Basically you should be able to pick this one up for $25 or so. It’s not a perfect game mind you. The bosses are tedious as is the aiming mechanism, the inopportune transponder messages, single save slot and the survivor’s AI (bitch, I’m carrying your 240 lb boyfriend…keep up with me). But killing zombies with katana swords, assorted cutlery, lawnmowers, sledge hammers (my fav) cash registers to the face, ash cans, giant lego heads, music CDs, a shower head, paint cans or chain saws is just awesome.
You should definitely buy:
Grand Theft Auto IV
Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat
Dead Rising (for 1/2 price)
Gears of War (or wait for Gears 2) I could have rented this one though
Some good rentals:
Bioshock (great game, but not all that replayable)
Farcry: Instincts Predator (I’m looking forward to Farcry 2)
Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation
I’m looking forward to:
Farcry 2
Gears of War 2
Battlefield: Bad Company (The Battlefield series goes Kelly’s Hero’s/Three Kings in a totally destructable environment)
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Meh. It was okay. I thought it leaned too far the direction of NFS, and was frankly boring – the same routes were races over and over again. The previous Burnout titles were much more fun, and several are either XBOX 360 titles or compatible. Go get Burnout 3: Takedown or Burnout: Revenge for XBOX or XBOX 360, probably available for cheap.
Dead Rising is a blast but I have heard it is not SDTV good on an SDTV (the in game font is not readable on SDTV) so only get it if your TV can do 720p or better.
Halo 3 is also a blast. Lego Star Wars and Lego indy are great fun (even better if you have young kids to play with). And get so Microsoft points, many great games in Xbox live arcade to download.
And, if you’re a cheap bastard who just wants to build a library: Earth Defense Force 2017. The gist: you’re a footsoldier in the Earth Defense Force. The aliens are here, and they’re out to kill us all. To that end, they drop wave after wave of giant ants, giant spiders (it feels like you’re in a 1950s scifi monster movie), giant robots, flying warships, giant cyborg dinosaurs, a walking fortress, and finally the mothership itself. You’ll build an arsenal of up to 170 weapons, including assault rifles, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, shotguns, guided missiles, automatic turrets, and flamethrowers, and you have unlimited ammo to blast away at the seemingly endless waves of invaders.
It’s not a perfect game: the 2D powerups look cheesy, one shot destroys a building, there’s no online multiplayer, and the video gets choppy when there are too many things on the screen. But, it’s just so damn much fun! The graphics are really good for a budget title, and what I like most about it is the sense of scale. You really feel like one lone dude on the ground facing off against skyscraper-sized enemies. It’s a rush.
This video shows a lot of the good stuff in the game. Ignore the price at the end, though; I picked it up brand new 7 months ago for about $17, and it may be even cheaper now.
On Live Arcade, I’m a fan of Geometry Wars. Loads in a flash, play a quick but intense game in a couple of minutes, and that’s it. Pure, basic gameplaying fun.
It’s not that it’s unreadable, but it is very difficult to read in SD and takes away some of the fun. The difference in the text between Dead Rising in SD and Dead Rising in HD is like night and day.
Let me throw in a very little-known gem : The Darkness.
It is based on a comic and is basically a shooter but very cinematic in its setup.
It is an extremely dark game and very violent but the character interaction in it is extremely good.
You can probably pick it up somewhere for a few bucks as no-one I know has ever heard of the game.
The most atmospheric and story-driven shooter on consoles is still going to be Bioshock. Assassin’s Creed is an adventurous sneak-fighter that got mixed reviews, but is a very good place to start if you’re looking for a fluid and sharp next-gen experience. My favorite niche game is going to be Culdcept SAGA, which is a card-collecting game set in its own mythology where you play summon cards on a large, Monopoly-like board and can face them against each other to take over the claimed squares. A budget title, but lots of depth and strategy in it.
Some of the best XBL Arcade games, IMHO opinion, include console versions of Worms, Ikaruga, and Settlers of Catan. And, of course, Poker Smash, which plays like a dream if you were ever a fan of the original Puzzle League or Tetris Attack games.
Here’s my story to convince people about how beautiful the scenery is in Bioshock: I suppose by now everyone knows that it takes place in an underwater city. I was in one of the glass tunnels between sections, thinking back to make sure I’d done everything I needed to do before moving on, when a shadow suddenly passed over me. I freaked and started spinning around, looking for an enemy, but nothing was there. So I looked up, and the shadow was caused by a school of fish swimming overhead.
The by far most played game by me is Forza Motorsport 2, which I got 14 monthsago and still plays just about every night – and I don’t care about racing in real life. It’s fantastic, but you really have to work with it.
The other game which really made the Xbox 360 for me, is Lego Star Wars 2, which me and my son (5 y o) have had a great time with for hours and yours. (Lego Indiana Jones is good too, but it feels a bit short.)