[Question] Top 20 Games of the 7th Generation of Gaming

With the release of the PS4 and Xbox One we draw a close (kinda) to the 7th generation of gaming: so that's 360, PS3, Wii, NDS and PSP… oh and for good measure I guess we can throw in PC and mobile gaming over the years 2004 to 2013.

With the (sort-of) end of a gaming generation I figured I'd take a look back at the games I played over the last 9 years and try and pick out the top 20 games of the generation, plus a few honourable mentions. I realise this is going to be a tough ask, but thought I'd throw the question out to everyone. My list is below, but what's your top 20.

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Without further ado, here's my top 20 of the 7th generation of gaming:

20. Grand Theft Auto V
[ Multi | Rockstar North ]

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19. Left 4 Dead 2
[ Multi | Valve ]

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18. WipEout HD/Fury
[ PS3 | Studio Liverpool ]

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17. XCOM Enemy Unknown
[ Multi | Firaxis ]

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16. Super Mario Galaxy 2
[ Wii | Nintendo ]

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15. Mass Effect 2
[ Multi | BioWare ]

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14. Portal 2
[ Multi | Valve ]

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13. Minecraft
[ Multi | Mojang ]

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12. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
[ NDS | Capcom ]

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11. Borderlands 2
[ Multi | Gearbox Software ]

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10. Split/Second
[ Multi | Black Rock Studios ]

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09. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
[ NDS | Level 5 ]

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08. Crackdown
[ 360 | Realtime Worlds ]

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07. Red Dead Redemption
[ Multi | Rockstar San Diego ]

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06. Burnout Paradise
[ Multi | Criterion ]

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05. Bayonetta
[ Multi | Platinum Games ]

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04. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
[ PS3 | Naughty Dog ]

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03. The Last of Us
[ PS3 | Naughty Dog ]

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02. Vanquish
[ Multi | Platinum Games ]

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01. Xenoblade Chronicles
[ Wii | Monolith Soft ]

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And now for some honourable mentions:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution | Journey | The Walking Dead: Season 1 | Rock Band 3 | Bastion | Assassin's Creed II | Batman: Arkham Asylum | 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors | Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance | Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare | Race Driver: GRiD | Monaco: What's Yours is Mine | Little Big Planet 2 | The World Ends With You | Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift | Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 2 - Justice For All | Forza Horizon | The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings | Battlefield: Bad Company 2 | Halo: ODST | Papers, Please | Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan | New Super Mario Bros. | Transformers: Fall of Cybertron | Hotline Miami | Dead Rising | BioShock | Enslaved: Odyssey to the West | Street Fighter IV | FTL: Faster Than Light


There we have it. What's your top games of the generation?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

In no particular order and just from looking across my shelf and based as much on hours spent playing as anything else:

Frontlines: Fuel of War - 360

To many Frontlines was a Battlefield-a-like that wasn't as good as Battlefield but I loved the hell out of it and it was a bit better than Battlefield Bad Company 2 and waaaaay more fun than Battlefield 3. The range of different gadgets was nice and you genuinely had a lot of choices as to how to complete each story mission in the single player. Tank combat was fun and it had some of the best helicopter mechanics of any game I've played in the genre.

Where Frontlines really shone though was the multiplayer. Taking the capture the bases concept of Battlefield, Frontlines improved on it by introducing a moving front line meaning although there were seven or eight points on the map, the active ones you were fighting over were limited to four or five at a time. This meant that although the maps were huge, there was always a ton of action and everyone was in more or less the same place (Unless they were stupid). What Battlefield has always suffered from, the beta of BF4 being the worst offender to date, is huge spread out maps and no incentive for people to be anywhere near each other. If anything, Battlefield rewards you avoiding the worst of the fighting, sneaking behind enemy lines and capturing undefended bases has been a valid and decent tactic forever.

