With so few good new titles being released these days, especially by major studios, I figured I'd make a thread for everyone to share your favourite classic or older games, especially if they're lesser-known titles that others might have missed at the time.
I'll open with The Saboteur (2009), Mercenaries (2005) and Saints Row 2 ( The 2008 original)
7th gen was also really good for handheld Japanese games. The jump to HD was a major hurdle that affected Japanese developers more, since they tended to be smaller companies in comparison to big AAA Western developers. So most Japanese companies chose to just make games for the handheld systems (DS and PSP, and later 3DS and Vita) with a lot of great titles.