With the release of the PlayStation 4 coming this Friday (November 15), and the release of the Xbox One hard on its heels, I thought it would be a good time start thinking about my favourite games of the 7th console generation. I have mixed feelings about creating an ordered list, and I actually did post a top 10 on the Giant Bomb forums, but I have a lot of problems with what I came up with.

It was difficult for make a list of 10 games that I really loved in generation 7. This is mostly because a lot of the games I have enjoyed most in the last few years were backlogged titles on the PlayStation 2 or handheld ports of PS2 games. I also flat out play less games than many others because I am often a little more restricted in which genres I enjoy and a lot of the games I play are very, very long. A top 5 list would be much better for me, which is what I’ll be going with here. I also wasn’t wild about the idea of creating an ordered list because generation 7 isn’t really over yet. There are numerous titles coming out next year that I am very excited about, and there will probably be some interesting cross-gen titles next year as well. I also have a significant backlog of games from numerous generation 7 consoles that I haven’t gotten around to playing yet.

All that said, I decided that I should just go for it anyway. It’s been on my mind a lot lately given all the hype about the PS4 and Xbox One releases and I do love ranking things. I figure now is as good of a time as any to put a first draft out there and see how it holds up to the last year or two of this generation’s life.

I will be devoting three more posts to this topic over the next few days (I hope to finish this series on Friday, but we’ll see if I’m able to stick with it). Today I will just be writing this introduction. Tomorrow’s entry will deal with the 5th, 4th and 3rd games in my top 5 since I have not played any of them in some time and I know that I can sum up my feelings about them pretty well. The other two games will each have their own entry as they are fresh in my mind and I have a lot to say about both of them.

I should probably mention quickly that when I was considering which games should be on this list I drew from the PS3, X360, DS, PSP and PC (during the appropriate time window).