Best Xbox games of all time

In the late 1990s, Microsoft noticed a trend: some game developers were leaving the PC side to make games for consoles. This was a problem. A few engineers disassembled a laptop and put it back together as a console, hoping to run games based on DirectX graphics and the Windows platform. Thus, the DirectX Box was born. And then they took off "Direct" because it sounded dumb. Introducing the Xbox.

Microsoft's system debuted in 2001, launching just days before Nintendo's Gamecube, and coming with a launch lineup that is arguably one of the best of all time. For the next few years the system amassed quite a library, and kicked off a number of franchises that are still seeing new iterations to this day. We've gone back and picked out the best of the best, and come up with our final, definitive list of the top Xbox games of all time.

Before plastic guitars and drums were the norm in every living room, Capcom's Steel Battalion asked players to fork over $200 for a gigantic controller sporting two control sticks and 40 buttons. Such was the price for one of the most immersive games of the generation. While it was admittedly overkill, the added physical controls made the game feel remarkable, creating the experience of actually controlling a mech.

Even beyond that, however, the game was simply fantastic. The gameplay was solid, and the visuals were great for their time. It even had a sequel, Line of Contact, which also used the controller, as well as adding in multiplayer. Knowing that you were using a $200 controller to fight someone else in the world using a $200 was just special, for some reason.

Everyone secretly wants to be Spider-Man, but no game really came close to fulfilling those dreams until Spider-Man 2 came along. Although it's a (really loose) movie adaptation, it was the first game to throw a superhero into a big, open world and just let players mess around with his powers. And until Batman: Arkham Asylum arrived in 2009, it was arguably the best.

That's mostly thanks to developer Treyarch absolutely nailing the feeling of web-swinging, enabling you to latch onto absolutely any surface for free-form Tarzan antics. There's a careful rhythm to doing it right, but once you got the hang of it, you could rocket across Manhattan's skyline with the speed and grace of an Olympic gymnast. The whole experience was a seamless, unbridled rush, coupled with plenty of randomly fun side quests, from pursuing non-movie plotlines to chasing down some kid's lost balloons.

There are three kinds of racing fans: those that like Gran Turismo, those that like Mario Kart, and those that like Burnout. And for those that like Burnout, Burnout 3 is the cream of the crop. Criterion's racer puts action-packed racing and over-the-top crashes over realism for fantastic results, and Takedown perfected the formula that it tinkered with for the previous two games.

The largest addition is likely the new "Takedown" mode, which turns a traditional race into a gauntlet, where players need to beat their opponents by smashing them off the road. It managed to take the unrealistic racer to the next level, adding more competitiveness than the last two games had combined.

Intensity and authenticity. Those two qualities make the game in this first-and-third person shooter from a galaxy far, far away. Developer Pandemic expertly realized wargrounds near and dear to Star Warsfans, stuffed them full of heavily armed vehicles (mostly well-known), then stuffed in nicely-sized opposing armies complete with a detailed class system so that the various unit classes all felt slightly different.

That was all in the first game. This second game added compelling new game modes, titanic space battles to complement the planetside platoon action and - what's this? - playable Jedi, capable of singlehandedly turning the tide of a battle, but which somehow didn't rupture the game's balance.

Who would have guessed that Oddworld Inhabitants, creators of quirky and environmentally conscious puzzle-adventures, could pull off a full-blown shooter? Or that it would end up being one of the very best shooters the original Xbox had to offer?

Yet the most unbelievable thing about Stranger's Wrath is that the slow-paced, lever-pulling Oddworld universe has been transformed into a fast and frenzied action affair without losing a single ounce of its lovably weird personality. Despite the macho Western setting, the story's theme still concerns nature vs. industry. And despite the hero's tough guy aura, you're still fighting to protect dewy-eyed innocents from greed-obsessed monsters that look straight out of a demented Jim Henson film.

Even the gun itself isn't what you'd expect. Forget bullets - this baby shoots actual live ammo. As in, living creatures that you snatch off the ground, load into your crossbow and launch, screaming and writhing, at the enemy. It's fun, innovative and totally out of left field, just like the entire game.

