I Marathoned All 18 Xbox 360 Launch Titles for the 20th Anniversary and Here’s My Official Ranking
November 22 marks the 20th anniversary of the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s most successful home console. My brother and I got our first Xbox 360 on Christmas Eve in 2006, a little over a year after it first launched. We had no idea it needed a memory card or hard drive to save data, so we spent the following days getting as far as possible in Dead Rising without turning it off and playing through the Gears of War campaign in one sitting. It’s some of my most cherished gaming memories ever, and the 360 would go on to become my favorite console of all time.
Months later, our first Xbox 360 succumbed to the Red Ring of Death. We ended up going through three or four of the things before finally getting a newer model that never had the issue and still works to this day. From activating the ridiculous Easter eggs in Call of Duty Zombies to being blown away by stories in games like BioShock, the Xbox 360 was a machine that printed core memories for me all throughout the seventh generation.
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In honor of the Xbox 360’s 20th anniversary, I decided to replay the console’s 18 launch titles. For sports and racing games, I basically played until I was bored, but for games with a proper story, I played until I saw the credits roll. Luckily, none of the Xbox 360 launch titles are particularly long, especially by today’s standards. I also tried out the extra game modes in each title and made mostly fruitless attempts at playing their online multiplayer.
Not pictured: Condemned and Kameo, which were played digitally.
18
NBA Live 06
I think I actually had more fun with NBA Live 06 than a couple of other games on this list, but I have to put it last because it’s the only 360 launch title that literally made me nauseous. The default “broadcast” camera blends queezy pans and quick cuts that make it hard to follow the action and caused me physical pain.
A trend among Xbox 360 sports titles at launch, especially those published by EA, is that they generally lack the same kind of feature suite as their previous generation counterparts, and that is the case with NBA Live 06 as well. The game has a season mode and Play Now options, and that’s pretty much it considering the online is dead. The other sports games have the excuse of being the only option at launch, but there was a much better day one basketball game on the 360 for fans to play.
17
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06
Look, I’m not a golf guy. But I have still played many golf games and enjoyed them. Out of all the golf video games I have played over the years, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 on Xbox 360 may be one of the most underwhelming. It features a suite of various game modes, but not nearly as much as other golf games, and its online functionality is dead. Most of the achievements are completely unobtainable because of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 being one of the many games EA has shut down, beyond the fact that no one would be playing it online these days regardless. But competing in 1,000 online matches and achieving #1 ranking in any online game mode was never going to happen anyway.
I will say that the character models are surprisingly good for being a 360 launch title, though some of the details in the courses are lackluster. It’s also amusing to pelt onlookers with golf balls and watch them collapse. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of value here.
16
FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup
FIFA 06: Road to FIFA World Cup is another Xbox 360 launch sports title that is egregiously light on content. It’s got a couple of tournament types and the titular “Road to FIFA World Cup” mode, but that’s about it. Online is dead and there’s honestly little else to say about it, but the core gameplay is fun enough. It fills the soccer void on the 360, but was clearly rushed to meet launch.
15
Madden NFL 06
Like the other EA sports games that released for Xbox 360, there’s not a lot to do in Madden NFL 06, and it’s definitely the worst version of the game. Still, the graphics are pretty good for the time, the Madden formula is always fun, and it’s an easy 1,000 gamerscore if you can be bothered to sim 30 years of Franchise mode. The discrepancy between sports game achievements in the 360’s early days is hilarious. Madden NFL 06 can be 100% completed in mere hours, while Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 would have required a ridiculous commitment and has made pretty much all its achievements impossible to unlock 20 years later.
14
Ridge Racer 6
Three racing games were available for the Xbox 360 at launch and Ridge Racer 6 is the weakest of the bunch. A competent arcade racer, Ridge Racer 6 is exactly what you would expect and nothing more. I found the courses to be fairly underwhelming, and despite the game being an Xbox 360 exclusive, some of the textures look a gen behind. What I really didn’t vibe with was the announcer, who obnoxiously chimes in multiple times with goofy comments that add nothing, like saying “Niiiiiitrous!” after using a boost. It’s got Pac-Man, though, so that definitely gives it an edge over some of the other 360 launch titles if nothing else. There’s an achievement for winning a race with all combinations of courses and machine classes without any collisions, so good luck to any achievement hunters out there.
