of a hat, Isaac's force you to ring them dry until your palms are red and blistered. The only way to learn is by doing. Anywhere else, that'd quickly devolve into rote trial-and-error – perhaps one of my absolute biggest gaming pet peeves. Isaac, though, never removes the possibility of success from the equation. Each do-over is accented by a teensy dash of luck that staves off hopelessness with Gandalf-like fervor. 

Every time you start anew, the dungeon's floors and rooms are randomized. Enemy types, placement, which items you'll find and their locations, bosses – all of it. It's as thrilling as it is completely compulsive. One attempted playthrough might roll out a red carpet so that you can cakewalk through an entire floor. Another, however, might have so many murderous flies and blood-spewing disembodied faces leap out at you that you'd think it was some kind of surprise deathday party.