DAMN RIGHT WE DO. Welcome to the cutting room floor! Rather than putting these in any kind of ranked order, we’ll just list these alphabetically.
Joe: Wheh mah skull. Not every game can or should be a complex interplay of tactics, memorization, and depth. Sometimes, you just gotta blow shit up, and send people to the terrifying depths of the Fiddy zone en route through your 1980s action flick tribute.
Demetri: I have a habit of saying “jump over that bigass ramp” every time I do an underwhelming vehicular stunt in a video game, and that’s entirely due to the brain worms BotS transmitted to me back in ’09. God I love this stupid ass game.
Kyle:
Joe: It’s here because FromSoft decided they wanted to try something again. Chromehounds was 7 years past, and the spirit of that glorious better place still shone in the hearts of the blessed few. An Armored Core game, already a series with fantastic customization, could still be more. What if Armored Core was also a game of buiding a lance of mechs, a striketeam fully built from the ground up by you, to fight for a nation in seasonal conflicts, with the ebb and flow of metagame choices? What if it was a very good game on top of that? Yeah, I know there’s some people immediately shouting about For Answer, but that game’s merely the apex of the cracked out overboost style of play. Verdict Day wanted to be more, and it was. It was also the last time Fromsoft tried a massively multiplayer setup, because we’re in the bad timeline.
Demetri: The actual DMC game of the generation, for better or worse. If I’m being honest this isn’t Platinum’s best work mechanically, even on the 360 alone, but it served (in multiple senses) as a vehicle to introduce one of greatest character designs of all time. Bayo is an honest to god icon and she makes pushing through the middling bits entirely worth it just to see how wild the game is willing to get. It’s like Asura’s Wrath that way, only actually good. Also this is arguably the best entry in the series, which is kind of depressing now that I read that back!
Joe: A lot of the games on the 360 are frankly boring to look back on. Even if they’re not bad, it’s a sea of brown ‘realism’, generic swole guys and companies tripping over the footprints left by bigger and better games. And here’s Bayonetta, built like a telephone pole’s wet dreams, and an entire game built around that combination of fashion model style and over the top allusion that made her one of the more compelling new characters of the era. She has gunheels named after herbs from folk music. Yeah, you can do that here! And they did it with style.
Demetri: The game is honestly just alright most of the time, but when it gives you an open level and you hit those swings just right it’s the single best Spider-Man game ever made.
Joe: Culdcept Saga will poison your brain forever. A story exists, yeah, but this mashup of Monopoly and the now-beloved deckbuilder genre scratches an itch you didn’t even know you had. Stock monsters, roll high, get rich or die trying.
Demetri: There was no way I wasn’t at least going to give one of the best digital board games on the platform a nod. There are other Culdcept games, but there are not enough games like Culdcept. I need as many monster combat/real estate mogul mashups as I can get my hands on – I’m pretty sure I’ve played them all already! That sucks to realize!
Kyle: Why is this PS2 game on our 360 list?
Joe: This isn’t a good video game. But it’s an incredible experiment in storytelling from a man who’s doing his best job to show us what it’d be like if we had an alien remake all our favorite things.
Demetri: My heart wants DP to make the list proper, but my head remembers spending hours upon hours in awful combat sections and pointless driving, and that’s to say nothing of the myriad technical issues. I wish I could recommend a non-360 version instead, but I can’t – most of those run even worse! This is the epitome of a YouTube game, but man, what a YouTube game.
Demetri: This is more a style pick than a substance one, but what style! Double Dragon Neon is fanservice from start to finish and its soundtrack goes ridiculous, especially the mixtapes. There’s a certain stiffness to the combat that’s simultaneously jarring yet true to DD as a franchise, giving it a funky learning curve but still allowing for enough combo creativity to make replays worth it. It took games like DDN to lay the groundwork for the modern Streets of Rage and River City reduxes, and we owe it a debt of gratitude.
