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Alec and James are joined by Matthew to name the Top 30 games that make the Xbox360 so memorable. Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters.
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Alec and James are joined by Matthew to name the Top 30 games that make the Xbox360 so memorable. Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters.
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Alec and James are joined by Matthew to name the Top 30 games that make the Xbox360 so memorable. Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters.
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The speaker starts off by mentioning that they have chosen to do a podcast instead of running their business, and that they enjoy doing it. They mention that their wife is annoyed, but it's not a big deal. They talk about owning an estate liquidation company and having guns in the estate. They then transition to discussing their podcast, where they rank the top 20 games that showcase Xbox 360. They explain the format of the episode and how they will be discussing and editing the list as they go. The first guest chooses Halo 3 and Mercenaries 2 as their top two games. The second guest chooses Need for Speed: Most Wanted as their pick. I've chose the unprofessional route of doing a podcast instead of running my business this morning, so I'm great. That, you know what, I dig it, I like it. My wife is a little annoyed, but she'll be fine. I've abandoned my wife, she's fine. Honey, it's really important, okay? That successful business that pays our mortgage can take a backseat. It's fucking fine, dude, a bunch of people are just gonna bug me, like guns and stuff, so it'll be nice to be late. What do you do, just carry on? I own an estate liquidation company. We have an estate today, and I have a couple guns in the estate, which means there's gonna be a line of guys that wanna finger-fuck the guns that are just waiting for me. And there's our cold open. Three, two, one, docking launch. Welcome back to Three, Two, One Backlog, a podcast where we sit down and play games. Well, we talk about games that we have played recently, however, today we're gonna be doing a little bit different of an episode. We're gonna be ranking the top 20 games that showcase Xbox 360. Am I on point there, Dave? I'm on point. I'm on point. I'm on point. I'm on point. I'm on point. I'm on point. I'm on point. I'm on point. I'm on point. I'm on point. Am I on point there, gentlemen? Yeah, I like the idea of this because there was like the retro consoles that came out, like the Nintendo, Super Nintendo ones that came out. So this is kinda like, you know, if they made a Xbox 360 version of that, I feel like these, hopefully we can come to an understanding of a select amount of games that would fit that bill, and you know, if they ever did release one, these would be the representative games, so. Exactly. Also speaking now is James, and then we also have another guest with us because I forgot this whole part. You go way back, again. Way back. We also have a returning guest, Matthew, today. Hi. Thanks for hopping on so early. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So to run down exactly what it is we're gonna do, kinda like James said, you know, there have been these classic consoles for like Nintendo and like retro style where they say, hey, these are the 20 to 30 games we're gonna give you, and that's like, it shows what that console is known for best, right? So we're gonna do that kinda thing, but with Xbox 360, so it's, I'm sure it's gonna be super divisive. No way. How this is gonna roll through is we're gonna go, in turn, we've all brought a list of 15 to 20 games, I think some have a little more, and we're going to, in turn, present two games from our list that'll immediately go in our top 20, and we'll try and place them somewhere in there, and then the next person will go, they'll add another 20, or excuse me, another two, and we'll discuss and edit that top 20 list as we go. So by the end of it, we're probably gonna have some overlap, so if one of us picks a game and the other people have it on our list, we will just behind the scenes scratch it off your list because it's already been mentioned, and that's kind of it, and we'll kinda see by the end of this what our top 20 games are that really showcase the 360s. So, Matthew, I'm gonna actually have you go first as the guest. Okay. So what are your two games to throw on the list right off the bat? So am I ranking these in any particular order, or just? No, so I think deal of choice on which one you say first, and then the three of us will then kinda like say, okay, where do we think this can go? And the list is gonna shift around, so I'm, for those listening, I'm screen sharing just a blank list of 20 numbers, and we're gonna place them on there, and then as we go, we'll shift them up, shift them down. If we think, you know, hey, this one's probably gonna be really high, we can just toss it up the front, and as the episode progresses and at the very end, we'll see, okay, how's this ranking, and then let's make adjustments as we need. I will, okay, I'll just go deep the first one all the way, like Halo 3 as my number one. Let me go ahead and take that off my list in the background. I discussed this with a handful of other people. I had to do, I had to run to some different game stores and like card stores around town this week for business, so I asked like several other guys there. Not one of them said Halo 3. I got like three Halo reaches. I got three Halo reaches, not one Halo 3. Ooh, okay. Well, yeah. So I'm thinking right off the bat, this is probably gonna go at least in the top five. I mean, it's one of the, probably not one of the, but the most well-known Xbox exclusive series. Yeah, it's Halo. It's synonymous with that, yeah. Right. So how about for, you know what, I'm gonna toss it in just the three spot for now just because it's Halo 3. We in agreement there? It might move, it might go up. I mean, it kind of feels disrespectful, but I'll accept it. Did you play a lot of Halo? Oh, dude, I was a tournament player, yeah. I traveled a lot. I was playing Halo 3 for years. Do you do claw grip or do you do like human grip? No, no, I never did none of that self-taught claw grip. Nope, normal grip. I did, I played bumper jumper. Okay, I don't know what that is. Jump was on the top bumper. Oh, okay, okay. I think that's what made that like inference from that, but. You fool. It sounded like maybe a drug that you were using at the time to enhance your skills. Bumper jumping hard, dude. Basically, I kept losing to 13-year-old kids, dude. That's when I quit playing. That's the story of our lives, dude. Yeah, dude. It was the night that Halo Reach released. I played in a 96-man tournament for the release night of Reach, and I got my ass kicked by 12, like I got third, but these twins, like this boy and girl twins who were like 12 or 13 took first, and they, dude, it wasn't even close. They dominated us. That sounds, yeah, that sounds like there's something going on there for sure. Some kind of twin power. Yeah. And what is your game two? Ooh, game two. Now this, man, I might be going out onto left field here, but hands down, my actual personal favorite 360 game was Mercenaries II, okay? Mercenaries II, I'm not familiar with that one. No one is. I feel like I've heard it. It's amazing. I remember the cover, but I've never played it. I, if we have a minute, if you wanna pull up a, you should pull up the Mercenaries II theme song on YouTube for us to all watch and listen to together, and I feel like this will really give you a great idea of the game. This is an amazing game. We just see Alex's history pulling it up, and it's just really weird. Oh, No, You Didn't. That, there you go. Oh, there it is, yeah. I'm curious if this will come through for you guys. Yep. Oh, no. Oh, no. Yo, yo, yo. Oh, no, you didn't. Sucker tried to play me, but you never paid me, never. Oh, no, you didn't. Payback is a-coming, you will be riding it forever. Oh, no, you didn't. Until I get my vengeance, I will never end this mayhem. Oh, no, you didn't. I'm a mercenary, you ain't got a prayer, you owe me. Oh, no, you didn't. Oh, no, you didn't. Oh, no, you didn't. I, this sounds familiar, like in a ridiculous way. Like, we had to have seen this. This was, like, I think it was on a couple commercials. This was every time you started the game, the first time this song came on, and I still sing this song, like, routinely to myself while driving down the road. Wow. Oh, so that was also a PS2 game, surprisingly. Okay. Yeah, it was. I feel like I remember seeing it. Yeah, while I was making this list, I was noticing, like, oh, hold on, this is in the age of, like, cross-play was, like, really hitting its stride. Yeah, I tried really hard to adhere to games that I only played on 360, that, like, you know. Because when I was going through this, I was like, okay, you know, this game I want to bring up, but it was released for