It's been a somewhat slow months for gaming, and for this well. Work, personal life, sports, gym, and more have been consuming my life, but with my new position at work, it allows me a little more time to maintain. So, with not much going on, other than the announcement for the next Xbox coming up, I figured I would write my list for my favorite games from this generation, so far. I know there are still some big name titles around the corner, but I toyed with this idea since the Playstation 4 was announced.
It was a difficult task. Too many quality titles were released, and to be honest, I probably will have forgotten and left out a few. Let's give it a go, in descending order from 10 to 1.
10. Batman: Arkham City - A game that proved licensed property doesn't always have to suck. And not only that, but was a wonderful game overall. Improving on everything Arkham Asylum did, it gave us the feeling of being Batman in a large scale world. A ton of gadgets, and unlockable moves, progressing through the story multiple times was a blast. Playing this is the closest thing to be the Bat as you're going to get, other than wearing the costume and getting beaten up on the streets by people wanting to test your skills...
9. Dark Souls - I was prepared for death. I told myself I wouldn't stop till I beat this damn game. I stopped. I traded it to a friend, and said screw it. 2 weeks later, I was pondering what I could have done differently? Why I was dying so easily? Maybe I should have tried a different build? I ended up having the itch to try Dark Souls again, and never looked back. Racking up a couple hundred hours of game play and play throughs, I fell in love with everything about this one. And with Dark Souls II on the horizon, I'm looking forward to the frustration all over again.
8. Halo 3 - It was a long time ago, but Halo 3 was a huge part of this console generation. People seem to overlook it, especially with Reach taking a lot of the praise away from the game that gave it the hype it was semi worthy of. Halo 3 brought me into online gaming more than I ever was before, and I loved everything about the balanced game play and shooting mechanics, and awesome story that kept me coming back to play Legendary with friends. This one deserves a spot on the top ten.
7. Borderlands - Borderlands brought a lot to the table. I must have played through it 4 or 5 times, I actually lost count. A couple on Xbox, and a couple on my PC, I couldn't get enough. There was something strangely addictive about finding gun chests scattered throughout Pandora and mixing different gun combinations to fit your character class. Borderlands combined everything people loved about first person shooters, role playing games, and a comically smart story line to keep me not caring about any other game I had, even months after release.
6. Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots - Oh boy, this one. The fitting conclusion to Solid Snake's journey. A ridiculous story line that had more twists than any right minded person could count, fun stealth and camouflage game play, addicting gun customization, and a proper sending off for Old Snake, this game is as close to perfect as it will ever get.
5. Uncharted 2 - As a game that felt more an experience rather than just another title, the overall grandiose cinematic adventure that was Uncharted 2 was something of legend. Fun characters and fun game play. Fun run and gun action, and a fun story. Guess what? The game was fun. Plain and simple fun. I was never frustrated, it flowed perfectly. Even on Crushing difficulty, it was a blast to play through. Add in some decent multiplayer death matches on top of the stellar everything else, this game was damn good that everyone better have played from front to back.
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Here is where things get interesting. Modern Warfare is the game that started the first person shooter craze. Yes, Halo 3 was made before it, and it was the game that got the FPS genre going, but Call of Duty 4 took it to the next level. This was the type of shooter that everyone was clamoring for after the World War 2 setting had become stagnant. Finally a game set in modern times, with M4A1's, M1014's, M240's, Clay-mores and C4. A compelling story with major tones of national unrest and the threat of world war by terrorism. Pepper in some beyond addicting multiplayer with a progression system that everyone and their mother's developers have copied since. This game was and will go down as the shooter to spawn the rest, and it did one hell of a job in the process.
3. GTA IV - Building on the success of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, GTA IV took a little turn to the more serious side of story telling. It was Rockstar's first GTA on the new hardware and they succeeded in every way, shape, and form. Ditching the cartoonish visuals of the Playstation 2, and Xbox era, they went with a real look, and real story, all while keeping their patented satirical humor, insane action, massive open world, and detailed character development. Grand Theft Auto has been a juggernaut since GTA 3 was released, and they haven't looked back. GTA IV is arguable one of the greatest games ever made, let alone this console generation. You could pretty much do anything you wanted in Liberty City, and it was a great way to kill your Sunday afternoon, or entire weekend for that matter. I could ramble on for a few paragraphs about every crazy thing you can do in game but I need to continue on. Just know this game needs to be played at some point in your life, or you just need to stop playing video games if you haven't at least tried it.
2. Fallout 3 - I must have spent close to 400 hours in the Wasteland, and I just started up a new play through on my Xbox 360. When I first learned about Fallout 3, I didn't know much about the series, nor did I even know much about Bethesda. For some odd reason, I was in college and I remember being at Gamestop, and something clicked in my head that I wanted to pre-order the game. It must have been a Gameinformer preview or something along those lines that made me excited about the title. So, I ended up at the midnight release with about two dozen other people. I brought it back to my apartment, and had an immediate attraction to everything the game had to offer. The way the story was presented, the feelings I had developed to characters and locations throughout it's massive map, my affinity for the secret weapons and the need to find and try them all, stellar DLC, and more side quests than I could remember. Fallout 3 has crept its way into one of my personal favorite games of all times, and it absolutely deserves it.
1. Red Dead Redemption - Rockstar has stolen the show. With two titles in the top 3, it's clear, to me, they have made the most out of this console generation only to have another powerhouse in GTA V coming down the pipe quickly for holiday 2013. Red Dead Redemption gave us something new and refreshing. A lot of people were a little unsure as to how the Wild West would lend itself to an open world environment, but coming away years later, it turned out to be, in my opinion, the greatest game of this console generation. The sheer amount of quality in the massive amount of quantity is above and beyond the competition. Do you want to hunt wild animals? Have fun stalking prey in the snowy mountains, and ranking up your hunter challenges. Want to cause a ruckus at the bank and fend off the local police from a rooftop? Good luck in the firefight with the U.S. Marshals. Want to ride the train through Mexico for a few hours picking off anything you see with your Winchester Repeater? It'll be a treat watching bandits, slide off their horses dead. Meeting strangers and other cowboys in the field, stumbling upon treasure, intense gun fights, awesome multiplayer, considerably the greatest DLC ever created, and a story to make a grown man shed a tear, Red Dead Redemption far and away takes the cake with a Winchester in one arm, and a lasso in the other. Bravo John Marston, bravo.
I really struggled with this, especially the last 5. Now, these aren't the greatest games ever made, nor am I saying that these are better than your picks. These are just the games that I think I personally enjoyed this console generation. The gap from 1-10 is minuscule. I didn't think it would be this difficult until i got to around number three. And I know there's major titles that are superb games that I left out; Bioshock, Bioshock: Infinite, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, the Mario Games, the Zelda games, Dead Rising, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Rock Band, Gears of War, God of War 3, Minecraft, Killzone 2, Journey, Braid, Battlefield 3, Assassins Creed, etc. These are all games I spent time with and had fun with, a lot of time playing multiple play throughs and countless hours.
Overall, I like my list. I tend to stick to the open world games, shooters, and RPG's. I ended up flipping a few choices back and forth a few times while writing it, but I'm comfortable with how it turned out. A few choices I was debating on putting in the list, and not the eighth through tenth, but pretty much throughout other than one to three. I guess to me, story, and character development have a lot to do with what I consider to be the greatest. Add in customization, some post release support, and fun multiplayer and it just helps out the cause. Hope you enjoyed the list, so what are your favorites from this generation?
