The Xbox 360 turns 20 years old today, and so what better time to look back at the games that most defined the console. The 360 was not only the most successful machine Microsoft has ever made, but arguably the most beloved too. And for great reason: the second Xbox mixed powerful hardware with innovative, boundary-pushing, and risk-taking software to power a memorable generation that lasted eight years – longer than any other Xbox so far.
I had a front-row seat to the Xbox 360 era from start to finish during my time at Official Xbox Magazine and then IGN, so here are my picks for the top 20 games that defined the Xbox 360.
Released: 2009
One of Microsoft’s boldest experiments in the Xbox 360 era was 1 vs. 100, a live game show where most players would be randomly selected to play along in The Crowd, while a lucky 100 would be chosen to be in The Mob and a single person would be chosen as The One.
You had to log on at specific times to play 1 vs. 100; it wasn’t available to you anytime you wanted to fire it up. Microsoft ran it with a live host from a studio in Seattle. But when you joined in for what was literally appointment gaming, you were rewarded with, in some cases, real-life prizes such as Microsoft Points – up to 10,000 for The One if they won, which is the equivalent of $125 – or free Xbox Live Arcade games.
It was a truly unique social gaming experience emblematic of the creative risks and online bets Microsoft was taking and making in the Xbox 360 days, and though I was never selected to be The One, I was in the 100 once and won 80 Microsoft Points (aka $1). I know that might not sound like it was all that worthwhile, but I promise you it was as engaging and memorable as it was short-lived. My proudest Xbox Achievements are having all 12 of the possible 12 from 1 vs. 100, because the game is gone and, sadly, never coming back.
Released: 2006
Long before Microsoft paid $69 billion for Activision-Blizzard, it shocked the world by purchasing a controlling stake in Nintendo second-party powerhouse Rare in 2002 for $375 million – the equivalent of over $600 million today. Viva Piñata wasn’t the first game the studio made for Microsoft – the fine-but-forgettable Grabbed by the Ghoulies came first in 2003 before Rare dropped two solid launch titles for the Xbox 360 in 2005: Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero. But its first bona fide hit for Xbox was 2006’s Viva Piñata, a life sim in which you grew and maintained your garden full of adorable piñata-fied animals. It spawned a sequel, a Nintendo DS handheld version, and a short-lived animated series. In hindsight, it was ahead of its time; it would seem to have great potential to thrive now in a world where Animal Crossing is a massive hit for Nintendo. But even back in the 360 days, it was Rare’s first defining moment for its new platform.
Released: 2007
No Xbox has ever successfully gained a real foothold in the Japanese gaming market, but you can’t say that Microsoft never tried. Arguably the company’s biggest push came in the Xbox 360 era, when one of the biggest overtures made to Japanese audiences by the American behemoth came when it partnered with legendary Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi to help fund his new studio, Mistwalker. The two JRPGs Mistwalker created for Microsoft live on in Xbox lore: Blue Dragon, a cartoony adventure with art by another legend, Akira Toriyama, came first, arriving in Japan in 2006 and in the Xbox’s home market in the US in 2007. But it’s the second game – the darker, more serious, Unreal Engine-powered, four-DVD epic called Lost Odyssey, that showed the rest of the industry that the Xbox could go toe-to-toe with Sony and Nintendo in the JRPG department and wasn’t just a Western RPG powerhouse. No one questioned Xbox’s RPG credentials after that.
Released: 2006
By default, every game released for the Xbox 360 during its first few months that wasn’t also available on the original Xbox – and there weren’t nearly as many cross-gen games back then as there are now – was an Xbox 360 exclusive, since the PlayStation 3 didn’t release until late 2006. Among those exclusives was one of the most memorable zombie games of all time.
