Eurogamer's Lifetime Top 10

6. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Bethesda Softworks / PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Rob Fahey: Same answer as last time for me!

Johnny Minkley: I tried so hard to like this. I really did. "Just give it another hour or so and you'll love it," Kristan would say. So I did. 17 hours, in fact. 17 long, tedious hours of aimless, aesthetically sterile rat-punching I will never get back.

Oli Welsh: Honestly? I barely played it. I'm just not one for that lonely-sociopath-in-a-cruel-world thing that Bethesda does so well. But I was fascinated when a friend told me how he completely ignored the main thrust of the game, choosing instead to play through the Dark Brotherhood side-quest to completion - and then he left it there, completely satisfied with this deft little whodunnit. That it gave him the freedom to play what he wanted, how he wanted and then move on, without succumbing to videogames' chronic, goal-oriented OCD - that's all the evidence of Oblivion's genius I need.

Ellie Gibson: Unlike Oli I actually have played Oblivion. But only once, for about four minutes, on a demo pod in Microsoft's reception area. It made me feel sick. However, I enjoy making snide comments about horse armour to this day.

Kristan Reed:No matter how many times people tried to bellow into my face that Morrowind was the better game, it simply failed to hook me the way Oblivion did so effortlessly. This was a game where no decision or choice felt like a particularly bad one - just another intriguing branch to explore. With all the inherent freedom of the RPG married to the most spectacularly alluring gameworld I'd ever seen, it was small wonder I was utterly seduced by the option to steal someone's entire house. Like Fallout 3, half the fun was merely exploring, and when you find a game like that it's hard to ever stop poking your nose in where it's not wanted. Who cares about the levelling-up nonsense? This was the first huge game world I wasn't put off by, but attracted by.

John Bye: I don't think I've ever spent more time playing a single-player game than I have with Oblivion. Epic doesn't even begin to do it justice. After escaping the sewers at the start of the game I got completely sidetracked, working my way up the ranks of the Thieves Guild and ransacking the mansions of Imperial City in search of a quick profit, before redeeming myself by going on a holy pilgrimage around the shrines of Cyrodiil. Along the way I discovered the joys of alchemy and joined the Mage's Guild, learning some handy magical skills that helped me become grand champion of the Arena. Several weeks and 50 hours of gameplay later, I suddenly remembered I was still carrying a really important thingummyjig that I was supposed to be taking to a monastery to, you know, save the world and stuff. Oopsie.

5. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Activision / Infinity Ward / PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Tom Bramwell: Wanna know Eurogamer's dirty secret? Eurogamer's dirty secret is that we all really admire Call of Duty 4 - its technical achievements, its crushing atmosphere and surprising variety, and the seismic effect it's had on multiplayer FPS design, particularly in terms of persistence - but nobody on the core staff really... likes it... all that much. I've played it, probably about halfway through, and I spent a few hours dropping fools on the internet, but that was enough for me.

It reminds me of how I felt about Halo originally - I'd just come off years of playing Quake, Counter-Strike and every other meaningful online FPS on the PC, and I didn't have much time for this little upstart with its sparkly planet, squeaking gnome enemies, plot arrows painted on the floor and daft little spaceman bouncing around holding only two guns. By the time Halo 3 came out though, I'd got it. I still don't quite "get" COD4, but I'm cautious about making too much of that, and I'm eyeing up Modern Warfare 2, especially the Spec Ops time trial mode, and wondering whether this is when I join the fight.

Johnny Minkley: I very rarely play first-person shooters online (I'm not very good and see it essentially as an elaborate form of self-harm), so have probably missed out on the side of the experience that has bestowed upon Modern Warfare its enduring greatness. But the single-player was brilliant and, in terms of action, flair and excitement, everything I could possibly want from a 'Hollywood' shooter. Shame the generic global terrorism nonsense that constituted the plot was so forgettable.

Rob Fahey: I like the storytelling in COD4 - it does brave, interesting things with game narrative, and tells a remarkably strong story for what is, essentially, a dumb action movie in game form. Sadly, the single-player game is let down by some awful design - infinitely respawning enemies? Really, guys? It's not here for the single-player though, is it. It's here because we spent dozens if not hundreds of hours online, perfecting our ability to pop a bullet right between the eyes of an American teenager just at the moment that he suggested that our sexual preferences may involve goats. Fast, exciting, satisfying and stunningly well balanced (the game, not goats), it's the best online FPS game of the decade, bar none.

Kristan Reed: For reasons that only a shrink could hope to unravel, I only ever seem to bother playing Infinity Ward games on the hardest possible setting. Partly it's kind of a videogaming self-harm thing, but also because they nail the difficulty so perfectly, and somehow give you a sense of achievement that stays with you. The way each segment unfolded so atmospherically embedded itself in my head in a way that a good movie should - and in the way that only the very best shooters ever manage to, the original Half-Life, for instance.

For me, the highlight of this gloriously merciless videogame was the section next to the ferris wheel midway through, where planting traps for the incoming hordes was the only way to blunt their incessant attack, before dancing a frantic jig of death behind the bumper car stand to mop up the stragglers. It's probably the closest I've ever come to outright madness.

Oli Welsh: It doesn't win me a lot of friends around these parts but I'm a diehard Halo man, and as much as COD 4's sturm und drang blew my socks off, I couldn't help but find it a little too tightly scripted by comparison. One thing, though - Death From Above. That level is incredible. The sense of alienation, the meaningless, soundless slaughter in grainy black-and-white, the presentation of godlike technological might tearing little humans to pieces, the blunt title... In the ultimate gung-ho war game, it comes across as almost anti-war. It sent shivers down my spine. I still don't know if Infinity Ward meant it that way, but respect, regardless.