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Hytale has officially been saved and is on its way to our machines after seven long years of waiting. It spent half a decade in limbo at Riot Games stuck in a drawer somewhere probably, and had to be re-purchased by the same people who sold it to that corporate giant. Now, in the hands of its rightful owners, Hytale is in full development and is actually coming out. Here's everything you need to know about a potential release date, the platforms it will be available on, and more. Hytale release date speculation It's likely coming out soon. Image via Hypixel Hytale does not have a concrete release date as of this article. However, following its re-acquisition by Simon Collins-Laflamme, the original founder of Hypixel and one of the initial creators of Hytale itself, the game is set to come out as soon as possible, even if it contains bugs and jank, arguing that players have waited for far too long already given that the game was announced over seven years ago. Collins-Laflamme finalized the repurchasing of Hytale on Nov. 17 after several months of working on the deal, so it's still a bit too early to offer precise speculation on a release date. Even so, Collins-Laflamme's comments on X indicate it's going to happen soon, and we've recently also been given a price for the game, which is going to be $19.99, undercutting Minecraft by 33 percent. What platforms will Hytale be on? Hytale is upping the ante for voxel survival games. Image via Hypixel Hytale was originally planned to be a PC exclusive game, especially for Microsoft Windows. This tracks with the game being inspired by Minecraft, specifically the Hypixel server, which was primarily a PC-only experience. It'll probably have its own launcher, but we might see it come to Steam and Epic Games as well. Though Mojang's title eventually branched out to just about every platform under the sun, it's safe to assume that Hytale will release on PC and Windows first, followed up by potential ports to consoles and mobile devices. With the rise of the SteamOS and Valve's major push for Linux gaming, we could also see Hytale launch on Linux natively, and even on Apple's macOS. All of these are part of the broader PC family and would play more or less the same, but it remains to be seen if Hypixel will focus on moving the game beyond Windows before finishing its 1.0 development cycle. Many of its planned features are very much work-in-progress, and Hytale invites the community to join the fun and help develop various aspects of the game, pitch features, and collaborate with the developers to make Hytale into the game it was meant to be. The broad scope of development is likely to impede potential release dates and platform ports, but it's better to have a good game come late than a bad one rushed to us early. Full details of planned features can be found here, and from what we can gather, it looks rather promising. The post When does Hytale come out? Potential release date, platforms, and more appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

A new wave of digital activism is emerging inside the world's most popular video games. In a recent demonstration, the New Save Collective – a team of 13 activists and organizers from diverse immigrant backgrounds – used the role-play mod for Grand Theft Auto V to simulate real-life immigration enforcement... Read Entire Article View the full article

Contrary to prior speculation, Tencent is neither fully acquiring Ubisoft nor exiting the companies' existing $1.25 billion agreement. During an earnings call following the delayed release of the H1 2025 – 2026 report, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot explained that the postponement occurred because the company's new auditors changed its fiscal accounting methods. Read Entire Article View the full article

One of the coolest things about Half-Life 2 is its physics engine, but as anyone who has played a physics-based game will know, even the best-in-class tech is prone to quirks here and there. Valve's legendary narrative shooter was no exception, as former Valve developer Tom Forsyth shared in a thread on Mastodon... Read more.View the full article

Battlefield 6 has beaten Call of Duty: ****** Ops 7 in sales. It's impossible to overstate CoD's financial dominance; it has been one of the top two best-selling games every year since 2009 when the original Modern Warfare 2 came out. In two separate years, it held both the top spots. Battlefield has never before triumphed over its FPS rival. View the full article

In the world of animal athletics, frogs are unsung heroes. They're amphibious, so they can dominate both land and water based events, not to mention that they're famously great at jumping. The Board Game Frog Faire aims to explore the sporting potential of frogs, except it may never get published. Frog Faire is one of several games that won't be made available for purchase, that's debuting today at the Indie Games Night Market at PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Transform your DnD 5e cities into surreal horrors with this award-winning book The 20 best sex board games Two new Discworld board games are on the way, a classic Knizia remake and a Sam Vimes ******* simulator View the full article