Xbox and Xbox 360, so it was probably made for the 360, really, and then the flip of that of, like, oh, this was made for the 360 and the Xbox One, so I'm not going to include that, because, let's be honest, they were trying to navigate us towards the Xbox One. Likewise. Like, one of my favorite games, Assassin's Creed Black Flag, is not on my list, because it was actually supposed to be played on the Xbox One. Oh, there? Okay, yeah, I did the same thing with Fables, so. Yeah. Ooh, that one's on my list. One of them is. Nice, calm down. Okay, calm down. Oh, my God. So, let's go ahead and let's start with James, then. I thought, oh, was he only doing two? Yeah, two, two at a time. Yeah, okay, fine. I want to put on Need for Speed Most Wanted, the 05 one. Ooh. Did you guys play that? Yeah. Yes, I think you and I did. Yeah, so that was. And that is. James, I feel like you and I are going to have a lot of the same picks. We might all, dude. There's a very strong possibility that we all have a lot. Well, you and I played a lot of these games together. So, now, if we're taking off Most Wanted, does that leave room for Pursuit and The Run on the list, as well? It would. Yeah. Yeah, I think. Oh, were those DLTs? No, they were separate games. Oh, okay. So, I think that that'll be a point to argue a little bit. I feel like, you know, because this game could, this list could easily be like five Call of Duty games and then like three Halo games. So, I think we should try to keep it to like one representation from each series, you know? But, you know, if you want to argue that the other one was better, I'm open to it. Because I played the shit out of all those, so I'm not. I just remember, personally, Most Wanted was the most memorable one. But I know that, I think it was Hot Pursuit. Was that the one you said? Yeah, Hot Pursuit and The Run. Yeah, both. Yeah. Hot Pursuit, I think I played. I played a lot of Most Wanted. Most Wanted was my favorite out of them. Okay, cool. The Run was fun, but I liked Hot Pursuit. Most Wanted. I think Most Wanted was also a launch title, too. So, it kind of, everybody got to, you know, dig in there. And then I also, go ahead. Yeah, so for placement, I'm thinking somewhere in single digits. So, I guess I envision, dude, it's going to be really hard to, like, really do, like, top three directly. I thought we were just coming up with, like, 28 anywhere. I think you're right, because we're definitely going to be, they're going to be games that aren't comparable to each other. So, I think you're right. I think it would make more sense to scrap the whole ranking, but we're just going to get them all on the list. I mean, I think we should try to adhere to some amount of tier list, just for fun. Yeah, at the end, we can maybe give them, like, a tier list or something like that, if we've got time. I'm going to be number one, then. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and just move these around in the background while you talk about your next game. I also wanted to include Crackdown. I don't know if anybody played that. I have not. So, I feel like it's been a while since we've seen too many of these games, but in that time period, there were so many of these games that were big, open-world games where you were just some enhanced person. Prototype was another one, literally every superhero game. But Crackdown was really good because there was a driving aspect of it. You were basically an enhanced cop, and there were, I think, other enhanced villains. But it was original. It wasn't a superhero. It wasn't Spider-Man. What was the genre? Was it a shooter, RPG, action-adventure? It was an action shooter, but similar to GTA. But I guess it would be like GTA if you were enhanced, if you happened to use steroids for many, many years. I got you, I got you. Okay. Your mom put Tren in your Wheaties. Okay. I saw the Prototype one on the list, and I was like, I didn't end up putting it on mine, but definitely in that vein. Yeah, I thought Prototype was a better game, but it was on more than one console, and I think Crackdown was actually like an exclusive, so I had a little conflict. Yeah, Prototype is cool. All right, so I think we're to me now. Yeah. As we probably guessed of what franchise I'm gonna go to for our listeners, we're gonna go into Ubisoft. We're gonna go into Stealth. We're gonna go into Assassin's Creed. The original? For sure. No. So the Assassin's Creed line is probably one of my favorites. Assassin's Creed, I believe, came out, it may have been on the three, I looked at this last night, and there were a couple that would have qualified, but then I wanted to break it down and think, okay, well, which ones were probably actually better and more beloved by the community from all the talks that we've had over the years? So the first one I'm gonna put on here is Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Okay. It was with, it's still in SEO's timeline and in story, and that one, I feel like got a lot of really good reception from the community. So it's not one that I played a bunch, but I know it was very well received. Cool. I had the first Assassin's Creed, but I don't know them as well as you, so. Yeah. Definitely something for them. So I know I played it, but I don't think I ever finished it, but I know it was, every time any discussion videos come up or any time there's an AC-specific conversation, Brotherhood is brought up at some point. Gotcha. Behind Black Flag, and again, like I said before, the reason I didn't pick Black Flag is because it was made with the intention of going onto the Xbox One. Rogue stayed on the 360. It felt like a throwaway to me for those that couldn't afford a Xbox One, and I didn't like it as much of a game. So my second one, we're gonna go right into it again. We're gonna go Assassin's Creed III with Connor. So I'm getting them both on the board. See, I didn't play Brotherhood. I've heard good things about it, but. I've heard nothing but good things. I played the hell out of Assassin's Creed III, and that one is really what got us primed for Black Flag. Really? Because that was directly in that storyline. There were people that were related between both main storylines and everything. So I fully expect towards the end of this episode, we're gonna battle these two things out. But I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna get them on the board and have them talked about. So that's me. I think we're back to Matthew. Okay, Craig doesn't have input. What the hell? It's Alistair. Oh, you changed his name. Yeah, I picked another one. I was like, where the hell did Craig go? Oh, this picks suck. Craig's dumb. Okay, so my list is pretty well spread between competitive first-person shooters and no-brainer time wasters off the store. So I will go with Battlefield 3. Yep, gotta have it. That was a solid game, another game that I put entirely too much time into, you know, played too competitively. And Mirror's Edge. That's a good one too, yeah. Amazing, yeah. It's funny with Battlefield 3 because I didn't really put much time into that, but we put a ton of time into Bad Company 2. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or Mirror's Edge. Battlefield was on mine. What was that, James? I couldn't remember if it was Battlefield 2 Bad Company. Is that what it was called? Yeah, Battlefield 2 Bad Company, yep. Bad Company was good, but 3 had a thriving online competitive community and that just, dude, like, there was literally, some of my favorite gaming memories is hanging out with three buddies that all live a city over from me and just wrecking bitches in a tank, dude. Just the four of us were untouchable. That was my experience in Bad Company, Bad Company. But yeah, I mean, it makes sense, yeah. And then Mirror's Edge was just profound, like, just genre-defining. It was just such a good game. Yeah, Mirror's Edge was on my list and it got bumped for some other things that were technically in, like, the puzzle space, puzzle platformer kind of thing. So it got bumped out and you guys will understand why once I get to it, but yeah, it was definitely almost put in mind to bring to the table. So a lot, a theme that you may notice as my list progresses is that I have a lot of, I guess they're all competitive. There's, so there's, like, competitive first-person shooters and competitive time squeezers, right? Like, things like Trials or Mirror's Edge where you just play over and over and over to shave a half a second off your personal best. I really liked Mirror's Edge for that. I think that kind of, like, a lot of these games being shooters, it kind of speaks to the, like, I feel like everybody that played shooters was on 360 at that time. Yeah. Like, that was the competitive shooter console for sure. I mean, 30% of what I brought today is a shooter game. Like, that's such a, like, it's such an easy game to, like, market and have interest in. This is gonna get, this list is gonna get nasty, dude. We got a lot of, like, not a lot of spots, but we have a lot of games. And that's one thing, time permitting, I would