She's a killa queeeen... or in this case, king

Title: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar North
Platforms: PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox
Release Date: October 26, 2004 for PS2, June 7, 2005 for Windows, and June 7, 2005 for Xbox
Number of players/Multiplayer: Single player, multiplayer

A black man finally gets in a video game.

And of course he ends up to be a raging criminal. Nevertheless, Rockstar Games has once again come out with another installment to the ultraviolent series known as Grand Theft Auto. This time set in 1992, the main protagonist known as Carl “CJ” Johnson begins the game upon returning to San Andreas from Liberty City to attend the funeral of his recently murdered mother. Surpassing even the most prominent criminals in history, CJ starts off with a jammed 9mm handgun living in a house in the ghetto and ends up owning countless homes, stealing top-secret technology from the government, and beginning his own business. While the plot is way out there, it is definitely one to look and laugh at.

Ever killed Mount Everest?

Title: Shadow of the Colossus
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developers: Team Ico
Platforms: Playstation 2
Release Date: October 18, 2005 in North America
Number of players/Multiplayer: Single player only

Games as art.

Many games have come out for the Playstation 2 by radical developers such as Budcat Creations with their release of Psychonauts that claim to be art, but the most these games tend to offer is a blinding headache from the neon-glowing game play. Shadow of the Colossus, however, is quite different. The scenery seems to be something straight out of a Michaelangelo painting. The player spends most of their time exploring this vast land, and unlike other games, the hunt is actually entertaining. Grassy plains, rolling hills, countless plateaus, canyons that drop for hundreds of feet, deserts that seem to never end, and oceans that literally look like you could jump into them. While this isn’t exactly the run of the mill art, a person would be next to insane to claim otherwise.

About time someone put a collar on him.

Title: Ratchet: Deadlocked
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developers: Insomniac Games
Platforms: Playstation 2
Release Date: October 25, 2005 in North America
Number of players/Multiplayer: Single-player, multiplayer, co-op

The scrappy furball is back! But this time, he’s more or less alone. Clank is too busy hitting on the service droid… no joke. Straying away from the constant slapstick humor that Ratchet and Clank became famous for, Sony went in a new direction in an attempt to make the series a little ‘darker’, and that they did. Really, the cover alone reminds one of death… or at the very least metal spikes. Sporting his new shoulder pads from the 1980’s, Ratchet goes on yet another adventure after the Up Your Arsenal title, and of course no one came to help.