I'm sure there's been a discussion like this before (and I believe I've chimed in on such a list), but I felt curious and decided to bring it up again. So, here goes:

10) SimCity 4 – What's better than being God of the world, really? SimCity's 4's predecessors gave you one city to work with, and manage. While, that was all fun, it was rather limited. SimCity 4 expands upon that, and gives you an entire region, with the ability to create complex interactions between dozens of cities in a single region. With more of a godlike feel than any other game in the series, this is a game well worth buying and spending hours on.

9) The Sims 2 – What's better than being God of the world? Being God of the few. The original Sims was incredibly fun and unique, with game design that just sounds absolutely boring on paper, but can suck away hours of your day. The Sims 2 expands on this in a ridiculous number of ways, adding complex family trees, true neighborhoods, things that can actually constitute a life, with multiple stages of aging, and a mounds more things. With all the expansions, you have one hell of a god game.

8) Halo – Yes, the game has flaws, and more than a few of them. The most glaring is that many of the levels can be very monotonous. Despite this, it's still a very fun, good, solid game. Many would call the sequels better, but, as far as I'm concerned, they are wrong. Halo has more atmosphere and a far better story than any of the series that falls after it. Even in its repetitiveness, it's fun, and still looks fairly good. The soundtrack and sound design are good, and it is well worth playing.

7) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem – If you think that Resident Evil or Doom are the scariest games ever, you haven't played a truly scary game. Eternal Darkness loves nothing more than to screw with your mind in every way possible, From tricking you into thinking you've killed your character, to pretending to delete your savefile and turn off the console, this game screws with your head. It helps that the Lovecraft-inspired story (which is very good, to boot) deals heavily in the themes of insanity and things humans weren't meant to know. It has some of the static camera angle problems of the Resident Evil series, but it isn't as rigid as those, and allows the camera to follow and turn a bit, which helps a lot. These minor issues are easily dealt with, and Eternal Darkness is a great experience, especially if you play at night with the lights out.

6) BioShock – From the very beginning, BioShock and Rapture suck you in, and do their damnedest not to let go. The ambiance of the game is incredible, as you travel through the tunnels and building of the underwater metropolis, and encounter the leaks and chaos that have ensued since the revolt and riots the game talks about (through the, admittedly, annoying tapes scattered about everything). Big Daddies and the creepy Little Sisters are wonderful to watch, though, sadly, the toughest battle with the Big Daddies are considerably more difficult than anything the final battle sequence can throw at you. The morality system is also thrown too much in your face, and in the end it just feels tacked on. None of this, though, stops the game from being anything less than awesome.

5) Resident Evil 4 – Sure, it may have some of the corniest and most horrible dialogue I have ever seen in a game, and Ashley Graham is my single-most hated videogame character of all-time, but that doesn't stop RE4 from being a very, very fun game. Completely scrapping the formula that was beginning to show it's age and get very old, RE4 mostly scraps the genre title of "survival horror" and brings it more closely in line with "action horror", stress on "action". Fun gameplay, a new, vastly better aiming system, slight RPG elements, and a dickish merchant who won't be nice enough to give you the paths he takes or the ridiculous armory he carries with him, and you have one incredible game. I can still spend hours making fun of the dialogue, characters, and absolutely absurd puzzles, though.

4) Beyond Good & Evil – Few people know of, and fewer people bought, this incredible title, but that just goes to show that a lot of people aren't worth a damn. Despite the misnomer of a title (supposedly, it was going to be titled Between Good & Evil, but the company didn't like that), BG&E brings to the table fun, sometimes difficult stealth puzzles and just stacks more on top. Despite the shortness of the game (it's not too tough to beat in six-to-eight hours), it squeezes everything it can out of the lovely story, and makes you feel attached to the characters you meet and join up with. Pack in an interesting world and sound design that makes the setting feel exotic and alien without feeling absurd, and you've got one beautiful game.

3) Mass Effect – Mass Effect is quite possibly my favorite game for the 360, and it is extremely deserving of the title. While not necessarily groundbreaking or incredible from a gameplay perspective (and sometimes monotonous), it makes up for that with interesting characters, beautiful music and sound design, and an absolutely spectacular storyline — possibly one of the best I've ever seen in a game. Though it starts off slow, the pace quickens after the first hour-or-so, and doesn't let up, with a good portion of the final fifth of the game being downright amazing in its scale. Beautiful dialogue and more than a few compelling, interesting missions place this firmly at my number three spot.

2) Portal – It may be one of the shortest, professionally-developed games I've ever played, but I'll be damned if that has any relevance at all. First and foremost, the portal gun is just an absolutely brilliant, and fun, physics device. The levels, while not always very difficult, are still very fun, and definitely well-designed. And then, as everyone and their grandmother knows, is GLaDOS, who makes the game really shine. Funny and insane, she, the only individual in the whole game, aside from Chell (and maybe the Weighted Companion Cube), says hilarious line after hilarious line, culminating in what is certainly one of the greatest credit sequences of all time. If you don't like this game, you don't have taste.

1) Half-Life 2 – My absolute, number one game of all time, for sure. From the beginning, with a train leading to a run down, dystopian train station to the fantastic ending, with revolution and chaos in the streets, this game oozes ambiance and setting. It has wonderful characters, great gameplay and level design, beautiful art direction, sound, and music, and, of course, the physics engine. This game is arguably the game the set the stage for the current trend of games with detailed, realistic physics. From beginning to end, Half-Life 2 is a draw-dropping, incredible experience.

---

Before someone mentions it, yes, this list is very skewed towards this generation, and the last. To be quite honest, I haven't played too many games from previous generations, and not terribly many games from this or the last generation. With a dozen games for my 360, I probably have more games for it than any other console I own. This list is hardly static, and as I expand the number of games I've played, I'm sure this list will evolve and change to suit my newfound knowledge.