The other great thing about it was the balance of weapons and upgrades. There was no real power class like you get in some games and rather than the horrible unlock mechanic that CoD has cursed the genre with which rewards the people who play the game for hours on end rather than people who are perhaps good at the game but don't have so much time to play it, Frontlines adopted a system whereby you start the match with basic gear and then unlock better secondary weapons as the game progresses. There were different levels of this and you had to decide whether to go for the quick upgrade to a sentry gun or hold out for the insanely powerful, kill pretty much everyone air fuel bomb, or whatever. This meant when you got killed by a sentry gun or whatever, you knew it was because the person who killed you was racking up points in that game, not because they bought the game two weeks before you did and has unlocked a thermal vision sniper scope and can see you from the other side of the map while you're struggling with your iron sights on your starting machine gun.

Finally, it was about the only game I ever played online that actually rewarded teamwork. Sure you could run off to the helicopter at the start of the game and fly off without waiting for anyone else but if you did that, you had no guns, it required a second person to fire the weapons. You could drive around in a tank on your own and do a bit of damage but add two more people and you have double the firepower and can destroy incoming enemy rockets (And the basic engineers rpg had a homing feature). You could snipe from a high tower on your own but the game had a fog distance similar to Turok so you'd be low on targets. Squad up with someone who knew how to use drones properly however (i.e. for spotting, not just as a floating bomb) and you'd get handy red triangles to shoot at, allowing you to snipe from the opposite end of the map, scenery allowing. The real beauty of all of this is that people who had no interest in teamwork or capturing bases and were obsessed with k/d ratios rapidly lost interest in the game leaving it for everyone who wanted to play it properly to enjoy it. Genuinely awesome game and probably the most fun I've ever had playing a multiplayer fps.

Civilization V - PC

I've always loved Civilization since I played the first one in the early nineties and number 5 is easily the best yet. The biggest improvement over the older versions is that you can't stack military units so combat actually requires a hint of tactics, rather than just queuing up hundreds more units than are defending the city and clicking on it until you win. The city states mechanic adds interest and now winning a diplomatic victory is almost as fun as winning a domination victory. For the first time in the series' history, for me at least, Civilization has actually come quite close to how civilisations actually grow and evolve and this is a really good reinvention of the series.

Gran Turismo V - PS3

Gran Turismo is not a great racing series, it never has been. It is a great driving game though and the fifth one is pretty awesome. A decent mix of tracks, hundreds of awesome cars that handle realistically and sound like they should and none of this silly nonsense about drifting or what have you. I don't even know why I like Gran Turismo so much but I play it for hours and hours. I'm not even that good at it and can still barely get a car round the Nurbergring but it's bizarrely addictive.

Crackdown - 360

I must have been one of the only people on the planet who didn't buy this for the Halo demo it shipped with. I didn't actually buy it until quite a while after it came out and only because I saw a second hand copy for a fiver. It's such a fun game though, one of the most pure fun experiences of the generation. I played through pretty much all of it with Phong and we did it in a dumb order and it didn't matter. Once you power up a bit it's such effortless fun jumping from roof to roof, murdering hordes of crims with a couple of well-placed rockets, hurling cars down the street and beating people to death with a lamp-post. You don't really need to think about what you're doing too much and you don't need to worry about the story too much, you can just piss about for hours on end. The sequel was decent enough but it never really lived up to the pure joy of the first one.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - 360

I don't think it's a secret that I'm a huge Warhammer nerd and this played right up to my fanboyism. Even without that, this is a great game. The story mode has great set-pieces, is tense in places, frenetic in others and above all else, has the most hilarious healing mechanic in gaming history whereby you regain health by performing messy executions. For the first time, a computer game managed to capture what GW Space Marines should look like, move like and fight like. The story is predictable and silly which is perfect for the universe it's set in and it's all very grim and dark.

The multiplayer was fun too, if a little under-populated and beset by network issues. The weapons were well balanced and buzzing about as an assault marine is hilarious, even if it did bring one of my mates to question why I constantly took a sword to a gun fight. The maps were well thought out too and there was no one obvious way to dominate. Decent DLC with the Dreadnought mode being completely ridiculous and silly and the horde mode being a lot of fun too. I played this until the community died out and it's a real shame that the death of THQ means a sequel is unlikely at best.

