Blink and you’ll miss it. Yes, the Xbox 360 is mere days away from it’s 20th birthday – 22 November 2005 in the US and Canada. On my British shores the console arrived a couple of weeks later on 2 December 2025 and it changed my gaming life, and in so many ways real life, forever.
The Blades dashboard. Xbox Live integrated into every facet of the UI. Achievements, which I’m still a sucker for all these years later. It would be easy to go on about how revolutionary Microsoft’s second console was on arrival. Strategically launched well ahead of it’s biggest direct competitor, the PlayStation 3, the 360 shot out of the traps and fever quickly spread between friendship groups and communities. It was the console you had to own as online gaming was about to leave the basement and become mainstream.
Though many remember the Xbox 360 for ‘the golden era of online gaming’, with Gears of War (2006), Halo 3 (2007) and Modern Warfare 2 (2009), many of the console’s greatest games were there day one. When the Xbox 360 arrived, it came with one of the strongest lineups the industry has ever seen, in both quantity and quality.
Now, we’re going to look back at seven of the best Xbox 360 launch games. And as an ode to the times when Xbox really cared about physical media, I’ll include an image of the back of each box for old times sake. Get some tissues, this one will be sentimental.
Condemned Criminal Origins
The realism of graphics in Xbox 360’s OG horror title, Condemned: Criminal Origins turned first-person horror into a truly pant wetting experience. Developed by the now shuttered Monolith Studio, the first in the two-part Condemned series had incredibly intelligent AI for it’s time and a gripping story.
The mood of this seven to ten hour journey is grim, gripping and tense. If you’ve played Condemned, you may shudder at the sight of mannequins in clothes stores for the rest of your life.
As protagonist and FBI agent, Ethan Thomas we are sent to hunt down a sadistic serial killer. But they are the least of our worries as every turn of this single player title was dark, sadistic and often barbaric. Condemned had a limited HUD to give a survival horror-like experience which was largely hand-to-hand combat focused. Smashing heads in with lead pipes or 2x4s, tasering foes before hammering their kneecaps with a sledgehammer, or simply blowing their brains out with firearms, everything in one of Monolth’s greatest felt personal. It felt like we had to perform these actions to survive, to win, to overcome the barbarism of our foes.
Thomas has an apt for hunting down the worst kind of criminals and we were tasked with going after Serial Killer X. a serial killer of serial killers. (I guess that kind of makes them okay people? One for the comments section). Thomas ends up being chased by the FBI himself and begins suffering with his own twisted psychosis. With detective tools and abilities, Ethan must find his way to safety and sanity despite the whole game making you feel like everyone is out to get you.
Condemned is backwards compatible on Xbox One / Series but was randomly removed from the Xbox Store and Steam recently. With no word as to whether it will ever return, at present the only way you can buy the game is via an Xbox 360 disc. And did you know, Condemned was the only Xbox 360 physical launch game without the full 1,000G? Well, now you do.
Project Gotham Racing 3
Whilst never directly competing with the likes of Gran Turismo – that space was saved for Xbox’s Forza series – the PGR series took simulation-style racing and made it feel arcadey. With the first two launching on the original Xbox, PGR 3 dialled it up several notches when it launched alongside the Xbox 360.
Created by Bizarre Creations who have been closed since 2011, the PGR series added Kudos points to your races. Kudos was scored by driving with style – drifting, high speed overtakes, airtime and more. Dozens of beautifully created cars for it’s time, an array of real-world circuits and a decent single player campaign made PGR 3 an excellent package offline.
But online, there was so much more to PGR 3. Some of the best times online include the Cat and Mouse game mode which was a race between two teams, each with one big heavy slower car (the cat); and several smaller lighter cars (the mice). Players had to ram the other team’s cat off the road and assist their own get to the finish line first in what caused so much lobby rage. Gotham TV was a revolutionary feature of the game, enabling players to watch other races take place live online. Getting featured on Gotham TV made you feel like you were getting your fifteen minutes of fame.
Though outmatched by it’s sequel, PGR 4, It still looks pretty good today for a 20-year old game and boasts a great soundtrack. Or, like me, you’ll have ‘ripped’ CDs to your 20gb hard drive and played them during your races. Neither PGR 3, nor PGR 4 are backwards compatible, likely due to licensing issues. The only way to play these today is to get setup an Xbox 360 and get a cheap physical copy.
Feel old yet? There’s still 5 more games to go.
