Since this generation is now officially on its last legs, let us now start deciding what the best games of this generation were for you.
No limit on the number, just list as many as you want to, because so many great games were released why limit it to just 10 or 5?
Special mentions:
Earth Defense Force 2017/Insect Armageddon
All the LEGO games released this generation
Minecraft
Castle Crashers
Batman: AA/AC
Assassins Creed series
Section 8
Dragon Age
Red Dead Redemption
Portal
Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires
Orcs Must Die! 2
Rock Band/Guitar Hero
Plants vs. Zombies
Iron Brigade(Trenched)
Spec Ops: The Line
Solar 2
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Anything I didn't mention I probably just didn't like or never got the chance to play.
So what were your favorites?
No limit on the number, just list as many as you want to, because so many great games were released why limit it to just 10 or 5?
1. Mass Effect: Undoubtedly my absolute favorite of this generation was this franchise. Though it started to falter in 3, I still personally believe it ended strong, because we all still remember it. I have an emotional attachment to this one as it came into my life as my high school days were ending, and just before Mass Effect 3 was shown off at that year's E3. Before I played it I couldn't see what all the fuss was about, then I tried the Mass Effect 2 demo and all became clear. It was the only game demo I literally played 14 times in a row, each taking about an hour to play through, and I played it that many times because I was waiting for Mass Effect 1 to come in the mail. When all was said and done, I felt I actually lived in that universe for the time I spent in it, and I had my emotional ups and downs, and I really felt a connection with the characters (except that Chobot-facsimile). Overall I played through Mass Effect 1 and 2 4 times each, and Have yet to get through Mass Effect 3 a second time (because I'm trying to roll a whole new story and it's taking a long time between school, work, and girlfriend) and I have to say my time was well spent.
2. Borderlands: This is a concept that wins on so many levels I bet some developers/publishers were smacking their heads thinking "Why didn't I think of that?!" Combining gaming's most popular genres into one game? Genius in my eyes. Because it utilized easy-to-grasp generic shooting controls combined with just the numbers popping off of enemies as you shot them, it became very addictive to me. The first night I had it I played until it literally hurt too much to keep playing because I hadn't moved from the TV in so long to neither eat or drink. Add to that the fact that it had split-screen co-op (a rarity nowadays) and I couldn't think of a better co-op, loot-based, action-rpg, shooter hybrid. Of course I hold Borderlands 2 in a different regard. I look at them side by side rather than one being better than the other because while 2 made improvements (the badass system, an extra class, the motherfucking gunzerker, etc) it also had a laundry list of flaws such as an overhanging difficulty curve, insane spikes in difficulty, and just difficulty all around. Even armed with ALL legendary weapons and equipment at my level, I still found myself dying in literally one or 2 shots from guys a hundred miles away with obvious improbable aiming skills. Add to that the fact that the inventory is severely limited and the level cap is really becoming a thorn in my side and I can't really say 2 is better than one, but that both are about equal in terms of enjoyability. Still, I love them both and have spent over 200 hours in each game and will gladly place a blind pre-order on Borderlands 3 if it ever gets announced.
3. Crackdown: I never felt Crackdown ever got the chance it really deserved this generation. An urban-themed sandbox game where YOU are the law? SIGN ME THE HELL UP! But the second one and the collapse of the original studio because of its ambitious MMO project means we'll probably never see another one. Which is a shame because I just adored its gameplay. To me, it very skillfully combined mindless twitch shooting with actual skill because of how you could utilize your various skills in the game. And how as you levelled up your skills you could actually SEE a drastic increase in your power unlike in normal RPGs where skills get upgraded so incrementally it has all the dramatic effect of you growing over the course of your lifetime. Crackdown knew what it wanted to be and went for it wholeheartedly, and not many games do that, not before and not nowadays. It's one of the few games that let me live out the fantasy of beating the shit out of punkass gangstas knowing that the law was on my side, and even though Crackdown 2 departed from that in favor of a zombie city and fighting terrorists, (which is still really cool but not exactly what I hoped for), the second one still provided the catharsis of being a super-powered badass in a city that needed one. Man if only we had gotten to see where the story went after that cliffhanger at the end of two, eh? I would put my money down for that right now, ESPECIALLY if they keep the new tools/gadgets/vehicles/powers from 2 and bring back the old weapons from one (I kind of missed having a handgun). I hope someday it will have a PC release as well.
