Editor’s Note: We recently asked you, our community to vote for your Games of the Year across a variety of categories. We received a fantastic number of votes, well surpassing last year’s entries, and well, this is just one of many results. Enjoy.

The racing genre has, and always will be, a staple in the video game industry. With a flurry of fantastic racing titles out in 2011, it was very difficult for our community to choose an eventual winner due primarily to the versatility of games on offer. The more serious tone of F1 2011 contrasted greatly with Nintendo’s Mario Kart 7, the story orientated Driver: San Francisco clashed with Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed – ultimately there were many driving games this year that made the genre incredibly entertaining.

The struggle for the genre however, is finding that elegant balance between appeasing fans of real driving simulation and those looking for an arcade experience. Last year’s winner Gran Turismo 5 proved that life-like simulation was 2010′s preferred style of racing, but was this the case this year?

With two games gunning for the top spot, Forza 4 and the incredible use of Kinect technology just fell short to our eventual winner.

So without further ado, as voted for by the MediaKick community, the Best Racing Game of the Year is: Motorstorm Apocalypse.

The Evolution Studios developed racer managed to gather 29.3% of the votes, narrowingly beating Forza 4 by just point-four percent.

Indeed this PlayStation exclusive franchise deserves mountains of praise for a fantastic take on rally-styled racing. Sacrificing realism for total anarchy, Motorstorm Apocalypse allowed players to race on beautifully designed courses full of well-implemented environmental disasters. Great physics and a variety of different vehicles to try out made your time with this racer last. The competitive multiplayer scene was also a huge success with plenty of gamers getting stuck into the online experience. Impressive use of 3D was also present, if you were lucky enough to play it on a 3D TV.

“Motorstorm Apocalypse manages to bring a good amount of new features to the series while keeping the feel we know and love,” read our Editor Davs’ review. “It may not be the perfect racer but, with upgrades to vehicle customisation and online racing seeming a lot fairer, it isn’t a million miles off.”

The racer suffered a delay as a result of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which put a big dampener on sales, however, the studio is currently developing a PlayStation Vita Motorstorm title in the form of Motorstorm RC – a remote-controlled micro-machines styled racer due out next year.

It’s a testament that Motorstorm Apocalypse could beat Forza 4 and claim the number one spot – but a well-rounded game that ultimately, was just so much more fun than any other racing game this year, really makes handing the Best Racing game of 2011 to Motorstorm Apocalypse, completely justifiable.

Will 2012 be an even better year for the racing genre? We will have to wait and see.