It took me quite some time but finally made my list...
1. Dragon's Dogma ; I've heard people claim that Dragon's Dogma is more than the sum of its parts: The world of Dragon's Dogma looks too mundane to the point that some say it looks pretty boring; the graphics, while good were not exactly breathtaking; the monster design is based on real depictions of mythological creatures and classic medieval fantasy, which compared to other games make Dragon's Dogma look actually pretty bland; the music seems also so out of place as electrical guitars and drums play while you fight against a griffin or a cyclops; the story was relegated to a website, some guides and some cutscenes that it seems almost inexistent, and yet the ending sequence is quite interesting; the character creator is so good, Capcom themselves used it to create all characters in the game, and yet the characters can look a little bit weird at times; but the combat system is the main strength of Dragon's Dogma, it's so good and flashy and fast and diverse and so much fun to mess with that once you add the rest of the elements of the game it easily makes it into the top of the list of the best games of the xb360/ps3 era. The truth is that Dragon's Dogma is a very flawed game and one could discuss further and without any effort at all the things that Capcom made wrong with it; but once you put everything together, the game works in a way it shouldn't have. Playing Dragon's Dogma with its MMO-like sidequests, the repetitive dialog of the pawns, the almost lack of story, the lack of online functionality besides the pawn system, etc., is so addictive I'm still wondering what would happen if Capcom learns from their mistakes and releases a much more polished Dragon's Dogma 2. Still, despite its limitations, Dragon's Dogma made many things right and it's a great contribution to the action RPG genre, it's not a coincidence I consider it the best game of its generation.
2. Dark Souls ; There's an actual discussion right now about whether or not ”Souls like" is an actual genre. Whether the discussion reaches a consensus or not, what's undeniable though is that the ”Souls series" are some of the most influential games of this decade and Dark Souls particularly is the more recognized game out of those. It was also the first Souls game I played and despite the fact that I've played the other games more, I consider Dark Souls my favourite of all of them. I think Dark Souls has a little something for everyone: and that little something for me was exploration, I love to explore Lordran and trying to uncover the story behind it. The combat itself and how you can twist your skills was an extra that made me love the game even more, and since I'm usually pretty patient, I never found the game too difficult as advertised. In the end I think Dark Souls is one of the best games ever made. Together with Dragon's Dogma, both games are a pretty interesting take on Medieval Dark Fantasy Games, much more engaging than what I had played before.
3. Tales of Vesperia ; The start of the previous generation for both xb360 and ps3 was pretty disappointing to me. Yes, there were still games I enjoyed a lot during those early years but it wouldn't be until around 2009 when I finally felt a lot of appealing games started to come out. One of those games I was referring to was Tales of Vesperia (2008). Tales of Vesperia has a great cast, incredible voice acting and one of the best JRPG protagonists out there: Yuri Lowell. The game does have a pretty big world to explore, a strong story and a battle system that clicked with me; Tales of Vesperia's also one of those games that came out when Microsoft was trying to win a place in the Japanese market, a lost cause, but still we could play one of the best ”Tales of" games out there. I think it's pretty telling that the first three places of my top 10 are all action RPGs.
4. Bayonetta ; When I watched the first trailer for Bayonetta I knew I'd love it: Ninja Gaiden, Otogi, Devil May Cry, were some of the best games I had played and while I liked DMC4 and NGII, I felt they weren't as good as the games that came before them so I had high hopes for Bayonetta, then I played the demo and fell in love with it. I loved how accessible the game was at the beginning but how deep and rewarding it feels once you decide to experiment with what the game offers. For a long time, Bayonetta was my favourite game of the generation.
