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Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (2005)
Originally featured as a minigame in Project Gotham, this 80s-style twin-stick shooter was rebuilt as a standalone digital-only release, attracting a huge new fanbase. Fast, frenetic and super stylish, with lovely vector visuals, it was the game that first showed the potential of Xbox Live Arcade.
Tens of millions of hours must have been spent in this foundational text of open-world role-playing games – one of the first video games where you really could go where you wanted and do pretty much as you pleased. Riding around Cyrodiil on horseback, taking in its gleaming city and backwater towns, it was so easy to get drawn into unexpected shenanigans that closing the story’s threatening hell-gates became a distant second priority.
Uno (2006)
Look – don’t @ us – Uno was one of the most important Xbox 360 games. It was the first game that many people ever played on webcam (for better or for worse), letting you see the expression on an opponent’s face when you played a wild draw four. It was one of the first downloadable multiplayer games that console players could enjoy. It was astonishingly moreish. Many, many times you’d pick up the controller intending on making a dent in Halo or Mass Effect, and instead be drawn into round upon round of late-night online Uno. We still sometimes hear the pleasing sound effects in our dreams.
Viva Piñata (2006)
Build a beautiful garden, attract colourful piñata-creatures to reside in it – then watch on as they all eat each other. The Darwinian brutality of Viva Piñata is a surprise in such a family-friendly-looking game, but it’s also just so compulsive. Many a hungover weekend in the 00s were spent trying to tempt bigger and more colourful predators to our lush mini-paradise. Horstachio for ever.
BioShock (2007)
Part dystopian adventure, part exploration of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, 2K Boston’s masterpiece has you exploring an undersea city built by a crazed billionaire with a fondness for drastic socio-scientific experiments. Would you kindly see the parallels to today’s tech bro oligarchs?
Halo 3 (2007)
Halo has never again been as good as it was in the original trilogy. This one is a shooter of astonishing scale for its time, the concluding part of gaming’s most maximalist and justifiably self-serious space drama. Where most modern shooters are glorified rollercoaster rides, corridors linked together by triggered set-pieces, Halo is full of intelligent enemies and opportunities for emergent chaos. But what we all remember best is the multiplayer: tanks and Ghost airships and Warthogs all clashing in endlessly entertaining remixes of the same outrageous grand battles. Its Forge map editor and fully customisable game rules made it feel infinitely entertaining.
Mass Effect (2007)
BioWare’s vast sci-fi trilogy may not have had an ideal ending, but its mix of interplanetary war and inter-species romance held fans enraptured for a decade, starting with this brilliant first game. Mixing role-playing elements with squad-based combat and a truly timely existential threat (a race of evil sentient spacecrafts), Mass Effect delivered a memorable space-opera story with characters you truly cared about.
Fable II (2008)
Lionhead’s perfectly British fantasy game is funny, snappy and very easy to enjoy. Perhaps too easy, as it’s over surprisingly quickly – but it has more heart and personality than any other Xbox role-playing game. It’s a mood-lifting fairytale with a heap of good ideas. Also, it has an excellent dog companion – though we may never forgive this game for what happens to it.
Gears of War 2 (2008)
Building on the muscular foundations of its predecessor, Gears 2 is the ultimate testosterone-drenched cover shooter, pitching macho marines against alien locust monsters in an orgy of destruction and chainsaw machine guns. Plus, its thrilling Horde mode started a trend for wave-based survival challenges.
Lost Odyssey (2008)
For a brief period, Microsoft was really determined to make the Xbox a thing in Japan. The company tempted a series of storied Japanese developers to make exclusive games for the 360. Most of them sank without trace, but Lost Odyssey is a standout in its genre: it’s about what happens to our humanity in the face of technological revolution. Given that it was directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, a Final Fantasy veteran, it is perhaps unsurprising that it feels like a lost entry in that series.
Ninja Gaiden II (2008)
Before Dark Souls came along, it was Tecmo’s viciously difficult acton adventure that had players either grinding their teeth in frustration or gleefully hacking the limbs off adversaries. Beautifully choreographed combat, interesting locations and a wealth of razor-sharp weapons make this the interactive equivalent of those classic 1980s ninja movies.
Rock Band 2 (2008)
The ultimate party game, for ever and always. After creating Guitar Hero, Harmonix handed that series over to a different developer and set to work on Rock Band, a peerlessly entertaining music game that had you singing, playing and drumming together on plastic instruments. Rock Band 2 not only had the best setlist, leaning towards milllennial-pleasing pop-punk and classic rock, but also the most frictionless play experience. You could be rocking out in moments, online or, much better, in person with friends.
Limbo (2010)
The art game that showcased Xbox Live Arcade as a venue for experimentation, Playdead’s quasi-horror puzzle platformer is an unnerving noir thriller about a boy searching a hellish monochrome world for his lost sister. Selling a million copies in its first year, it proved that there was – and still is – a mass audience for strange, abstruse gaming experiences.
Forza Horizon (2012)
Project Gotham and Forza Motorsport preceded it, but Horizon felt like something fresh: a driving festival offering a range of experiences from circuit races to stunt challenges, all located in an exciting Colorado landscape crammed with enthralling roads and those ever-exciting vintage car barn finds. High-thrills video game tourism.
Trials Evolution (2012)
Upon this game’s release, a huge percentage of the Xbox Live Arcade audience suddenly got really into intricate, physics-based motorbiking trials. Demanding pinpoint controls and nerves of steel, the game remains a challenging treat, with four-player support and an excellent level editor.
