Best Games of 2003

Let's be honest. We all loved this Xbox title because - in lieu of a Neverending Story game - this was the closest we'd get to flying about on the back of a Luck Dragon. Oh sure, the art direction was fantastic and the gameplay was fast and frenetic, but still... Luck Dragon.

Before Aria of Sorrow, Castlevania was primarily a platformer with gothic tendencies. With this handheld reworking though, Konami switched up the formula adding exploration and RPG elements best known from Nintendo's Metroid series. It's spawned numerous sequels in the same vein but this vast, beautiful whip-cracking adventure is still an absolute highlight.

How do you break the mold of the platformer genre? In Jak II, you take the game's tone much darker, subjecting the main character to torture and unleashing him on a quest for revenge. Adding new vehicles, weapons and abilities, Jak II was a vast improvement over the original.

Many Zelda fans freaked when Miyamoto introduced the new toon-shaded Link for GameCube (especially after that 2000 "realistic" Link peek), but such petty grievances were blasted aside by yet another epic, engaging adventure that kept the Zelda batting average better than any game franchise in history.

Like him or not, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six franchise spawned some of the best tactical first-person shooting available. Rainbow Shield was no exception; the blend of then-topical oil control and terrorism was blended with (on the original Xbox) Xbox LIVE multiplayer and outstanding Unreal Engine 2.0 visuals.

Wario's always been the bad boy of the Nintendo bunch, but this extremely creative Game Boy Advance game gave him a new role at the company: a helmer of experimental videogame experiences. Wario Ware isn't much more than a string of quick-fire challenges that require nothing more than a single D-pad or button push, but playing them, one after the other while the pace increases, offered up something we hadn't ever seen before.

Capcom's Viewtiful Joe took a side-scrolling action platformer and injected so much personality and originality into the mix that it immediately captured a legion of fans. The blend of cell-shaded comic book aesthetic and time-warping beat-em-up remains challenging, hugely entertaining - and most importantly, incredible fun.

Prince of Persia went from deviously clever platformer to rollicking 3D adventure with a then-fresh time reversal mechanic that let you undo mistakes. Sands of Time lead to a rebirth for the series, which is about to be revisited in this years Forgotten Sands. Hopefully, lightning will indeed strike twice.

Launching one of the greatest and most successful of all World War 2 shooter franchises, the original Call of Duty combined a high level of authenticity, great visual presentation, and powerful scripted elements to put players in the midst of the War. Best of all, you got to feel like you were part of a battle and not just some lone super soldier.

There's a reason legions of fans put another Knights of the Old Republic game at the top of their dream wishlists. The original from BioWare is magnificent in every sense of the word. An epic storyline, fantastic characters, and two drastically different ways to play (Light or Dark) made this one RPG for the ages.