5. Dark Souls II ; Some would think that a second game of the same series in a top 10 of the best games of a generation may be too much, especially if said game is somewhat controversial, but to me it's an easy choice: Dark Souls II is the Souls game I played the most, my favourite bosses and areas of the whole series are part of Dark Souls II as well, and in general it's the Souls game that offers more options if you want to replay it. After Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, Dark Souls II tried to alter the formula so players had to stop playing the same way they played Demon's and DS, and many people hated Dark Souls II for that, but in the end the Souls games that followed made changes to the combat too to make the games feel different to the first two games of the series, and I think it was the right decision. I feel too that only recently people started to understand what Fromsoftware were trying to do in Dark Souls II.
6. Halo: Reach ; Reach was Bungie's goodbye and it shows. I loved how you could play in the same locations both in multiplayer and the story campaign. The campaign itself was what many fans always wanted to see: how the Covenant obliterated a whole human planet and how dangerous they were, which was something you could only know if you cared about the extended story materials like books, comic books, etc.; and the multiplayer component was huge. I'm aware Halo 3 is what many fans consider the peak of the franchise in terms of multiplayer, but the multiplayer I played the most was Halo Reach. Also, Reach is the last Halo game where the Spartan armors don't look ugly.
7. Professor Layton and the Curious Village ; I love adventure games, puzzles and incredible detailed art, and Professor Layton games have all those elements + charming music. The reason why I chose Professor Layton as the best Nintendo DS game on my list is not only because of what I mentioned before, though; I feel that the touch screen of the DS brought with it a lot of games inspired by Point and Click Adventures and Visual Novels like the Layton games, Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk, Ace Attorney, 999, and many others, which was a genre(?) almost exclusive of PC, but this time you could take it with you wherever you go, and that was a game changer (no pun intended). Among all those games, my favourites were the Professor Layton ones, and I feel the first one deserves a lot of recognition, even though you could easily pick Daibolical Box, Unwound Future or Last Specter as the best.
8. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor ; One of the most common complaints of the ps3/xb360 generation was the lack of JRPGs. Except that, that complaint is not exactly true, almost all Japanese publishers embraced the Nintendo DS and the PSP and released a lot of games for those systems, Shin Megami Tensei DS or SMT Devil Survivor was just one of them, and it was amazing. The combat system is a weird hybrid of a traditional turn based combat + traditional turn based strategy RPG; your party members and the story changes as you face the consequences of your decisions during a given in-game day and the presentation is amazing; also the game is pretty hard. I can totally understand why people complained by the lack of RPGs on 360 and ps3 at the time but, with gems like Devil Survivor around, I didn't feel this JRPG drought many people complained at the time.
9. The World Ends With You ; If I have to choose a game that lets you use all the features of the Nintendo DS creatively that would be The world Ends With You. The combat system is not the only good thing about it, but the graphics are very stylish and the soundtrack was very good too; the story was mysterious as well and that alone made the game incredibly addictive. The reasons why this game is not higher in my list are basically two: the main character... who was pretty obnoxious and the fact that to play this game well you have to be a chameleon since you need to control two characters at the same time and they both are in different screens. Still, this game is better than hundreds of games that were available at the time.
10. Batman: Arkham City ; I know the general consensus about Arkham games is that Asylum is better, I also find the story of City pretty ridiculous (”We are going to make this section of the city a prison. Oh, you were living there? I'm sorry, you're in the prison now"). But the fact that I can play as Catwoman and that there are better villains in this game that in Arkham Asylum are the main reasons why I prefer City over Asylum, also, there's an amazing boss fight against Mr. Freeze in City. In general I can say these kind of games are very enjoyable as long as you let some time pass before playing another Arkham game... let's face it: playing too many of these games one after another will definitely contributes to diminish your enjoyment of them no matter how good they are. My only complaint about Arkham games has always been the art style; still, they are some of the best games that came out during the ps3 and xb360 days.
Honorable mentions:
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Ninja Gaiden II ;
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Catherine ;
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Hotel Dusk ;
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Bastion ;
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Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons ;
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Limbo ;
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Mark of the Ninja ;
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Contact ;
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Lost Planet ;
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Bioshock ;
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