Call of Duty 2
Love or hate Call of Duty, but it’s hard to disagree with what it has done for first person shooters, and growing gaming globally in general. Since Call of Duty 2, the series has been an annualised juggernaut which peaked during the mid-years of the Xbox 360 with the original Modern Warfare trilogy and the first two Black Ops. Black Ops 2 still remains active on Xbox Live to this day.
Though it all began on 360 with launch title, Call of Duty 2. Comfortably my favourite game on this exceptional list. The World War II shooter took what the original achieved and cranked the gameplay quality up several notches and applied glorious HD graphics. The gameplay of CoD 2 paved the way for the series and if anyone played the game today, the controls would still feel like any modern shooter.
An incredible single player that spanned multiple continents, with war campaigns in the Soviet Union, North Africa and Western Europe, the battles captured in the game were based on real events. The enemy AI was solid for it’s time and again holds up today. Add to that an arsenal of weapons for each belligerent nation of the War and ground-breaking smoke effects still makes the globe trotting adventure one of the best campaigns in Call of Duty history.
Whilst the campaign was a triumph of it’s time, where Call of Duty excelled was on Xbox Live. Servers were alive for years after launch which is a testament to the quality of the maps – many of which have been recreated in more recent Call of Duty titles. Carentan is genuinely one of the most perfect maps of any shooter, period; and the fields and trenches of Brecort were a sniper’s paradise (Kar98, we miss you). But all those years ago Toujane, Tunisia was the map commonly played for competitive MLG matches, with it’s sniping alleys, close quarter corridors for trench gun rats, and rooftops to mount with your M1 Garand and that still glorious, end of clip PING!
Without Call of Duty 2, first person shooters wouldn’t be what they are today. Though the servers are colder than the hearts of the Nazis, an exceptional campaign is still very much worth your time 20 years later. The game remains available to buy on the Xbox Store today via backwards compatibility. If anyone would like to get a lobby alive, see about joining the GSC Discord in the footer, little more would make me happier.
Amped 3
Extreme sports games were at their highest in the early to mid-2000s. Skateboarding, BMX and snowboarding games were appearing all over, buoyed by the phenomenal success of Tony Hawks and SSX. Amped 3 gave players plenty of customisation right from the start of a strong campaign enabling players to create fun, or completely wacky looking characters.
Amped 3 leaned heavily into the skater and Jackass-type culture and tone of the time with bright colours, spray paints and crazy costumes. The game was mechanically very strong with plenty of snowboarding tricks that didn’t just rely on face button presses, rather a strong use of the analogue sticks. With real-world slopes and snowboarders include Marc Frank Montoya, this wasn’t just a completely artificial trip down a snowy mountain. The game also introduced excellent snow slope maps that allowed players to start their tricky descents from different places.
What I remember most about Amped 3 – much like many games of it’s genre from the time – is it’s soundtrack. Heavily emo influenced, there are incredibly over 300 lesser-known tracks in the game, with the odd few that I still listen to today including this one by Waking Ashland.
Beyond some online leaderboards for each of the game’s hundreds of activities, there was no Xbox Live integration in the game, but a fun and wacky story gave the game legs.
Amped 3 was sadly the end of the series and with a 20 year gap, I’d be surprised if we ever see it return. The game isn’t backwards compatible nor on any other platform, so get down to CEX or Gamestop and grab a disc and get back up the mountain!
Perfect Dark Zero
The prequel to the N64 classic, Perfect Dark was a big deal for Xbox. After acquiring Rare and an insane library of IP in 2002, Microsoft were on a mission to revive some dormant franchises and create some new. With a clear plan to cement the Xbox 360 as the first choice console for FPS, utilising the strength of Xbox live, Perfect Dark was chosen as the first-party candidate for day one.
Joanna Dark’s second campaign was a solid game, featuring fourteen missions across a variety of what at the time were near-future 2020 settings – and yes, we’re well past that year now, Zero was a first-person shooter that introduced new mechanics including the ability to take third-person cover to scope out enemies, as well as dodge rolling to avoid enemy fire. Dark, being very much the covert-type, had multiple unique items that even Bond would be envious of, such as the hacking ‘Datathief’ and ‘Loctopus’ lock picker. The campaign was offered solo and co-operatively online, split screen and even system link (RIP). Playing on the highest difficulty Dark Agent was no joke and was one hell of a challenge.
