Your biggest surprise and disappointment of this year.

[Britton]

Biggest Surprise: How good Castlevania: Lords Of Shadows is.

Disappointment: Playing through the first 5 or so hours of FF 13 and thinking it was the best in the series, only to give up on it a bit later on and coming to the conclusion it was one of the worst in the series.

[GrimReality]

Surprise: Castlevania and Nier both being WAY better than expected. Little games like LIMBO coming out of nowhere to really impress me.

Disappointments: That I'll probably never know whether FFXIII sucks as much as everyone says it does. I dug it for the 4 hours I DID play.
Deathspank being hyped up as this great game, then boring me after a couple hours.

[MeshGearFox]

Surprise:
Minecraft.

Disappointment:
Laptop being to crap to run Minecraft.

[Hoshino_Kid]

Biggest Surprise:
Star Ocean: the Last Hope [PS3] (though I'm sure I'm the ONLY ONE here who feels this way - hence, biggest surprise)

Don't worry, you're not alone. :3

Anyway for me:

Surprise: Star Ocean 4 (people say it's shit, it's crap, etc. but in the end, I really loved it)
Disappointment: Probably 3D Dot Game Heroes, I expected a bit more though.

So-so on FFXIII. I was unhyped for it but in the end enjoyed it, although I was expecting a bit more.

[Draak]

Suprise: Mine is the Mass Effect series. I played both games sometime during the beginning of the year and was blew away by the experience. I didn't expect to like it so much since I'm not big on shooters or sci-fi, but I loved every moment of it and can hardly wait for ME3.

Biggest disappointment was Dragon Quest IX. It just felt shallow, especially the exploration. Maybe because it was geared towards multiplayer and I only play single.

[CDFN]

Suprise: Mine is the Mass Effect series. I played both games sometime during the beginning of the year and was blew away by the experience. I didn't expect to like it so much since I'm not big on shooters or sci-fi, but I loved every moment of it and can hardly wait for ME3.

Me too.
I was also surprised by how good Castlevania, Nier and Vanquish turned out.

As for disappointments, I can't think of anything right now. Well, some technical issues in GT5 were pretty disappointing for me, those low res alpha and shadows look really bad in a game that otherwise is a technical marvel, I don't know how they let that slide.
This reminds me that I'm disappointed with japanese game developers in general. When I read interviews about the development of games like GT5 and FFXIII it blows my mind how unorganized they seem. You can tell it was complete chaos. What kind of management allows something like this?
The only japanese game in recent memory that delivered both in terms of tech and in achieving everything it set out to do in terms of gameplay is vanquish (and bayonetta on the 360).

Speaking of endless development cycles, I hope that the Last Guardian delivers the kind of polish you expect from 6 years of development. I hope they don't cut corners to finally allow the game to reach shelves. It's amazing that an entire generation will go buy and one of Sony's most respected studios will only release one game. One game in an entire hardware generation... In the same time Naughty Dog will have released 3 uncharted games.

[Raziel]

Surprise:
Minecraft.

Disappointment:
Laptop being to crap to run Minecraft.

Almost the same here. I guess the size of the world kills it.

Biggest surprise: that I got accepted into Red Cross Nordic United World College (international boarding school) with a full scholarship. That has changed my life drastically, considering I live in a pretty run-down place, and my financial situation isn't that good. But hell, my second year gave a presentation on the college while she was on the winter break, I applied just for the sake of trying and whoooa.

The last four months have been the best time of my life, so this year is massive win for me.

[Kstar]

You'll no doubt see the answers in my Goty top 5 where I also stated my disappointment.  However, I just want to say NHL 11, I thought 10 was amazing and they topped that.  Also, I didn't include Fragile Dreams as a disappointment, but I should have.  I think I just hyped myself for more than what was there.  A lesson learned. 

[MeshGearFox]

Almost the same here. I guess the size of the world kills it.

It's actually a mixture of the light model and fluid physics, apparently.

[Eusis]

Biggest disappointment was Dragon Quest IX. It just felt shallow, especially the exploration. Maybe because it was geared towards multiplayer and I only play single.

Actually, now that I think about it while DQIX may've been my favorite RPG of the year (SMG2's probably favorite game) the post-game itself is a disappointment. In a sense it has infinitely more value than any other DQ's post game (assuming it had one), but it's a set of random dungeons rather than one or two harder ones. There IS one of those, but it's not particularly long and outright pointless to go through until the required DLC hits, which admittedly may have happened. Would've also liked if more of the sidequests didn't take the MMO route of just beating on monsters until they drop items you need, but ah well.

[Fei]

Resonance of Fate would be my pick, if I had to pick just one.  For some reason I thought it was regarded as a mediocre game, but when I played it, I wept tears of joy for the future of JRPGs on next-gen consoles. 

Funny story, I got RoF and NieR at the same time, and after getting a few chapters into RoF, I thought I should "get NieR out of the way" before I fully committed to the grind of RoF.  What came next shocked me just as much.

So I guess JRPGs are my biggest surprise.  Even DQIX is awesome, considering VIII was too heavy for me.

FFXIV would be my biggest disappointment.  I was prepared to upgrade my computer just for that, but the bad press and everything killed my motivation, and I like being stupidly optimistic going into these things.

[Esper_Crusader]

Biggest surprises would have to be Nier, Castlevania:LoS and Kinect.
Biggest disappointments would be FFXIII(I like it but the lack of exploration and towns really hurt the experience) and Alpha Protocol(This game is all kinds of broken if you ask me).

[FlamingR1ft]

2010 was a funny year for me with games. I don't believe I've ever had to many disappointments and surprises in a single year. My post is coming a bit late, but there are a few truly wonderful games I played this year (Not all were released this year) that I wanted to mention:

Disappointments:
Crysis - Maybe I was just expecting too much. But I found the gameplay extremely bland and there were far too many enemies at once at some points.
Penumbra - I had only heard good things. Yet the horror of it wore off quickly and the constant sneaking became irritating.
Dragon Quest IX - I couldn't believe how dull the story was. It was disappointing no one in your party was a real character.
Resonance of Fate - This game could have been one of the most amazing games ever. But it fell so short of the mark. A fantastic premise that simply wasn't fulfilled by the gameplay.

Surprises:
Demon's Souls - Absolutely fantastic game. I didn't really know what to expect going in to this one but I had such a great time with it.
The Path - This is definitely not a title for everyone, but I adored it. It really is a work of art.
Magna Carta 2 - I had pretty much only seen mediocre reviews but I bought it anyway. So glad I did. There's some pretty clunky things about it, but the atmosphere really drew me in.
The Void - I would like to thank those on this site who recommended it to me. It is probably the weirdest game I have ever played, but also one of my favourites.
The Mirror Lied - This was a free indie title recommended it to me. In shared some similarities to The Path. Not much happens, but I really enjoyed it.
Star Ocean 4 - Some on this site will scoff and others will agree. But it was some of the most fun I had with a game this year. Well, except for when I replayed Katamari for the millionth time. God I love that game.

I'm sure there were more. But those are all that are springing to mind right now.

[Esper_Crusader]

I guess that another disappointment would be the lack of attention given to Tatsunoku vs. Capcom. It was easily the fighting game of the year.  It really should have been put on the 360 and PS3. So sad:(

[MeshGearFox]

Crysis - Maybe I was just expecting too much. But I found the gameplay extremely bland and there were far too many enemies at once at some points.

I don't think anyone actually liked Crysis. AFAIK it's mostly infamous for its *excessive* 'future proofing'/godawful system requirements.