10) Marcus Fenix – Gears Of War Despite being an absolute brute of a man, Delta Squad's leader has the last name Fenix. Not Phoenix, but Fenix. Man, that’s cool… 9) Joanna Dark – Perfect Dark This is supposed to sound like Jeanne D'Arc, but... that doesn't really work, now, does it? At last! A silly name for a Rare character that isn't ironic. 8.) Edge ...

The Japanese games industry has seemingly become dislodged from that of Europe and the US. Some of the best development talent in the world resides there, certainly, but its importance relative to the rest of the games industry has eased, this generation. It also seems that Microsoft itself has backed slowly away from the market.

I'm very slow at playing the latest games, due to the fact that a) David Lynch seems to review them all and b), I'm catching up with yesteryear's 360 near-classics. This weekend, I'm playing Lost Odyssey and I'm interested to see if people are doing a similar thing. We're not all mindless consumers, after all, dropping at least £40 a week on the latest title – sometimes it's good to go back.

So, another 12 months have passed us by and as ever we've been inundated with some true classics. Of course, there can only be one winner and it's up to you to decide. The contenders are below and after some serious thought please pick your favourite before heading to X360magazine.com/forum to cast your vote (the relevant thread will be in Magazine Discussion). If your personal choice didn't get into the nominations, better luck next year... Gears Of War 2 Epic's original third person shooter was such ...

First and foremost, I want to welcome everyone to my debut blog entry. I hope everyone is well? :) Although I could have kept this hidden for an eternity, I felt it only right to use this space to admit how wrong I was about Lost Odyssey.  For the last few months I've run my mouth to anyone who would listen that Microsoft's answer to Final Fantasy was far too archaic to be released in 2008. Square Enix's most recent FF instalment ...