Opinion | Are jobs the ultimate roguelike? Moonlighter 2's smart excuse for its loot-grabbing loops suggest yesView the full article

Xbox Free Play Days are constantly providing new opportunities to check out free games on the service, and the latest batch has a few notable hits available to every Xbox user. The Free Play Days initiative focuses on weekends, granting limited-time windows to play games at no cost. Unlike discrete demos, these free samples are the standard versions of games, so you're able to play as much as you like within that window. View the full article

Half-Life 3 is still on course to be announced before the end of 2025, a known industry insider has said. The claim, offered alongside some other purported details about the game's rumored reveal, comes as hype for Half-Life 3 reaches a 17-year high, based on publicly available data. View the full article

Aang may be the Avatar, and the Last Airbender, but in the race to be the most popular commander from the new MTG Avatar crossover, he emerges with only a bronze medal. Two other characters from the element-bending Nickelodeon show have proven themselves to be more popular with Commander players. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Mediocre MTG god card spikes 220% thanks to God of War, and I can only ask "why?" MTG Avatar is a shockingly well-designed set, and it's all thanks to its bending MTG Monster Hunter Secret Lair Superdrop price breakdown View the full article

He might have saved the most exciting Minecraft contender yet from the brink of extinction, but Hytale founder Simon Collins-Laflamme wants you to know that the upcoming launch won't be pretty. Originally built by Hypixel Studios, which was founded by a team responsible for some of the best Minecraft servers, Hytale was sold to Riot Games during development, which then pulled the plug on the project in June. Collins-Laflamme made the decision to step in and rescue it, hiring a team of more than 30 developers familiar with the project, but he's eager to stress the somewhat ramshackle state it's currently in. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: After a fairytale rescue, Minecraft rival Hytale sets "aggressively low" price as it isn't "waiting for perfection" Rescued "Minecraft challenger" Hytale finally shows off gameplay, and it has the building blocks of something great Hytale founder has "good news" in quest to save Riot's canceled sandbox game View the full article

The Half-Life 3hype train has been moving at full speed again, and a recent Game Awards tease has sparked even more discussions. With the possible reveal dates of November 18 and 19 having come and gone, The Game Awards are looking like the next viable spot for a reveal. However, the newest reason for hype seems to have already fizzled out. View the full article

Nintendo and Supergiant Games have launched the Hades II Nintendo Switch 2 Edition physical release worldwide. View the full article

Half-Life 3often feels like the greatest pipe dream of the game industry. After decades without an announcement, the storm of Half-Life 3 hype around every game industry event has slowly morphed into more of a joke than a serious proposition. That doesn't mean the game will never be real, though, and there's recently been reason to believe that it's actually on its way. View the full article

Aquaplus will also bring Monochrome Mobius to Switch 2. View the full article

One of the many tasks of the Falling Skies chapter requires you to find the Armored Case in Escape from Tarkov, and this can be a hard one to complete if you don't know where to search. Finding quest-specific items in Escape from Tarkov can be a difficult task. The confusing terrain, combined with Scavs and other human players, can make it pretty hard to focus on the quests. This guide will help you get the Armored Case as quickly as possible so that you can work towards completing the Falling Skies questline. Armored Case location in Escape from Tarkov To find the Armored Case, you'll have to start a raid on the Woods map. If you're yet to unlock the map, that will be your first objective. Once done, head over to the spot where the broken aeroplane is located. This is in the center of the map, and I have marked the location on the screenshot below. Image via Escape from Tarkov Wiki. Remix by Destructoid The spot is extremely dangerous, as there are Scav enemies around. You can also come across enemy players (if you have the PvE zone DLC, use that to complete the quest). The broken plane is part of another quest to find a flight recorder. While the flight recorder is located near the tail, the Armored Case is located at the front of the plane. You'll find an open door that leads to the cockpit. The case is to the left of the door; you can interact with it to add it to your backpack. Screenshot by Destructoid You can take two decisions after picking up the Armored Case. You can keep the armored case with you, which is against the quest's natural ending.You can hand it over to Prapor to complete the task. I chose the latter because it felt less risky. If you're recovering the case in the dark, it can be hard to locate. Just use the door's entrance as your clue. The case will be between the door you enter through and the point where you enter the cockpit. The post How to retrieve the Armored Case in Escape from Tarkov – Falling Skies guide appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