Capcom’s Dead Rising, which was produced by Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune, was something we truly hadn’t seen before: a triple-A game set inside a gigantic mall with literally hundreds of characters on the screen at any given time. And those characters, of course, were zombies. So, so many zombies. (Side note: one of the Xbox 360’s most famous Achievements – remember, the console invented those too – was the Zombie Genocider Achievement that required you to kill the number of zombies equivalent to the population of Willamette: 53,594).
Dead Rising was uniquely told on a timer – you had three in-game days to complete the story and, hopefully, escape the Willamette Mall. This resulted in numerous possible endings and, thus, ample reason to replay the campaign. Just as memorable was that as photojournalist Frank West, you could turn just about anything in the mall into a weapon. But you also earned Prestige Points by taking perfect pictures of the insanity around you – which you’d accumulate to level up and have a better chance of survival.
Dead Rising was not only one of the defining games of Xbox 360’s first year, but it showed us that the “HD Era” was truly capable of giving us gaming experiences that we’d never had before.
Released: 2005
Xbox Live Arcade – the brilliant indie-turned-small-scale-and-indie game publishing program that offered a curated selection of bite-sized games on a weekly basis (who remembers Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays?) – did as much to define the Xbox 360 as any triple-A game did. The most-downloaded Xbox Live Arcade game ever was Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, Bizarre Creations’ unlockable Project Gotham Racing 2 minigame that found a second life as a day-one debut download on the then-brand-new XBLA platform. Geometry Wars’s premise was deceptively simple: survive as long as you can while blasting larger and larger waves of encroaching enemies. For a lot of gamers, when they think of Xbox Live Arcade, the first thing they think of is Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.
Released: 2008
PlayStation may have had God of War, but Xbox had Ninja Gaiden. The first in Ryu Hayabusa’s modern revival helped legitimize the Xbox as a viable platform for Japanese-developed games, and the Xbox 360-exclusive sequel upped the ante for the more powerful new console. It brought more weapons, more bosses, and more resolution, now that Ninja Gaiden was in HD (fun fact, though: the first game natively supported widescreen way back in 2005!). Oh, and it also served up a whole heck of a lot more blood thanks to the new dismemberment system.
Ninja Gaiden 2’s action was far more violent thanks to your new ability to slice off the arms, legs, and heads from your foes. It only augmented an absolutely sublime fast-action combat system, even if having all those additional pixels couldn’t quite fix the troublesome camera. Sadly, this would prove to be series mastermind Tomonobu Itagaki’s final contribution to the franchise, but at the time, it asserted the Xbox 360 as the place to go for the best of any genre.
Released: 2008
Odds are, if I say the words “Summer of Arcade,” it brings up positive memories for you. The annual promotion was a genius bit of Microsoft marketing that sought – successfully, I might add – to fill in the quiet summer months that tended to be devoid of major game releases with 4-5 weeks of curated heavy hitters in the indie and bite-sized game space. The very first one took place in 2008, and boy did it ever set the tone! Galaga Legions, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Castle Crashers, and a platformer called Braid from a then-unknown developer named Jonathan Blow. Though smaller in scope than a traditional big-budget game, Braid had every bit the looks and the brains of one thanks to its distinct painterly artstyle and challenging time-manipulation-based puzzles. If everyone wasn’t paying attention to Xbox Live Arcade before Braid, they sure as heck were after.
Released: 2007
It is a double-edged sword that the original Crackdown will perhaps forever be thought of first and foremost as The Game That Came With the Halo 3 Beta. But anyone who bought Crackdown just to get a crack at playing Halo 3’s multiplayer for the first time quickly learned that the candy wrapper tasted just as good as the candy bar inside. Crackdown – the brainchild of original Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones – set players loose inside a comic-book-esque world as a would-be superhero with no rigid structure. Instead, you had total freedom to go anywhere and try anything in its Pacific City sandbox. That meant that, yes, you could make a beeline straight for the top kingpin of one of Crackdown’s gangs. You probably wouldn’t be powerful enough to take them down at that point, though – you got literally stronger in Crackdown by defeating enemies and picking up experience orbs of different flavors depending on how you took them down, such as with melee combat, in a vehicle, or with a gun. Eventually, you’d be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, lift cars over your head and throw them, and more. In a time when there weren’t a lot of good sandbox games not named Grand Theft Auto, Crackdown brought something fresh and fun to the table.
