My favorite console is the Xbox 360. I've played around 160 'full' titles and a good number of arcade games. Some of these games were bad (looking at you Hour of Victory), some good and some very good indeed. Here are the games that I think are the best for the console.
Picking a version of COD is difficult. COD 2 was the first game I owned for the Xbox 360 and seeing TV adverts for the game spurred me on to go out and buy the console in the first place. I enjoyed number 3, the Modern Warfare incarnations and Black Ops were very entertaining too. But there was something special about World at War.
This game took the franchise to another level and is second only to Ghosts in the whole COD franchise for me. Zombie hoards are pretty evil, but nothing is more evil than Nazi Zombie hoards. Whilst I played this game online a lot, I'm fairly sure I didn't prestige as I spent most of my time playing Nazi Zombies. No stupid jet packs or laser weapons: just my buddies and me with some MP40 ammo, a med-kit and an evening to waste. Oh, and don't forget the monkey bombs...
The fact that I rate this game so highly surprises even me. To be honest, the graphics haven't aged well and the weapons are probably the least satisfying of any game I have ever played. This game takes a long time to get going, and when it does finally kick into gear, it becomes a cycle of monotonous and highly linear missions.
Much like other sequels on this list, this installment in the franchise struck the right balance between advancing the gameplay and graphics above those of the original without becoming overly complex. Fable III left me a bit cold and, whilst I enjoyed it, it didn't feel quite as engaging as this game.
Fable II was part bucolic fantasy, part pantomime. I loved the 'jobs' mini games and exploring the crazy land of Albion. There's a lot of humour in all the Fable series and its strikingly English feel is a refreshing change when you've become accustomed to a diet of American games.
Yet another sequel that built upon the legacy of the original without ruining the recipe. Borderlands 2 is a chaotic, blood splattered, gun fueled trip around a desolate planet called Pandora.The graphics are unique, the characters amusing and the story engaging. You know you're enjoying the game when you find yourself saying, "Yeeees!" as you pull a high powered weapon from the depths of a toilet bowl. Even the third installment on the next generation of consoles was pretty good. All of the Borderlands games come highly recommended if you want some easy entertainment that allows you to sit back, zone out and just rely on your brain stem.
I loved Forza Motorsport 2 and played it for many hours back in 2007. But the pinnacle of the series as far as the Xbox 360 goes, is the third installment. Number 4 was OK, but I didn't like the inclusion of Top Gear and the Kinect support was lame. Furthermore, I hated the announcer's voice on number 4 and I never forgave it for ditching the New York tracks. Oh and the box art sucked.
3 struck a fine balance between being complex and yet accessible at the same time. It was fun without feeling like an arcade experience. It is clear that as Motorsport was developed to more closely resemble the 'driving simulator' experience of Gran Turismo that Horizon was needed to fill the 'arcade' type void. But back in the day, we didn't need Horizon: Motorsport could do both jobs.
The first Gears game was brilliant and demonstrated the potential for the Xbox 360. The game play was innovative, the story interesting and the characters were engaging: everything about it was good. But Gears 2 raised the bar. Horde mode has been much imitated (and often bettered) but Gears 2 was the OG. The plot to the second game was deeper and it felt slightly more involving than the original. It was almost as if the developers suddenly realised they had an IP that was deserving of more care and attention than it had received before. Other than playing Horde I didn't play Gears much online, but I know it was a firm favourite with many back in the day when PlayStations didn't even have rumble packs and the 360 ruled supreme.
4. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
If you're not keen on endless wandering and jumping up mountains then this probably isn't the game for you. This is not to say that there is no reward for all the flower picking and cave raiding you are required to do. When the action does come it can be quite frenetic and challenging. This isn't the hack and slash, button mashing approach to combat; you have to employ tactics and a bit of nous. Let's face it, it requires planning to take down a dragon by shouting at it.