Arrowhead Game Studios CCO Johan Pilestedt has commented on what fans can expect from the Helldivers 2 developer's next game. Although fans shouldn't expect another title from the Helldivers 2studio any time soon, Arrowhead already has one eye on the future. View the full article

"It's a specific kind of lock-and-key type of progression"View the full article

Escape From Tarkov 1.0 has now been here for a week, and it's gone about as I expected. It might have been one of the first FPS games to lock down what's now become the hyper-popular extraction shooter or 'PvPvE' format, but Tarkov in 2025 has a lot more competition. While sentiment around the actual content of the 1.0 update has largely been positive, it's been overshadowed by everything from crashes and server struggles to rivals like Arc Raiders and, yes, even the solo alternative that is Escape From Duckov. But Battlestate COO Nikita Buyanov isn't too worried, and he's already lining up what's next. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Grab brutal FPS Escape From Tarkov at its cheapest price for a special 1.0 launch discount Grab a free key for Escape From Tarkov as the extraction shooter finally hits 1.0 Escape From Tarkov's final mission will be "like Call of Duty, but with all the Tarkov mechanics" View the full article

Warhammer 40k Darktide was the long-awaited counterpart to Fantasy's Vermintide. Some even argued the Left 4 Dead style horde shooter gameplay was always more of a fit in the grimdark world of 40k. However, Darktide did have some trouble at launch, namely the lack of promised content and bugs that made the game unpleasant. Since its release, Darktide has redeemed itself among fans with tons of updates and overhauls of existing systems. But it seems the hate train is full steam ahead again for this DLC reveal. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The best Warhammer 40k games Warhammer 40k Darktide just hit its lowest price ever Grab Warhammer 40k Darktide and 7 other games for just $12 in this bundle View the full article

Owlcat Games collaborates with former NASA pilot and ISS commander Leroy Chiao for The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. View the full article

Got nothing better to do this weekend than try your hand at leading a nation to victory in World War II in one of the best strategy games ever made? On the back of a new DLC entry for the nearly decade-old grand strategy giant Hearts of Iron 4, you're welcome to try out the base WW2 game for free for the next few days. And given it'll likely take you that long to figure out the menus, the sooner you start, the quicker you can fail. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New Hearts of Iron 4 DLC expands three major WW2 players, but it's the factions rework I'm most excited about The next Hearts of Iron 4 expansion opens new paths for three key Asian nations Hearts of Iron 4 tackles Japan's most chaotic political struggle in new update View the full article

