Let's Talk Xbox 360

Those of you who visit the video game thread know I've been getting back into video gaming. I just traded a few board games for an Xbox 360 and a couple games (that I'm not too interested in, but Project Gotham 3 will probably be cool).

When I got a Wii a while ago I found it pretty easy to figure out what games I wanted, even through the piles of crap on that console. With 360 I'm finding it tougher because I've never had a Microsoft console, and I'm unfamiliar with the franchises. So what big franchises are worth playing? A bit about my preferences, I like puzzly adventure games, I like FPS if there's tension, but am not interested in the WW2-present sort unless you're personally backing it. I like platformers and racing games, I hate hack and slash/brawlers unless they're outstanding. I get so bored otherwise. I like RPGs and RPG elements.

So there are all these games with 2 or 3 titles on the system; Gears of War, Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Borderlands, Batman, Dragon Age, Condemned. What can I ignore?

You can safely ignore at least 90% of the games out there. So many sequels, so much crap, so many games that by this point aren't worth sludging through their 6 hour campaigns or fooling with their abadoned multiplayer modes.

The Batman games are great, especially if you like Batman and they are puzzly adventure games so I think you'll be good there. I think they're probably dirt cheap by now.

Shadow Complex was one of the first big Xbox Live games, and it's still really good. Metroidvania.

Bastion is great.

Metro 2033 remains the best FPS of the past generation- lots of tension and story.

Skip all the Bioware junk, that stuff was at its prime three, four years ago. I don't think Gears of War is worth playing anymore either, Vanquish is a WAAAAAY better cover shooter.

Bayonetta is one of my favorite games of all time, but more of a Japanese-style brawler. But it's RIDICULOUSLY over the top and the gameplay is outstanding.

Forza 3 (not 4) is probably the best racer for the system. Lots to dig into. If you want a more arcade-oriented racer, Split/Second was WAY underrated and Burnout Paradise is huge.

Witcher 2 is the best RPG for the system, a great game.

And there's always Dark Souls.

Left 4 Dead is practically obsolete, if you want 4 player co-op Borderlands 2 is probably the better pick.

Bioshock and Bioshock 2 are worth playing through once. Infinite is fucking horrible.

Condemned, talk about old fashioned...they're really dated, but they have a kind of unique atmosphere.

Bull Nakano wrote: So what big franchises are worth playing? A bit about my preferences, I like puzzly adventure games, I like FPS if there's tension, but am not interested in the WW2-present sort unless you're personally backing it. I like platformers and racing games, I hate hack and slash/brawlers unless they're outstanding. I get so bored otherwise. I like RPGs and RPG elements.

Do you have a PC? That colors the answers a lot because 360 has a lot of games that are good but become great on the PC.

For platformers: SPLOSION MAN, SUPER MEAT BOY, BRAID and FEZ are all great. SPLOSION MAN plays like a zany cartoon, SUPER MEAT BOY is more puzzle than platformer but totally rewarding, BRAID is a brain burner and super clever, and FEZ is remarkable in that there is no conflict. You don't have anything to squish or kill. Just explore and work it all out.

The only FPS I like is BORDERLANDS. Fucking fun as hell. If you liked DIABLO 2, this is it in FPS form. BORDERLANDS 2 is also good.

Of all the other titles you mention, the only other one I liked was BATMAN, and then only ARKHAM ASYLUM. Great game. Other folks love CITY, and it's more that I didn't like it as much as ASYLUM. In that same genre, CRACKDOWN is awesome as well. Fair warning, the sequel is a turd. Do you have a Wii U? If so, hold off on BAYONETTA. Otherwise, get it. Not a lot of games let you kill God with your hair orgasms.

I want you to borrow DARK SOULS. You might love it or fucking hate it forever with the fury of a thousand suns. It's a little polarizing.

You should get a ZEN PINBALL game if only to see how fucking awful you are compared to Space Ghost and repoman. In that same vain, you are not a man until you have been humilated by stormseeker75's GEOMETRY WARS 2 scores.

Split/Second and Blur are two of my highest wants, I love arcade racers.