4. Saints Row: I could hardly play the first one for more than a couple of hours before I succumbed to boredom. The second one though? It just kicked it into high gear from the first moment and let it settle into that groove that I loved. What more is there to say about a game that lets you dress up/make yourself look like anyone in the world? I loved 2 so much that I've played well over a hundred hours of it just dicking around in the open world with various costumes. Now the third one, while I still like it, I can't bring myself to love it as much. Maybe it's the way they hamstrung the customization or the fact that the city just has no personality next to Stillwater? Yeah, that's probably it. In Saints Row 2 there were just SO MANY KINDS of pedestrians with all sorts of ambient behaviors, along with an extremely varied city that had everything from ghettos to super luxurious high-rises to stereotypical suburban communities to a mall. A freakin mall! With mall goths and a hot-topic knockoff and mall cops and old ladies and street performers and everything! Yeah, that's why I loved Saints Row 2, it had more kinds of people to scare, run over, and murder.
5. Skyrim: I hated Oblivion and Morrowind. The only reason I tried to get into them was because when I was younger I was on an RPG kick thanks to Runescape, and since I didn't have internet in my house I couldn't play that. So first I got Fable (which I really like, more on that later), but when that got taken away because my mom found out you could have SEX in the game I tried to fall back on Morrowind, which a Gamestop employee told me was great. I hated it. Every stinking minute. It was inaccessible, bloated, ugly, and had these fucking psychic guards that could somehow DETECT if you had stolen something and took it away from me, locked me in jail, and took away my skills as well. I tried getting into Oblivion because I thought maybe they improved on that. Nope. Fuck that too. Then came Skyrim. And oh my lord it was just the best. From the very first few minutes it was already an improvement. It wasn't trying to make me decide my future within the first few seconds of play when I didn't even know how I wanted to play yet, it was letting me just work it out myself. I loved that. It let me just do what I wanted to do and not force me on a path within the first few seconds. Like Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the world oozes with hardcore fantasy love and makes no attempts to stifle it. I could not ask for more in an open world RPG.
6. Fallout 3/New Vegas: I'm going to lump these together because of how similar they are, but both are just so wonderfully memorable in the best ways. Fallout 3 gave me the Capital Wasteland, and I remember the first time I saw this after leaving the Vault (which was so amazing at getting me invested in the setting and characters) I was stricken by the beauty and detail in the destruction. I just stood there in awe of the scenery before me, not knowing what to do or where to go first. Eventually when I did move, I grew to appreciate the level of detail even more. From the little bits of scrap littering every location to the chips in the paint to the cracked concrete, every little thing sucked me in harder than an industrial grade vacuum. I could feel, smell, and taste the wasteland around me in these games. I can't really say any other game has ever made me reach this level of immersion besides Skyrim. Add to the fact that I love this retro-futuristic setting to death and the lore is just all kinds of interesting and the gameplay could have been just nothing more than an open world adventure game with no enemies/levelling/or visible narrative and I still would rate it as one of my favorite games this generation.
-New Vegas is similar in all these regards but unlike 3, the stories present here I would not have this game without. All these fun, interesting sidequests are what make New Vegas so amazing for me. The dialog and voice acting does so much for me in telling me who these people are, why I should care about their plight, and how they are important to this world. Not only that, but the game didn't make me play by its rules. If I wanted to, I could storm the Legion's camp and kill Caesar right in his own tent within the first few hours if I was skilled enough. It really made me feel like this was my story, but that I was just one person in this large, complicated world, and at the end of the day, it would be there even when I wasn't. The western theme was also very awesome to me.
-New Vegas is similar in all these regards but unlike 3, the stories present here I would not have this game without. All these fun, interesting sidequests are what make New Vegas so amazing for me. The dialog and voice acting does so much for me in telling me who these people are, why I should care about their plight, and how they are important to this world. Not only that, but the game didn't make me play by its rules. If I wanted to, I could storm the Legion's camp and kill Caesar right in his own tent within the first few hours if I was skilled enough. It really made me feel like this was my story, but that I was just one person in this large, complicated world, and at the end of the day, it would be there even when I wasn't. The western theme was also very awesome to me.
