7. Disgaea
The REAL spiritual heir to X-Com

Tom: Here's your chance to put your 'graphics don't matter' maxim to the test: if you can stomach the anime style graphics -- you know, the big-eyed, bobble-headed kiddies -- you're in for a long, involved, dynamic game. Even though it sits squarely in the genre of Japanese tactical combat RPGs, Disgaea is the best squad-based combat game since X-Com. The gameplay allows for sophisticated tactics involving flanking, ranged weapons, support roles, and terrain. The strategic shell has elements of item crafting, political maneuvering, a rich character class system, and randomly generated levels. And you can take it all at your own pace, since Disgaea caters equally to obsessive powergaming or leisurely character development. It's odd that two of the year's best games are strategy games played on a console system. The only thing odder would be if the best graphics of the year were in a 2D game.

Mark: Disgaea is the only videogame ever reviewed by the New England Journal of Medicine, which gave it four stars and predicted a cure in the next five years. Bada bing!

6. Viewtiful Joe
We don't need no stinkin' 3D

Tom: Yeah, it's a difficult game. It's got boss battles from hell. And the save system requires/ensures a lot of replay (but you earn upgrades even as you're failing a level for the umpeenth time). Nevertheless, this is still the most satisfying fighting/punching/kicking game I've ever played. Partly because of the stunning artwork, but mainly because of the gameplay. You can run through Viewtiful Joe on the easy setting and just enjoy the pretty pictures much like you'd flip through a comic book at the newstand. But at the default difficulty, Viewtiful Joe has a surprising amount of tactical depth. You have to watch carefuly how you use your limited pool of VFX power, dividing it among a set of Matrix style tricks that owe more to the anime that inspired The Matrix than The Matrix itself. As you learn Joe's moves and unlock his special powers, you can find your way into a groove of fantastical dodges, superheroic fisticuffs and roundhouses, and gratifying freedom from gravity and physics. Prince of Persia's silky animation and photorealism sure look sweet, but they've got nothing on Viewtiful Joe's stylized splashes of color and grace. In terms of artwork -- which is where it really counts -- Viewtiful Joe is the best looking game of the year (with Monolith's Tron 2.0 a close second).

Mark: Viewtiful? What the hell does that mean?

5. Dark Cloud 2
All silver lining

Tom: About ten hours into Dark Cloud 2, it folds into its many-splendored world a minigame called Sphaeda, which is actually just golf. Golf. You're in a game with random dungeons, weapon upgrades, city building, fishing, quests, robots, fish breeding, photography, and myriad bonus challenges. And here comes some golf to top it off. "With the world in danger like this, I know it must sound pretty dumb," our heroine Monica explains after showing you how to play, "but I guess people like to escape from reality." This is why Dark Cloud 2 is so good. It's a carefully developed alternate reality with a million and one things for you to do, all of them providing you with some sort of ingame reward. It takes to heart the lesson learned by better RPGs in a post MMO/Grand Theft Auto industry: make the world and turn the player lose to discover it at his own pace. When done wrong, you get something airy and barren like Morrowind. When done right, you get something rich and vibrant like Dark Cloud 2.

Mark: Perhaps the game that sums up what's wrong with console games. You have to play as some cute-as-a-bellybutton little boy who takes pictures with his camera to combine them into silly weapons and vehicles to battle the evil circus master who's chasing you and you cute little robot buddy, or maybe it's a dog, and the mini-games are things like fishing. This game is like eating a couple of barrels of cotton candy doused with powdered sugar washed down with gallons of Kool-Aid.

Four, Three, Two...