love, once we have 20, to be able to, like, look at our list, reassess and be like, okay, you know what? I didn't get a chance to talk about this one. Let's toss it in there and see if it can bump anybody out. I have an honorable mention that might start a fire under some butts. Okay. All right, right on. So, we are up to James. What are your next two? Modern Warfare, Call of Duty 4. That was the game, dude. That's the game that got me to even buy the console. Like, I had no interest in a 360, but then everybody was on that shit. And that's what we, that's what got me into, I guess, playing online shooters on a console. Yeah, we put a lot of hours into this one. Yeah. I was never, I was never, like, amazing with those shooter games. You know, I feel like I got, I got, oh, like, skilled out as we got older. Out-skilled? Yeah, like, I slowly became less reactive and the kids that came in behind us to start playing, they were just, they're so good at these, like, quick reaction time games. Yeah. So, it became hard to keep up. Someone who's been playing FPS for, you know, 20 plus years at this point, like, yeah. It's, some of these little kids are absurd, dude. And that's, like, not even, like, disparaging myself, because I'm, like, so, we didn't do PC. A Counter-Strike player. I've been playing Counter-Strike since 1.6. I have 22 years inside that game. Muscle memory's a real thing. At almost 40 years old, I'm better than 90% of the people that play that game, only because I've fucking done that thing literally tens of thousands of times. That being said, these little kids who have done it 14 times are, like, almost as good as me at that thing. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, speaking of muscle memory, I think it's, that's definitely part of it. And as we were, like, in the console, in the 360 era, we were still in high school for James and I, and then we went kind of directly into the workforce. So, my time went way down. You know, it's funny. For, like, just sitting and playing a game. It's funny you say that, because I actually put, like, a little note here. We had just started working, like you said, you know, when the 360 had come out. But also, like, that was also our first time getting significant income. So, we were actually able to buy these games. And we had the luck, like, Blockbusters was still around. So, I remember having that, like, unlimited rental pass. So, I played a little bit of a lot of games back then, because you could just swap it. If the game sucked, go back that day. You already had, you know, you could just go in and you had already paid, you know, to rent unlimited. Now, we have things like the premium service, where you can just download a game, and if it sucks, just delete it, but. Right. It's just the access to games now is insane. All right, what's your next game? I want to say, I'll go away from games where you just murder people. Fez, I want to put that up there. Fez? Yeah, it was a platformer game, but it came out, it was released alongside Xbox Live Arcade, which was, you know, the, yeah, so you guys all know this. It sounds familiar, but I don't think I've ever played it. Yeah, it was an indie game, and, yeah, it was an indie game, and the reason I feel like it's a good representation, it was released because of Xbox Live Arcade. They allowed people to, like, indie developers to develop for that console. So, it was exclusive to Xbox 360 for the first year. And it was kind of revolutionary, because this was one of the first indie games that was successful, alongside, like, a lot of other indie games that came with it, but it introduced, like, the game was 2D platformer, gets on the top of the thing, but if you hit an obstacle, you could rotate the whole map. I think another Mario game did this, too, like, maybe, you know, but, yeah, you rotate the map. Along a horizontal axis? Things you spin it the way? Oh, right, okay. So, the world is actually 3D, but you're seeing one plane of it, and it rotates, and then you have access to continue upward. Does it rotate on both axis, or just one axis? I mean, just looking at, like, this screenshot, I would imagine that it's, oh, here we go. Yeah, watch this here. Hopefully, yeah, there you go. Oh, okay. Yeah. That's neat. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And, yeah, I don't know. The game itself was, it was kind of a puzzle, not really super heavy on action, but Xbox Live Arcade was huge. It made the console, like, $200, and people were buying it like crazy, and it gave you kind of like the live service that we have now, where you can just subscribe and pay to play any game you want. This was one of those types of things where you could have, like, a huge digital library that you could start to accumulate, and, yeah, it was an indie game. It was developed by, like, I wanna say, like, literally one person. Wow. I've never played this. It looks fun. No, but it looks, it actually looks really fun. Oh, yeah. I may be playing it shortly. I think it's in the library, Alec. Yeah. That's cool. I'm glad we're actually getting some variations, because if you're looking at our list right now, it's like, okay, we know who's making this list, which is why I'm gonna have my next picks how they are, but, no, I think it's an awesome addition. Yeah, I tried to, I really, I mean, it's tough, because, like I said, everything was a shooter, but I was trying to come up with shit that is also reminiscent of the, I don't wanna call it culture, because that's fucking weird, but the entirety of the rest of my list is bullshit like this, so, sick. Right on. All right, so we're back. Over to me. Assassin's Creed 2. Assassin's Creed. No, so, in the 360 era, we had a peripheral device, the Kinect. Yeah. That we have not talked about. Yeah, I hate it. We left these games out. And, you know, we have to mention some of these games, because it was a piece of hardware that I had with my Xbox One. I also have it on my Gen 1 Xbox One. But the first one, ooh, see, here's the thing. Really cute. I have two that use the Kinect, but I don't like both of them. So, I think what I'm gonna do is we're gonna go with Kinect Sports. That was on my list of like, that was 21 on my list, but. Yeah. That was funny. Yeah, I had Kinectimals, but I took Kinectimals off. When I have Kinect Sports written down, LOL is immediately typed right after it, it's there, but. In the sports genre, just for context and for people listening, hopefully somebody finds it funny. I was trying to get different genres of games, right? So I wanted like sports games, racing games, shooters, RPGs, action adventure, all that good stuff. And sports. I don't like the sports ball, typically. So, and I was like, okay, I should probably look at like some of the NFL games or something. And there's so many. Yeah. On my list that would be like in the 21 spot is just quote, any Madden game. Because there was one every fucking year. That shouldn't go on there. And it feels like it's just, no, it's bullshit. It's just a cash grab by the NFL Corporation. Handful of players would move in and out. It's largely the same for decades. Anyway, so that one got bumped off. Ooh, you know what? I fully think this is gonna get. You can put Kinect sports. Just later on. I'm gonna stay with the Kinect. Just Dance 3. You know, the Just Dance games first were for the Wii, but Just Dance 3 was released on the 360 as well to utilize the Kinect. So I got to toss it in there. It was a piece of hardware that went through two console generations of Xbox. It went through one generation. It went through the end of one and the beginning of one. When I got my 360, I think I got the Elite. It was one of the Call of Duty releases. It was black and had 120 gigabyte hard drive. We made it an extra $200. It was some crazy. But it also was bundled with a Kinect. Yeah, what a waste. Yeah, it was so much money, dude. It was dumb. Anyway, so yeah, I gotta give some love to the Kinect. I fully expect one and or both of those to get challenged at some point, but I figured I would get them on the list. Yeah, as long as they're below the top 10, I'm good with it. There you go. All right, so we are back over to Mr. Matthew. Okay, now I have, this is one of my all-time favorite games, all-time favorite series. I've played every version of this game on literally every console it's been released on. Beautiful Katamari. Oh yeah, dude, I like Katamari games. I love Katamari games. They're one of my feel-goods. I have never heard of this game. It's a K. And it's a Katamari. Katamari. I didn't know that game was stuck on, that's like still stuck on 360. No, it's on every console. You can play it on the PlayStation. Oh yeah, yeah. Okay, I guess it was only released on the 360 at that time. Yeah, at that time, yeah. Okay. That was one of the first ones. That was the first one that came to 360. PlayStation has like probably the most. Right, that's what I said. I guess I would have assumed it was a PS3 game. You're doing yourself a disservice by muting this. Well, I've literally never heard of this game