11 Of The Best Xbox 360 Games, According To Metacritic | TheGamer – TheGamer

Microsoft came out of nowhere with the original Xbox and entered the console market with a bang. While essentially running on a version of Direct X, the Xbox made a fantastic home console and had many great exclusives like the Halo series, Fable, and more.

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When Microsoft launched the Xbox 360, they were sure to make it just as impactful as their first console and brought many PC exclusives to consoles for the first time. To commemorate the Xbox 360, here are 10 of the best games on the console based on their Metacritic score - one game per franchise for varietys sake.

Batman Arkham Asylum proved that an amazing superhero game was possible. Batman Arkham City took everything established in the first game and built upon it, giving you a massive city to explore and find gadgets in. They also made the flight mechanics much more in-depth and useful as it would be your primary way of making it around the city.

The game saw a lot of DLC which added new missions, new playable characters, and more. The Metroid style of gameplay mixed with the almost rhythm-game-like combat made it the perfect package.

Gears of War was Cliff Bleszinskis take on the genre established in Resident Evil 4. You are Marcus Phoenix fighting off the Locus, a massive race of humanoid creatures that live directly beneath the earths surface.

You take part in epic firefights and must pop in and out of cover to ensure you wont get killed. You also have a chainsaw attached to your gun so you can cut your enemies directly in half during close-quartered encounters. The series still persists to this day, though the gameplay has changed very little in the 5+ games that have been released thus far.

Up to this point, Call of Duty was set primarily in World War 2 and while successful, was in no way as big as it is today. In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare they decided to leave the second world war and head into modern times.

While the game did offer a fun and interesting single-player campaign, the real appeal of the game was its online multiplayer. The online multiplayer set the gaming world ablaze and it hasnt been the same since and countless attempts are still being made to try to capture the online multiplayer excitement created by this game.

Halo 3 is as the name implies, is the third game in the Halo series. Like the previous entry, Halo 3s main hook is in its multiplayer. The game offered a large selection of different online modes including deathmatch, capture the flag, team deathmatch, and much more.

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The Halo series was massive at this point and was a system seller for Microsoft. Halo 3 allowed you to also play multiplayer in the story as one player controlled Master Chief and the other controlled Artbitor, an Elite who joined the human side.

The first Portal was set up as a series of test rooms where you would have to solve puzzles using a portal gun which could create a blue and orange portal that you and other objects can pass through. By the end of the game you find out your only purpose is to finish the tests and later be disposed of so you escape.

In Portal 2, the game is structured more like an adventure as you attempt to escape the Aperture facility. The game also offers a cooperative mode where you and a friend must solve puzzles together to progress.

Red Dead Redemption is the sequel to Red Dead Revolver, though it shares very little with that game aside from the wild west setting. Red Dead Redemption can be summarized as Grand Theft Auto in the wild west as you have a massive open world to explore.

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You take on various missions for people, get into gunfights, tame wild horses, unlock more outfits and equipment, and more. The game was followed up by Red Dead Redemption 2 which came out in 2018 and was one of the biggest games of that year.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim adds so much that wasnt in the previous game, you may be mistaken and think they arent from the same franchise. While in the previous game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion your sword swings sort of just go anywhere - in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim all of your attacks feel like you are actually connecting, making the game feel much more action-oriented instead other the heavy CRPG feel previous games in the series had.

Easily the most successful games in the series and is still being played and modded today over 9 years after its release.

Mass Effect 1 took the RPG elements that Bioware is known for and shot them into a third-person cover-based shooter which were very popular at the time. Not only was the gameplay deep and enjoyable but the game also created an entire universe with complex alien creatures all co-existing and dealing with racism and power balance.

Mass Effect 2 took the gameplay and story established in the first game and improved upon it immensely. Combat is given and even bigger role also you have the ability to stop cutscenes in the middle of the conversation and react which will affect the story.

The Orange Box takes some of Valves best work and throws it all into one amazing package. There is Portal which is a series of levels where you must complete puzzles using a portal gun. Team Fortress 2 is a team-based online shooter that started off as a mod for Quake 2. Finally, there is Half-Life 2 which is a groundbreaking first-person shooter that most of todays first-person shooters are based on.

With this and many other games of this generation, it was becoming clear that the line between PC gaming and console gaming was becoming thinner and thinner.

BioShock is a first-person shooter set in Rapture, a fictional underwater city that was made by those who wanted to live away from laws and do as they please. However, as time went on the inhabitants of the city were driven mad from the cabin fever and gene splicing that had become common practice.

The games philosophy borrows heavily from Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged novel which is referred to many times throughout the game. In BioShock, you encounter plasmids, injections that genetically alter your DNA so you can shoot elements and other things out of your hands such as fire, electricity, bees, and more.

Grand Theft Auto IV was the first Grand Theft Auto to both appear on the seven generation of consoles and use the cover-based third-person gameplay that is used in Grand Theft Auto V. Like previous games in the series, Grand Theft Auto IV has a heavy emphasis on adult storytelling and exploring an open world.

Grand Theft Auto IV had 2 large expansion packs which included entirely new stories with a different playable character, new cars, new weapons, and new radio stations based on the theme of the story, and more.

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Ian is a writer with a strong interest in video game history with a small collection of games from the Atari 2600 all the way up to the most current generation; so when you need a random fact about video game history to share at a party, he's your guy!