25 Best Video Games Of The 2000s

23. Shadow Complex

The 'Metroidvania' game formula has been taken and ran with in all sorts of directions, but one completely unexpected gem was Chair's Xbox Live Arcade-only, Shadow Complex.

Narratively it was like some teen-horror scenario; couple vacate to the woods, one of them gets taken, the remaining playtime being you getting your partner back. Brilliantly this gave you the perfect scenario for both exploration, drive to succeed and mystery behind the compound ahead of you. Shadow Complex's unique hook was that its traditional side-scrolling elements were rendered in 3D, meaning you could tackle enemies in both the front and background simultaneously, hero Jason auto-targeting amongst cover to let you clear rooms with ease.

The best games to utilise this idea of procedurally unlocking items are those that have your character as a truly kitted-out uber-badass by game's end, and the moment you realised you'd come from t-shirt n' jeans everyman to robo-suited machine gun expert with punches that could send guys careening off cliffsides, it was a sense of reward only few in this genre can match.