Am I able to buy games from the online store without paying money to have an account? There's a few I'd really like, like Flashback and Hidden in Plain Sight, but I don't want to pay $50 to subscribe, I care 0 about playing games online, it's never appealed to me.

So there are all these games with 2 or 3 titles on the system; Gears of War, Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Borderlands, Batman, Dragon Age, Condemned. What can I ignore?

Taking these one-by-one:

Gears of War: Ignore the first one, they didn't really iron out the mechanics until GoW2. These games are particularly great for co-op -- either the campaign itself or Horde mode. GoW: Judgment has Overrun mode, which is fantastic. Games are fun despite the meathead characters, dude-brah dialogue and unintentionally homoerotic bromance. Actually, the unintentionally homoerotic bromance is pretty great.

Left 4 Dead: L4D2 is a pretty big step up from the first one, and it's one of the rare games to be set in the American South. Really fun co-op and multiplayer.

Mass Effect: I'm not as crazy about these games as most people, so I'll let others chime in.

Bioshock: First one is a modern classic, second one was unjustly maligned, third one has a neat Chums-of-Chance-derived setting (any Pynchon fans up in the hizzouse?) but the pieces didn't quite come together for me. There's a really good Bioshock-esque title called Singularity that probably costs fifty cents used at this point and is worth picking up on the cheap.

Borderlands: They're both great, excellent for co-op.

Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are both good, although if pressed I'd suggest the first one. Haven't played Arkham Origins so someone else can chime in.

Dragon Age: I loathed these games, but like Mass Effect they have no shortage of fanboys so someone else can pipe in.

Condemned: Never played it

A few lesser-heralded favorites I'd like to point out:

The Saboteur: Open-world adventure game set in Paris and surrounding countryside during WW2. Fantastic and undervalued. The introductory portion of the game is a two hour linear crescendo of pulp narrative that ends in a amazing, breathtaking set piece.

Burnout Paradise: You mentioned racing games. This is the only one you need, although I'd put in a good word for the super-obscure Autobahn Polizei, which is a low budget but highly competent Need for Speed clone that's a loose adaptation of a long-running German television series and has hilariously bad voice acting.

Enslaved: Undervalued platformer with great characters.

Renegade Ops: Downloadable title from the folks who made Just Cause (you are getting Just Cause 2, right? If not, what's wrong with you?). It's pretty much literally a 21st Century version of that old NES/arcade game Jackal. It's fun as hell.

Alpha Protocol: Conventional wisdom is correct on this one: get through the first two or three hours (the Middle East sequence) and you're rewarded with one of the best narrative and character driven games of the last generation. The dynamic character, reputation, dialogue and plot branches means you can play the game a half dozen times and have very different experiences, and on that front it frankly makes Bioware look amateurish. Also contains one of the all-time great side characters, Steven Heck.

Deadly Premonition: Widely misunderstood and mocked (most notably by the dudebrahs at Giant Bomb), it's not everyone's thing but if you can stomach the truly execrable gameplay you'll be treated to the most compellingly batshit story of the last generation, something that uses Lynch-ian and King-ian tropes as a starting point before it strikes its own truly original chord.

Nier: The most brilliant game of the last generation. It's a reflexive inquiry into cliche RPG tropes and also compelling and heartbreaking. I happen to be writing an article on it, so I'll just link it here when I'm done.

I'll think some more. Oh, since you like platformers, you need to get Splosion Man.

Whoa buddy, you named two that I would easily slate as the best of the past generation that were WILDLY misunderstood and really kind of out-of-place in the whole dudebro shooter atmosphere of the 360- Deadly Premonition and Nier.

Deadly Premonition was BRILLIANT, but yeah, the gameplay is almost like a PS2-era survivial horror game made in the PS1 era. But there are moments of pure genius. Like driving around in these HORRIBLE cars and realizing that you can turn on the windshield wipers. For no reason. And that you have to shave. Or the price of things in vending machines is INSANE. The writing is hilarious and it comes across like a big piece of meta-tomfoolery riffing on Twin Peaks in particular. It's really long too (maybe 30 hours?) and there's just a STUPID amount of stuff to see and do. Most of which is terrible, but always at least entertaining, spooky, hilarious or just weird.