The Xbox 360 turns 20 years old today, and so what better time to look back at the games that most defined the console. The 360 was not only the most successful machine Microsoft has ever made, but arguably the most beloved too. And for great reason: the second Xbox mixed powerful hardware with innovative, boundary-pushing, and risk-taking software to power a memorable generation that lasted eight years – longer than any other Xbox so far. I had a front-row seat to the Xbox 360 era from start to finish during my time at Official Xbox Magazine and then IGN, so here are my picks for the top 20 games that defined the Xbox 360. 20. 1 vs. 100 Released: 2009 One of Microsoft’s boldest experiments in the Xbox 360 era was 1 vs. 100, a live game show where most players would be randomly selected to play along in The Crowd, while a lucky 100 would be chosen to be in The Mob and a single person would be chosen as The One. You had to log on at specific times to play 1 vs. 100; it wasn’t available to you anytime you wanted to fire it up. Microsoft ran it with a live host from a studio in Seattle. But when you joined in for what was literally appointment gaming, you were rewarded with, in some cases, real-life prizes such as Microsoft Points – up to 10,000 for The One if they won, which is the equivalent of $125 – or free Xbox Live Arcade games. It was a truly unique social gaming experience emblematic of the creative risks and online bets Microsoft was taking and making in the Xbox 360 days, and though I was never selected to be The One, I was in the 100 once and won 80 Microsoft Points (aka $1). I know that might not sound like it was all that worthwhile, but I promise you it was as engaging and memorable as it was short-lived. My proudest Xbox Achievements are having all 12 of the possible 12 from 1 vs. 100, because the game is gone and, sadly, never coming back. 19. Viva Piñata Released: 2006 Long before Microsoft paid $69 billion for Activision-Blizzard, it shocked the world by purchasing a controlling stake in Nintendo second-party powerhouse Rare in 2002 for $375 million – the equivalent of over $600 million today. Viva Piñata wasn’t the first game the studio made for Microsoft – the fine-but-forgettable Grabbed by the Ghoulies came first in 2003 before Rare dropped two solid launch titles for the Xbox 360 in 2005: Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero. But its first bona fide hit for Xbox was 2006’s Viva Piñata, a life sim in which you grew and maintained your garden full of adorable piñata-fied animals. It spawned a sequel, a Nintendo DS handheld version, and a short-lived animated series. In hindsight, it was ahead of its time; it would seem to have great potential to thrive now in a world where Animal Crossing is a massive hit for Nintendo. But even back in the 360 days, it was Rare’s first defining moment for its new platform. 18. Lost Odyssey Released: 2007 No Xbox has ever successfully gained a real foothold in the Japanese gaming market, but you can’t say that Microsoft never tried. Arguably the company’s biggest push came in the Xbox 360 era, when one of the biggest overtures made to Japanese audiences by the American behemoth came when it partnered with legendary Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi to help fund his new studio, Mistwalker. The two JRPGs Mistwalker created for Microsoft live on in Xbox lore: Blue Dragon, a cartoony adventure with art by another legend, Akira Toriyama, came first, arriving in Japan in 2006 and in the Xbox’s home market in the US in 2007. But it’s the second game – the darker, more serious, Unreal Engine-powered, four-DVD epic called Lost Odyssey, that showed the rest of the industry that the Xbox could go toe-to-toe with Sony and Nintendo in the JRPG department and wasn’t just a Western RPG powerhouse. No one questioned Xbox’s RPG credentials after that. 17. Dead Rising Released: 2006 By default, every game released for the Xbox 360 during its first few months that wasn’t also available on the original Xbox – and there weren’t nearly as many cross-gen games back then as there are now – was an Xbox 360 exclusive, since the PlayStation 3 didn’t release until late 2006. Among those exclusives was one of the most memorable zombie games of all time. Capcom’s Dead Rising, which was produced by Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune, was something we truly hadn’t seen before: a triple-A game set inside a gigantic mall with literally hundreds of characters on the screen at any given time. And those characters, of course, were zombies. So, so many zombies. (Side note: one of the Xbox 360’s most famous Achievements – remember, the console invented those too – was the Zombie Genocider Achievement that required you to kill the number of zombies equivalent to the population of Willamette: 53,594). Dead Rising was uniquely told on a timer – you had three in-game days to complete the story and, hopefully, escape the Willamette Mall. This resulted in numerous possible endings and, thus, ample reason to replay the campaign. Just as memorable was that as photojournalist Frank West, you could turn just about anything in the mall into a weapon. But you also earned Prestige Points by taking perfect pictures of the insanity around you – which you’d accumulate to level up and have a better chance of survival. Dead Rising was not only one of the defining games of Xbox 360’s first year, but it showed us that the “HD Era” was truly capable of giving us gaming experiences that we’d never had before. 16. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved Released: 2005 Xbox Live Arcade – the brilliant indie-turned-small-scale-and-indie game publishing program that offered a curated selection of bite-sized games on a weekly basis (who remembers Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays?) – did as much to define the Xbox 360 as any triple-A game did. The most-downloaded Xbox Live Arcade game ever was Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, Bizarre Creations’ unlockable Project Gotham Racing 2 minigame that found a second life as a day-one debut download on the then-brand-new XBLA platform. Geometry Wars’s premise was deceptively simple: survive as long as you can while blasting larger and larger waves of encroaching enemies. For a lot of gamers, when they think of Xbox Live Arcade, the first thing they think of is Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. 15. Ninja Gaiden 2 Released: 2008 PlayStation may have had God of War, but Xbox had Ninja Gaiden. The first in Ryu Hayabusa’s modern revival helped legitimize the Xbox as a viable platform for Japanese-developed games, and the Xbox 360-exclusive sequel upped the ante for the more powerful new console. It brought more weapons, more bosses, and more resolution, now that Ninja Gaiden was in HD (fun fact, though: the first game natively supported widescreen way back in 2005!). Oh, and it also served up a whole heck of a lot more blood thanks to the new dismemberment system. Ninja Gaiden 2’s action was far more violent thanks to your new ability to slice off the arms, legs, and heads from your foes. It only augmented an absolutely sublime fast-action combat system, even if having all those additional pixels couldn’t quite fix the troublesome camera. Sadly, this would prove to be series mastermind Tomonobu Itagaki’s final contribution to the franchise, but at the time, it asserted the Xbox 360 as the place to go for the best of any genre. 14. Braid Released: 2008 Odds are, if I say the words “Summer of Arcade,” it brings up positive memories for you. The annual promotion was a genius bit of Microsoft marketing that sought – successfully, I might add – to fill in the quiet summer months that tended to be devoid of major game releases with 4-5 weeks of curated heavy hitters in the indie and bite-sized game space. The very first one took place in 2008, and boy did it ever set the tone! Galaga Legions, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, Castle Crashers, and a platformer called Braid from a then-unknown developer named Jonathan Blow. Though smaller in scope than a traditional big-budget game, Braid had every bit the looks and the brains of one thanks to its distinct painterly artstyle and challenging time-manipulation-based puzzles. If everyone wasn’t paying attention to Xbox Live Arcade before Braid, they sure as heck were after. 13. Crackdown Released: 2007 It is a double-edged sword that the original Crackdown will perhaps forever be thought of first and foremost as The Game That Came With the Halo 3 Beta. But anyone who bought Crackdown just to get a crack at playing Halo 3’s multiplayer for the first time quickly learned that the candy wrapper tasted just as good as the candy bar inside. Crackdown – the brainchild of original Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones – set players loose inside a comic-book-esque world as a would-be superhero with no rigid structure. Instead, you had total freedom to go anywhere and try anything in its Pacific City sandbox. That meant that, yes, you could make a beeline straight for the top kingpin of one of Crackdown’s gangs. You probably wouldn’t be powerful enough to take them down at that point, though – you got literally stronger in Crackdown by defeating enemies and picking up experience orbs of different flavors depending on how you took them down, such as with melee combat, in a vehicle, or with a gun. Eventually, you’d be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, lift cars over your head and throw them, and more. In a time when there weren’t a lot of good sandbox games not named Grand Theft Auto, Crackdown brought something fresh and fun to the table. 12. Forza Motorsport 3 Released: 2009 Why Forza Motorsport 3 rather than Forza Motorsport 2, which was the first entry on the Xbox 360? Easy: because FM3 is where Forza passed Gran Turismo as the best simulation racing series in the world. Visually, the series always set the bar high, and its second lap on the 360 kept the pedal to the metal in that department. And the car list was never in question. But what Forza Motorsport 3 added was the Rewind mechanic that allowed you to press Y to reverse the action a few seconds if you crashed or took a turn too fast. You could turn it off, of course – Forza Motorsport was always nothing if not customizable – but it added a thick layer of accessibility and approachability to what had always been a pretty buttoned-up, serious racing sim. The Rewind feature