IGN’s Top 25 Xbox 360 Games

While lists of this kind must be introduced with a huge disclaimer that notes how highly subjective and debatable they are, IGN’s Top 25 of Xbox 360 games is still notable, if nothing else, for including a good number of games that fall in the scope of our coverage, including the one that takes the top spot, Mass Effect 2. Other games mentioned are Fallout 3, which takes the 2nd place, Mass Effect, 7th place, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, 10th place, and Borderlands, 11th place. Here is what the IGN editors had to say on Fallout 3:

Why It Was Selected
Fallout 3 won IGN’s overall Game of the Year award back in 2008, and for good reason. Bethesda successfully took its open world style of role-playing and meshed it with classic Fallout elements to create an instant classic. If you want one game to last you months and months, this is it. The vast world of Fallout 3 leaves the decision of how to play up to you. Will you explore each of the hundreds of landmarks? Will you be a hero out to save the Wasteland? Or will you lay waste to everything you see? The choices and freedom available in Fallout 3 are unparalleled in games of this caliber.

Favorite Memory
The ability to completely wipe out characters that you’ve gotten to know over the course of a game is a strange thing. I spent time within the shanty town of Megaton getting to know people and having drinks in the bar. It wasn’t until later that the ever-present theme of choice was made crystal clear as I flipped the switch and nuked the hell out of the helpless town that I had once called home. That’s when I knew that Fallout 3 was something really special.