Your top 5 current-gen games

[(-_-)]

Of what I've played and has stuck out most in my mind,
In no particular order

Demon's Souls
Super Meat Boy
Nier
Bayonetta
Little Big Planet

[Droid party]

Need for speed : Hot pursuit
Far cry 2
GTA 4
MGS 4
Galaga legions

No particular order and really just the top 5 that are popping into my head tight now. All of these are current gen games that have left an indelible mark on me.

[dsheinem]

Need for speed : Hot pursuit
Far cry 2
GTA 4
MGS 4
Galaga legions

No particular order and really just the top 5 that are popping into my head tight now. All of these are current gen games that have left an indelible mark on me.

Glad someone else liked Far Cry 2, though it wouldn't be in my top 5. I may put it in the top 5 FPS this gen, though.

[emwearz]

These are what came to mind, no order.

Mass Effect 2
Bioshock
Portal 2
Super Mario Galaxy
Left 4 Dead 2

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Assuming current gen started in 2005-2006

Team Fortress 2
Portal
Gran Turismo 5
Minecraft
inFamous

I just picked a few out of probably 30 games that I've fallen in love with. This has become easily my favorite generation of games. There are just so many great games!

[AwesomeMonstar]

Team Fortress 2

Man, I feel weird agreeing with this.

When the first few updates were rolling out, I would have totally agreed. I loved the game to bits and put a solid few hours in almost daily.

Then anyone was allowed to craft weapons and the balance seemed a little off to me. I still played, but not as much. Something just felt off.

Then you could pay for guns.

Then I kinda stopped playing. I hate when games do this and often divide the game into the have and the have nots. TF2 does this better than most games out, but it's still really frustrating me to think that there are payed advantages.

I want to love tf2 but I just can't hop back into it anymore, there's just too much crap.

[swiftzx]

How could I have forgotten about Minecraft

[FiftyDollarCurse]

5. Portal
4. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
3. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
1. Super Mario Galaxy

[Gamerforlife]

I didn't say much about the games I chose in my previous post, so here's my take two on this

No particular order:

1.Viva Pinata - This is just the perfect game for animal lovers. It made me feel a genuine affection for some of its animals that I've only ever felt for the little creatures in Pikmin 2. This game does it better though. The little nuances of each animal make them feel real and shows an impressive attention to detail. It's also the most relaxing game I have ever played and possibly the most charming and endearing as well. This game showed me that Rare still is one of most amazing and unique developers in the industry and there is no other game like this one that I know of. It certainly stands out in this generation of me too games that are all shooters, multi-player games, sandbox titles or retro flavored digital games. In fact, I haven't even seen any game try and copy this one's formula.

2. Batman:Arkham Asylum - I'm a huge Batman fan. This game just nails everything about the character. It shows his amazing martial arts prowess, his gadgets, his use of fear against his enemies, his detective ability and his angst and psychological fears. Plus, they got the best voice actors to ever do Batman and Joker in Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. His rogues gallery is also well utilized, particularly Joker, Harley and Scarecrow. On top of that, the combat system is fresh, original and challenging(just try the combat rooms), the stealth system also feels different and original and the game even gives us a little bit of Metroid flavor while most games are still playing it safe and doing Metroid-like gameplay in 2D. Lastly, there is no stupid, multi-player crap, the achievement/trophies are all well thought out unlike most games on the market today, and the hidden collectibles don't require a damn strategy guide or faq to find. Kudos to this game for bucking annoying trends in today's games and walking its own path while giving us what many thought was impossible, a Game of the Year quality Batman game in 3D. With Arkham Asylum, video games have family caught up with Hollywood movies(The Dark Knight)and the world of animation(Batman:The Animated Series)in not only doing Batman right, but finding critical and financial success as well. This game is damn near perfect, but its bosses could be better and the story resolution is okay, but not great. I'd give it a 9.5

3. Brutal Legend - Again, games with originality always get points with me and no one has ever done a heavy metal tribute game. Certainly not one with this level of commitment anyway, one of the best intros and titles screens I've ever seen in a game and the soundtrack is full of awesome REAL metal songs. I'm glad they didn't just go with original, metal sounding compositions for the game and actually got REAL songs from REAL bands. The stage battles polarized people. I LOVED them. It's combat on an epic scale like a Dynasty Warriors game or Kingdom Under Fire: Crusaders and the battle of the bands theme was perfect for this game. The mix of action with a little real time strategy elements sprinkled in was well done.

