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.

With every passing year and every ambitious developer taking their turn at innovation and technological advancement we see the bar being raised for visual excellence in videogames. The past five years in particular, with the launch of the PlayStation 3 and the subsequent game of catch-up played by developers to get to grips with the technology housed within the machine in the two or so years following, we saw the face of videogames change both figuratively and literally.

The Uncharted franchise has brought us some of the finest graphics we’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing, while the last couple of years saw God of War III bring an often astounding visual and Killzone 3 do more with brown and grey colour palettes than anyone in history has ever been capable of. Offering us a face full of beautiful was Team Bondi’s film noir tribute LA Noire, which has shown us the potential MotionScan can offer us and how the uncanny valley level of facial animations can actually be an integral part of gameplay as well as presentation.

As a complete visual experience though, LA Noire wasn’t the best that 2011 had to offer us. We have seen some visually delightful games – Rayman Origins practically defines the word ‘vibrancy’ in its presentation, while F1 2011 and Forza 4 offer genuinely stunning graphics – but there can be only one winner here and I can’t think of any more deserving this year.

As voted for by the MediaKick community, the award for the Best Visual Appearance in 2011 is: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

I can’t be the only one that considers Uncharted 3 – certainly when it comes to its environmental detail – to be the most visually impressive game we’ve ever seen. The team at Naughty Dog put in a huge effort to produce such a visual spectacle and recreate environments in as realistic a manner as possible – as Lead Game Designer Richard LeMarchand noted during a Eurogamer Expo developer session, the levels to which the development team went to achieve realism in environmental animations led to at one point incapacitated team members – and the technical achievement on the part of the developer is evident throughout the game.

MediaKick Editor Davs put it best in his review: “Visually, Uncharted 3 cannot be understated, it is an utter masterpiece.” It seems the MediaKick community agrees: Uncharted 3 draked in a mighty 43.8% of the overall votes.

The award is already the second one for the PlayStation 3 exclusive, having collected the Best Action-Adventure award earlier in the week.

DICE’s efforts with the Frostbite 2 engine led to a visually sublime display in Battlefield 3 and a respectable 24.7% of the votes cast. As gorgeous as Battlefield 3′s environments and the Frostbite-powered explosions may be it is within the stunning world of Uncharted 3 that we are witness to the best visual display in a videogame that 2011 – and arguably this generation – has to offer.

I cannot overstate enough how superb Uncharted 3 looks in high-definition. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune were unquestionably excellent games with gorgeous graphics but Naughty Dog have improved the visual fidelity with each game and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is a “visual feast” that never ceases to whet your appetite.