Televisual Games what I Had a Spiffing Time Playing This YearA short description followed by links to smarter people.

Mark, of the Ninja
The best pure stealth game to come onto the XBLA. It was made by Klei, the same chaps that made Shank, and is the first game to represent the angst felt by a ninja trying to ghost every level and not do interesting things with spike traps, lunacy-inducing darts, and chandeliers hanging over guards' heads. It's also relatively quick and cheap, like most of my relationships.
Totalbiscuit & Ohmwrecker
RPS

XCOM: European Union
You take a squad of 4-6 soldiers, dress them up all nice and neat, hand them rifles, and send them out to die. Then you weep, because that one in the purple armour and the Guile hair was...

Televisual Games what I Had a Spiffing Time Playing This YearA short description followed by links to smarter people.

Mark, of the Ninja
The best pure stealth game to come onto the XBLA. It was made by Klei, the same chaps that made Shank, and is the first game to represent the angst felt by a ninja trying to ghost every level and not do interesting things with spike traps, lunacy-inducing darts, and chandeliers hanging over guards' heads. It's also relatively quick and cheap, like most of my relationships.
Totalbiscuit & Ohmwrecker
RPS

XCOM: European Union
You take a squad of 4-6 soldiers, dress them up all nice and neat, hand them rifles, and send them out to die. Then you weep, because that one in the purple armour and the Guile hair was your best sniper, for whom you bought that exorbitantly-priced plasma rifle, until a Cyberdisc exploded him. You curse and throw your mouse when Mutons kill your Support, not only because he was a valuable human being with hopes and dreams, but because he was the only one with a medkit. Russian roulette is the best roulette.
Totalbiscuit & Angry Joe
RPS

Dishonoured
Dishonoured is a game where you are asked to retrieve a vault combination for a gang; you do so, but loot the vault before returning, just because you can. Dishonoured is a game where you stop time, enter a room, pickpocket a man, and then leave, without being detected, just because you can. It's not the second coming of Deus Ex, but it came far closer than most.
RPS 1 & RPS 2

Faster than Light
Think Space Alert. It's like being Captain Janeway in that sketch where she commands the cast of Frasier.
Totalbiscuit, Angry Joe, and Ohmwrecker

Darksiders II
Like Legend of Zelda, but for adults (and not the XXX parody). This is one I need to finish; I was 20 hours in and about halfway through the second act, but those were 20 hours of enthralling action.
Totalbiscuit
RPS

Honourable Mention goes to The Resistance, as a game of the non-electro-sparkly variety:
Shut Up & Sit Down
Cardboard Children

Notable games that I have not played:
Trine II; Miasmata; Dark Souls; Endless Space; Tribes: Ascend; Far Cry 3; Hitman: Absolution; Farming Simulator 2013; Sleeping Dogs; Spec Ops: The Line; The Walking Dead; Max Payne 3, Little Inferno.