Released: 2009
Why Forza Motorsport 3 rather than Forza Motorsport 2, which was the first entry on the Xbox 360? Easy: because FM3 is where Forza passed Gran Turismo as the best simulation racing series in the world. Visually, the series always set the bar high, and its second lap on the 360 kept the pedal to the metal in that department. And the car list was never in question. But what Forza Motorsport 3 added was the Rewind mechanic that allowed you to press Y to reverse the action a few seconds if you crashed or took a turn too fast. You could turn it off, of course – Forza Motorsport was always nothing if not customizable – but it added a thick layer of accessibility and approachability to what had always been a pretty buttoned-up, serious racing sim. The Rewind feature only added to what I always called the “soul” of Forza – my vague but I think accurate way of describing the joy and spirit that Forza Motorsport always brought to players, whereas Gran Turismo, for all its simulation racing brilliance, always felt more…clinical. Forza Motorsport 3 was Turn 10’s turning point where the studio passed the competition and never looked back.
Released: 2008
Valve and partner Turtle Rock Studios (who Valve acquired mid-development) practically started the four-player PvE trend in shooters with Left 4 Dead, a brilliant, sometimes scary, and always replayable co-op shooter that had you proceeding through several five-level-long campaigns, surviving waves of zombie attacks thrown at you by the AI “Director” while you clamored for each map’s limited resources, seeking the shelter of the safe room at the end of each chapter. Its mechanics were simple but fun, and thanks to the Director’s always-changing placement of common and special enemies alike, it never quite played the same way twice. Plus, running an entire campaign only took 60-90 minutes to complete, so you and your friends could jump on Xbox Live, have fun together, and feel like you accomplished something by the time you signed off for the evening. It’s almost quaint to think about now in our current age of long-tail live-service games that try to keep you on a hamster wheel, grinding to the next unlockable or piece of content. But Left 4 Dead both respected your time and made great use of it. Many games have since imitated it, but none have ever topped it.
Released: 2010
Though Limbo didn’t come along until over halfway through the Xbox 360 generation, it is nevertheless the standard-bearer for what Xbox Live Arcade was capable of. Developer Playdead’s side-scrolling physics-based platformer told the harrowing story of a boy who…well, no one’s quite sure, really – there are many intriguing theories as to what the real story of Limbo is! But what’s not up for debate is that Limbo is about as close to perfect as a video game can get in terms of mechanics, art, animation, audio design, and polish. (Playdead’s next game, 2016’s Inside for Xbox One, would prove to somehow be even better than Limbo, but that’s a story for another day.) It was the perfect rebuttal to film critic Roger Ebert’s assertion from three months before Limbo released that video games weren’t and could never be art. Limbo defined Xbox Live Arcade, cementing Microsoft’s already established small-games platform as one of the very best things about the Xbox 360.
Released: 2007
If you were a gamer in the late 2000’s, odds are you were either an active participant in the plastic-instrument rhythm-game craze that Guitar Hero started, or you knew someone who was. Developer Harmonix Music Systems built Guitar Hero but then sold it to Activision. That’s when the developer advanced the exploding genre forward with Rock Band, a four-player co-op game whose multiplayer experience is truly unlike anything else you’ve ever played. A singer, guitarist, bass player, and drummer worked together to hit the right notes as they came down the note highway, truly and emphatically delivering a convincing replica of the feeling real-life musicians have when they play together. Rock Band was truly remarkable, not just for its core gameplay and multiplayer alchemy, but also for its commitment to music. Harmonix added to the game’s music library with new songs via DLC every single week for eight years, eventually adding full albums like Pearl Jam’s Ten, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Rush’s Moving Pictures, Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape, and more. Rock Band may not have been exclusive to the Xbox 360, but it was nevertheless a defining game for the console, standing out amongst the even heavier hitters coming up higher on this list that arrived at the same time.
