Kingdoms of Amalur
A fantastic and under appreciated RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur was developed by Big Huge games, developed with help from fantasy writer R A Salvatore and Todd McFarlane. Big Huge was closed by their parent company just after Kingdoms was released.
Ico/Shadow of the Colossus
Team Ico produced the original Playstation 2 games and it seems they like to develop only original games. The Last Guardian has been in development for many years, and it may even see a release one day, so it looks like Ico 2 or Shadow 2 will be the last thing the company wants to concentrate on.
Second Sight
Second Sight featured innovative gameplay, you can use psychic powers to unravel a very interesting story. Developer Free Radical was also responsible for the Time Splitters series of games, and was wound down after the dreadful Haze.
Honorary mention - Psi-Ops
Blur
Blur was a fantastic game which managed to combine the shiny cars of Need for Speed with the multiplayer and power ups of Mario Kart. Activision closed the developer, Bizarre Creations, after they produced a poorly selling Bond game, Blood Stone.
Honorary mention - Split/Second
LA Noire
Games really struggle with facial animation, the subtleties of human movement mean it is really difficult to render a realistically moving face. Team Bondi wanted to remedy this and developed what they called MotionScan, which allowed them to render actors faces realistically in game. Throw in a huge open world, an incredible story and challenging puzzles and you have a huge and involving game. Unfortunately Team Bondi was badly run, with employees complaining of poor working conditions. Rockstar closed the studio in 2011.