only added to what I always called the “soul” of Forza – my vague but I think accurate way of describing the joy and spirit that Forza Motorsport always brought to players, whereas Gran Turismo, for all its simulation racing brilliance, always felt more…clinical. Forza Motorsport 3 was Turn 10’s turning point where the studio passed the competition and never looked back. Kinect’s Legacy OK, so the Kinect probably wasn’t everyone’s favorite part of the Xbox 360 era, but it was an important part of it nevertheless – especially in the second half of the console’s lifecycle. And when you think of Kinect, there are two (good) games that defined the original version of the hardware. Kinect Adventures Released: 2010 Kinect’s pack-in game was also one of its best. The mini-games – from River Rush to Rally Ball – truly emphasized using your body as a controller, and with your Xbox Avatars as your in-game player characters, it did help pull you into the action. Dance Central Released: 2010 The true king of Kinect was Dance Central, and it wasn’t even close. The Rock Band creators at Harmonix struck rhythm-game gold again with this dance-based game featuring a soundtrack full of the pop songs of the day, and it’s one of the few Kinect games that was actually fun and not just a half-decent motion-control tech demo. If you had a Kinect, chances are you had a copy of Dance Central, too. [/url]11. Left 4 Dead Released: 2008 Valve and partner Turtle Rock Studios (who Valve acquired mid-development) practically started the four-player PvE trend in shooters with Left 4 Dead, a brilliant, sometimes scary, and always replayable co-op shooter that had you proceeding through several five-level-long campaigns, surviving waves of zombie attacks thrown at you by the AI “Director” while you clamored for each map’s limited resources, seeking the shelter of the safe room at the end of each chapter. Its mechanics were simple but fun, and thanks to the Director’s always-changing placement of common and special enemies alike, it never quite played the same way twice. Plus, running an entire campaign only took 60-90 minutes to complete, so you and your friends could jump on Xbox Live, have fun together, and feel like you accomplished something by the time you signed off for the evening. It’s almost quaint to think about now in our current age of long-tail live-service games that try to keep you on a hamster wheel, grinding to the next unlockable or piece of content. But Left 4 Dead both respected your time and made great use of it. Many games have since imitated it, but none have ever topped it. 10. Limbo Released: 2010 Though Limbo didn’t come along until over halfway through the Xbox 360 generation, it is nevertheless the standard-bearer for what Xbox Live Arcade was capable of. Developer Playdead’s side-scrolling physics-based platformer told the harrowing story of a boy who…well, no one’s quite sure, really – there are many intriguing theories as to what the real story of Limbo is! But what’s not up for debate is that Limbo is about as close to perfect as a video game can get in terms of mechanics, art, animation, audio design, and polish. (Playdead’s next game, 2016’s Inside for Xbox One, would prove to somehow be even better than Limbo, but that’s a story for another day.) It was the perfect rebuttal to film critic Roger Ebert’s assertion from three months before Limbo released that video games weren’t and could never be art. Limbo defined Xbox Live Arcade, cementing Microsoft’s already established small-games platform as one of the very best things about the Xbox 360. 9. Rock Band Released: 2007 If you were a gamer in the late 2000’s, odds are you were either an active participant in the plastic-instrument rhythm-game craze that Guitar Hero started, or you knew someone who was. Developer Harmonix Music Systems built Guitar Hero but then sold it to Activision. That’s when the developer advanced the exploding genre forward with Rock Band, a four-player co-op game whose multiplayer experience is truly unlike anything else you’ve ever played. A singer, guitarist, bass player, and drummer worked together to hit the right notes as they came down the note highway, truly and emphatically delivering a convincing replica of the feeling real-life musicians have when they play together. Rock Band was truly remarkable, not just for its core gameplay and multiplayer alchemy, but also for its commitment to music. Harmonix added to the game’s music library with new songs via DLC every single week for eight years, eventually adding full albums like Pearl Jam’s Ten, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Rush’s Moving Pictures, Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape, and more. Rock Band may not have been exclusive to the Xbox 360, but it was nevertheless a defining game for the console, standing out amongst the even heavier hitters coming up higher on this list that arrived at the same time. 8. