3 of the best Xbox 360 games that really need remasters

The Xbox 360 celebrated its 20th anniversary recently, making a lot of people feel both very old and very nostalgic about one of the greatest consoles of all time. Responsible for ushering in the HD era and pushing online gaming forward in a way no console before had managed, the 360 was Xbox at its best – red rings aside.

Thanks to backwards compatibility, many of the best Xbox 360 games remain accessible today and are still very playable. And because we live in an age of remasters and remakes, plenty are now 4K experiences that take advantage of modern hardware and TVs. But not all.

Sadly, there are some true classics that haven't been giving the makeover treatment yet – even though there is undoubtedly an eager audience waiting for just that.

Here then are three Xbox 360-era games that would surely benefit from a modern remaster. I'm hoping their developers are reading.

Fallout 3

Much like with Bethesda’s other beloved RPG series, The Elder Scrolls, the first Fallout game you play usually ends up cementing itself as your favourite. However, it’s hard to argue against Fallout 3 being the most impactful.

The 2008 Xbox 360 classic was the game that brought the series into 3D and reimagined it as an open-world RPG with real-time combat. Bethesda gave players near overwhelming amounts of freedom to make their mark in the Capital Wasteland in any way they saw fit, with Fallout 3 featuring some of the best moral conundrums in the series.

The game arrived a few years after The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which did get the remake treatment this year, so there’s every chance that Bethesda’s other big RPG of the early HD era is next on the production line.

So while it’s still more than playable today, the game would really benefit from a fresh lick of (admittedly mostly brown) paint, especially now Amazon’s Fallout TV show has garnered the series a load of new fans.

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Grand Theft Auto IV

Rockstar is no stranger to remasters. Red Dead Redemption is about to get one, Bully got one just a few years after its release, and GTA V has had several of the things. But for reasons that remain a mystery, the highest-rated game of the Xbox 360 era (according to Metacritic), GTA IV, has remained largely untouched since it was first released in 2008.

It means that while Niko Bellic’s mishap-laden pursuit of the American Dream is still some of the best work Rockstar has ever produced, it definitely shows its age if you boot it up now.

GTA IV and its DLC expansions (The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony) are still playable through backward-compatibility on the Xbox Series X, they look pretty blurry on a big 4K TV these days. It’s a shame because Liberty City is a ludicrously detailed love letter to New York, and the iconic setting, combined with the game's grittier tone compared to other entries, mean a lot of people regard it as the best game in the series.

With another whole year to wait for GTA VI, that long-rumoured remaster would sure go down well right now, Rockstar.

Gears of War 2

The Gears of War series is back on Microsoft's mind in a big way. A brand new entry, Gears of War: E-Day, arrives next year, and will be a prequel to the original game, which got remastered for the second time in Gears of War: Reloaded earlier in 2025.

But as beloved as the first Gears of War is to people who get all nostalgic over chainsaw guns, curb-stomping and comically large biceps, the second entry was the better game.

Like any good sequel, Gears of War 2 was bigger and more exciting than its predecessor in every way, building on the excellent cover-shooting gameplay and cinematic set pieces from the first game, while introducing the now signature Horde mode.

Whether in single-player, co-op, local or online multiplayer, it’s just stupidly good fun, but with the game that preceded it looking so much shinier in its remastered form, it’s about time that Gears of War 2 got the same attention.