before, and I just needed some context for what it was. What in, oh my lord. It's a what simulator? Gun Beetle Simulator. You're a little Katamari. I mean, you're kind of like God, like your dad is God, and he tasked you with going to different places around the Earth and collecting things. And they're like arbitrary missions. You can just do this, like he'll say some shit, like today we're gonna not catch any live animals or whatever, but it doesn't matter. There's no like, you can totally eat the live things if you want, it doesn't matter. Oh my goodness. The bigger the ball gets, the bigger objects you can pick up, too. Until you roll up the world, like eventually you're rolling up continents. Okay, okay, so I see what it's going for. Okay, all right, interesting. Good pick. Yeah, it's a very good game. And then into my, you know, impulsion to try hard is N+, which was a 2D platformer racing game that was shit. N, N, and then a plus symbol, yep. Yep, and yeah, that's an amazing game. I played the shit out of that game many, many years. Never even seen it. Really? Never heard of it, no. Wow. But it's a racing game? Yeah, like it's a, yeah, yeah. It's like a little, like a little racing game, yeah. Is it a platformer? Yeah. Okay, so time trial-based platformer. Oh, oh, oh! Oh, jeez. Yes, this, right? Right here, man. This is, I, oh my God, I spent so much time on this fucking game. So much time, dude, yeah. I didn't, I just remember it as like N, I think it was like what, N for Ninja or something? No idea. Essentially. Yeah. It was a browser-based game when I used it, when I played it. Okay. And, oh my goodness. It was part of like Xbox Live Arcade. I may be. Thank you for watching the person play, dude. This has got to stay on the list, and if it doesn't, everybody go check out N+. It was so cool. They were like community-made maps, and one of my favorites was like just called Hold Left, and that's all you did, right? Because they made this insanely, just a clusterfuck of a level, and you would just hold the left key, and it would just take you all over the stuff. It was essentially automated with you just hitting the left key, but man, I did not know this came to any consoles. I only ever played this with a, not even WASD. It was just the up, down, left, right. Man, that was amazing. On 360, it had an online community, so you could race against other people. Okay. All right, so I knew that more of like as a platformer, for sure. Gotcha, yeah. They must have added more like game modes or something into it, because it was never, was it like, like you would go on like a leaderboard or something? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I gotcha, I gotcha. Which is exactly what you saw, but four people spawn in first one to the light winds, yeah. Oh, see, that's the thing. I had never, when I had been exposed to it, there was never, there was no other like, other people. It was just a single solo player experience until you did like the community maps where there were like challenge runs that people would just like throw on there. That's awesome. I love that. Yeah, dude, and that really like was one of the first games for me that, I'm not sure the term, like time refinement, I'm not sure the terminology we're gonna use for that style of game, but once like the community aspect, you know what I mean, once you realize like that you can just min-max your movements to save time, like holy shit, that's fun, dude. That's a speed runner's like dream game right there. It really is, dude, yeah, yeah. Oh, man, all right, James, we are back to you. We are running out of space on this one. Yeah, man, I wonder, I mean, it's up to you, but in my head, I envision that I guess 30, but we can make this more of an argument. There might be time. There's a DLC option, right? Like later on down the road. Oh, right, all right, okay. I vote number one for that. I wanna put the Telltale Walking Dead game. Okay, okay. Like the whole series, just, you know, not like a specific path. Yeah, not episode one or whatever. Right, yeah, just, I don't know, man, I think back to that time period, and Telltale was killing it back then. They had like a really good, like in all these different IPs, they were just making these games, and everybody loved it, and I also feel like that was kind of the, I don't know, it was 360 as fuck. Any of those Telltales I have not played. Yeah. I've played a little bit of them, but I've watched most of them, like probably all of them from that time period. They even had like a Game of Thrones one. Like they were just in everything for that time, but not the anime. Are they the ones that do the Wolf Among Us? Yeah, that one was great, I liked that one a lot. Similar art style, yeah. That's the part that made, I disliked all the Telltale games exclusively for the art style. I just couldn't, I couldn't. Oh, okay. It was accelerated, right? I just made it getting old really quickly. Yeah, it was similar to the Borderlands. We just played Firewatch in Borderlands, yeah. Yeah, I also dislike Borderlands for the art style. It's just sad. Ooh. I'm not gonna say Borderlands for my next game, man. Me and my best friend have a point of contention that I don't love Borderlands as much as him. Oh, man. If there was a mod that made it look like anything but Borderlands, I'd probably love the shit out of that game. See, that's the thing, though. I think, James, I need you to change whatever your next pick was gonna be. I feel like that's, the art style is kind of what set it apart. If you're right, agreed. I think if they released Borderlands with Call of Duty skins, I don't think it, I think it would've just been passed over completely. But it was something that's so unique that everybody was like, it was immediately noticeable, and I genuinely think that the art style was what made it so memorable. I agree. That and Claptrap. I'm gonna totally expose myself and say that. I'm like, sincerely, I think that my hangup comes from a youth rebelling against anime and comic books, like just trying really hard to not be that flavor of nerd, and I think that that's probably why I disliked it so much, not because it's not amazing in every single way, but just because it looked too much like something I tried not to be a part of. Yeah. Was it the best game from a shooter standpoint? No. No. It was the best game as far as open world exploration, though, for sure. Yeah. I think it set itself apart enough. Borderlands 2 was way better. Yeah. Yes, I agree. I agree. All right, well, let's just fucking get it in there. Borderlands 2, I guess, we'll just add that in the next pick. I'm not attacking you, Matthew. No, no, no, it's okay. I mean, it's on honorable mention list on my list, just because I didn't love it doesn't mean I don't respect that it's not one of the greatest games ever made. So, see, I was gonna, and I'm not going to, because I think I have other items to bring up, but I was going to bring up Borderlands 1 and 1 over 2 because 1 is what started us off. Yeah, and I do agree with that, but Borderlands 2 had so much more going for it. Like, I finished Borderlands 1, like, completely never had interest in playing it again after the first week that I played it. Borderlands 2, like, if you guys said, let's play it right now, there'd be a pretty good chance that I would be down. Like, if we were trying to get Matthew to actually like it, they released, like, a mod to change the graphical overlay. But yeah, so, I don't know, Borderlands 2, I feel like it was just a better game, you know? That's why you would pick Assassin's Creed 3 over the first one. So, it's a better representation of what, how expansive it could be. And the DLC was fucking crazy for that game. Was it? Yeah, there was, like, whoa, Tiny Tina's... Oh, God, oh, yeah, yeah. That was part of, that was originally, like, the DLC for that. That's fair, yeah, yeah. Full-blown, crazy DLC. He was thinking, like, Tiny Tina's the full game? Yeah, that was funny, dude. That was a solid storyline. I played that. Yeah, I have yet to finish it. We're, like, I swear we're probably, like, an hour or two from the end, and it just fell off the gaming group, like, rotation. It just, I didn't enjoy it that much, but... See, it was bringing the looter shooter that you guys really like, and the D&D nod that I like. So, I was like, oh, we can both enjoy something for different reasons. And it's a funny story. So, I, yeah, I need to go back and finish it, because I'm really excited. I was really, really enjoying it while we were playing. You're up, dude. All right, I'm up. This is, I feel like we're gonna do more, but if, keeping in mind, like, this, we said 20 at first. I gotta get some just on the board. We haven't talked a lot about music in this yet. We did mention Mercenaries 2 for their intro, but what about the playing the game, and the game is music? We're gonna go Guitar Hero 3, Legends of Rock. Oh, you're just going straight with one of the, like, offshoots, huh? Yeah, well, I believe Guitar Hero 1, I think, was Xbox. Guitar Hero 2, I believe, was 