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Released: 2006 Around 30-60 minutes into the first-person RPG The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, when you first emerged from the dungeon and into the open world for the first time, you spun your character around and your jaw dropped. A truly next-gen, high-definition world was all around you, and in it you could go anywhere and, seemingly, do anything. That Oblivion dropped so soon after the Xbox 360 launched – just four months into the new Xbox’s lifecycle, and while PlayStation gamers were still stuck on the PS2 that wasn’t capable of anything that looked remotely like it – only made Bethesda’s first console-on-day-one role-playing game that much more incredible. While the Xbox 360 had a very good launch lineup, nothing at the time (or really in hindsight) made you have to buy the console immediately. Oblivion changed that. You had to get a 360. You had to see this. And the gameplay lived up to the graphics. Oblivion packed dozens of hours of open-world medieval-fantasy role-playing, spanning many memorable quests and locations. It was a generation-defining moment. Indie Explosion While the most defining Xbox Live Arcade games are represented in our main list, Xbox Live Arcade itself deserves to be called out as an incredibly successful program and unforgettable piece of the Xbox 360 experience. From more of the many stars of the Summer of Arcade program – Castle Crashers, Mark of the Ninja, and Shadow Complex, to name a few – to The Indie Movie breakouts like Fez and Super Meat Boy, Xbox Live Arcade started and made careers for many independent developers, and its contribution to both the Xbox 360 and to gaming won’t be forgotten anytime soon. It’s absolutely insane that Microsoft willingly walked away from the Xbox Live Arcade brand once the Xbox One generation began. [/url]7. BioShock Released: 2007 Before BioShock, stories were mostly secondary in first-person shooters. Sure, there was Halo, but that was the (wonderful) exception to the rule. BioShock – the brainchild of Ken Levine, creator of the emergent-gameplay classic System Shock 2 – had the depth of a great book, the plot twist of a memorable movie, and the gameplay to match the very best of any action game on the market. It was set in a failed undersea utopia – the city of Rapture – where visionary Andrew Ryan’s dream turned into a nightmare. As players discovered Rapture, they found it overrun with creepy monsters as well as curious Little Sisters and their drill-armed, divesuit-wearing protectors, the Big Daddies. It’s not hyperbole to say that BioShock elevated video game storytelling, and the fact that it was initially released as an Xbox 360 exclusive only helped further define the second Xbox as a must-have entertainment delivery box for your living room. 6. Fable 2 Released: 2008 While it wouldn’t be fair to say that Fable 2 was the Xbox 360’s Zelda, it was a large-scale action-adventure RPG with charm for days and a unique consequence system that would change your character’s physical appearance based on how good – or evil – you chose to be. Fable 2, for the most part, delivered on the remaining promises made by renowned designer Peter Molyneux’s first attempt on the original Xbox. No, you couldn’t plant a seed and watch it grow into a tree, but you could wander the world of Albion with your trusty dog at your side, battling Hobbes, leveling up by actually doing jobs, and building relationships – yes, even romantic ones – with townsfolk. Player choice was at the heart of Fable 2, making it yet another fantastic and unforgettable role-playing game for an Xbox platform that, until the 360 came around (see what I did there?), was known primarily as a first-person shooter box. There had never been and still hasn’t been anything quite like Fable, and the series was at its best with Fable 2, its first Xbox 360 entry. 5. Grand Theft Auto 4 Released: 2008 To say that the buildup to Grand Theft Auto 4’s release was a big f’n deal would be a colossal understatement. The biggest franchise on Earth was going next-gen, with a brand-new game engine and the power of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to allow for more open-world possibilities than ever before. And while the previous 3D games had all debuted as PlayStation exclusives, GTA 4 would ship day-and-date on Xbox 360. But Microsoft wanted more than that. So they paid through the nose for timed exclusivity on both of GTA 4’s brilliant expansion packs: The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. Then-Xbox boss Peter Moore even announced this monumental get by repeating his Halo 2 release date trick, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a “tattoo” of the Grand Theft Auto 4 logo. Suddenly, the Xbox 360 was the best place to play the first next-gen GTA game, and both expansions were so good that I can’t imagine anyone – be it Microsoft writing the check or players picking up the 360 version of the game – regretted their choice. 4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Released: 2007 Shout-out to Call of Duty 2, which was a day-one launch title for the Xbox 360 and truly started Call of Duty’s ascent to becoming the biggest non-Grand Theft Auto video game franchise in the world, but Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the one that really sent the series into the stratosphere. It almost seems silly to say now, but before Modern Warfare, Call of Duty had only ever been a first-person shooter set in World War II. Infinity Ward not only jumped the timeline forward, but everything else, too. The stellar single-player campaign was full of shocking moments, while the multiplayer built on top of the fast time-to-kill the franchise was already known for and paired with some truly memorable maps to make it a must-play. That this hit just after the juggernaut known as Halo 3 – combined with the effortlessness of connecting with your friends on Xbox Live – cemented the Xbox 360 as the place to play multiplayer shooters. 