#8. Mass Effect

Role-playing games aren't the hip thing in gaming these days, but Mass Effect brings back some of that old-school, story-driven, single-player magic. Set in a rich, original science-fiction universe, it approaches the long-sought-after ideal of game-as-interactive novel. You play a kind of galactic 007 agent on a mission to deal with another agent gone rogue. Choose a class, level up, earn weapons and armor, assemble your party, talk to startlingly realistic aliens. Mass Effect has all that good stuff that games used to be about before the Internet came along. Plus you get to shoot people — and there's an alien make-out scene.