360, but actually, they both made it, you know, for the 360. Guitar Hero 2, I know for a fact, was PS2. Yeah, because it was Guitar Hero 3, Legends of Rock was 2007, so it was, if 2 came out on 360, it was, like, right off the bat, but, and I will say, Guitar Hero 3, hold on, but did Guitar Hero 3 have the other instruments? Yes. So I think that's part of the reason I picked it, because I was gonna bring up Rock Band, but Rock Band was really just like a, oh, we wanna do it, too, but Guitar Hero was, like, setting up the stage for them to do it, and you had an amazing soundtrack, we won't go through all of them, but I remember, I think Slash was heavily involved with it, because they had character models of Slash, he was in the game, and it was a fun time. All the promotional stuff for that game included Slash, which was just a treat to watch whenever it came on the TV, so, yeah. And I loved the guitar, like, the actual controller that was the guitar, and I'm, they're so expensive now, but I wanna get one and have my son play some of these. The 360 ones are, specifically, one of the more expensive ones, because they were USB. So this is a game that I still play, not Legends of Rock, just the base model one with DLCs, songs, but I still play Guitar Hero 3 semi-regularly with my best friend, I'll do Guitar Hero 3 nights over at his place. It was such a fun game. It's fun. James and I have a mutual friend that was, my brother also was really good at it, but she would sit there and play, yeah, she would play, like, what was the wire crazy, what was it, Fire? Through the Fire and Wind? Yeah, yeah. She would play that on hardest difficulty, and she would just, like, just. It's kinda nuts to watch people that are really good at it. Just relaxing, chilling. You know, yeah. It's crazy. My brother was also very good at that game. I never, I can't remember, I would, I'll probably give it up to Michelle, because she was crazy good at that game. Yeah, me and Michelle went to Walmart at two o'clock in the morning and bought multiple copies of it so we could play split screen of Guitar Hero 2. Like, two o'clock in the morning, PlayStation 2. And, yeah, I don't know, man. It was crazy. It was good times. LSD. I also feel like, I know I need to get another pick in there, but I feel like the 360 era was like when you would go to a midnight release of a game. Yes, yes. Call of Duty. We don't do that anymore. It's like, oh, there's a release, cool. We'll pre-download it. Remember fuckin' Diablo, Diablo 4? You can, the file's already out there. You can just download it. They just won't let you play it. I went to a midnight release for the newest Pokemon game, Scarlet Violet. Yeah. My wife was like, yeah, let's go. Like, I think we had just gotten off of work and we stayed up long enough to go to the midnight release and I got home, I like put it in the Switch, I laid in bed, and like I was snoring five minutes later. Yeah, it's, you know, I remember with those midnight releases, we would get the game, get home, immediately go through like a patch. All out of work. And then by like one, maybe two o'clock, you're gonna play like one or two rounds and then that's it. Unless you waited for the Call of Duty games and then you just sat there and looked at your fuckin' TV for seven hours as it updated, dude. It updated and then failed to get in a game over and over again. All right, so I need to get another pick in here to keep us on track. I have so many good ones, I don't know what to pick. Yeah. Oh, this is so frustrating. We're gonna have to add some more games on this list. I thought 30 was a good number, but. Yeah, okay, all right. I'm gonna go for me, not for the community. For me, Portal. See, I thought of that as a PC game, but yeah. See, it was on the 360, Portal 2 was also on the 360, but I think, one, Portal launched us into it. It was, I think Portal 2 had a better story. Dialogue and interactions with the NPC, the single NPC. But I think Portal getting us started was why I'm giving them the first one, the. Was Portal. The original one on 360? I believe it was. Oh, it was released with the orange box, okay. Yeah. Okay, all right, all right, okay. So yeah, I'm gonna give it to Portal 1. It was not on PC for a few years before it hit. Right. And Portal 1 was what bumped up Mirror's Edge for me, because I was like, oh, they're in the same platform or puzzle vein. Ooh, excuse me, different mechanics, but they were similar enough. All right, we're gonna get it back to. Okay. Yeah, this is gonna have to be a 30 list, because Matthew's getting special privileges for two games here, and I just can't have this. Oh, shit, hey, special guest privileges, bruh. That's true, yeah. Bruh. Okay, okay, I'm gonna stick with, like, I really, making this list made me realize that I am truly just a competitive gamer. Trials Evolution, man, which deserves a higher spot on the list than I've given it, but it's just where it fell as this thing. Oh, yeah. Dude, I love all, every Trials game, Evolution is an R in front of the I. There you are. Don't clue the audience in to me not being able to spell basic words, okay? Quail with Revolution? To have Evolution, right, is that what you said? Yeah. And look at it, you're like, something's not right. Trials Evolution. This is another one of those, like, competitive time-wasting games, where you just do the same thing over and over and over for hours. Like, it's truly one of the best. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. You liked arcade-y type games a lot. I liked games where, I mean, still today, where I push myself. Like, I like a game where I can get better, where I can put 100 hours into it, and then put another 100 into it, and be better. Or at least, not even necessarily be better, but, you know, personal best. Be able to have a time or a score to commemorate my improvements, right? Like, I really like that. I feel like I've played this. Yeah, dude. Or if I didn't, this would totally have been a game I'd play. I probably put a couple thousand hours into getting gold medals on every map in this game. And, like, the impossible maps at the end, dude, were, like, literally eight hours to get a medal in that game. Like, and you just stood just non-stop, dude. On one of my games I ended up taking off was the Dirt series. Okay. I think it's named Colin McRae. It was, like, rally racing and all that. This has similar vibes to me, a little bit, but rally vehicles instead. Okay. Awesome pick. My number 20. So this combines my two obsessions into one game that no one's probably ever heard of before, called The Club. The Club. So imagine, like, take a first person shooter and then turn it into a speed running game. Like, that is The Club. It's so weird to see, like, when I look it up, I see the title of it, like the box art. And it, like, I never played it, but I obviously have seen this a thousand times. I just always pass it over. Go that one right there. Oh, you can't see my finger. Oh. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. So you get a place like that, right? And you have a time limit and a score and, like, you know, accuracy and, like, speed improves score. And basically, you just have, like, this small area, a building, a courtyard, whatever, and just massive amounts of enemies just wave after wave after wave spawns and you murder everyone as fast as possible and then get your final score. Was it multiplayer or was it against, like, the computer? I think it had a multiplayer aspect that was terrible and not fleshed out. I just played solo. But this was, like, a first person shooter speed running game, which was just fantastic, dude. And on that outstanding note, I feel so exposed, dude. I've just picked the same game ten times. That's great. We're back over to James. Okay. This is a weird one, Lost Odyssey. You guys have never played it, obviously. I've heard of it. I have not played it. So this game, you can only play it on the 360. It's not on any other console still. It's the only way you can play it. It doesn't even emulate perfectly at this point, so. It was a JRPG-type game, like, turn-based RPG, but it was, like, one of three that came out on this console and it was exclusive and it was really good graphics. It had timed hits, which are kind of rare in that type of game. And it was, like, a four-disc Xbox 360 game. Wow. Good story, too. Really good music. I think, like, I want to say... Oh, like a Final Fantasy clone. Yeah, it's very similar. The guy that did the music for, like, the first 10 Final Fantasy games did the music for this game, Nobuo Uematsu, I think. Is that how you say it, maybe? But either way, really good game. Stuck on the Xbox 360. No way to play it otherwise. Considering that we can't put Final Fantasy VII on this list, that's, like, an acceptable replacement. Yeah. Okay. That's a good one. Yeah. And it really was. It was a great game. So it looks like it. I was a big Final Fantasy VII fan, so. Oh, you would love this guy, dude. Yeah, dude. Yeah. That's a franchise that I have, like, just sillily, I have bought Final Fantasy