3. Mass Effect Released: 2007 Mass Effect promised players a true space opera – a trilogy of games where your choices would affect your relationships with other characters and lead to your own unique outcomes and endings. Your character would import into the subsequent games in the promised trilogy, and in the end it would be unlike any role-playing game you’d ever laid your hands on. And the first Mass Effect – an absolutely visually stunning Unreal Engine-powered epic from the RPG kings at BioWare – delivered on its end of the bargain. The Mass Effect universe felt lived-in, with myriad alien species all interacting with each other at the Citadel, a galactic hub at the virtual center of the universe. You played as a male or female Commander Shepard, a human who becomes the first of their species to be welcomed into the ranks of the Spectres, a group of space sheriffs given incredible power and leeway to protect the galaxy. No one had ever seen anything like Mass Effect before, and the fact that it came from the same development team that gave us the original-Xbox-exclusive Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, meant that Xbox truly had some of the world’s most talented RPG developers on its side. 2. Gears of War Released: 2006 You know a game is a big deal when its developers can ask Microsoft to double the amount of RAM in the Xbox 360 before the console makes it to market – and Microsoft says yes. Gears of War was perhaps the best-looking action game anyone had ever seen when it was released just 11 months into the Xbox 360’s lifespan, but it had incredibly weighty third-person cover-based gameplay to match its stunning looks. Gears of War dropped us onto the planet Sera, into the middle of a war between humans and the Locust, an underground-dwelling alien race hellbent on obliterating humanity. Gears of War is a war story, and while its Active Reload system, delightfully vicious chainsaw finishing moves with the Lancer rifle, and engrossing team-based multiplayer were all top-shelf, it’s arguably its empathetic characters that secured its place in gamers’ hearts. Marcus, Dom, Baird, and Cole – Delta Squad – really felt like brothers, and we became emotionally invested in their wartime journey. It’s no wonder Microsoft later bought the franchise for $2 billion. 1. Halo 3 Released: 2007 The Xbox 360 may not have had a new Halo game on day one, but as the rest of this list has shown, it didn’t need it. Still, when the day finally came in September of 2007 for the hugely anticipated Halo 3 to drop – nearly two years into the new Xbox’s life – it couldn’t have been a ******* deal. The original Xbox’s Halo 2 had infamously ended on a cliffhanger, and Halo 3 was built to resolve it – throwing plenty more hardware horsepower at Master Chief in the process. Story-wise it stuck the landing this time, giving players a satisfying conclusion that closed the book on Bungie’s trilogy, but not before Chief told us, “Wake me, when you need me.” Meanwhile, multiplayer picked up where Halo 2 left off, augmenting the best online multiplayer infrastructure with Forge, a new level-editing tool that let players build their own maps. In hindsight, this is where Halo peaked in terms of success, popularity, cultural relevance and impact, as Call of Duty took its place at the top of the first-person shooter ladder after the release of the aforementioned Call of Duty 4. But we finished the fight, and the Xbox 360 eliminated any remaining doubt as to its dominance in the games industry. Those are our picks for the 20 games that defined the Xbox 360. Are there any you’d like to add? Leave them in the comments below, and to the greatest Xbox console of them all, let me say, happy 20th anniversary and thank you for the countless amazing memories. Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan. View the full article

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Despite all the realms and battlefields one can find in Dungeon and Dragons, there's nothing quite like a city to roleplay in. From the familiar streets of Baldur's Gate to the twisted snarl of Planescape's Sigil, there's so much flavor in urban hell. That vibe is exactly what the creators of Into the Cess & Citadel had in mind when crafting their award-winning setting. The supplementary RPG book is an awesome resource for fleshing out any city on the tabletop with some horrifying lore and creatures. And you can experience the city for yourself with the book's second printing campaign. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The 20 best sex board games Two new Discworld board games are on the way, a classic Knizia remake and a Sam Vimes ******* simulator This tiny cassette-tape board game has immaculate dungeonpunk vibes View the full article