I’ve got a lot of catching up to do…
Doom (360): I never actually finished Doom when it first came out, as I think I only ever had the shareware version. It was just rereleased for the Xbox 360, so I picked it up on a whim, and…it actually holds up fairly well. The graphics are ancient and the controls extremely primitive compared to modern shooters, but it’s still full of plenty of action, tension, and challenge.
Okami (PS2): An action/adventure game in the Zelda vein, where you go from area to area fighting monsters, collecting upgrades, and helping people. Except you’re a wolf. With a paintbrush. The art style is definitely different than your usual game, and keeps you from tiring of the scenery. It also has a unique new feature in that you can temporarily freeze time and ‘draw’ on the screen with the analog stick, which has various effects depending on what you draw and where. It sounds gimmicky at first, but it gets used so often that it starts to feel natural after a while.
Defcon (PC): Nuclear war is harder than it looks. Defcon seems simple enough at first, just place your air bases, radars, missile silos, and navies, and unleash hell. If you want to ‘win’ though (or at least lose the least badly), you’d better have good strategies behind those placements, managing fleet routes, providing bomber and fighter cover, watching enemy defences, timing launches…
And aaargh… I’m one mission away from 100% completion in Lego Star Wars II, but it keeps freezing on me. It’s happening in only a few different specific spots to other people as well, even on the PS2 and PC versions, so it seems to be a bug in the game itself. Hopefully there will be a patch to fix it.