There's never been a better time to invest in the games you skipped on the way to Modern Warfare 3. They're below £20, they're brilliant, and if those sales figures are accurate there's a good chance you missed out when they first hit the shelves.

1. Vanquish

Sometimes it seems every cover-based shooter in the world is built around heavyweight heroes with all the urgency and vigour of Last of the Summer Wine. But not Vanquish. Shinji Mikami's cover-based shooter employs jet-boosted armour, and tends to make all your favourite games seem a bit slow and dim. Mad guns, huge boss battles, crazy setpieces - play this and see that not all shooters are CoD clones.

Developer Platinum Games / Publisher Sega / Released October 2010 / Best price £10, Blockbuster.co.uk

2. Pure

The recession and their largely average racer Split/Second finally killed Black Rock's studio, but their quad bike racer Pure still stands up. Sure it's shallow but it's rocket-fast and beautiful in a clean, bright way that's rare these days. Plus the customisation is fun and the tracks are mad.

Developer Black Rock / Publisher Disney Interactive / Released Sep 2008 / Best price £5, Play.com

3. Shadows of the Damned

This picks up where Resident Evil 4 leaves off, then adds knob jokes, nudity and swearing - it's the product of RE's Shinji Mikami and a couple of other noted creative geniuses. It promptly sold about three copies.

Developer Grasshopper Manufacture / Publisher EA / Released June 2011 / Best price £16, Ebay.co.uk

4. El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

Heaven's toughest priest spends 200 years hunting seven fallen angels who are corrupting mankind's evolution, and the game's art team spend ten hours blowing your eyeballs out the back of your head. It's a simple action game that looks and feels like nothing else.

Developer Ignition Tokyo / Publisher UTV Ignition / Released Sep 2011/ Best price £15, Zavvi.com

5. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

This sold more than naysayers expected, but that was still way less than it deserved. Lords of Shadow is a truly colossal adventure across a medieval world of dark gothic fantasy, and a thoroughly decent excuse to batter the crust out of the undead with a chain.

Developer Mercury Steam / Publisher Konami / Released 2010 / Best price £11, Amazon.co.uk

6. WET

WET is an utterly classless acrobatic murderfest starring Eliza Dushku and a thousand twangy guitars. Wall-running, bullet-time, shooting - it's all dumb and it feels great.

Developer A2M / Publisher Bethesda / Released Sep 2009 / Best price £9, Gameplay.co.uk

7. The Orange Box

So nobody ever played Team Fortress 2 on consoles, but The Orange Box is still four games for £2.50 a pop. And the best part? They're four of the best games you'll ever play.

Developer Valve / Publisher EA / Released October 2007 / Best price £10, Play.com

8. Child of Eden

A heavy emphasis on Move motion control and screenshots that look like the big screen at an Orbital gig at Glastonbury hurt Child of Eden's sales, as did that confusingly wispy name and high 'What the hell does it do?' factor. But Eden plays best with a pad and makes sense once you're playing. Trust us.

Developer Q Games / Publisher Ubisoft / Released September 2011 / Best price £10, Amazon.co.uk

9. IL-2 Sturmovik

This does for World War II planes what Gran Turismo does for cars. Sturmovik is a flawless simulation of 1940's aerial combat that's only ever as realistic as you want it to be - it goes from fun Arcade settings to super-authentic, plus it offers a wealth of missions culminating in a bombing raid on Berlin.

Developer Gajin Games / Publisher 505 / Released Sep 2009 / Best price £10, Amazon.co.uk

10. Bayonetta

The story is batshit insane and the leading lady looks 14 feet tall, but Bayonetta is among the best games ever made. The depth is daunting even for the best of the best, but Bayonetta's combo system is so deep even the creator was surprised by what players discovered. Play it forever and you'll be scratching the surface.

Developer Platinum Games / Publisher Sega / Released Jan 2010 / Best price £12, Amazon.co.uk

11. Red Faction: Guerrilla

2011's Red Faction Armageddon forgot everything that was great about Volition's original Red Faction revival and promptly killed the series, but Guerrilla remains a fun open world game with brilliant destruction, huge, often atmospheric landscapes to explore and a passable storyline. It's not quite GTA on Mars, but it's not far off either, and will entertain you for hours.

