There are a few nice things to say about the year-end flood of Xbox 360 games that conveniently coincided with the holiday shopping frenzy. One, they're made for a system that's readily available. And two, Xbox 360 games are firmly entrenched in the system's "second generation," which means they're all much more polished and expressively sophisticated than the initial crop of titles rushed out for launch day last year. In the case of Xbox 360 titles that are also available for other systems, they shine on 360 with both benchmark visuals and seamless gameplay functionality. Here's the best of them.

Gears of War
From: Microsoft
Price: $69.99 Cdn | $59.99 USD
Rated M for Mature

A tactical action sci-fi horror shooter, Gears of War trumps all games before it or otherwise like it. The best looking Xbox 360 game to date and featuring wicked but intuitive gameplay mechanics (hide n' seek, shoot n' deke), Gears of War stands poised to topple the mighty Halo franchise as best-of-breed.

Rainbow Six Vegas
From: Ubisoft
Price: $72.99 Cdn | $59.99 USD
Rated M for Mature

Funny thing about Ubisoft: the big huge game developer/publisher pumped out several inaugural games for both the Nintendo Wii and the PlayStation 3, and most of those games are fine examples of why one shouldn't run a pump without a filter lest a bit of roughage sneak by... exactly not the case when making Xbox 360 games, with the likes of Rainbow Six Vegas offering a robust, sophisticated, gorgeous and thoroughly riveting game of crack commandos taking on terrorists amongst everyone’s favorite neon city.

Call of Duty 3
From: Activision
Price: $69.99 Cdn | $59.99 USD
Rated T for Teen

Though one of many WWII-based military shooters, Activision's Call of Duty franchise is renowned for injecting genuine emotion in each and every level. Played as a flowing narrative of the Normandy Breakout (the liberation of Paris), Call of Duty 3 not only makes war look spectacularly hellish, it evokes a real sense of empathy for its artificially intelligent characters, your brothers in arms, and a real sense of I-want-my-mommy fear in you, the player.

Need for Speed Carbon
From: Electronic Arts
Price: $69.99 Cdn | $54.99 USD
Rated E10+ for Everyone 10+

EA's Need for Speed franchise would be considered long-in-the-tooth were in not for each new version's ability to take over-the-top racing and police chasing even further over-the-top... beyond-the-over? At any rate, Need for Speed Carbon is the most ludicrously exciting game in the series yet, with superbly pimpable rides a-plenty, motion-blurring eye-candy galore and a seemingly endless string of high octane, crash-bang races and chases. Available on all the other consoles too, but best on 360.

Splinter Cell Double Agent
From: Ubisoft
Price: $69.99 Cdn | $59.99 USDRated M for Mature

The umpteenth iteration of Ubisoft's long running, ever lauded, soft shoed, shadow skulking, stealth commando game, Splinter Cell Double Agent offers twofold anxiety as you play a good guy who's infiltrated the bad guys, so acting like a bad guy, even taking out bad guys, but not so much that you look like an obvious good guy, which would be bad.

Blitz: The League
From: Midway
Price: $59.99 Cdn | $39.99 USD
Rated M for Mature

Best described as the anti-Madden, Blitz the League is a football game that turns the fact that it can't call itself an NFL game due to EA Sports' exclusive licensing deal to its benefit. That is, Blitz is all about pain and violence on the gridiron and living the life of a career bruiser. Not without its flaws, but Blitz does a really good job of making Madden look like a cream puff; lots of gratuitous catharsis because of it.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance
From: Activision
Price: $69.99 Cdn | $59.99 USD
Rated T for Teen

Comic book fans rejoice, Marvel Ultimate Alliance offers a gargantuan and glorious game of saving the world from the dread Dr. Doom and his supervillain minions with self-styled team of trademark super heroes like Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man and the Silver Surfer (some 20 to choose from after a while) in this large scale, visually resplendent action-RPG.

Viva Piñata
From: Microsoft
Price: $59.99 Cdn | $49.99 USD
Rate E for Everyone

Call it Microsoft's "token kids game," Viva Pinata is nonetheless a decidedly competed, effortlessly engaging, leisurely-paced gardener sim where you maintain a tract of arable land in hopes of attracting a variety of species in the Pinata genus (as if there is such a thing). Gets a bit creepy when you expect certain Pinata to mate and produce offspring, but you must first build them a closed-door domicile, which puts the stork out of business but serves the same euphemistic purpose. Otherwise, thoroughly enjoyable and, atypically, pleasantly pacifistic.

Star Trek Legacy
From: Bethesda
Price: $69.99 Cdn | $59.99 USD
Rated E10+ for Everyone 10+

Star Trek Legacy is probably the deepest Star Trek game ever attempted, yet at the same time the most intuitive to play. Spanning all Star Trek eras, from the original TV series through each sequel and prequel -- five in all and featuring the actually captaincy voice work of William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, and Scott Bakula --, Legacy plays as a wicked cool tactical-action-strategy hybrid game with you as a Star Fleet Admiral helming the lead warship in a task force of warships which you also command. Sounds daunting on paper, but most the pernicketiness is automated, making for a fully immersive, mother-of-all Star Trek games.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07
From: EA Sports
Price: $59.99 Cdn | $54.99 USD
Rated E for Everyone

Though also available on Xbox, PlayStation2 and PlayStation3, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 looks and plays like it was made for Xbox 360, with all other versions coming off as copycat afterthoughts and often losing something in the translation. Tiger 07 offers the most complete golf experience yet as it plays as a heavy duty golf simulation and as an engaging virtual golf club online as serious or as casual as you like. Plus, it includes several fun variations and mini-games that just make it fun to whack a ball around without all the aforementioned heavy-dutiness.

Sour Cream


Of course, it's not all peaches and cream for the mighty box that Bill built; for every great 360 title there's a pretender that features hype as its most redeeming feature. Xbox 360 games to avoid include Phantasy Star Universe (Sega), a game that was acclaimed for its online console innovations way back in the days of the Sega Dreamcast and now just looks like a dated dud; Superman Returns (EA) is probably the best Superman game yet made, exceedingly ambitious but ultimately a wash atop the pile of bad man-o-steel games; Eragon (Vivendi), the boy-and-his-dragon game that looks bad, plays worse and has very little dragon in it; Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 (Tecmo), a virtual gold-digger of a title featuring the scantily clad familiarity of the DOA she-fighters doing some scantily-clad shopping and other mini-games in an otherwise-perverse, $60 peep-show; and Bionicle Heroes (Eidos), which is a total Lego Star Wars knock-off minus the entertainment value.


Also See:

• Cream of the year-end crop '06: Windows PC games


• Cream of the year-end crop '06: Nintendo games


• Cream of the year-end crop '06: PlayStation games