Nier is a REALLY unusual game that's doing some pretty transgressive stuff. When you turn it on, the first thing you hear is one of the characters (that you're hours and hours away from meeting) just completely bitching out a book. Like Inferno says, there is actually a lot of really sophisticated meta about RPGs, but it has an unusually interesting story. The game is so awkward and off-putting that most folks just didn't bother to look further into it, but there is much to appreciate. Most reviewers griped about the combat, graphics and so forth and missed the real value of this difficult (not as in "hard to play") game.

I wanted to get into Alpha Protocol more and I did get five or six hours into it but I think something came out or whatever that distracted me from it. It did seem like it was pretty good, and really quite underrated.

Another great, tragically misunderstood game was Catherine...it was marketed as some kind of anime sex game with titillating advertisments and so forth, but it was actually a shockingly mature title about relationships, growing up and the psychology of sex. The gameplay was an odd mix of interactive adventure and this block puzzle platforming thing. Most of the actual action sees the main character in his dreams, trying to ascend these blocks that can be pushed, pulled, moved and traversed. Some of it is really tricky. There are a couple of branching paths that can be taken, and between each "level" there's this confessional booth where you go in and answer personal questions- you get to see what percentage of other players selected certain responses too. It's a really neat, completely unique game- and it may just fit into your puzzle/adventure/platform taste.

FPS: Borderlands 2, Gears and Halo are the best shooters on the system imo. This is the strongest genre on the 360, there are many good options regardless of your taste. Vanquish is good, but Gears has online. Metro felt gimped next to the PC version, it seemed to be build with a mouse and keyboard in mind. Bioshock was too easy, suffered from archaic tunnel shooter design, and feels clunky. But the storyline was good, so people loved this shit game.

RPGs: Mass Effect series, Nier, Bastion and Dark Souls I found great. Tales of Vesperia was alright, not the best in the series but pretty good. Witcher 2 didn't interest me at all, though many seem to like it. Dragon Age feels like an older Bioware game like Baldur's Gate, except it sucks. Not many choices for XBox RPGs. The best of these games have migrated to handhelds, though the PS3 has a few standouts. Sandbox RPGs from Bethseda are around if they are your thing, but if you've played one you've played them all. Fallout 3 and Skyrim are the best options.

Adventure: Arkham Asymlum, Arkham City, Bayonetta, and Metal Gear Rising are easily the best on the system. Metal Gear and Bayonetta are both hack and slash brawlers, but they're outstanding. Crackdown was good but aged really poorly, go with Red Dead, GTA V or Saint's Row 3/4 for this type of game. There are many good stealth games but I hate them all. Like FPG games, adventure games are a really strong suit of the XBox, so you have many options.

Platformers: I'm picky with platformers. The great ones on the system are Spelunky, Mega Man 9 and 10, Super Meat Boy and Rayman Legends. Other than those, you have the gimmicky puzzle platformers that critics seem to jerk off to (Fez, Journey, Braid, Limbo, Trine - all shit). Shovel Knight is the best indie platformer I've ever played (and one of the best indies of any sort) and might come to the XBox? Mighty No. 9 will (hopefully) be great, and that's coming.

Heh, I was beaten to the punch with Nier and completely forgot about Catherine. Catherine is fucking great for both the storyline and puzzle gameplay.

Hey Bull, I had years and years of fun with my Xbox360 so I'm happy to recommend my favourites throughout that generation:

Grand Theft Auto IV - absolute blast, my favourite game of that generation.
The Orange Box - amazing value. Portal and Half-Life 2 with both episodes as well. You have big fans of Team Fortress 2 on this site as well.
Grand Theft Auto V - I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy this for Xbox One just to play through it again. It's fantastic.
Mass Effect 2 - you should play the first one first to get into the story and doing so will really let you appreciate this fantastic game.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - perfect to scratch that RPG itch, it's a monumental game in scope.
Bioshock - terrific shooter, really scary, best atmospheric game I think I've ever played.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - incredible shooter and the first of its genre. The campaign is fantastic.
Red Dead Redemption - lots of fans of this on this site. It's a Western-themed Grand Theft Auto. It's incredible.
Portal 2 - i absolutely adored this game from start to finish. Very smart. FPS puzzler.
Gears of War - I really think you should play the first two. Best cover 3rd person shooter ever. The story is great, the game play is top drawer. I love it. That first experience with a Beserker...yikes...