Like many RPGs this game becomes addictive. Yes, I spent many hours wandering around looking for berries or hoarding cheese wheels to make a tidy profit the next time I visited town. But the experience was immersive and I didn't think about the mundane nature of what I was actually doing. I was living in Skrim; I did what I did to survive. Let's move on.
For many years I would tell anyone that listened that Bioshock was hands down the best game I had ever played. I loved everything about it and have played it through three or four times. The gameplay, graphics and sound are all of the highest quality and it is one of few occasions where I have actually been fully engaged with, and intrigued by, the story line.
Looking through this list I realise this is the only game that isn't a sequel. Bioshock 2 tinkered with the winning formula a little too much for me and didn't lend itself well to exciting online multiplayer. The original remains my favourite installment in the franchise and still sits in my top 10 games across all generations of any platform.
With most Xbox 360 games I paid my £40 or £50, played it through over the course of a few weeks and then forget about it. Not so with Halo 3. I have spent many, many, many hours playing this game. If there were a prize for value for money, Halo 3 would win hands down: no contest. No sooner had I finished the campaign than I completed it on a higher difficulty setting on co-op. I then played the online multiplayer for more hours than was healthy. It felt like Halo 3 had a new exciting map pack every few weeks and there were rumours of some exciting DLC for the campaign to come.
I think Halo 3 occupies a special place in my heart as it was my first online multiplayer experience. All of my friends played, I met loads of new people and had some amazing fun. Sometimes you got a few verbal insults and the number of people cheating the skill ranking system was out of control. But, tea-bagging aside, I enjoyed Halo 3 online more than any multiplayer I have ever played. Some of the COD games came close, but nothing quite hit the mark like Halo 3. I can still feel the thrill of hearing the commentator say, "Triple Kill" or "Killing Spree".
Of course the fabled DLC turned out to be the steaming turd that was ODST and once Gears 2 and COD: World at War came on the scene people began to drift away from the matchmaking lobbies quite quickly. But nobody can take away the memories of the winter of 2007/08 we spent on Guardian.
Towards the end of 2008 everyone started to talk about this new game called Fallout. I felt like it was going to be essential to own this game and was looking forward to it. As I remember there were a couple of other new games released around the same time as as Fallout and I decided to buy all of them. As I started to play Fallout 3 I began to feel a little confused.
It is worth noting at his point that the concept of an RPG was new to me. I thought all games were either FPS or driving games. Fallout 3 was just a boring walk around a dark bunker trying to shoot cockroaches with a pellet gun. It didn't seem like a lot of fun and went back on the shelf. Whatever the other two games I bought at the same time must have caught my attention and I tried to forget about the £40 I had just wasted (looking back the games were Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War).
My saved games suggest that I started playing the game again in August 2009. A friend of mine who owned a PlayStation 3 had been talking about Fallout in the most reverential terms. "Is that the game where you have to shoot cockroaches and Liam Neeson is your dad?" I ask. At this point I discover that here is a little more to the game than my fist foray led me to believe and that I should give it another try. Thus I started to trawl through the opening of the game with grim determination. Then one afternoon as I was raiding a supermarket I realised I was actually enjoying the game.
Like many other RPGs, Fallout 3 is addictive. It appeals to the hoarder in me. Once you've played through this game you will never look at a bottle cap in quite the same way again. My addiction to the game got to the point that I was counting down the hours of my 13 hour shifts at work until I could get back to Fallout 3.
Some people love New Vegas and suggest that is the better game. Whilst technically Vegas may be better, it was 3 that caught my imagination. OK so the DLC with the aliens was a bit weird, but still, the only way you can have my Game of the Year edition is to take it from my cold dead hands.
For my money, there is no better Xbox 360 game than this and the only better RPG is Fallout 4 on the next generation of consoles.
Honorable mentions to Forza Horizon, The Orange Box, Fallout: New Vegas, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Dead Space. Next time I'll look at PlayStation 2 games.
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