Released: 2006
Around 30-60 minutes into the first-person RPG The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, when you first emerged from the dungeon and into the open world for the first time, you spun your character around and your jaw dropped. A truly next-gen, high-definition world was all around you, and in it you could go anywhere and, seemingly, do anything. That Oblivion dropped so soon after the Xbox 360 launched – just four months into the new Xbox’s lifecycle, and while PlayStation gamers were still stuck on the PS2 that wasn’t capable of anything that looked remotely like it – only made Bethesda’s first console-on-day-one role-playing game that much more incredible. While the Xbox 360 had a very good launch lineup, nothing at the time (or really in hindsight) made you have to buy the console immediately. Oblivion changed that. You had to get a 360. You had to see this. And the gameplay lived up to the graphics. Oblivion packed dozens of hours of open-world medieval-fantasy role-playing, spanning many memorable quests and locations. It was a generation-defining moment.
Released: 2007
Before BioShock, stories were mostly secondary in first-person shooters. Sure, there was Halo, but that was the (wonderful) exception to the rule. BioShock – the brainchild of Ken Levine, creator of the emergent-gameplay classic System Shock 2 – had the depth of a great book, the plot twist of a memorable movie, and the gameplay to match the very best of any action game on the market. It was set in a failed undersea utopia – the city of Rapture – where visionary Andrew Ryan’s dream turned into a nightmare. As players discovered Rapture, they found it overrun with creepy monsters as well as curious Little Sisters and their drill-armed, divesuit-wearing protectors, the Big Daddies. It’s not hyperbole to say that BioShock elevated video game storytelling, and the fact that it was initially released as an Xbox 360 exclusive only helped further define the second Xbox as a must-have entertainment delivery box for your living room.
Released: 2008
While it wouldn’t be fair to say that Fable 2 was the Xbox 360’s Zelda, it was a large-scale action-adventure RPG with charm for days and a unique consequence system that would change your character’s physical appearance based on how good – or evil – you chose to be. Fable 2, for the most part, delivered on the remaining promises made by renowned designer Peter Molyneux’s first attempt on the original Xbox. No, you couldn’t plant a seed and watch it grow into a tree, but you could wander the world of Albion with your trusty dog at your side, battling Hobbes, leveling up by actually doing jobs, and building relationships – yes, even romantic ones – with townsfolk. Player choice was at the heart of Fable 2, making it yet another fantastic and unforgettable role-playing game for an Xbox platform that, until the 360 came around (see what I did there?), was known primarily as a first-person shooter box. There had never been and still hasn’t been anything quite like Fable, and the series was at its best with Fable 2, its first Xbox 360 entry.
Released: 2008
To say that the buildup to Grand Theft Auto 4’s release was a big f’n deal would be a colossal understatement. The biggest franchise on Earth was going next-gen, with a brand-new game engine and the power of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to allow for more open-world possibilities than ever before. And while the previous 3D games had all debuted as PlayStation exclusives, GTA 4 would ship day-and-date on Xbox 360. But Microsoft wanted more than that. So they paid through the nose for timed exclusivity on both of GTA 4’s brilliant expansion packs: The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. Then-Xbox boss Peter Moore even announced this monumental get by repeating his Halo 2 release date trick, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a “tattoo” of the Grand Theft Auto 4 logo. Suddenly, the Xbox 360 was the best place to play the first next-gen GTA game, and both expansions were so good that I can’t imagine anyone – be it Microsoft writing the check or players picking up the 360 version of the game – regretted their choice.