Condemned - 360

Condemned is the only game I've ever found actually scary. Fuck Resident Evil and Silent Hill, real scares come from poking around a dark apartment building with only a shitty torch to light the way and a length of wood for protection, waiting for a psychopathic junkie to jump out and attack you. It's tense as fuck constantly and you can easily wind yourself up playing it in the dark. Towards the end it gets a bit silly and the second one was awful but this is the only game I would describe as actually scary.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - 360

Some people enjoy fast-paced run and gun thrills in their fps. I prefer hiding behind cover, popping up occasionally sniping some fool and generally ordering my team around to kill things for me. Fuck opening doors myself when I can tell the three goons with me to open it, chuck in a grenade then kill everyone while I hang upside down and shoot through the window like a boss. Sneaking and sniping is always more fun for me than running and gunning and R6V2 had a great mix of sneaking and sniping. It also had an order system that the AI would follow and a spot on cover system. It's a source of eternal shame that I never managed to finish the game on Realistic wearing only a white vest and cowboy hat and using a pistol.

The versus mode was a bit shit but terrorist hunt mode was about the most fun co-op game I've played. The combination of pre-set and random spawns made every game different and the wide range of equipment setups meant playing with randoms was always interesting too. The game also had a hilarious array of customised looks for your soldier so you could look like a cyber ninja, a real world soldier or John Maclane depending on your sense fo style.

Halo Reach - 360

Some of the other Halos might be technically better but Reach was the one I had the most fun playing. Primarily for the Firefight mode which I think improved on the one from ODST. Having basically entirely cosmetic upgrades to unlock was exactly how experience unlocks should work and although the multiplayer never matched Halo 2 for fun, the Forge meant there was a constant stream of new stuff to play with and the different playlists meant you could completely swerve battlerifle deathmatches if you wanted. People still never learned how to play objective games and Bungie really should have increased the points tally for scoring objectives but that aside the game types were solid. I also had a lot of fun playing the co-op campaign, especially the first playthrough from start to finish with Phong, Kyndig and Sailor Daravon.

Guitar Hero Metallica - 360

I never got a Rock Band game and Metallica was the GH game I played the most. To this day I suck at Guitar Hero but I still go back to Metallica from time to time to belt out Master of Puppets at comedy volume.

Armored Core: For Answer - 360

Massive mechs, fuck yeah! I've played and loved all the AC games up to For Answer and this one takes the concept and turns it up to eleven. Huge turbo boosts, setups that let you permanently fly, huge clouds of missiles and massive laser cannons. Again there is no "right" way to play each level and you can get through the whole game using a variety of mech styles and half the fun is designing new mechs and painting them stupid colours. I genuinely believe I spent more time designing mechs than playing through levels.

GTA V - PS3

GTA IV was technically impressive but they completely missed out on the fun element that made Vice City and San Andreas so great. GTA V almost got this back and the game is pretty funny. There's a fair bit to do, the missions are interesting and varied and the soundtrack, whilst not as good as Vice City's, is not as bad as the one in IV that made me just take taxis everywhere. I couldn't really be arsed with the online mode but the story was more than enough to warrant the asking price, especially as my playstyle is to explore the world and try everything rather than plough straight through the missions to the end which I think is kinda missing the point of the game.

Final Fantasy XIII - 360

People hated FF XIII for being linear and not having towns. Towns in FF games have always just been lists of shops with a bit of walking in between and endless, uninteresting dialogue. Jog that shit on and give me a shopping menu. FF games have also mainly been essentially linear hiding behind vast expanses of dead space. Sure you could wander the world in all the earlier ones but there's fuck all there. Neither of these things were negatives for me. The story was bollocks but then if you're playing a FF game for the story you need to get out and read more books. For me, jrpgs have always been about the battle system and collecting shit and FFXIII did both these things well. I enjoyed mucking about with the paradigms and I enjoyed working out the best combinations to get through each area. I actually really enjoyed FFXIII-2 and was tempted to put that in this list instead but I do think the first one is a slightly better game.