Multiplayer in PDZ featured lobbies for up to a massive 32 players and / or bots. Looking back, the multiplayer wasn’t anything particularly special but was solid fun for an early Xbox 360 title. Game modes included the standard TDM, CTF, though there was some Counter Strike style gameplay where you could use credits earned by killing foes and capturing points to buy guns and items. The original’s famous Laptop Gun returned in Zero and was feared throughout Live lobbies.
Sadly, it’s reboot was cancelled and it’s studio, The Initiative closed earlier this year despite looking really promising. Therefore, it’s almost certain that Perfect Dark Zero will be the last game in a cult-franchise.
Perfect Dark Zero remains available via the Xbox Store and backwards compatibility and is also available via the tremendous value package of Rare’s back-catalogue, Rare Replay (which surely must be coming to Switch at some point, right!?).
Peter Jackson’s King Kong The Official Game of the Movie
Let’s just call one of the longest game names of all time King Kong, ay. King Kong was the original ‘achievement game’, kickstarting the burning desire of so many to chase 1,000G completions. Though tarnishing the game as an achievement game would be unacceptable, the game was very good. As gaming has moved away from ‘AA’ games and movie tie-ins in the last decade, King Kong excelled and was one of the last great excellent video games that released alongside a Hollywood blockbuster.
Only about 6 hours in length, players got to play as Jack Driscoll and Kong across Skull Island and an incredible showdown in a 1930s New York. As Jack we use spears and more nomadic tools to take on dinosaurs and other beasts of Skull Island, on a journey to save Ann Darrow who the island natives want to sacrifice to the giga-gorilla himself.
Encouraging players to feel barebones and primal, King Kong was a game without a HUD. There was no aiming reticule, life bar or ammunition counter, which itself was a unique video game choice for the time. Whereas the game’s Kong sections were a third-person experience where players smashed the living daylights out of anyone getting in the way of Ann.
Though backwards compatible, King Kong is not available to buy via the Xbox Store and was delisted in 2015, likely after a 10 year licensing deal expiration.
Hexic HD
Still available today for free, and playable via backwards compatibility, tile-matching puzzle game Hexic HD was very likely the first Xbox Live Arcade game you played. Pre-installed on everyone’s 20gb hard drive, Hexic was a blast that so many early adopters played as that ‘chill game’ between getting sniped by Kar98 sweats in Call of Duty 2 or smashed off the track in PGR 3. For 15-year-old me, my parents allowed me to have my 360 before Christmas 2025 ‘to ensure it worked’, but I wasn’t allowed my games. Little did they know, I was playing Hexic to death.
Hexic is designed by no other than Alexey Pajitnov, the man who created the world’s most iconic video game, Tetris. And it’s little less addictive than the tetromino shape shifting legend. The game requires players to rotate colourful hexagonal tiles to create specific patterns that give players increased score depending on their size and shape. You had to keep the tiles matching until the game introduced bombs to the mix. Bombs had to be matched to their respective tile colour unless you wanted a game over screen, which kept the game tense and strategic.
It’s a modern arcade great – simple to play, attractive to look at and addictive as games can be. A sequel, Hexic 2, is available on Xbox via backwards compatibility.
Honourable mentions
Above are seven of the best Xbox 360 launch games, but everyone will have their own. I’ve missed many off this list including Rare’s Kameo, Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland and Quake 4.
But two that certainly deserve a shout are Gun and Need for Speed Most Wanted. Both cross-generation titles that launched on the original Xbox and many other platforms, these two were both great games that could have easily made their way in to the above seven. Gun in many ways paved the way for the Red Dead franchise with an excellent Western campaign. With NFS Most Wanted featuring some incredible cops and robber chases and a great soundtrack as we climbed the Blacklist of racers to be the no.1.
Thanks for the great times, November 2005 and beyond
If there’s one thing that the Xbox 360 created was memories. Looking back on these games has unlocked gaming memories that had been tucked away for well over a decade. For you, Xbox 360 era memories may be of titles like Gears Gridlock lobbies, Halo 3’s co-op campaign or college dormitory Rock Band parties; but they arrived after the scene setters that positioned the greatest Xbox console to thrive. Without one of the best launch lineups in the history of the greatest entertainment medium, it’s unlikely console gaming would be the same today. And I for sure would have a lot less real-world friends, some who I met on the streets of Carentan.
What’s your greatest Xbox 360 launch game memories? Are you still using your Xbox 360 in 2025? Come and join the active and friendly Gamer Social Club Discord to chat all about your favourite Xbox memories and to find a community of gamers to play the latest Game Pass games with.
