The Xbox 360 will be 20 years old on November 22nd, 2025. Microsoft’s second console was a massive hit for the company, demonstrating that the Xbox was poised to be a significant player in the console market. While most of the standout Xbox 360 games launched a few years into the console’s life cycle, there were a few standouts in the initial launch lineup. Most fans will remember Call of Duty 2, Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, and several of the other games with high attach rates on the 360, but there are a few great games that didn’t make as big a splash and have mostly faded from players’ memories.
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Here are three underrated games from the Xbox 360’s launch.
3) Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
While the full title is a mouthful, King Kong was one of the best video game adaptations of its era. That was important because most adaptations at that point were abominable cash-grabs, hoping to capitalize on a big license without putting in much work to make a good game. That doesn’t mean there weren’t a few good ones, but they were few and far between.
And, to be fair, King Kong did have quite a few issues, depending on which console you played on. That said, this list is about the Xbox 360 version, and that one was great, as long as you had an HDTV. Like many early 360 games, King Kong‘s resolution was set for HDTV, leaving players with standard-definition TVs unable to see during some instances of gameplay.
When played on good hardware, King Kong was ahead of its time. It’s not a substantially long game, but it’s a great showcase of cinematic-like action scenes that put you into the action. It’s a real looker on a good TV, and it’s too bad Skull Island: Rise of Kong couldn’t live up to the legacy.
2) Amped 3
Amped 3 is the final game in the snowboarding series. By that point, extreme sports games were on their way out, and while we’d still have a few more years of Shaun White at his peak, the popularity of snowboarding was starting to drop off.
That said, Amped 3 is a solid snowboard game that puts even more focus on the wilder aspects of extreme sports. There’s a two-player mode where players compete to amass the most injuries, to give you an idea of the direction developer Indie Built was taking the series for its final entry.
The thing that stands out from Amped 3 is, weirdly, its cutscenes. The developers decided to get weird with it. Instead of standard, in-game scenes, the team uses everything from hand puppets to scrapbooking to a live-action talk show. It’s truly bizarre. We’ve seen developers play with different storytelling mediums before and since, but Amped 3 might be the most comprehensive.
1) Gun
Developer Neversoft was much better known for its Tony Hawk series during this era. In fact, they, as mentioned, also released Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland for the Xbox 360’s launch. However, Gun was a neat experiment for the team that, unfortunately, never went anywhere.
Players jumped into the boots of Colton White, a skilled marksman trying to make his way in the Wild West. It featured solid gun combat, several minigames, and an impressive cast that included Ron Perlman, Lance Henriksen, and Kris Kristofferson. Many reviewers fondly compared it to Grand Theft Auto, and it sold relatively well.
However, Neversoft never made another Gun game. Instead, publisher Activision quickly sent the studio back to the Tony Hawk mines, only letting them out a few years later to enter the Guitar Hero production factory. Thankfully for fans of the Old West, Rockstar launched Red Dead Redemption in 2010, satisfying that itch.
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