The Last Remnant - 360

Another jrpg with a great combat system, Last Remnant really made you plan ahead with your party setup and rewarded exploration of the system (Or reading about it online I guess). It was also fucking tricky in parts and killing all the optional bosses gave me a rare sense of achievement. What really sets LR apart from other jrpgs is that you can't really grind your way past tough bosses. Well you can, but if you're not careful you end up making the game harder, not easier. I spent hundreds of hours playing Last Remnant and loved every minute.

Too Human - 360

Famously shit, I really enjoyed Too Human. It's a mindless hack and slash with a WoW-esque compulsive grinding element. I loved the setting, I loved the look of it, I loved the way combat involves pushing the sticks rather than hammering buttons. It's just great, shut up, Skills.

Sacred 2, - 360

A western rpg and one of the most needlessly massive games I ever played. Fuck only knows what the over-arching plot was, there were so many side plots and missions I lost track of that within minutes. Another game more about manipulating the system rather than anything else, the loot system was really well balanced and encouraged you to keep looking for that one better item that would round off your build. Also, in a game this big, once you've uncovered 70% of the map it would be rude not to go on and uncover all of it. Games like this are why I've never risked starting to play World of Warcraft, I need my loot games to have some semblance of an end to them.

Lumines - PSP

I've never really been into puzzle games. I was shit at Tetris and swerved the whole genre for years as a result. Lumines is awesome though and it's far too easy to sink hours into this without even realising it. I'm also not that bad at it as it happens, my current high score on the Vita version is more than twice Infernal's, about the only game I can claim to be better than him at in terms of comparative scores. It's simple on the face of it but there is surprising depth to the game and having great music doesn't hurt at all.

Ni No Kuni - PS3

It's a jrpg, a cartoon and pokemon all rolled into one! Yay! Charming game, lots of depth, loads of fun and only marginally spoiled by the main character having one of the worst, most out of place voice actors in the history of gaming and for being way too easy, including the optional bosses. If you need a boss strategy faq for this game you need to give up playing rpgs, seriously. I did love my time playing Ni No Kuni though.

Pokémon Soulsilver - DS

I'm not one of these people who understands the hidden characteristics, who breeds egg moves or gives a fuck about tournament movesets. I'm someone who has an almost ocd need to collect things in rpgs and this was the first Pokémon game where catching em all was reasonably achievable! I think I have about 300 hours logged on this version, no other game can come close to that in pure hours spent playing.

Mass Effect - 360

Yeah, the first one. Even with the bollocks driving the mako bits it was still more interesting than the second. It's a shame the whole morality thing is entirely superficial and the whole outcome of the game boils down to one choice at the end but that's apparently Bioware's thing. The universe was well realised, the story was interesting enough and you could attempt different play styles. Still not as good as KOTOR mind you.

Fallout 3 - 360

I enjoyed Fallout 3. There was lots of stuff to find, lots of people to talk to and plenty of scope for free roaming and different approaches. Yes, the whole map was an almost unending swathe of the same destroyed office blocks and uniform grey and browns but it was fun to explore. Even after you get reasonably levelled and can one-shot Deathclaws the game remains interesting and fun. I thought it was a lot better than Oblivion and spent a long time playing it.

Other games I could have put on this list include: GRID, Battlefield Bad Company 2, FFXIII-2, Halo ODST, Little King's Story, LocoRoco and doubtless many others once I remember them!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I haven't played that many popular/mainstream 7th generation games but here are 20 that made a very positive impression on me, including retro-style titles.

In no particular order, because it would be too difficult otherwise:

- Journey
- Heavy Rain
- Mass Effect
- Mass Effect 2
- Dragon Age: Origins
- The Witcher
- The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
- The Last of Us
- Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
- Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
- The Longest Journey: Dreamfall
- To the Moon
- Machinarium
- Transformers: War for Cybertron
- Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
- Mushihimesama Futari
- ESPGaluda 2
- Within a Deep Forest
- Child of Eden
- Gemini Rue

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

This order is mostly accurate, but they're still fairly interchangeable. Narrowing down the list was tricky with the DS thrown into the mix.