Crimson Skies sucked you in with its cool steampunk setting – full of gigantic zeppelins and weird-looking Howard Hughes fighter planes – but it was the arcade-style dogfights that kept you playing. With the dramatic sweep of an adventure serial, Crimson Skies had you effortlessly swooping through lush, craggy landscapes as you took on air-pirate missions and blasted bogeys out of the sky.

While there was plenty of charm in Crimson Skies' mission-based, pulp-fiction storyline, it was really just a training ground for the high-flying Xbox Live deathmatches. Pre-Halo 2, this was unquestionably one of the best online games on Microsoft's black box, and shoving magnet-guided rockets into 15 other opponents still has an undeniable charm today.

Beneath that cute surface is a real depth, with a plotline that delves into themes of government conspiracy, revolution, love and trust. Its gameplay is all over the place, from Metal Gear-style stealth sneaking to space dogfights, hovercraft races, nature photography and one particularly brutal game of space air hockey. And when the final credits pan across a series of photographs of the characters, you’ll feel like you’re looking at pictures of your actual friends.

Originally pitched as the ultimate open-ended experience, Fable was released as an unfinished, fairly linear action-RPG and an object lesson in not believing the hype. But somehow, we love it anyway; for all its hacky-slashy gameplay and deep flaws, it's still a rush to watch your character age, marry the girl (and/or guy) of his dreams and be loved or feared by mobs of villagers depending on what he's done.

Fable's main quest is short, and all the side diversions packed into the world get old after a few hours. But it delivered a lot of special, memorable moments while it lasted, and watching your hero grow up and develop gave you a connection to him that most games just don't offer. Fable wasn't what we were promised, but it was still groundbreaking in its own way - after all, how many games let you just hang out in taverns turning into a fat boozehound?

God only knows how many times we've single-handedly won the Second World War by cutting through wave after wave of the Nazi plague, marching relentlessly on through the bloody wastelands like a possessed, bloodthirsty super soldier, never stopping to think, just focused on kill, kill, KILL!

And then Brothers in Arms rolled into town, teaching us to do things differently and that, actually, war is a team game where unilateral thinking gung-ho heroes tend to end up getting their guts shot out. Road to Hill 30 had plenty of intense Hun-in-the-crosshair action, but it is also focused on smartly paced, squad-orientated tactical masterminding, effectively ambushing us with a refreshing approach to Jerry hunting.

At times, hiking across - or flying over - Mercenaries' huge battle-scorched landscape was a strangely bleak and depressing experience. Pandemic successfully captured the deathly joyless atmosphere that must, we imagine, suffocate the air in times of war.

Thankfully, the developer also captured the magical, chimney-stack wonder of blowing buildings up and watching them fall down, providing the player with a Richter scale-shattering array of heavy weapons and air strikes to play with. Laser guided death has never been so devastatingly fun.

Please, whatever you do, don't call Forza Motorsport a Gran Turismo clone. When the developers at Microsoft saw what the folks at Sony had accomplished with their realism-obsessed racing simulator, they didn't copy it... they thought, "We can do that better."

Luckily for Xbox owners, they were right. On its very first try, Forza matched the GT series car for car, track for track and customization option for customization option. Then it made two immeasurably huge improvements - accurate damage physics and online play. The former was long overdue in a genre that prides itself on realism. The latter gathered lonely, closeted car enthusiasts around the world and united them into an elite and knowledgeable culture club.

A truly classic adventure that teetered tantalizingly close to perfection. While the ability to "rewind time" was the game's party piece, it was the Prince that stole the show with his repertoire of athletically approved moves. Warm, hazy lighting lent an ethereal glow that poured over the brilliantly designed levels and navigating the Persian hero perfectly from an elaborately plotted A to B was a heavenly satisfying thrill.

And it's a love story! An actually well written, heartwarming love story! In a game! A videogame!

Unlike seemingly every other giant-robot game on the market, MechAssault wasn't a slow, methodical walking-tank-battle that stressed customization and weapon management over fun. Instead, it was fast, relatively simple and packed to the gills with explosive carnage, which made it a perfect candidate to be one of the first - and therefore most important - Xbox Live games. That it's still one of the most fun doesn't hurt that standing, either.

