BREAKDOWN
Platform: Xbox
Backward-Compatible: Yes
Price: $15 new

Shooting, punching…and vomiting. Yep, the ambitious Breakdown goes where few other fi rst-person games ever dared, and except for the puking part, it’s a shame that nobody ever followed its lead.

For starters, you experience absolutely everything from leading man Derrick Cole’s point of view. If he gets nailed in the face, the camera flies head-over-heels right along with him; if he throws up a poisoned hamburger — which he actually does in the game’s first few sequences — you’ll see that, too.

The gameplay is equally innovative, focusing more on hand-to-hand combat than gunplay. Plus, over the course of the game, Derrick — a recovering amnesiac — experiences some surreal hallucinations that function as puzzles, forcing you to fi nd a way to return to reality before you can continue on through the game.

Breakdown’s unfinished feel and frustratingly lopsided combat system led many to consider it a disappointment when it was fi rst released, but we’ve always had a soft spot for it here at OXM, and we’re stoked that it’s fi nally backward-compatible. Breakdown’s seriously cool ideas easily justify the $15 you’ll drop on a sealed copy.