From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Niko Bellic came to Liberty City chasing the American dream and found the bill. GTA IV swapped jetpacks for moral weight — and its grimy, living city remains an astonishing achievement.
Rockstar’s western elegy follows John Marston across a frontier being fenced in by the future. Red Dead Redemption is a slow, sorrowful masterpiece that redefined what open worlds could say.
Rare’s garden sim asks you to breed living piñatas in a world of candy, rivalry and the occasional sour invader. Viva Piñata is the weirdest, warmest exclusive the 360 ever grew.
Dragon Ball’s Akira Toriyama and Final Fantasy’s creator walk into an Xbox exclusive. Blue Dragon is a deliberately traditional JRPG whose shadow-class system hides real depth beneath the storybook surface.
Hironobu Sakaguchi’s four-disc epic pairs old-school turn-based craft with short stories that will quietly break your heart. Lost Odyssey is the Xbox 360’s great lost JRPG.
Capcom trapped a photojournalist in a mall with 53,594 zombies and a three-day timer. Dead Rising is stressful, silly, savage and unlike anything else — a launch-window classic that still bites.
Part superhero sandbox, part orb-collecting fever dream. Crackdown’s Pacific City is a vertical playground where the levelling-up never stops being fun — the rooftop agility orb is gaming’s most addictive sound.
Turn 10’s fourth lap is the series at its peak: 500 cars, sublime handling, Autovista’s car-porn showrooms and a community engine that never stopped giving. The 360’s racing crown, unchallenged.
A hero, a dog, a kingdom to buy one shop at a time. Fable II is janky, sentimental and utterly singular — Lionhead’s fairytale still glows where most RPGs merely gleam.
BioWare rebuilt its space opera around one impossible mission and the crew you assemble to survive it. Mass Effect 2 remains the gold standard for the character-driven RPG shooter.