Released: 2007
Shout-out to Call of Duty 2, which was a day-one launch title for the Xbox 360 and truly started Call of Duty’s ascent to becoming the biggest non-Grand Theft Auto video game franchise in the world, but Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the one that really sent the series into the stratosphere. It almost seems silly to say now, but before Modern Warfare, Call of Duty had only ever been a first-person shooter set in World War II. Infinity Ward not only jumped the timeline forward, but everything else, too. The stellar single-player campaign was full of shocking moments, while the multiplayer built on top of the fast time-to-kill the franchise was already known for and paired with some truly memorable maps to make it a must-play. That this hit just after the juggernaut known as Halo 3 – combined with the effortlessness of connecting with your friends on Xbox Live – cemented the Xbox 360 as the place to play multiplayer shooters.
Released: 2007
Mass Effect promised players a true space opera – a trilogy of games where your choices would affect your relationships with other characters and lead to your own unique outcomes and endings. Your character would import into the subsequent games in the promised trilogy, and in the end it would be unlike any role-playing game you’d ever laid your hands on. And the first Mass Effect – an absolutely visually stunning Unreal Engine-powered epic from the RPG kings at BioWare – delivered on its end of the bargain. The Mass Effect universe felt lived-in, with myriad alien species all interacting with each other at the Citadel, a galactic hub at the virtual center of the universe. You played as a male or female Commander Shepard, a human who becomes the first of their species to be welcomed into the ranks of the Spectres, a group of space sheriffs given incredible power and leeway to protect the galaxy. No one had ever seen anything like Mass Effect before, and the fact that it came from the same development team that gave us the original-Xbox-exclusive Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, meant that Xbox truly had some of the world’s most talented RPG developers on its side.
Released: 2006
You know a game is a big deal when its developers can ask Microsoft to double the amount of RAM in the Xbox 360 before the console makes it to market – and Microsoft says yes. Gears of War was perhaps the best-looking action game anyone had ever seen when it was released just 11 months into the Xbox 360’s lifespan, but it had incredibly weighty third-person cover-based gameplay to match its stunning looks. Gears of War dropped us onto the planet Sera, into the middle of a war between humans and the Locust, an underground-dwelling alien race hellbent on obliterating humanity. Gears of War is a war story, and while its Active Reload system, delightfully vicious chainsaw finishing moves with the Lancer rifle, and engrossing team-based multiplayer were all top-shelf, it’s arguably its empathetic characters that secured its place in gamers’ hearts. Marcus, Dom, Baird, and Cole – Delta Squad – really felt like brothers, and we became emotionally invested in their wartime journey. It’s no wonder Microsoft later bought the franchise for $2 billion.
Released: 2007
The Xbox 360 may not have had a new Halo game on day one, but as the rest of this list has shown, it didn’t need it. Still, when the day finally came in September of 2007 for the hugely anticipated Halo 3 to drop – nearly two years into the new Xbox’s life – it couldn’t have been a bigger deal. The original Xbox’s Halo 2 had infamously ended on a cliffhanger, and Halo 3 was built to resolve it – throwing plenty more hardware horsepower at Master Chief in the process. Story-wise it stuck the landing this time, giving players a satisfying conclusion that closed the book on Bungie’s trilogy, but not before Chief told us, “Wake me, when you need me.”
Meanwhile, multiplayer picked up where Halo 2 left off, augmenting the best online multiplayer infrastructure with Forge, a new level-editing tool that let players build their own maps. In hindsight, this is where Halo peaked in terms of success, popularity, cultural relevance and impact, as Call of Duty took its place at the top of the first-person shooter ladder after the release of the aforementioned Call of Duty 4. But we finished the fight, and the Xbox 360 eliminated any remaining doubt as to its dominance in the games industry.
Those are our picks for the 20 games that defined the Xbox 360. Are there any you’d like to add? Leave them in the comments below, and to the greatest Xbox console of them all, let me say, happy 20th anniversary and thank you for the countless amazing memories.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