7. Just Cause 2: I felt the need to be specific here because I never tried Just Cause 1. I never saw the need to when 2 had a freakin double hookshot! Seriously, that thing just made the game for me, I was like a super gun-toting Mexican Spiderman! Who surfed on planes! I couldn't ask for more in my games, and that teaser image that Eidos released recently is riling me up something fierce. 
8. [PROTOTYPE]: Again, tragically we will probably not see anymore of this because of the collapse of the studio and the fact that the second one didn't turn a hefty profit, but I really loved these games. The first one was a realization of everything I wanted to be in a super-powered being since The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (yes, of course I know they made that too). And the second one literally improved EVERYTHING about the first one in terms of gameplay and story (to me anyways). Now whenever I see a sequel to a game, most of the time there are ways you can point out how it falls short from the original, like Mass Effect 2 took out inventories and was very linear with no sandboxes like the first one, or Dead Space 2 wasn't as scary, or Dragon Age 2 "ruined" Dragon Age or like what I said about Borderlands 2 and Crackdown 2. But Prototype 2 is one of those rare sequels that took the original and leapfrogged it completely. In any case, both games were bloody, gory fun. I can't say I enjoy any game like I enjoy Prototype with its ability to let me literally eat people and become them. How cool would it have been to see this in a different setting, eh? Like London or Japan?
9. Brutal Legend: I'm a metalhead, so this game just spoke to me on so many levels. With a 90% kickass soundtrack and many speeches regarding the power of metal and just a world where everywhere you look is a potential album cover, this is unequivocally one of the best games this generation to me. As any metalhead like myself will attest, the speech that Lars gives before Ironheade kicks the shit out of Lionwhyte will make you want to raise the horns and sound a battlecry. This is also the only game I ever STARTED on the hardest difficulty, because I thought that that was the only way to get the REAL experience from it. And surprisingly, I never lost a battle. I always won decisive victories in the campaign, stomping the enemy with my superior METAL, headbanging my way through each and every battle. It was awesome from start to finish (minus the escort missions, everyone can agree, FUCK escort missions). And I really wish we could have another one, or at least a spiritual successor that aims to be what we all thought Brutal Legend was GOING to be (a quirky hack-n-slash with lots of references to and love for heavy metal).
10. Fable: From the moment I first started Fable 1, I was hooked. This was the game I had been waiting for, I thought when I was 13/14. This was it for gaming, it couldn't get any better than this. Of course I was young and stupid and had no freakin clue about the other games on this list but to this day I can still play all the Fables and enjoy them unironically. You see... when I first played Fable 1 and 2 I was completely unaware of Peter Molyneux or his outlandish claims, so I was never disappointed with them. I loved the personality of the worlds presented, the witty, absurd humor, the easy to grasp combat, the fact that you saw yourself get visibly more powerful over time, I loved it all. When Fable 3 rolled around once again people were up in arms about how disappointing it was and how it didn't live up to expectations, and at that time I WAS a more savvy customer who knew about the bullshit in this industry like homogenizing games and brown and browner shooters, but yet... I still bought and loved Fable 3 from beginning to end, I daresay it was even my favorite one because it was the Fable I always wanted it to be. Plus, I got to wear a crown. So suck it.
11. Dead Rising: These games just ooze with personality. I can really appreciate the sheer amount of detail work that went into making these games settings believable, and they work on every level! The level design of the first, from the lighting to the music to the little color detail in the stores to the placement of the stores, just perfectly encapsulated the feeling of an American mall, and the second one and Off the Record did the same great work in the environments. Of course the stories and characters are groaners but that's not why I'll remember these games. I'll remember them as the games that let me pick up literally anything in sight be it a teddy bear, a dildo, or a lawnmower and cause massive, gory zombie death with them. I just love these games and hope to see more in the future.
Special mentions:
Earth Defense Force 2017/Insect Armageddon
All the LEGO games released this generation
Minecraft
Castle Crashers
Batman: AA/AC
Assassins Creed series
Section 8
Dragon Age
Red Dead Redemption
Portal
Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires
Orcs Must Die! 2
Rock Band/Guitar Hero
Plants vs. Zombies
Iron Brigade(Trenched)
Spec Ops: The Line
Solar 2
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Anything I didn't mention I probably just didn't like or never got the chance to play.
So what were your favorites?