Joe: Sometimes, the best way to get a fresh take on something is to hand it to someone who only knows it by reputation. Hideaki Itsuno came to this game from a background of fighting games and DMC titles. You down with DMC3? Yeah, that’s he. Having built up sufficient credits with Capcom, he got to build the dream game from his teenage years. An action-first take on the western RPG genre, targeting the feeling of 60fps in a 30fps game. With a deep moveset and a wide variety of character builds from powerful wizards casting healing spells and buffs on your frontline companions, mighty warriors, and lone-wolf hunters stalking prey, this game elevated the general sense of “Here’s a western fantasy with knights and monsters and woods” into something else entirely. Your pawns learn as you use them, and if you borrow someone else’s pawn, because they’re a good cosplay or you simply needed the biggest fireball in town, you can send them back to their creator with gifts. A bunch of the callouts for monster weaknesses these pawns know and will signal for is burned into my brain. They’ll do their best to try sick teamwork moves, like launching you into the air to grab onto a flying beast, but honestly it’s more endearing when they whiff than when they manage it. Don’t want to deal with it? Play a solo build, and make the pitch-black night work for you. Turn your lantern off and stalk through the woods, looking for the flickers of flame and the moonlight reflecting off armor before you burst out in a way that makes you believe you can jumpscare a program. Simply one of the most fantastic open world games of all time, and Dark Arisen gave you a fresh new way to play with Bitterblack Isle. You’ve played all those vocations? Mastered all the interactions? Yeah? Enjoy a classic single-area dungeon delve, designed to test all those assertions, and ready to kick you directly in the crotch every time you slip up. Even as imperfect as it is, if there was ever a video game to explain the appeal of tabletop RPGs, this is as close as we’ve got.
Demetri: Kyle, please explain this one to me.
Kyle: Gladly! Why is this honest 7/10 game even sniffing the best games of the 360 area? Because Andy Serkis is the fucking man, that’s why. His dynamic roles taking mocap from the movies to the consoles gives Monkey a tonal shift from brooding main protag syndrome to a character with some Hollywood chops in terms of character development. You actually give a shit about this character, and you can feel those emotions due to this man’s direction. The later scenes with Monkey and Trip, played by Linsdey Shaw, just tug on heart strings in a way I did not expect a run-of-the-mill action-adventure-platformer to ever do. Could you get everything you need out of a cutscene-compiled YouTube video? Probably, but man this game goes on sale for like -90% off every Steam Sale, or you can get a used copy on the 360 for a couple pieces of lint. It’s absolutely worth 12-15 hours of game to see their friendship flourish and that bonkers-ass ending.
Kyle: My childhood was rooted in a litany of JRPGs and the 360’s apple did not fall far from the tree. Only video games could make Frederick Chopin the main squeeze of a JRPG rooted in musical plot devices and an ATB like system that mixes Final Fantasy with Star Ocean and make it fucking work. You can get this bad bos right now for under $20 and have the weirdest fucking 4th wall experience as a reward for beating the game. I refuse to elaborate further.
Kyle: Fable III really felt like Molyneux was getting remotely close to fulfilling the vision of a genuinely great game. The final 3rd of the story, choosing between financial stability or fulfilling the promises made to people throughout the game, really teetered a balance of consequence that the previous 2 titles never really reached. Even more so when you could play it just right and fucking break the mechanic to do both extremes at the same time. I saw my wife pull this off and was astonished the game even thought you’d go so far down the rabbit hole that you would even be able to in the first place. It was bold, engaging, and the combat was at its best with previous years to flesh it out. I don’t have much faith in the remake and good luck being able to play this game without setting sails, but in 2010, this game really struck a chord with me.
Demetri: Another one of the best board games on the system! This time we’ve got something closer to a distilled 4X experience, only the act of exploiting the land for resources actively destroys the floating islands you’re on, forcing you to constantly plot your next land grab. It’s held back just a tad by awkward player counts (4p > 2p > 3p) and some dominant strats depending on the map, but that’s true of many of the best board games out there too, and that makes Greed Corp no less deserving of praise.
