the eight
best Xbox
single-player
campaigns
Weallhaveparticulargameswhosestories
left indelible imprints on our psyches – so
any attempt to rank the very best ever is
doomed to hopeless subjectivity. However,
we thought we’d at least give it a try – and
keeping the list down to just eight games
meant that unforgettable narratives from the
likes of Silent Hill 2, BioShock and Star Wars:
Knights Of The Old Republic regrettably
missed the cut. Try this lot for size, though –
and feel free to write in regarding your
personal favourite narrative-led gems.
From sprawling epics
to experimental stories
we pay tribute to the
best stories on xbox
08
BeyondGood
&evil
C’mon Michel Ancel: hurry up and finish
Beyond Good & Evil 2, so we can return
to this wonderful world. In Beyond
Good & Evil, the French auteur spun
a glorious yarn around two unlikely
characters: Jade, a photojournalist, and
Pey’j, an anthropomorphic boar, living
in a lighthouse-turned-orphan’s-home.
Their quest to escape the breadline
mushrooms into an epic, and frequently
funny, story which also tackles more
mature subjects such as human
trafficking, the rise of technology and
environmental issues. Beyond Good & Evil
is delightful and thought-provoking - and
its gameplay is none too shabby, either.05
AlAn WAke
Remedy’s much-loved Xbox 360 console
exclusive consciously adopted a format
inspired by television, split into distinct
episodes, each with its own cliffhanger at
the end. Even now, Alan Wake is surprisingly
reminiscent of various modern TV series. It
even has a literary undertone – Alan Wake
is a writer, suffering from crippling writer’s
block, who pitches up at a creepy cabin in the
middle of Cauldron Lake with his wife Alice,
who is promptly kidnapped. It starts off pretty
Twin Peaks-y before descending into full-on,
Stephen King-style ’80s strangeness. All the
way through, it ruminates on the nature of
memory, madness and reality. It’s the perfect
showcase of Remedy at its creative best.07
HAlf-life 2
It’s time to come back, Gordon Freeman: all
is forgiven. Alas, after waiting for 15 years,
we’ve given up all hope of him reappearing in
Half-Life 3. Freeman’s second starring vehicle
saw him woken from stasis to find a world
subjugated by an oppressive alien regime
called the Combine. It’s a classic ‘resistance-
against-overwhelming-odds’ sort of story,
but as with its predecessor, it’s brilliantly
constructed, full of glorious weirdness and
stuffed with memorable characters. And, of
course, Half-Life 2’s first-person shooter
gameplay is sublime – how we miss that
iconic Gravity Gun. It’s such a shame that
Valve seems to have become permanently
sidetracked by other projects.04
MAsseffecT 2
Commander Shepard’s second outing
is surely their best ever. It begins with
Shepard plunging from the destruction
of the original Normandy onto a planet,
before being resurrected from the dead
and given a new version of their ship,
plus a galaxy-saving mission by the
mysterious, chain-smoking Illusive
Man. Assembling a crew of differently
skilled crew members offers a host of
memorable storylines, and once you
assemble them all, the real fun begins.
You’re thrust into a suicide mission
against the evil Collectors which, frankly,
is so epic and high-stakes it makes Star
Wars feel a tad parochial.068 the official xbox magazine
06
GrAndTHefTAuTo:
sAn AndreAs
Sure, we could probably have put any
of the GTA games from GTAIII onwards in
this list, but we reckon that San Andreas
represents the pinnacle (so far) of
Rockstar Games’ storytelling prowess.
Unremittingly gritty, it puts you at the
controls of Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson, a former
gang-banger who’s forced to operate on
behalf of corrupt cop Frank Tenpenny.
As a snapshot of LA gang culture, it’s
incomparable. And then there’s the
glorious mechanism which demands that
you keep CJ alive by feeding him – so you
can force him to eschew the gym and
become hopelessly obese.oxm investigates