The Top 24 Xbox 360 Games (#7 – 1)

Welcome all to another edition of The 8 Ball! I’m here to finish out my series of the 24 best Xbox 360 Games. This is counting down from pick 7 to pick 1, the math just kind of worked out that way. These are all my picks of the best Xbox 360 games, and as always, these are just my picks. If you have others, feel free to mention them in the comments. Let’s begin:

#7: Colin McRae: DiRT 2

Dirt 2 remains one of my all-time favorite racing games, period. While it is more in the simulation camp, it still is an extremely approachable racing game due to the Flashback system and just the actual racing being fun. Even on the more technical races, where it’s just you and a co-driver going down a mountain as she is talking about upcoming turns, it is still a fun activity to actually do. Mixed with a superb soundtrack and a lot of actual good UI elements, this remains one of the best racing games on the Xbox 360, period.

#6: Saints Row: The Third

I appreciate both GTA games that hit this generation but both were flawed. GTA 4 was just an un-fun slog with your cousin constantly phoning you. And GTA 5 is great, till they forget about Franklin and having nothing for him to do at the end. While early Saints Row 1 and 2 were more direct copies of the GTA formula, Saints Row: The Third just became its own thing. The writing is superb, transitioning the Saints from a street gang/criminal syndicate to an actual “legitimate” company, hawking energy drinks and their own clothing label. It has a ton of memorable characters, specialized missions and a ton of humor. Plus, it fixed the principle issue of the first two games by requiring a certain respect rank to complete main story missions. That’s just gone, thank god. Saints Row 4 is a good follow up but the less time we talk about Saints Row 2022, the better it is for all.

#5: Gears of War 1

Here’s the thing, I can generally appreciate that Gears 2, and especially Gears 3 are more complete packages. They have more featured multiplayer modes, have Horde more (in Gears 3 case), and more co-op options, but I just like the first game more. It was just a more enjoyable experience, I liked the characters more, it had a simpler plot but that’s not a bad thing. It was just a more special game, at least to me. The newer games are still fine but it says a lot that they are rebooting the first game BECAUSE it still means a lot to people and that Gears of War 6 is likely never to happen.

#4: Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I’ll always champion Brotherhood as the best Assassin’s Creed game. AC1 is a good prototype and AC2 is a marked improvement but Brotherhood is where the formula really came together. Combat was fun, building up the actual Brotherhood was enjoyable, the story was solid, and it made the wise choice to have it just be one continuous area for you to explore, Rome, instead of the different, smaller areas that AC2 had you visit. By today’s standards, Brotherhood is a “small” game but it had about 30 hours of content, which is just about right. I don’t need/want an AC game to be some 100+ hour epic, or filled with quests that are keep trying to keep player engagement. Brotherhood is where it all came together in the perfect mixture.

#3: Shadow Complex

Shadow Complex is the game that really resurrected the whole Metroidvania genre. Since 1997 with SOTN (and Tomba) being released, the genre heavily slid into the handheld territory. Those games, the various other Metroids and Castlevanias are good but the genre largely disappeared from traditional consoles. Then Shadow Complex came out and developers realized “Hey, people still like this stuff, huh?” Since then, Guacamelee, Hollow Knight, Ori, Axiom Verge and dozens of others have come out and most have been good. It might not have happened if Shadow Complex was a bad game, but guess what, it’s not. It has precise controls, plenty of fun upgrades, and a big secret base for you to explore and run around in. It’s among the biggest crimes that in the billions of dollars that Epic has raked in over the past decade and a half they still won’t fund a Shadow Complex 2. It’s yet another reason why I boycott the company so hard.

#2: Red Dead Redemption

While the GTA games on the Xbox 30 weren’t my faves, Rockstar was still putting out some very solid work on the console. Table Tennis, various Midnight Clubs, parts of Max Payne 3, etc. Their best though, at least for this generation was Red Dead Redemption. Most people don’t even know it’s a sequel to Red Dead Revolver, that shows you how little people actually cared about that game. Redemption was great though, a very iconic main character, good writing, combat was enjoyable, and it really gave you the feeling of being in the west. Redemption 2 tried to be a bigger/better version and while it’s a solid enough game, it just didn’t hit the same mark for me as this one did.

#1: Mass Effect 2

Yeah, how could it not be? I’m sure others would argue for GTA 5, or Skyrim or some CoD game but this is my list. While Mass Effect was a great game, it did have its share of flaws. Thankfully, Mass Effect 2 fixed those flaws, mainly by ditching the MAKO, having actually interesting characters in your crew and making the whole game a more cohesive experience. I still think ME1 does have some better bits, like the Citadel being a more vast experience but these are more minor points, rather than heavy flaws. I replay ME2 at least twice, with both a Paragon and Renegade character and had fun both times. The boss fight at the end is a bit of a joke but it really is more about the journey rather than the destination. ME3 is “alright”, Andromeda is nothing, and I really hope Mass Effect 5 hits otherwise Bioware is done as a company.

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For comments, list your own favorite 7-1 Xbox 360 games and why.

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Top 8 Games of the Year (so far)