Of course these are all my opinions, please feel free to tell me how you feel differently.
LittleBigPlanet
I'm starting with my favourite. If you were to ask me my favourite game of all time, I would probably answer with this game. Retrospectively I was setting myself up for a huge disappointment. My thirteen year-old self watched the first demonstration of the game at GDC more than twenty times. I showed it to as many people as I could, including my parents who couldn't understand my excitement. Not to mention how devastated I was when the game got delayed a mere few weeks due to a song lyric. Despite all of these things LittleBigPlanet managed to beat my expectations. I will never know how that happened.
LittleBigPlanet also fundamentally showed the industry how to properly interact with player made content, in-game.
Hotline Miami
Never have I felt so satisfied and guilty at killing countless NPCs. Hotline Miami managed to feel garishly brutal and stylish at the same time. Everyone should play this game.
Skyrim
For me this is an example of over-anticipating a game. There were times I couldn't put this game down, but unfortunately those weren't long lasting. In the end the automatically generated quests killed the game for me. I didn't feel like a stealthy cat stalking through the night, I felt like I person playing a game to level up, or get better gear. That said, I should definitely give it another chance.
Assassins Creed
The first time you perch atop a building and peer across the city below is something you don't forget.
Fable 2
Interestingly enough Fable 2 was due to come out on the same day as LittleBigPlanet. Looking back I wonder if this was a simple coincidence that two of my favourite games were released very close to each other. Maybe an outside factor made me love these two games so much? Either way Fable 2 was the first game I was compelled to actually role-play. The day began with me gazing into the sunset as I chopped firewood. Later I would say goodbye to my wife Alex before I went into town for my next heroic contract.
I won't bore you with how much this game captured me, but something clicked. I was hooked in a way I had never been before. I wasn't playing because the game was fun or challenging but because I had a personal attachment to the world around me.
Fable 3
The army of brilliant English actors wasn't enough to convince me on this one. Ultimately it was an experiment that went wrong. But that's my opinion.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
This is some of the most fun I've ever had with a multiplayer title. The unbalance in the weapons meant winning was all the more satisfying when you managed to do so in such a stupid way. Call of Duty 4 was definitely a better game, but that doesn't change the fact that only using a throwing knife was so good.
MineCraft
There is a lot to say about this game. But essentially it opened me up a world of indie-games, dramatically changing my tastes in video games. For that I am hugely grateful.
Diablo 3
An interesting lesson for many people in the industry. It may have played like a dream, but had numerous sticking points. Blizzard showed us exactly what shouldn't be done, hopefully we will all learn from the mistakes they made.
Fez
Fez does many things that I thought to be impossible. The world felt so consistent and well thought out, even glitches in the game felt like they were supposed to be. It's a game that sets itself up to be an innocent plat-former only to break every rule that it created. If you haven't played it you might think I'm speaking gibberish. However, if you have the time and patience to experience Fez you will be blown away.
So there's my small collection of stand-out games. There are many games that I missed, maybe I will add more over the next month. Either way, I will be happy if the new next generation is half as good as this one.