13
Quake 4
I love the older Quake games, but never got around to playing Quake 4 until this marathon. The first thing I noticed was that, aesthetically, Quake 4 is very similar to Doom 3, but with better-lit levels and a greater focus on action. Unfortunately, Quake 4 on Xbox 360 runs like absolute junk. There are massive frame drops throughout the game and in every single level, with one particular tram segment practically devolving into a slideshow. It’s not like Quake 4 had overwhelmingly demanding graphics either. It doesn’t look far off from an original Xbox game.
Even so, Quake 4 is fun. Raven Software knows how to make solid FPS campaigns, and that’s exactly what it did with Quake 4. Even the stuttering vehicle segments are fun and action-packed. There are cool guns, and the story goes in some unexpected directions.
The achievements are also good for a laugh. You can tell that this is an early Xbox 360 game because the achievements are absolutely ridiculous. Difficulty achievements for campaign completion do not stack like they would in most modern games, and there are a lot of online-focused ones that were unreasonable in 2005 and practically impossible in 2025. There is one for reaching the number one rank in the All Game types leaderboard, which is absurd, to say the least. I attempted to play some online matches for the fun of it, but 20 years later, no one is playing Quake 4 on Xbox 360.
On the bright side, playing through the campaign unlocked some gamerpics and the Xbox 360 version of Quake 4 actually comes with Quake 2 and its expansions as a nice bonus.
12
Perfect Dark Zero
There’s a lot of hate for Perfect Dark Zero, but there is actually a lot of fun to be had with this game. A prequel to the critically-acclaimed Nintendo 64 game Perfect Dark, Perfect Dark Zero sticks to the GoldenEye 007-style of FPS combat that was admittedly fairly dated even in 2005. The campaign is a boring drag for most of it, but it can at least be played in co-op. Where the game really shines is its versus multiplayer. It may be next to impossible to get into an online match nowadays (there was one person playing when I checked), but the game’s support of 4-player split-screen and bots — many of which are named after classic Rare characters — means that the multiplayer can live on. My buddies and I used to spend hours fighting bots on the Old Town map with their difficulty cranked up to the max just to see how long we could survive. The inclusion of GoldenEye‘s Facility map gives Perfect Dark Zero a nostalgic edge and while it may feel sluggish by today’s standards, it’s still a blast with the right group of friends.
11
NBA 2K6
NBA 2K6 on Xbox 360 completely blows NBA Live 06 out of the water. The character models are fantastic, the courts look great, and overall, it’s easily one of the best-looking games the 360 had at launch. Whereas NBA Live 06 is a barren wasteland, NBA 2K6 is stuffed with features and can keep a basketball fan busy for hours on end, even with online multiplayer no longer being a factor. It’s a meatier sports game with all kinds of modes and super easy achievements for those interested in boosting their gamerscore. In fact, I unlocked three achievements in the game without even doing what they asked. Playing NBA 2K6 and seeing no microtranscation in sight is also refreshing when compared to how the games are presented nowadays.
10
Amped 3
Whereas EA largely dropped the ball when it comes to Xbox 360 sports games at launch, 2K delivered some high-quality games. One of its best offerings was Amped 3, a zany snowboarding game with a great sense of humor, a solid soundtrack, and solid core gameplay. Essentially Tony Hawk with a snowboard, Amped 3 also has a snowmobile and sled for added variety. The only drawback is that while some mini-games support multiplayer, there is a painful lack of a proper, dedicated multiplayer mode to put Amped 3 over the top and earn itself a higher spot on the list.
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9
NHL 2K6
NHL 2K6 is a fully-featured hockey experience with a franchise mode, season mode, tournaments, and even air hockey. The online is dead, like all the other sports games that were released for the Xbox 360 at launch, but there are so many offline options that it hardly matters. I’m not even particularly interested in hockey, yet I was very impressed with what I played. In the context of the time, maybe it wasn’t much different than other games in the series, but in a vacuum it’s the best Xbox 360 sports game that was available at the system’s launch.