Best Xbox 360 games

What are the best Xbox 360 titles right now? These are the past year’s greatest games, the 10 we’d immediately recommend to any recent purchaser of the console and the 10 every current owner should make sure they’re playing. Check back often, as we’ll update the list – and the order of the list – when new games release.

1 - Portal 2

Portal 2 is not only the sequel to our choice for the best game of all time, it’s a sequel that improves on that choice in every imaginable way, including a longer campaign, more memorable characters and the addition of cooperative play. To describe the elements that truly make Portal 2 an unforgettable experience, however, would require spoilers that might ruin that experience. If you haven’t played it yet, stop reading this and go do so immediately.

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2 - Batman: Arkham City

How do you improve on the greatest superhero game of all time? Throw in more heroes, more villains, more powers and a more epic setting, then miraculously manage to connect all those pieces with writing that’s as good as – or better than – most comic books, movies and TV shows based on the same character. If you’re a fan of Batman, this is a dream come true. If you’re not, you’re about to be.

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3 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Size matters. Sure, you could probably conquer Skyrim in about 10 hours if you stuck only to the game’s main quests, but you’d be missing the point. The massive RPG’s real attraction is everything on the side – hundreds of hours of optional (but worthwhile) adventuring, exploring, crafting, hunting and dungeon diving outside the central storyline. Skyrim is an incredibly ambitious title that raises the bar for open-world experiences and will keep you busy for a very, very long time.

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4 - Deus Ex: Human Revolution

To say that 2000’s Deus Ex changed the face of gaming might sound hyperbolic – if it weren’t true. Fortunately for modern gamers, this latest entry in the series lives up to those impossibly high standards. Human Revolution is an intelligent, challenging and Blade Runner-beautiful vision of the future, with gameplay that’s customizable enough to qualify as both 100% shooter and 100% stealth. Which genre you experience is completely up to you.

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5 - Forza Motorsport 4

This is the new standard for racing games. Forza Motorsport 4 does virtually everything right, not the least of which is pandering shamelessly – gloriously – to car fetishists. It speaks to the game’s addictive nature that we spent almost as much time in the menus tuning vehicles and checking out other players’ uploads as we did on the actual race track.

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6 - Gears of War 3

Gears of War 3 is an epic end to an epic trilogy. The heroes we’ve now followed and loved for five years are more believable than ever, while the enemies are bigger and more insanely unpredictable than ever. Some of the setpieces, especially in the first and last acts of the game, are spectacular. And if this list was ranked solely on the basis of multiplayer, Gears 3 would sit at the top, with so many addictive modes, it’s hard to know where to begin and when to stop. Click here for the full review of Gears of War 3.

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7 - Saints Row: The Third

Any description of Saints Row: The Third inevitably ends up sounding like some kind of demented Mad Lib: “the green man in the gimp suit hit the gang member in the crotch with an anime squid cannon.” We swear we’re not making that up, and we swear that this extremely ludicrous and lewd sandbox game is also extremely fun to play – if GTA has grown too serious for you, Saints Row: The Third is the antidote.

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8 - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

If you’re looking for a new kind of shooter, look elsewhere. Modern Warfare 3 succeeds by doing more – much more – of what’s always worked spectacularly for the series. The campaign is still an unapologetically unrealistic roller-coaster ride through blockbuster-movie setpieces across the globe. The multiplayer is still addictively simple and pulse-poundingly immediate, but with enough new modes and features to keep you busy until the next Modern Warfare releases. We still can’t get enough.

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9 - Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

10 years, two sequels, two spinoffs, one prequel and countless companion media later, it’s remarkable how many gamers still say that the first Halo is their favorite entry in the entire franchise. And now, with this superb Anniversary edition – which completely updates (or replaces, to be more accurate) the outdated 2001 graphics and adds modern Halo: Reach gameplay (jetpacks!) to classic fan-favorite maps – Master Chief’s original galaxy-saving adventure is better than ever.

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10 - Dark Souls

Dark Souls is an anomaly – a thoroughly modern 3D game whose old-school mechanics and philosophy gleefully reject every modern gaming convention. The brutal difficulty and complete lack of hand-holding take you back to the era when games were made to challenge, and beating them was all the reward you needed. For those who “get” it, Dark Souls is undoubtedly one of the year's best.

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