Whether you were playing online or by yourself, though, MechAssault's real draw was the feeling of piloting a big, fast, armed-to-the-teeth battlemech through open landscapes dotted with fully destructible cities. It looks a little fuzzy by today's standards, but there's still nothing quite like fighting lightning-fast rocket duels as huge futuristic buildings get pounded to rubble all around you.

Take the go-anywhere, do-anything aesthetic of Grand Theft Auto and stick it into a fully-realized fantasy world, and you've got the best first-person RPG ever made (at least until the next-gen sequels, Oblivion and Skyrim, came along). Will you follow the epic main quest to become a prophesied hero and free the land from demonic oppression? Or will you wander from town to town, stealing wooden spoons and murdering elves for their hats? It's up to you.

Morrowind featured countless plotlines and battles that you could tackle any way you saw fit. Whether it was with intense first-person sword-fighting, magic, sneaking or - in rare cases - actually talking your way through a bad situation, there was a solution that'd fit your style of play.

BioWare's first few hits were based on per-established franchises, with Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons holding up its fantastic games. Jade Empire was one of the developer's first attempts at creating an entire universe of its own, and while the world wasn't as interesting or involved as Mass Effect's would be, it was still incredibly interesting - it's no wonder fans clamor for sequels to this day.

Players make plenty of choices on their way to the end of the game, choosing to follow either the Way of the Open Palm or the Way of the Closed Fist as they fight to find their master. Early seeds of future BioWare game mechanics - including player romance and choice-driven gameplay - were present in the game, making Jade Empire a true spiritual predecessor to games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

Xbox's superior power in the last generation was put to spectacular use in Panzer Dragoon Orta, creating one of the most breathtakingly cinematic shooters ever seen. Even back in the days of the Sega Saturn, Team Andromeda were pushing the hardware further than anyone thought possible and while Orta may not have been quite as revolutionary, it was still a magnificent spectacle.

Add in a strategic dragon-placement system similar to that found in obscure RPG classic Panzer Dragoon Saga and you soon find yourself cunningly avoiding enemy fire then moving around to exploit a weak spot for massive damage. Although it was essentially an on-rails shooter, such cold words can't do justice to the game's majesty. You'll suspend your disbelief until you really are riding a terrifying dragon beast through fiery skies... what better recommendation can we give?

It's a pity that Escape from Butcher Bay was tied to such a crap movie as The Chronicles of Riddick. The characters in this prison-break drama were more compelling, the action was far more brutal and it was a far, far better vehicle for a charismatic antihero like Riddick than any lame summer blockbuster could be.

More than that, Butcher Bay was a seriously awesome adventure; the first-person perspective was really just there to rub your nose in the beautiful horror of its grimy sci-fi prison. It also put an especially personal touch on all the fistfights and knife fights you got into, and made it just that much cooler when you did stuff like make a guard shoot himself in the face. Add some immersive, cinematic action sequences that'd put Half-Life 2 to shame, and you had an ahead-of-its-time inmate sim that still stands as one of the Xbox's best games.

The smooth and steady gameplay progression was completely addictive, and attempting to wow the computer and earn Kudos - points awarded for daring and stylish driving - was an added incentive to bring your A-game. Once you thought you had it all down pat, you could take the fight to Xbox Live. When the game originally launched, Xbox Live was just coming into its own, and this game was a landmark driving title that showcased just what Microsoft's online service was truly capable of.

We saw no shortage of Splinter Cell games on Xbox, but the standout of the group was definitely this second entry. Pandora Tomorrow's single player campaign was yet another masterpiece in stealth and tension, with exotically detailed locales, top-notch celebrity voice acting and fluidly animated new moves like army spins and upside down shooting. What distinguished Pandora was its completely unique and utterly addictive multiplayer.

The two-on-two versus mode enabled you to sneak and shimmy through matches as a Sam Fisher-like spy, with agility and shadow as your most powerful weapons. Or, be a mercenary and rely on more traditional weaponry - assault rifles, grenades, trip mines - to blast holes in those pesky black ninja suits. The two options were both addictive as hell, and so different that one played in third person view and the other in first person.