20) Bioshock Infinite

Columbia never stopped being a gorgeous setting to look at. Every area had at least a few spots, if not the whole thing, worth taking a few moments to examine. Not to mention some of the more subtle touches like the redone modern music. Elizabeth had an impressive amount of depth, and the amount of time they spent developing her idle movements and such really added to her as a character.

19) Picross 3D

I'd never played Picross before this, and I still prefer 3D over regular Picross. It makes great use of the touchscreen, and it's a real shame that there hasn't been a new Picross 3D.

18) Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

I'm going with this one because it's the best of the series on DS, though to be fair I haven't played Last Specter yet. The Layton games deserve major props for keeping the puzzles interesting while teaching us all to be true gentlemen.

17) Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations

Again, this was definitely the best in the series. None of the cases were dull, and the cases relating to Dahlia were fantastic. I really just wanted to highlight the Phoenix Wright games overall, since they showed me that visual novels were worth looking into.

16) Rayman Origins

Great game with frustratingly high difficulty at times. It finally brought Rayman back after being condemned to endless Rabbid games (not that Rabbids are bad), and showed that it's still worth making 2D platformers.

15) Rune Factory 3

The third game is apparently always the best when it comes to DS series. I'd been wanting combat added to Harvest Moon somehow basically since I started playing them, and Rune Factory successfully blended an action RPG and crafting with Harvest Moon. The first Rune Factory had some balance issues with how it handled stamina, and I didn't like how the second game divided itself in half and separated dungeons and farming more than it needed to. RF3 finally hit the perfect balance that Frontier had come close to.

14) Crackdown 2

It's hard to say whether the first or second Crackdown deserves to be on this list more, but Crackdown 2 wins out for me. We had some crazy multiplayer sessions, and there were so many ways to troll people. The first Crackdown may have had a better story mode, but you know what it didn't have? Chasing Omagnus in an assault helicopter while he glided away with a wing suit.

13) Rock Band 3

I'm sure that I played Rock band 2 more, but since they all shared libraries I might as well give it to the most recent game. I've never been great at rhythm games, but Rock Band was enough fun to make me learn how to play its guitar decently well. I have to stick to guitar though, because Rock Band has informed me that I can't carry a tune. At all.

12) Left 4 Dead

This and Left 4 Dead 2 were definitely the best multiplayer games this generation. It never got old even with only 4 campaigns. I'd still be up for playing if everyone else hadn't stopped.

11) Borderlands

I'm not usually big on shooters, but Borderlands' chaos and humor mixed in with amazing multiplayer sessions made this worthy of the list. Everyone else is mad jealous of my Best Bird Friend Forever.

10) Valkyria Chronicles

Screw the rest of the squad; Vyse and Marina can lay waste to the empire on their own. Such a pity they nerfed the series to bring it to PSP and then never even gave us the third game.

9) Super Mario Galaxy 2

It's like that terrible Rouge level in Sonic Adventure 2, except the gravity works and it doesn't make you hate life.

8) Monster Hunter Tri

Definitely more approachable for beginners than the PSP games, and proved how badly Monster Hunter needs two analog sticks and an actual internet connection. I'd go into detail, but I already did that for Gamer's Month 2 years ago.

7) Portal 2

Portal's physics and puzzles are great of course, but Portal 2 makes it this high up on the list mostly because it's one of the funniest games ever created.

YouTube Video

6) Demon's Souls

Insanely difficult, but even though the game could be cheap it allowed plenty of opportunities for you to trick the AI or otherwise cheat too. There was a real sense of accomplishment to finishing it, and so many great stories from partying with or being invaded by other players. If someone named KanyeEast07 invades you cannot let them win. It was close in the end, but I still prefer Demon's Souls' hub over Dark Souls' open world.

