So for entertainment purposes only here is my personal top ten gems of what I guess we could term the "Patch it in later" generation. Keep in mind that I haven't played every single game that's come out over the past seven years and I also don't care what you think, this is all from personal experience.
Also at time of writing GTAV isn't out yet and it'll be hugely surprising if that game doesn't earn a place on this list, but let's take that as read and let some other guys get a chance.
-IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER-
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Truth be told in terms of pure gameplay mechanics I'm not sure Arkham Asylum would hold up on its own merits as a game. It's a mostly linear experience of walking down corridors, crawling through vents, beating up dudes over and over again, occasionally dropping them from gargoyles and having crap boss fights. What Asylum does so well though is in its use of the Batman name itself, the game makes you feel like the Dark Knight and that is so valuable in a licensed game of this nature. Throw in a ton of polish and nice touches and the genuinely creepy Scarecrow sections which tensed me up on their three outings more than the entirety of The Last of Us and you have a great Batman experience. City on the other hand splooged the game out so wide that it lost its tight focus and the slightly flimsy mechanics started to buckle under its own weight.
LocoRoco
Pretty much the only game worth buying on the PSP for the longest time, LocoRoco was an adorably cutesy platformer that slaps a smile on your face the entire time its in front of you. The limited control of the LocoRocos themselves served to make the environments and hazards more threatening but the world was so well designed the little bouncy balls never failed to be endearing. The sequel is a good game as well but is more of a mission pack than a proper follow up.
The Walking Dead
Putting the huge budget productions of Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire to shame The Walking Dead showed everyone how interactive storytelling is done. It's not with extra polygons or facial capture it's with interesting characters and strong writing, y'know, those old chestnuts. The Walking Dead is a disappointingly rare example of a story driven game that couldn't work as well as a movie or TV show (HEUGH Last of Us ECK) as it is very good at making you feel responsible for your decisions and actions even if they're scripted sequences that happen anyway, a talent that gives the drama all the more weight and draws you into the story deeper than a non-interactive media could ever hope to.
Crackdown
This generation has been very sandbox happy but perhaps the one I enjoyed the most was the Xbox 360 exclusive Crackdown. It masterfully balanced the random fun of dicking around in a sandbox world with a structured design that made you feel like you were achieving something. Running around on rooftops doing side missions to level up was fun, tossing cars and ragdolling dozens of gang members in gas explosions was fun, and the progressively more difficult boss fights were the main event that held it all together as a constantly fun memorable experience. The sequel was shite though.
Nintendo DS
Yes this is absolutely a cheat and a good reason for why no-one should take this list seriously. I couldn't decide what I've enjoyed more, the courtroom anime drama silliness of all the Ace Attorney games, the more brain taxing straight up puzzle action of Professor Layton or just killing time on Sudoku in that Brain Training game. Writing this paragraph I just remember Ghost Trick, and Super Princess Peach, and Mighty Switch Force 2. Jesus that last one is on the 3DS, this is now less cheating and more hacking reality itself. Overall, nothing has held my attention in recent years more than Nintendo's dual screened sandwich toaster with its library of visual novels, brain simulating titles and a general design that encourages intuitive and inventive game so I'm giving a shout out to the entire console library and YOU CAN'T STOP ME.
Braid
Oh shut up you know why Braid is good, and if you haven't played it yet you can get it for pennies in some indie bundle or Steam sale or something so go do that. That's all I have to say about it. I'll pad out this paragraph by mentioning that the also very good Limbo nearly made this list but that game is super short and still sort of runs out of ideas and dies in its final hour...but go play that too...
(Ultimate) Marvel Vs Capcom 3
Embarrassingly UMvC3 has probably taken up more of my time this generation than any other single game, and that's even with the Ultimate edition released a mere nine months after the original, barely any single player content to speak of or anything else to pad out the core. However the core itself is so good I crammed the entire thing into my mouth and swallowed all of its seeds. Like any other fighting game you can argue for hours about how imbalanced or broken it is but ultimate(MvC3)ly what it does better than perhaps any other is make the game seem reactive and fun for button bashing casuals and also have a ridiculous amount of depth for hardcore players. I've played dozens of fighters before this one but this is the first time ever I've actually gotten deep into the mechanics of them and now I understand what stuff like "plus on block" and "OTG" mean and can throw them into conversations like they're real things. Marvel Vs Capcom 3 has become my gateway fighting game and anyone who trashes it for that is an elitist prick and part of the reason why fighters fell into obscurity before this generation brought them back.
Netcode's rubbish though.
Super Meat Boy
With Sonic constantly running into walls and off cliffs and Mario officially no longer trying any more and milking the nostalgic buck for all its worth, it was up to indies (and Rayman Origins) to keep the platformer boat afloat. Fortunately Team Meat provided us with Super Meat Boy, a super challenging, super tight controlled platformer with a super amount of content to go with it. Understanding what good game flow is Meat Boy gets rid of archaic nonsense like continues or lives and just presents you with simple mechanics, hard as balls levels and as many attempts as you like because by golly you'll need them. The instant respawn makes the failures in Meat Boy barely frustrating at all and the difficulty makes every success important, definitely the best platformer of this generation.
Dead Rising 2 (Off The Record)
Dead Rising 2 on paper is very simple, there's you, as many zombies as the current console hardware can handle, and whatever you can find to kill them with, which is almost everything. Mixing arcadey organic fun with survival and sandbox elements makes Dead Rising 2 stand out amongst its sandbox crowd as a genuinely unique game. A lot of people much prefer the Off The Record version for its inclusion of checkpoints and a sandbox mode, I think an argument can be made for both games as the original was a lot more tense and encouraged a lot more strategy and time management from the player, whereas Off The Record just lets you do whatever you want whenever you want which obviously is good in a lot of ways but it also means it gets dull a lot faster. Either way, they're both great fun especially when all the goofiness is accompanied by a trademark Capcom pseudo serious storyline.
Uncharted 2
Cover based shooting has been mostly cancerous to this generation as being the most overused and lazily implemented core mechanic for AAA gaming. The Uncharted series however understand it's best used as a connecting element between climby, puzzle and explosive set piece action. Uncharted 2 is a popcorn game, written like a movie and if it was actually one it wouldn't be a very good or original one, but it feels like an epic adventure and the set pieces really are the best that gaming have to offer. There's a lot I don't like about Uncharted 2 on paper, it's obsession with cinematic less interactive gameplay and cover based shooting but everything is balanced so well and done to perfection what you instead get is one of the most exciting action games on the market.
The multiplayer was highly engrossing too, taking the rather dull shooty affair of Gears of War and adding the trademark climbing and movement added a surprising amount of strategy and fun to what many assumed would be a tacked on lazy feature.
So there, that's what I enjoyed this generation, note that there are no Kinect/Wii/Playstation Move or first person shooters on the list because why would there be, alright I haven't played Bioshock, but with all I've heard about it there doesn't seem to be any reason to now.
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