Joe: Oh no, you didn’t? Sucka didn’t play me? You missed out on what’s still the best open world chaos simulator around. Grab your favorite action movie protag, dump them into a volatile situation, grab guns and tanks and choppers and bombs, stack money to the sky and burn it all on daisy cutters. Side with an oil company, rebels, the US, or china, and get your filthy hands on enough filthy lucre to keep churning out a never-ending symphony of explosions. Mercs 1 is a different kind of romp that’s worth its time, but Mercs 2 continues to be unequaled in its devotion to the sheer gremlin love for explosive nonsense it wants you to feel. Also, it features one of the more distinct ads of the era that will tell you the entire plot in its runtime.
Demetri: Home to several of video gaming’s very best explosions. Mercs 2 is in many ways the platonic ideal of the open world game, which isn’t to say it’s perfect, but it is a riot from start to finish. Beyond the booms the vehicles are the real star of the show here, which were something Pandemic was consistently great at until their untimely demise in EA’s meatgrinder. The only thing holding this back from me stubbornly sticking it at the bottom of the list proper is the fact that, yeah, you really are doing the exact same thing over and over but with marginally better hardware for however many hours.
Demetri: I may be a Dig Dug Truther but Pac-Champ goes so ridiculously hard. It’s sensory overload second only to the likes of Rez, and manages to put you into a flow state the same way Tetris Effect would go on to many, many years later. If you live for hitting the clean line and hearing Namco noises triggers your dopamine receptors you’ve probably played this already, but if not, do.
Demetri: It’s not that it’s the greatest puzzle game ever made, or even the greatest on this list as you’ve already seen, but it’s never managed to escape the 360 digital storefront and likely never will now that it’s been shut down. Hell, it even got removed from backwards compatibility for some reason (it’s because Big MS doesn’t want you smashing poker). Poker hands and Tetris Attack may not sound like they’d go together but I assure you they did, and still do if you can find a way to play it. The very model of an honorable mention.
Joe: Just Cause in space with a sledgehammer and a dream. The destruction sandbox showcased here still has power left in those dusty old bones, and it’s never to late to heft the tools of liberation and set to work.
Demetri: Oh hell yeah, I love Space Asshole! RF:G is a funny case where Volition’s sense of humor mixed oddly, though not unpleasantly, with a game that took itself a good bit more seriously than their other output. That dissonance doesn’t get in the way of smashing the hell out of your environment piece by piece, which made for an incredible showcase for what 7th gen hardware could do. This game’s legacy is a weird one (the song I linked above even got canonized for the remaster), remembered more for its goofy moments than any of the other things it did well, but it’s worth checking out on its own merits.
Joe: There’s a particular subgenre of Japanese work that’s best described as Vibes-Based Post-Apocalypse. Battle Angel Alita. Trigun. Akira’s probably the top dog of the format. Resonance of Fate fits right into that cadre. It features striking characters and a compelling setting, full of adoration for something the creator’s never once held in their hands, and while there is an overall story, it’s there to gesture at bigger concepts like the value of nature and what it means to fight moreso than be something distinct in and of itself. The hard work of making you care is carried by a trio of weirdos who’ll give you a fantastic, not particularly self-serious romp through a world where conflict is handled by unloading your quad-barreled 1911 into an enemy while running a geometric pattern around your foes. A completely unique combat method, a distinctive setting, and an honest to god adult protagonist set this game apart from a lot of its contemporaries, and in a lot of ways its successes for me are a lesser version of Lost Odyssey from above. Tri-Ace were doing what they do best here, make alternatives with more heart and ideas than polish. One of the last great experiments before the cost of releasing a game that didn’t look too out of place among triple A titles got too far for mere mortals to reach.
Demetri: This is just a gut check to make sure you’re paying attention. Fuck this game.
Joe: There’s a list for people like you.