The game is full of memorable moments, great characters(even the bit players are awesome), a beautifully realized heavy metal landscape(art direction is this game is fantastic) and hilarious lines. It's not perfect, the ending of the story felt a bit rushed and undercooked, they made it a bit hard to find all the collectibles without a guide and there was one particular mission that I thought was poorly designed, but the game has plenty of charm, humor, injokes for metalheads, good story, epic moments and originality. Plus, it's got Lemmy Kilmister, Kyle Glass, Brian Posehn, Wil Wheaton, Ozzy, Jack Black, Rob Halford, Tim Curry and Lita Ford and others I'm forgetting. It's a whose who of geeks and metal heads. Now that's awesome. There are moments in this game I'll never forget. Playing a guitar solo that LITERALLY melts faces, bringing out the MASSIVE Rock Crusher and using the EPIC Bladehenge attack on an enemy stage, playing wingman for one your buddies to keep the cock blockers away , doing the beer run mission, summoning the flaming zeppelin to wipe out my enemies or meeting the very funny and oddly familiar Bat family

4. Mass Effect 1 and 2(Oh c'mon, I'm not going to give it two separate entries)
You know when you get right down to it, this is the video game equivalent of Star Wars, though with a huge universe full of compelling mythology and characters that rivals Star Trek. As JT said, this is a space opera and it's more epic than anything else I've played in the past few years. It's the biggest Sci-Fi thing going in gaming right now and doing a whole trilogy of games where your decisions direct the direction of the story and carry over from game to game is revolutionary and brilliant. Like all Bioware games, Mass Effect stands out for being one of the very few video games where you feel like you are a genuine part of the adventure. You ARE Commander Shepherd and you decide who he falls in love with, who he kills, who he spares, who he sacrifices, who he forms ties with and ultimately what his destiny is.

The term immersion if overused in video games, and this series is one of the rare instances where the word really does apply. I do feel like I'm part of Mass Effect's world because I choose everything Shepherd does and because this is a Sci-Fi game, there are never any of those unrealistic moments that bring me back to reality and remind me that I'm playing a video game like other titles where you see ridiculous things like like a woman in high tops and shorts absorbing bullets like a Terminator machine. In Mass Effect, I have armor and I have shields. So watching Shepherd get shot three times with no injury or death doesn't come across as ridiculous and unrealistic. The game also wonderfully blends real time action and rpg gameplay. It's not a perfect marriage, but in both games it comes close enough.

5. Portal 1 and 2(See above)
The Portal series simply has some of the best and funniest dialogue I've ever heard in a game. They are so quotable it's ridiculous. Also, Portal 1 and 2 perfectly shows what I mean when I say that less is more and that sometimes it's good when games stay focused on one thing. The Portal games are puzzles games, nothing more, nothing less. There are no mini-games, no quick time events, no combat, no sandbox, no genre mixing, no bullshit. You solve puzzles...and that's it. They are some of the best designed puzzles I've ever seen. If you can't figure it out, it's your fault. You should never need a guide to get you through. Also, as many Valve fans already know, the Portal games are good at telling a story organically, with no cut scenes to ever pull you out of the experience and remind you that you're just playing a game. Everything is done using the ingame engine. It's really how ALL games should tell their stories, but you know companies like Square won't ever give up on their pretty CGI cut scenes. I recently gave Portal 2 a 10 in another thread. The game is polished to perfection and not a single part of the game feels half-assed

Runners up:
The Darkness - Some of the most brilliant story telling techniques and set piece moments I've seen in a game. Its characters and its tale really drew me in. I also love the creative uses of the Darkness powers in the game, though as some people have pointed out they could have been fleshed out more. Still, it was different. I have more appreciation for them after playing Infamous, which is a super hero game that never feels like more than a shooter unlike the Darkness, which blends cool powers and shooter gameplay together really well. I also loved the sense of fear you create in your enemies. It's nice to play a hero, yet see your enemies look at you and see a fear-inducing monster. Sort of like being the scary thing that hunts down players in a survival horror game

Castle Crashers - We've seen a couple, old school 2D brawlers like Dishwasher Dead Samurai, Shank and Scott Pilgrim versus the World, but they are all flawed in some way. Dishwasher has a high difficulty and doesn't really give players a chance to ease into the game before it kicks you ass. Scott Pilgrim is cheap, has shoddy combat mechanics and is clearly designed more for multi-player than single player(unless you love grinding). Castle Crashers has more replay value than its competition, better balanced difficulty, a decent combat engine and some nice rpg elements. It's also the most hilarious and visually creative brawler on PSN or Xbox Live and has a killer soundtrack that even rivals the Anamanaguchi soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim. It's a big step up from what I considered a mediocre title in Alien Hominid and made me take Behemoth seriously.

[Droid party]

Glad someone else liked Far Cry 2, though it wouldn't be in my top 5. I may put it in the top 5 FPS this gen, though.

I liked it so much that even though I have a MASSIVE backlog of games that I need to get through I've decided to play through this again. It's one of those games that I really didn't realize how much I enjoyed it until after I'd completed it and couldn't stop thinking about.