1) Bioshock - Been looking forward to this one for quite awhile. The demo got me more excited for the game than I was.

2) Mass Effect

3) Halo 3. I'm probably equally excited for the Orange Box, but I've already played a large portion of that.

I'm looking forward to Two Worlds ands Assassin's Creed, but to a lesser extent.

To be honest, I almost forgot to place a pre-order for it since I've been p retty excited for Bioshock, Mass Effect and some others. I have Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 for the PC, and the original Xbox release of HL2. I'm looking forward to Episode 2 and Portal quite a bit. Especially after seeing the E3 video here of Portal. It looks like it'll be fun.

I'm not that into multiplayer anymore, so I'm less excited about TF2.

I'm not very far into single player, but it's all right. Mech combat is a bit disappointing, though. I'd like it more if it weren't for some of the dialogue/cutscenes in between the missions. Haven't tried multiplayer yet.

Auto-regeneration is great for RPGs. Especially of the MMO variety. Having a constant regeneration rate means not getting into fights with near zero hp as mentioned earlier. It also saves time if you don't have to rest, and money if you don't have to use healing potions and what not all the time.

I kind of like the trend in FPSs, though I do agree that it makes thing a little too easy. I disagree that it's necessarily less realistic. You're not going to be able to heal yourself by ducking for cover, but you're also not going to be instantly healed after picking up or walking across a med pack. It does make more sense in a game like Halo, I'll agree. But it's nice if you can heal up without having to hunt around for healing kits. Especially when it's right before some big battle or boss fight.

The PDZ setup was a nice compromise of the two. You could heal automatically, but depending on how much damage you took before regeneration started your health bar was reduced to a certain point.

I have a love/hate thing going with MMOs in general. There are a lot of things I do like about them. Mainly, the open ended world they usually have. I also like the typical MMO interface and combat interaction quite a bit. Especially in games like SWG Pre-CU, and WoW. Many of the more recent MMOs also have a ton of quests and things you can do solo. I would love to see these qualities packed into a single-player type campaign. Guild Wars is probably the closest to that sort of thing happening. (I'd play more single player action RPGs, which have some of the same qualities, but I can't stand the clickfest that most of them are. My wrists get to burning pretty quickly :P)

On the downside, there's the communities, which are often a mixed bag. On top of that I tend to be a bit anti-social in game, and even with WoW, a lot of the gear and what not you need at end game requires pugging a lot of instances. That can be a lot of fun, but can also be horrendous.

They are also a tremendous time sink. A lot of folks, including myself at various times, play them like a full time job. It gets worse if you plan on raiding. It gets hard to talk to people like that, and I hated to see myself getting like that at times. Especially when it becomes the sole interest in the person's life.

I've had Halo 3 pre-ordered for awhile now. I might just rent COD 4 to see how it is, and how much it's changed fundamentally from the WW2 based games. And how it differs from other modern combat based shooters. I liked the first two, though the second was the one game that put me firmly into the "done with WW2 games" category.

The thing is, they're changing to another sub-genre I'm getting equally tired of.

probably the 360 one.-AK47-

Yep, that's what I would recommend.

I've never disliked the idea of downloading games. Though, I do prefer to have a hard copy when I can. Most of the sites I use will let you download another copy. While it might take longer to recover if you don't back up the game, you can still at least access the install files if you need them. I started when downloading games when I was in college without a car. It was a pain to get to the stores that were carrying games in that town. The first game I downloaded was Guild Wars off of the Play NC site.

I do like the convenience quite a bit. Especially when I'm working late shifts. Without too many stores open, digital distribution feeds my impulsive buying habits in the same way iTunes does for music. There's also the matter of getting games that are no longer in print, or extremely difficult to find. In many cases, there's used copies from online retaliers you can pick up, but that can be spotty as many of them tend to come from private sellers. Especially if you want a used PC game. It can be a lot more convenient to just purchase and download online.