VII on literally every single way that they've been able to take my money. You have it on Android and iPhone. I do, I do. I have it on Android, iPhone, and every single console. And the remastered version on all of the new-gen consoles. I just, I love it so much. I haven't even played any of them, dude. I haven't played that game in a decade. I've still bought seven copies of that game since the last time I played it. Have you been playing the remakes at all? Like, the new, the remake? No, I kind of started, but no, not really, dude. I don't, I heard that they changed some of the storyline and that makes me not want to pursue it too heavily. It's still the same story. They just flesh people out a little bit more and kind of give a little more. Well, like, for example, Cloud doesn't get, like, essayed by the big burly man in the tank top and stuff like that. Like, just, that sort of stuff just felt disingenuous. So, I didn't, it just bothered me. If Cloud isn't getting anything. I don't play my games with those boys touching boys, you know? I guess, dude, yeah. I just, like, but that was one of the favorite things. All those little, like, hidden gems, the interacting actions, the dialogues and stuff in the game, like, that was my favorite part of the game. So, changing those little things, like, that was a big part of the game for me. So, I don't really want to go through and play the game missing my favorite parts of the game. Yeah, I mean, they still have a lot of the niche stuff. I saw, like, a video the other day. This is completely unrelated, I'm sorry. I saw a video the other day of the newer game that just came, the second edition or whatever that came out. They had a, you can go to Tifa's house and play her piano still. And they had, like, a video of Cloud playing Still D.R.E. on the piano. It's funny. Like, the Dr. Dre song. Yeah. But, anyways, we got to get on track, dude. All right, what's your number two for this round? Oh, man. There's so many fucking games. There's so many. And I'm surprised that certain ones that are still on my list haven't been brought up. I feel like we're trying not to say the obvious ones in a lot of ways. But I feel like they're obvious for a reason. I'll put it out there, then. I'm just gonna say Fallout 3. Okay. That was not one that I was thinking of. Okay, fine. That's a good pick. Well, why not, though? I mean, it was- Fallout 1, where? It's actually 3. All right. Fucking all out is what it stands for. That's funny. See, I never got into the Fallout games. I'm aware of them, and I'm aware of, like, the basics, but I really never got into them. I'm not a huge fan of them, either, but I feel like it's a really good representation of the console and everything like that. I feel like it was a mix of RPG and shooter. Everybody was talking about it, everybody played it, and, you know. Definitely the superior open world game for this time period. Yeah. Right on. All right, so is that back to me? Yeah, back to Assassin's Creed. All right, so on Assassin's Creed, no. So, all right. Okay. We're gonna go, number one, just to get it on the board, because I feel like if memory serves, this was launched, not a launch title, but it did come out in 360, and it was GTA V. Not V. Three? Three? Is V that old? Is V that old? Yes, it is. If it's that old, bro, it's been re-released 17 times, but Grand Theft Auto V, 360. I mean, we did get the government saying aliens are real before GTA VI, so. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha. Wow, I can't believe that's a 360 game. That's nuts. Yeah, yeah. 2013. Wow. Yeah, so that's gotta be on the board. Yeah. And, ooh, again, The Elder Scrolls V, Skyrim. Okay, yeah. That is also on every fucking console ever since then. It is, but like, looking at the release date, it came out with these. It's a huge, people still today are playing this game. For some reason. So, I gotta give it props. Heavily, like, that has a huge community still, which is wild. Oh, well, there's a modding community, too, for V, that's pretty big. Have y'all seen the, oh, it's like the Skyrim grandma or something, the old lady that was playing Skyrim for a long time? I don't know if she's still kicking, but yeah, she started, like, streaming, and all her watchers were her grandchildren and all this. I don't know if she's still alive, because at the time, this was a couple years ago, she was already ancient. You could have just said, I don't know if she's still streaming. Yeah. Sorry. She's on life support, just like that game. Oh, no. And she's also one of your only viewers. Yep, yep. She tunes in every week. All right, so, that, that's, okay, so, we've, if we, if time allows, we've each got one more round. Yeah. And that'll round out our 30. All right, and I know we're getting close to time, so, Matthew, what are your next two? I have to pick two? Yeah, two more, and I think we're gonna round this out to 30, and then we're gonna talk about them, see if we need to make any adjustments, if everybody has any honorable mentions. They have to bring up for discussion. Yeah, I do. Okay, I have that. Okay, I have two with an obligatory honorable mention. Okay. Well, I mean, the elephant in the room that I'm actually wildly surprised no one's brought up is Bioshock. It was online, for sure. That one just got taken off of mine. Yeah. But it was definitely, it was definitely, had us early spot. Yeah, this guy should be way higher on the board and have been brought up an hour ago, if we're being honest. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, have you played that recently? It's kind of gnarly. Not, no, I haven't played the first one for a long time. It didn't age great, but. We did cover it on a podcast called 321 Backlog, and it was a good time. Okay. It was a good time. Now, for my other one, I'm gonna go with the Fable series. I think this time period was two. Two or three? Two and three. Three, okay, then I'm gonna go with three, because three had a better Paragon system. And yeah, that was on my list, and I actually had to talk to my wife about this one, because she really liked the Fable series. And Fable two, I think, had a much better system for like your jobs. You could like do blacksmithing to like make money and do all this stuff. Like the mini games were better, but then like the combat, and I think, I don't know, was it a morality system? Yeah, they had the morality system. Yeah, it was a little better in three, but they were both really fun games for different reasons, but really good series. And they're finally, well, they've been teasing at four for a couple of months. But it's been in development forever. I'm the kind of player where, like Insane goes for Mass Effect, like perfect Paragon, right? Like I can reboot the save, like if faced with a bad consequence, because I want perfect Paragon, and Fable just gives recognition of that. Like when you walk into the city, and everyone's like, eh, you know. Oh yeah. Yeah, that one was fine. Oh, James, have you ever played Fable? No. I can't remember, was it in the first one or the second one? You had a dog. Third one. Okay. Second and third. The dog was great. That dog was great, yeah. Because of the morality system, for those that don't know, if you became more evil, or more, what was it, Paragon good? Yeah. Or whatever their thing was, but the non-evil one, the dog would like either glow, or get like demonic and shadowy looking. It was an awesome game. It was a really, really fun game. I'm so excited for Fable 4, whenever they decide to release the damn thing. It has a lot of potential. And I hope they don't just completely shit on the series. So, very excited for that. All right, James, last round. All right. For your set. And then I got one more, but what do you got for us? Far Cry 3. There it is. Yeah. There it is. I think open world games, like shooters especially, or stealth type games were huge then. That was definitely one of them. It always got, like everybody was busting nuts over that. Yeah. Far Cry 3 was so good, dude. Like their fire mechanic was on point in that game. Like that was the first game I can think of that really did fire good. Have you played Far Cry 3, Matthew? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you played Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon? Yeah. So good. That is a contender for my honorable mention, but I went with the other version of that. Yeah, I liked Far Cry Blood Dragon a lot, dude. It was 10 out of 10 games. It was fun. 10 out of 10 perfect games. It was so ridiculous. It was great, dude. The aesthetic, like, yeah, the color scheme in the Blood Dragon was fricking dope. Yeah. Just the dialogue was ridiculous too. Hi, James. What is your last main entry into our now top 30 list? Good Lord, man. There's so many left over too. I think I've got five that have not been mentioned by anybody so far. I've got quite a few. I hate to say this. Dude, I don't know, man. EDF 2017. Yes. EDF. Oh my God. Earth Defense Force. Okay. Did you? I don't think I played this, no. Hold on. Okay, hold on. Hold on, hold on. So. This is, oh, this is Helldivers. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. This is like the original. I don't know when, if this was like the first one, but like James and I found this game. I forget what the context of us was getting the physical copy. We went back in the days of like still having like sleepovers and doing stuff, but like, you know, and played this game. Split screened it. For like 24 hours straight. Yeah. We stayed up overnight. I remember your dad came in because he like heard something. He was like confused that there was like movement so early in the morning. And I think went and got Sonic for breakfast. And it was, this game was insane. Yeah. I got that game because I got a job for working for Blockbuster. And, you know, like if I was just bored, I would walk around and read all of the, you know, try to find co-op games for one. But I remember finding that one and flipping it over and seeing it was like split screen co-op. And you just shoot giant bugs. And I was like, well, you know, I get five free rentals a week. Let's try it out. And it was like the game we rented for like, for a long time. I don't know. Yeah. Bugs and robots. Then it was, it was just crazy. Like you said, and I'm just like, everybody's busting over that way now too. I am familiar with this in that context. Yeah, I've never played it. Yeah. But I have been addicted to Helldivers for the last two weeks. Well, when you get bored with that. And I think they're still making them. Yeah, they are. Like they're still going. Yeah, this one I think specifically got like a remake under a new name. They named it something else and like made it look better. Cause I think this one was one of the most popular. Yeah. I just remember, dude, we're trying to get the Lysander Z sniper rifle. Was the one gun I wanted and we could never get it. It never dropped. Yeah. Oh, look at that daddy long leg. That's a big bitch. Oh. Yeah, this game was so, so good. Yeah. I think this was from, the screenshot I'm showing was from 2017. This massive spider in the distance. The jumping spiders? Yeah. Yeah. Jumping like, you know, multiple city blocks worth of space, like in your direction. Oh, that's terrifyingly amazing. And bees too? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. All manner of insects and arachnids and then robots. Yeah, there was like actually kaiju or like some kind of giant alien things too. There was a ton of aliens. Yeah. Anyhow. That's cool. Oh, good, good stuff. Great pack. Again, that was, I was looking at like, okay, what do these games do? They're shooters. Okay, there are other shooters that have been, I think for the masses more iconic. So I gotta take it off. So, but I'm glad somebody brought it up. Dude, you could always rely on me. All right. Okay. My last set. Red Dead Redemption. Yep. That's on my list too. I have not played this yet, but I know the reception it has got. Yeah. And it is. Really? It's on the list. It's on the list. So it's coming soon. And it's, yeah. This is again, one of those picks where it's kind of like, you know, public perception. Everybody knows it. Every time I tell somebody that I haven't played it yet, they have that same reaction of like, really? Like it hasn't been played yet. So, gotta give it up there. And then for my last pick, this is hard for me. I'm gonna bring up, and it may get- Emotional. Challenged later on, but I had more fun with this game than one that we mentioned previously, which is it's a Call of Duty game. World at War. Yeah. I really liked the, was it World War II? Yep. I think it was. I really liked that they introduced like limbs coming off and the older style, or not older style, but older guns. So, it just felt like everybody was on more of a level playing field. It made sense to not have all these crazy modifications on your weapons. So, I really, really liked World at War. So, I had to give it up there. Yeah. It was really a struggle for me not to put Black Ops on here, just solely for the zombies mode, because that was such a- Zombies was real fun, yeah. World at War had zombies too, right? Yeah, World at War had zombies too, yeah. Like, both acceptable. As long as there's some flavor of zombies on this list, I think that's acceptable. They're all the same. There's a World at War had like Kino, Dirt Totem, dude. God, that's a fun game. I think I liked World at War better than I liked Modern Warfare 4, but I wasn't sure how many, like it would be easy to put six Call of Duty games on here too, you know? Oh, yeah. See, and now that I would fight about. Like, I would push back. I strongly dislike the Call of Duty games, every single one of them, except for zombies. But that's, so, now this comes from, like as a Counter-Strike player and a competitive Halo player, right? Like, I like a game where we're on the same footing, where we start out with the same five guns, the same, you know what I mean? Exactly the same. And just the Call of Duty series really rewards addiction, right? Like if you just have the time to put thousands of hours into the game, you have the best attachments and the best guns and the best loadouts. And like, that doesn't, like that isn't fair. I can't be as good as the guy with more free time than me, which I dislike. Where all those other shooters, doesn't matter how often I play, it's based on skill, not what I've unlocked. I agree with, I mean, I get that. I do agree. You could also just not prestige and then, you know, but then it doesn't have the same replayability and all that. You say not prestige, like I'm a level 14. That's cool. Like I'm not a level 60 or whatever. Like I'm never, I don't have the time to ever get there. But they do tend to, I mean, back then, I don't know about the current ones, but they would tend to like release or you could get really good stuff early on. You could, yeah, yeah. Like the heartbeat sensor was one of the first unlocks and that was cheaty as hell. And then like there was always like specifically in World at War, the MP40, you would get it like level seven. You could get that in the first game if you knew what you were doing. The MP40 with quick ADS, dude, that was broken. And Juggernaut. Yeah, dude. Yep. Quick reload. Yeah, that was such an overpowered fucking loadout, dude. It would like automatically headshot for no reason. Yeah. All right. Definitely, I feel like the Call of Duty games they're not the best game in that type, but they're one of those where it's like. They were accessible. It's the most accessible and just the most well-known. Like it's something that Matthew and I can get on board with. It's like D&D is not always the best TTRPG, but it's the most well-known. And the one that everybody gravitates towards. So there's gonna be a lot of like heft around that one. So I feel like Call of Duty is one of those that it's the one that everybody knows off the top of their head. Right. Because it's so accessible. And somehow has way more like prestige and notoriety towards it. Because I guarantee more people have heard of Call of Duty than have heard of Counter-Strike. Yeah. Yeah, nowadays for sure. Well, it's on every console too. I mean, you could play World at War was on the Wii, dude. You could like motion control your MP40, like fucking wing that thing all over the place. Yeah, using your gun, yeah. Yep. All right. So we have our top 30 list. And it's not necessarily in any particular order. So I think I'm okay with the ones that haven't been mentioned on my list. I'm not going to mention them. I think it's fine. Do either of you have any like, okay, we haven't mentioned this, anything that we need to discuss? I just want to say it's crazy no one, nobody said God of War. That's pretty fucking, I'm sorry, what did I just, Gears of War. That's pretty crazy. And that was on my list. And again, and you and I talked about this during our break is like, it's a shooter. Yeah. Other shooters have, I think, done a better job. Well, they have a shooter, but it was the Xbox 360 Excalibur shooter, yeah. Yeah. But I don't, I never liked those games. I don't like them. They handle weird. I think they've gotten better. But in the 360 era, I don't think they were the best at what that game was trying to do. Yeah, it was fun. The, it was too far over the shoulder. The camera perspective, I never really liked. Like it was a cover shooter, which is so stupid. I don't know. And it was just, your character movement was very clunky and it was like you were running around with like, the, you know, Mr. Olympia was like in the suit. He just, they couldn't put their arms down. Everything was just way too big and bulky. It just felt odd, though it was very iconic for that system. It, other games did it better, I think. It was solid. So, I mean, I have my honorable mention that I feel like really should go, but then I accidentally scrolled up and re-found the first list I made that I whittled down into the 20, and there's so many more honorable mentions. Oh, yes. It's a lot. Oh, okay. First man, I can only get to pick one? Yeah, just give me one, maybe two. Okay, okay. Are