A swashbuckling sword fighting game would be nice. So would a strategic sailing simulation where you can navigate the Caribbean, attack other ships and sink them or plunder them at whim, providing you pick the right wind and cannon fodder with which to do it, and assuming your hand picked crew is well fed and impressed with your knack for scoring booty. It's always cool to skulk around towns, Splinter Cell style, yap with the local bar folk, and hunt for trinkets and treasure while avoiding the local cops. A game of dancing with debutants that actually requires a modicum of controller skill and finesse is odd but novel--especially if it's an upgradeable skill--, and any game that lets you control your own destiny and evolve from young tad to a successful old sea dog with a reputation for switching allegiances at whim has got "immersive" written all over it, especially if it lets you wander and explore an entire vacation paradise as free as you please, with side quests a-plenty, or just stick to the story-line you eventually end up on anyway, so there's a point to it all.

As it happens, Sid Meier's Pirates! is all that in one. A real-time strategy, role-playing, action/adventure Johnny Depp-ish epic, similar to its PC counterpart released last year (itself a remake of an 80's era game), but so thoroughly overhauled, so mindfully tweaked to console controller conventions, that it seems like it was born to be on Xbox.

It's does bog down in its own sumptuousness on occasion, mind you, but those occasions are rare.