Kyle:
Kyle: Before this franchise went absolutely off the fucking walls, Saints Row 2 was a legitimate open-world contender to other franchises in this category. No, it was never going to hold a candle to GTA, but it never bothered trying! Just ridiculous enough to not take itself seriously but well made enough to be an easy breeze of destruction and mayhem. I really should give this another spin now that I’m thinkin’ about it.
Joe: Not too serious, not too silly. They hit the Goldilocks zone with this particular sequel, learning all the right lessons from its’ predecessor and offering a brand new set of diversions, it had an honest fighting chance for your time and attention compared to GTA 4 in its day. The loss of source code and the subsequent death of Volition mean this one is lost to the world of fanpatches or dusting off the old workhorse and hooking it up again.
Demetri: I miss Volition dearly. This was by far their golden era, and the point it which it looked like Rockstar might have had serious competition. SR2 feels more like the previous gen’s GTAs than anything R* produced both in tone and in mechanics. More open world games could do with being this silly. Specifically exactly this silly – even SR fans will tell you the franchise kind of went off the rails after this’n.
Kyle: One of the best GTA games you’ll ever play. Once True Crime: Hong Kong before the franchise exploded, that Internal Affairs movie-plot turned video game stood head and shoulders above many open world titles during that time period and still holds a candle of enjoyment in current days. Never got a sequel, soon to get a movie, always looking like you could use a pork bun.
Joe: A man who never eats pork buns is never a whole man! Get you some char siu bao and sit down to one of the best of the crime action genre. There’s ghosts, there’s an enter the dragon island tournament, there’s some absolutely insane environmental moves, and progression you can feel hard enough to be jonesing for the next hit before it gets there. Tight combat, snappy chase sequences, and if it’s all too much and you need a breather, take a trip around the island blasting Eminence Front on the stereo, hop on a boat, and do some offshore gambling. a love letter to an era now long past that’s the perfect thing to be sitting here amidst a couple hundred paragraphs about dusty discs and X! BOX! LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE! If you wanna go back, the remaster’s right there on Steam for ya.
Demetri: I actually love Sleepy Dogs, but I advocated for pushing this down to HonMen status because this has always been more of an 8th gen game to me. The 360 version just isn’t the best way to play it but I’d be lying if I said you wouldn’t have a good time, and it did technically come out first here.
Joe: Brian Eddy mostly loved pinball. But in this era, he made 2 games that bang with the best of them. Today’s cut is Stranglehold, where inspector Tequila Yuen is going to spend the entire runtime doing the sickest gun ballet John Woo had left over in the scrap bucket. There’s some really interesting tech under the skin of this game, and it’s so well integrated you’ll never have time to notice it as you blast your way through levels, triggering cinematic moments and leaving people slowly dying of blood loss in your wake. Max Payne could never.
Demetri: “John Woo presents: Guy Who Runs Up Railings With Two Pistols” was one of the best uses of $5 in GameStop credit money could buy. Sure it’s the same thing over and over for the entirety of its runtime, but two counterarguments: the game’s short, and the one thing you do is sick as fuck.
Kyle: God Damn these slums got a buncha fuckin’ Doves. Snappy arcade-like shooting with waaaaaay too much slow-mo, but Fuck You that’s what this game’s whole MO is. Back when you could actually rent games, this game was such a quality rental.
Demetri: The best 6/10 game on the console. Fantastic visual style on a system that was often deficient in that department, and action with a heavy emphasis on Ruby’s mostly-fluid movement and snappy sword combat that makes it feel much closer to the movies it so clearly admires. It’s got rough edges and you may not want to finish it, but it’s at least worth checking out. Also its entire soundtrack is deranged.
Kyle: You ever had that one game that just latches onto your brain and makes you remember how fun it was even though it…really shouldn’t be there? Here we are with Wet. This game’s palette of visuals overextends so far from its gameplay that it needs to be popped back into place. The amount of love injected into this game is something you’ll just never see on a current or newer console because it would just cost too much money for a concept this mid. This won’t sniff anything close to a Top 25, but you should still play it.
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