I have other games to recommend but in my experience, those are the ones you absolutely have to play. They are the best of the best. You can absolutely ignore Left 4 Dead (so repetitive, so boring, if you are itching for zombies, get the Resident Evil 4 HD remake, it's great), Borderlands (Destiny is around the corner and is a way better version of this), Batman Arkham City is the best of the last bunch but I dunno... I think you need to play this other stuff first. You probably shouldn't 'ignore' it tho. Dragon Age, on the other hand, is really worth ignoring. Have a better time with Skyrim instead. Oh, and you can forget Condemned. It was a launch title for Xbox 360 and Bioshock is better in every single way.

Have a great time. It was easily the best console of the last generation. The game library is fantastic.

The thing that drew me to Condemned was the horror genre, I enjoy the pacing of horror games a lot, but I want to play Bioshock more because I love the System Shock games.

You all hit almost my entire list of games I was looking at, that's kind of incredible because it was like 30+ games! Here's the stuff no one mentioned:

Alan Wake
Deathsmiles
FEAR 2
Fuel
007 Blood Stone
Project Sylpheed
Spec Ops: The Line
Syndicate
Chronicles of Riddick (for escape from butcher bay)

I ALMOST put Fallout 3, almost. It is an AMAZING game. Skyrim is similar in many ways and is probably the best that Bethesda has made.

You like horror? Me too. Evil Within (coming this year) is going to be amazing. Resident Evil 4 HD is on Xbox 360 if you want to download it on Games on Demand. It is probably the best video game of all time if you haven't played it yet. Resident Evil 1 remake is coming soon to xbox360 I think.

Alan Wake gets old really quick. The FEAR games are fun for like 10 minutes. The rest of your stuff is awful there.

Unfortunately, the xbox 360 had a terrible Horror game library (other than RE4). I wonder if someone realized that afterwards because there are THREE Survival Horror games coming to Xbox One this fall.

Honestly, just get RE4 HD and then get RE 5 after (which was pretty good, just not as great as RE4)

Here are a few odds and ends I don't think a lot of folks mentioned:

Minerva's Den which was DLC for Bioshock 2 was fantastic. I felt that its story was more of a sequel to Bioshock than the second one was.

LIMBO I though was fantastic for its puzzles and the way the art style conveys the atmosphere. It creepy in the way the childhood dreams are.

FALLOUT NEW VEGAS- while I liked the setting of FALLOUT3, I think the whole experience of NEWVEGAS was a lot smoother.

MAGIC 2015- Single serving MAGIC THE GATHERING only this time there is complete deck building from the ground up. The downside is that means the AI decks have a lot better cards and a lot more synergy.

The gameplay in Alan Wake isn't very good, but the writing and scenario are especially strong. It's actually one of the better written games out there, far better than the juvenile gutter trash Rockstar puts out and way more engaging than the grocery list quests of the Bethesda games.

Deathsmiles isn't a horror game, it's a bullet hell shooter (side scrolling). It's a really good one (developed by Cave) but it has this awful gothic Lolita thing going on. I'd pick up the Treasure shooters on XBLA before it (Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun).

RE4 is pretty close to the best video game ever made.

Yeah, I know Deathsmiles is a Cave game, I like shooters, but I have a bunch of them, this one looked unique so I put it on my list.

I forgot about one "game" I really want, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I love anthologies and this one looks too good to be true.

Nier is very interesting and sometimes great, but one caveat applies. Do not go OCD and try to do all the subquests. Or really any subquest, unless by accident. Easily the worst designed subquests maybe ever, they're completely busy work. Fortunately tehy are in no way required to enjoy the game.