Developer Volition / Publisher THQ / Released June 2009 / Best price £6, Gameplay.co.uk

12. Bulletstorm

Anyone can kill their way to the end of this game; the trick is to kill with skill and exact gaming's most punishing (read: comedic) deaths on Bulletstorm's lumpen alien thugs. Yes, it's stupid, but the intent isn't - it wants you to have fun. EA hoped to flog millions thanks to its Epic / Gears of War ties, but only managed to shift a few hundred thousand here. So there's a good chance you missed great guns, a beautiful world, and a meaty campaign.

Developer People Can Fly / Publisher EA / Released Jan 2010 / Best price £8, Play.com

13. Mercenaries 2

One time we blew up a building and the guys on top stayed floating in the sky. Mercenaries 2 took so long to make that EA just punted it out unfinished; it's not perfect, but it's a fun shooter and the bugs only add to the fun.

Developer Pandemic / Publisher EA / Released Sep 2008 / Best price £9, Play.com

14. Dark Souls

If talk of Dark Souls' tremendous difficulty scared you away, you missed out on the most immersive RPG ever made. Dark Souls is a bleak world where every step into unknown territory is more terrifying than the last, and where real gaming skill is rewarded with real reward.

Developer From Software / Publisher Namco Bandai / Released Oct 2011 / Best price £20, Zavvi.com

15. Resistance 3

Sadly, the mainstream ignored the best Resistance game ever, causing Insomniac to step away from the series - nice going, world. R3 is the best of PS3's exclusive shooters, and a lesson for everyone working on the next Killzone - in design terms, at least.

Developer Insomniac / Publisher Sony / Released Sep 2011 / Best price £20, Amazon.co.uk

16. Yakuza 4

Shenmue fans yearn for a new Shenmue - they have done for 11 years - but if Sega actually made one it'd be a lot like Yakuza 4. It's the best of Toshihiro Nagoshi's open-world but story-driven crime sagas. Nagoshi hates the comparison, but he's wrong.

Developer CS1 Team / Publisher Sega / Released Mar 2011 / Best price £13, pcworld.co.uk

17. Valkyria Chronicles

Sega's strategy RPG did well enough for two PSP sequels in Japan, but it didn't fare well here - players used to morbid greys and hateful heroes were alarmed by the bright colours and pretty characters. It's massive, and plays unlike anything else on PS3.

Developer Sega WOW / Publisher Sega / Released Oct 2008 / Best price £11, Play.com

18. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Written off as a bullshit movie tie-in for a confusingly silly movie, The Forgotten Sands is in fact a proper Prince of Persia game. Of course, 2008's stupid cel-shaded PS3 reboot and the equally lame teen-angstified PS2 sequel Warrior Within didn't do the series' reputation any good either. But look past all that. Set between the first and second of the Sands of Time trilogy, this offers the classic PoP platforming, classic puzzles and - unfortunately - its classic combat. Still, two out of three ain't bad, and neither is this.

Developer Ubisoft Montreal / Publisher Ubisoft / Released May 2010 / Best price £8, Amazon.co.uk

19. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

Underrated even by us, Kane & Lynch 2 has the barest essentials of a modern shooter with gloriously scattershot guns designed for point-blank firefights and a harsh, blood-drenched meat grinder of a campaign. It's short, simple and thoroughly antisocial - as is the low-res, low-quality YouTube graphical style, which ironically would never fly on YouTube itself in these HD times. Yet even so, it captures something indefinable - and it's cheap.

Developer / IO Interactive / Publisher Square Enix / Released Aug 2010 / Best price £7, Shopto.net

20. Endwar

Endwar was Ubisoft's only Clancy-themed dead end - a real-time strategy game where the layers of traditional RTS intricacy were stripped away - what's left is an unsexy but fun game of ground control that will never get the sequel it deserves.

Developer Ubisoft Shanghai / Publisher Ubisoft / Released Nov 2008 / Best price £15, Amazon.co.uk

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