• No wishful thinking: Only games with an announced 2011 release date (in any country) qualified. (Sorry, Diablo III.)

• Only games that have not yet been released in any country were eligible. (Sorry, Radiant Historia.)

• As with last year’s anticipated games list, one or more of these will almost surely end up in our inevitable roundup of 2011's most disappointing games.

• Several of these games will almost surely be delayed into 2012. We wish we knew which ones, so we could give you a heads up. But we don't.

To come up with this list, Chris Kohler, Daniel Feit, John Mix Meyer, Jason Schreier and Chris Baker engaged in a lengthy discussion about which titles were most worthy. At the end of the feature, we've briefly listed some of our personal picks that didn't make the main list.

Now, on to the games that Wired is pumped for in 2011.

Above:

Batman: Arkham City

What it is: This sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, one of the best superhero games ever, takes the action out of the nut house and into the streets.

Why we're excited: Arkham Asylum was the total package. Mark Hamill turned in a bravura performance as the Joker, gameplay mixed Metal Gear with Metroid and it had some genuinely surprising twists and turns. The sequel promises a more polished experience, with a revamped "Detective Mode" that lets Batman solve crime scenes between bouts of punching up criminals.

Where, when: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC; fall 2011

—Chris Kohler

Authors: Chris Kohler

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