there any that are jumping out at you? Like, okay, how did they not mention this? I mean, not now, because this one is niche, but Saints Row Gat Out of Hell was an outstanding game. Like, wait, like with your Blood Dragon, I went back and forth between that and Blood Dragon on which one, like I was gonna do is my honorable mention, and like, I strongly disliked the Saints Row games. They were stupid. It was just a shitty version of GTA, but Gat Out of Hell was an amazing game. Like, truly one of my all-time favorites, most visually pleasing, most fun. I don't think I even knew that game existed, dude. Really? Yeah, Saints Row has been kind of off my radar. I've known about it kind of tangentially, but I have not dove in to see what they're all about. They're, like you said, shitty GTA. Yeah, just shitty GTA. Like, all the Saints Row sucked, except for Gat Out of Hell. Gat Out of Hell was above and beyond in its own thing beyond the Saints Row series, which was fantastic. Was it like you were a superhuman-type thing, kind of? No, you're just a gangbanger, but you're also in hell. You sound like Wings, dude. Okay. In Gat Out of Hell, you're like a demonic gangbanger. Okay, yeah. So, yeah, like, Saints Row is basically just GTA from a solely gang-based perspective, like Turf Wars or whatever, and Gat Out of Hell took those mechanics and added a cool storyline. Okay, why not? Devil May Cry meets GTA. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, yep, you nailed it, dude. Ah, another honorable mention. Man, I'm just gonna roll through a couple of them. I don't have to talk about them, but they all deserve words. Red Faction Guerrilla, super under-known, under-played, under-appreciated game. Red Faction, James and I, oh, burned out by Devil May Cry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one was such a fun game. The Destructive Retirement was just, like, on point. That was one of the first games I can remember that really did that. Gauntlet just deserves to be on there because Gauntlet's one of the all-time best play-with-your-buddies games ever. I love Gauntlet. Dragon Age Origins really set the stage for, like. That was on mine early, yeah. You know, like. I forgot that that was a 360 game, yeah. Yep, yep. My initial list, I guess at 40, I think it was closer to 50, and I started, like, whittling down, and then when I messaged you last night, I was like, this is crazy, I got so many I wanna bring up. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna say two more words. Skate 2, because Skate 2 was a bomb game. And Ace Combat, man. Like, the Ace Combat games, like, stand as the best airplane fighter, dogfighting games ever, like. Right. It's a shame that they weren't more popular and haven't still been done recently. And then Disney Infinity, too. Disney Infinity. That's one thing you don't see very often, are, like, the, like, aerial. Yeah. Aerial fighter combat games, yeah. Like, every time I've seen one, it's usually, like, a side thing of, like, an already existing military game, like a Call of Duty type game. It's like, oh, yeah, there's, like, a little side mission or a mini game where you're in a plane for two minutes, and that's kind of it. But then you've got a couple, like, you know, like, World of Planes or something like that, you have those, but there aren't many. Superman 64. It's hard to top that. There you go. All right. Well, I wouldn't, can I throw a couple more honorable mentions? Just, like, throw the names out. Castle Crashers, the Xbox Live Arcade, super fun. Super Meat Boy, another Xbox Live Arcade game. You'd probably, I think Matthew would like that. I never played Super Meat Boy. It's very time trial, and when you do finish it, your one hit, you die. But when you do finish it, it shows you all of the characters following the same path, and then the only one that makes it is the final one for each level. It's kind of cool. So if you die 100 times, there'll be 100 on the screen at one time, and then they all fall off. Where can I play this game today? Steam. I mean, everything, probably. It's everywhere, yeah. It's on Steam, and it's 80% off right now. Fuck yeah, okay. There you go. That was another- If you have Epic, I think it was on Epic recently to be free, or it's about to be. That was another game that was, like, released exclusively on 360 Xbox Arcade, whatever, like, alongside Fez. That was another one. Like, it was an indie game made by, like, one or two people. Okay. I like how you're pulling up the free games as I am, too. Oh, sorry, it was, I think Super Meat Boy was last week's free game. Oh. The one for this week is- Memory Yield. Like, an urban-style platformer. Is it N plus? It's interesting. Okay, and I also want to say Rainbow Six Vegas. That was another one that we played the shit out of. Yeah. And Dead Space. I'm surprised that that didn't come up, but- Again, I didn't know that one well enough to speak to it, but it was on my list, my initial draft. It might've been one of those games, too, that kind of got, like, mixed in with the next console, as well, but- Well, hell, if we're still giving out honorable mentions, I have two that I'd like to just bring and just be brought up. The Witcher 2. Okay. Not necessarily an amazing game compared to the rest in the series, but I think it was the 360 version that got us to what The Witcher is now. So it's just something worth mentioning. A game that revitalized this series, The Rise of the Tomb Raider, came out. Yeah, yeah. I thought about that, too. And the Earthen Asylum, too, would be another, because that was one of them. Yeah, that was the other one, yeah. That's it, man. Yeah. All right, any final thoughts or final things to mention before we run through what our top 30 now- Fuckin' heck, I just wanna say that. Games that really show- You know, I agree. I think it was, I like the concept of it, but I think it was kinda like too, it's like an early, I feel like it's in the same vein of VR. Yeah. Like it's kinda getting in that space. But I think other newer dedicated systems to VR are just better. It's funny, because I think the number one selling game was like Kinect Sports or something like that, because it was packaged with every single console. Yeah. So they were like, oh no, it was our best-selling game. Like, no, it wasn't. It was your most free game. It was just the thing that was always there, yeah. No one played it. I did play Kinect levels with it. But I definitely wanted to just have it in there, because it was a feature of the 360. Yeah, yeah. It was something that they were starting with, and it feels like it's worth mentioning. So, all right, we're gonna run through these. These are in no particular order. These are just in the order that we heard them. These are the top 30 games for the Xbox 360, as mentioned in the 3-2-1 Tech Log podcast. So we have Halo 3, Mercenaries 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Crackdown, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, and Assassin's Creed 3, Battlefield 3, Mirror's Edge, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, Fez, Kinect Sports, Just Dance 3, Beautiful Katamari, N+, Telltale, The Walking Dead series, Borderlands 2, Guitar Hero 3, Legends of Rock, Portal, Trials Evolution, The Club, Lost Odyssey, Fallout 3, GTA 5, The Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Bioshock, Fable 3, Far Cry 3, EDF 2017, Red Dead Redemption, and Call of Duty World at War. Solid list. Man, what a system. When I first started this, I was like, okay, let me just, because I know there's ones I've forgotten, let me just hop on the internet and see what, there's thousands, thousands of games. It took me a really long time. And trying to like narrow those down was crazy. I made a list and came up with like eight, and then I was like, what am I missing? So I pulled up a list of all the 360 games, and I was just like, holy crap, I'm missing a whole console. Man, oh man. So this was real fun, guys. Matthew, thank you for coming back. I appreciate it. It was a fun time. Nice to meet you, James. You too, man. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of beard shrugging going on over here. You guys kind of like, you know, met sort of. James was with us on the Rise of Industry, but he was like catatonic. He just couldn't wrap his head around the game. So he was just off in the corner, but it was a little awkward, so we didn't want to talk about it. So yeah, I think that's gonna do it for us. All right, we're gonna bring this episode to a close. I wanted to take a moment and thank Matthew again for joining us today. You can find us anywhere on social media. We made it easy. We have a link tree, linktr.ee slash 321backlog. You can find all of our stuff there. We got some merch. We got discount codes. You can help us out, show us some love. That'd be great. Next episode, we're gonna do another top five. James and I are gonna sit down and talk about our top five villains and bosses from video games. Stick around for that. It'll be real fun. Anyway, that's it from us. Thanks for listening.
