Xbox 360 is 10 years old this week - in fact, it turned 10 yesterday, 22nd November. We'll be running articles about this remarkable console, and about some of our favourite 360 games, all week.
Back in November of 2005, I thought I was heading down to GAME in Wimbledon to pick up my Xbox 360 so that I could lose myself in Project Gotham Racing 3 for a few years. The game's predecessor had felt like a revelation in the way it married its embarrassment of racing riches with a primitive online system designed to reward nothing more than gross participation and commitment, and I gave it both. It had been very much a drop of the good stuff that would come to consume me in World of Warcraft just a few months later - and long after PGR3 had been left on the shelf, along with its joyless Elo-driven matchmaking system.
One game penetrated the madness of those years, though - Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. It was the sequel to a comparatively primitive twin-stick shooter included for free with PGR2, but which was only on offer in-game as a demo this time around. There were plenty of grumbles about that at the time, but few could resist parting with their cash and unknowingly kickstarting the nascent Xbox Live Arcade platform. Lesser games in the series have followed, but the perfect purity of what I call the real Geometry Wars has yet to be surpassed by any other game that I can recall playing.
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