5) Dragon Quest IX

At first glance Dragon Quest IX is good, but nothing incredible. The story is light since your whole party is player-created, and there aren't any really difficult parts in the main game. Then you get to the post-game grottoes and legacy bosses. You start out dicking around in low level, seemingly random dungeons. Next you start learning the differences between grotto types and which level ranges give what treasures and monsters. Maybe you find a map website that can tell you exactly where chests will be and what rank they are. That super rare boss equipment looks nice, so you learn how to read the Hoimi table to trick the RNG. At some point you notice the game clock and realize that 200 HOURS HAVE PASSED SINCE YOU BEAT THE GAME JESUS CHRIST WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE OH WELL BETTER GO BACK TO FINISHING QUESTS.

4) Fallout 3

I still haven't played the previous Fallout games, but I loved the crap out of Fallout 3. It could have used more than two radio stations, one of which I didn't unlock until I was mopping up quests for achievements at the very end, but otherwise it was damn near perfect. Even once I was essentially invincible and melting everything with a plasma rifle there were still plenty of places to explore and logs to read. The Pitt DLC was another definite high point, since it managed to present a rare moral choice where an argument can be made for either side being right.

3) Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City

This was the first Etrian I played, and it's still my favorite. It has a huge amount of variety between the strata and some of the best music in the series. I went into it not knowing how far I would get since I'd heard plenty about its high difficulty, so reaching each new stratum felt extremely rewarding. It's nice having an RPG these days with modern improvements to dungeon crawling, but zero hand holding.

2) Tales of Vesperia

A definite step up from Abyss, it looks fantastic and the battle system flows smoothly. Yuri is still probably Vesperia's biggest triumph though, because he's one of the best protagonists in any RPG. Vesperia was without a doubt the best RPG of this console generation until...

1) Xenoblade Chronicles

Yep, no one could've seen this coming at #1. Forget about 2-20. What a bunch of jokers. Xenoblade is top notch in every aspect, and I have no problem with saying that it's the best RPG since the SNES era. Its stunning visuals proved that the Wii was perfectly capable of doing great things if developers bothered to put in a bit of effort, and X can't get here soon enough.

YouTube Video

Honorable Mentions: Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, Minecraft, Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?, and Resident Evil 5

How ya doing, buddy?

Well, I'm kinda behind on the 7th generation games, so I'm note sure I'll make it to 20. Anyway, here's what I have so far in no specific order.

1. Dragon Quest IX (NDS)
2. Professor Layton and the Curious Village (NDS)
3. Dead Space (360)
4. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PS3)
5. Tomb Raider (PS3)
6. The Last of Us (PS3)
7. Portal 2 (PC)
8. Rythmn Heaven (NDS)
9. Red Dead Redemption (360)
10. Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (NDS)
11. Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3)
12. Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift (NDS)
13. Final Fantasy XIII (360)
14. Alan Wake (306)
15. Batman Arkham City (360)
17. Bioshock (360)
18. Mass Effect 2 (360)
19.
20.

I'm short 2 games.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Well I made a list a while back and typed up a description for #20 but never finished it, so I'll go ahead and post. These are in order and some of these switched spots several times before landing their final number. I tried to limit it to one game per franchise.

#20



This game is still fun to play to this day. I, my bro, and my dad will play golf on here during a vacation. Also, here's an awesome story. Back in college one of my buddies was dating this girl that was really competitive at this game, but she was never able to beat me. So one time, she decided to sit on my lap to try and distract me. It was working for a bit, but then she started doing just as bad. She got up and in the end I still defeated her. I made sure to let her know it before she left, which sparked a yelling "SHUT UP!" from her towards me.

And that's why Wii Sports is on this list.



#19





#18





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#14



Proof that the fans can make a Mega Man game just as good or even better than Capcom.



#13





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#04





#02 (TIE)



I really tried to separate these two out, but of this generation these games from their respective franchises are the most fun and the most beautiful.



#01



What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?