It also featured a compelling story that started small, with gangs fighting over crappy neighborhoods in Los Santos, but soon ramped up to become a ridiculous crime epic with jetpacks, VTOL jets and multimillion-dollar properties to buy. It was (and still is) one of the best games imaginable for creating insane stunts and just going completely berserk, and was an ideal way to get that out of our collective system before moving on to the more “adult” GTA IV.

Psychonauts was clever. It was also funny - laugh out loud funny. Talking to a game's supporting cast normally consists of button-mashing through conversations as quickly as possible, but shooting the breeze with Psychonauts' adorably quirky - and gimpishly styled - bunch of misfits was an absolute joy, thanks to the comic brilliance of the dialogue.

Besides the entertaining psychobabble, the disturbed mindscapes that made up the game's levels were utterly original and blindingly fun to outsmart. Psychonauts was food for your brain as well as lubrication for your laugh valve - if you like sampling the best ever games that failed to make any kind of impact in the charts, make sure you check it out.

One of the most hotly anticipated games in the history of the Xbox, Ninja Gaiden lived up to the lofty expectations that developer Team Ninja's Dead or Alive fighting-and-cheesecake series could never quite match. From the first second you slipped the disc into the Xbox, the game was brutally intense, with punishing difficulty; your only option was to get good at the game, and fast.

The reward was being able to play one of the most engrossing action-adventure games ever. While the main focus was the speedy ninja combat, clever level design with light Zelda-like touches and gorgeous graphics - so beautiful they were like a preview of the next generation - bolstered the action. The developers' heritage with fighting games allowed them to offer the most complex, yet smooth character control in an action game yet, and mastering ninja Ryu's moves was an addictive odyssey for hardcore players.

Set 1,000 years before the Star Wars films, Knights of the Old Republic gave players a chance to explore a galaxy torn between the Republic and the Empire-like Sith. As an amnesiac Jedi with a terrible secret, you traveled from planet to planet, righting wrongs (or wronging them even further), gathering followers and busting out the crazy Force powers in all-or-nothing lightsaber battles.

KOTOR was awesome on every level - an engaging storyline, characters you actually care about and turn-based battles that moved so fast, they felt more like real-time hack-and-slash. Even the branching conversations were fascinating, which was great, because you'd spend a lot of time just navigating your way through them. Add a ton of side quests, cool outfits, upgradeable Dark and Light Force powers and a smattering of never-before-revealed Star Wars trivia, and you had an RPG masterpiece that put to shame anything else bearing the Star Wars logo.

Halo overwhelmed us all when it first arrived... and not just because of the massive Microsoft marketing push. The sci-fi shooter simply excelled in so many categories that it's hard to know where to begin the praise. There are, of course, the big things. The action was spectacular, constant and a breeze to master. At the time, Halo's control scheme was the most intuitive a console FPS had ever seen. More impressively, the deep and engrossing story felt like an organic part of the gameplay experience, never overshadowing or taking a backseat to the battles. The visuals proved what the Xbox was capable of technically and the music proved what it was capable of artistically.

Then there are the little things, seemingly insignificant at first but actually crucial elements of what made Halo so special. Hearing the surrounding Marines react to your heroics as they fight and seeing miniature space vessels make their way across the atmosphere above you all contributed to a fully realized, breathing universe that still captivates gamers to this day.

The original Halo may have single-handedly sold the majority of Xbox consoles, but its sequel was the game that truly defined the big black box. Yes, the action was improved. New features such as dual weapon wielding, anytime vehicle jacking and access to the all-powerful, all-badass energy sword twisted the gameplay in just the right places. Yes, the plot was better. The revelation that you got to play as a Covenant soldier took the story in an unexpectedly complex and morally ambiguous direction. And yes, the graphics were enhanced.

But it was this successor's multiplayer that will forever be remembered. Taking the already wildly popular 16-player matches out of the system-linked college frat houses and unleashing them upon the entire world over Xbox Live is what made the Halo franchise the phenomenon it is today... and that it will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Xbox was the first videogame console to define online multiplayer and Halo 2 was its iconic masterpiece.