Besides the most popular and obvious choices (CS, TF, The Opera, Garry's Mod, Desert Combat, Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, BTmod), some lesser know greats of all time.....

Operation Na Pali for the original Unreal Tournament to this day is probably the most enjoyable single player mod I've played. It was pretty lenghty and better then many retail FPS games at the time, what's ironic, is that this mod was dubbed "the unofficial Unreal 2" yet it managed to be FAR better then the actual Unreal 2 in pretty much every way possible.

They Hunger for Half Life was another excellent single player horror game.

Mods I'm most looking forward to...

Black Mesa - A full remake and overhaul of the original HL on the source engine.

The Sith Lords Restoration Project - When Lucasarts literally cut Obsidian's already short 15 month development schedule of KOTOR II by surprise and refused to allow them to do a content patch, Obsidian did the next best thing they could.....they put a bunch of the stuff the content they had actually been working on but never got the chance to actually implement into the game into file folders in the PC version. That's where Team Gizka's Project comes in, which actually has the support of Obsidian, it hopes to implement the stuff Obsidian never did....cutscenes, fixing missions so they can actually be completed, and most of all...an actual ending(s).

First thing I look at is who the review was written by, and if it's by a reviewer I have consistantly agreed with....there is one particular reviewer over at IGN, mainly IGN PC, that I have found I can trust since his reviews writeups and scores have consistantly matched my own experience with various games.

Second thing I look for is if the game has a great story or if the single player is engaging in any way....since I'm mainly a single player gamer who leans towards story based games.

Mafia 2, it's at the top of my list of most anticipated games due this year.

Other under the radar games that I'm definitely keeping an eye on are...

Mirror's Edge
Gray Matter
Prototype
Darksiders: Wrath of War
Boom Blox
de Blob

Bots if it has a multiplayer component is another thing that every FPS game should have these days....too few games allow the user to either fill up a game or play against bots.

One of the reasons I enjoyed UT2004 so much when it released, and still do, is because it had among the best bot AI out there. CS: S too.

- An SDK or some form of mod making toolkit.

- Some way to interact with various objects in the environment....even if it's through a simple "use" key.

- An actual physics engine.

- AI that actually lives in the game world rather then just stands there waiting for the player to show up.

- Enemy AI that can present some form of challenge and at least seem realistic....friendly AI that actually assist the player, or at least give the illusion they are assisting the player without getting in the player's way.

- These days, a non-linear environment, or at least the perception the player is dealing with a non-linear environment. In other words, at least some form of freedom with the environment.

- Localized body damage and various AI reactions.....it would seem really ridiculous if you shot an enemy in the foot and they died the same way as if you shot them in the head.

- A secondary ability for almost every weapon in the game, or at least the ones the player will be using the most.

- The ability to issue orders, even if they are simple, to friendly NPCs if there are going to be any with you in the game.

- The ability to look down the Iron sight.

- The player actually having a body and legs that they can see if they look down.

- Weapons that can be customized or at least fitted with items to enhance or alter their ability.

I guess my concern is that, as EA continues to grow, and especially if they bought Take-Two and owned Grand Theft Auto, it might start to make sense for them to abandon their multiplatform strategy. They've said in the past that a 1 console future is ideal for them, and if they had Bioware, Pandemic, Rockstar, EA sports, all of the talent from the 2K teams, the Bioshock IP, and god knows what else, they might decide to launch a console... and that is someting I wouldn't tolerate. I suppose I'm looking at it from a very extreme 'tinfoil hat conspiracy' angle, but I don't want EA to be any bigger than they already are.

rragnaar

EA's bread and butter is in multiplatform publishing. Launching a Console just wouldn't be as cost-effective for them and I doubt it would give them as much profit as they currently recieve from publishing games across many different platforms.

And regardless....that still wouldn't remove competition from the other console manufacturers.

You can buy and own companies, but they can't own people and talent and creative.....EA has learned this lesson in the past.

As I said, I'm no fan of buyouts at all....but I hate when people act like an EA buyout is the worst thing that can happen, then turn around and act like a better alternative would be a buyout from a company like MS, which has proven to be even more of a monopoly and who has poorly handled the direction of previously great franchises, such as Shadowrun, and where a developer like Rare certainly hasn't delivered the same quality under MS as they did under Nintendo.

Personally I'd love to see Sony or Microsoft outbid them. They seem to treat their developers a hell of a lot better than EA does. We don't have yearly installments of Halo, Gears, God of War, or Gran Turismo. EA would destroy the Grand Theft Auto series.rragnaar

I'm not fan of buyouts at all, I prefer development teams and game companies to stay independent and promote competition and better products across a wide range of platforms.

But if forced to choose, I would take EA over MS anyday. The last thing we need is for Take Two's multiplatform development teams to be forced to go 360-only and for them to abandon the developers that don't fit in with that....and worse, for their PC games to suddenly require Vista and GFW Live! and still be horribly optimized regardless.

I don't want to see Take Two get bought out by anyone, but if it did happen I'll take anybody over Microsoft.....at least EA supports games across a wide range of platforms, and at least their PC published games never tries to push Vista and the horrible GFW Live! on people.

Thankfully Take Two rejected EA's offer.....as I hope they reject any future buyout offer from any monopolistic company, whether it be EA or Microsoft.

Definitely Vice City.

Vice City improved on GTA3 in ways that actually mattered to the gameplay and enhanced the experience and made a large number of additions to the series yet still managed to have a focused theme that remained consistant and managed to build throughout the entire game.

Vice City also had the best soundtrack out of any GTA game to date.....the music really captured the decade of the 80's and managed to be varied while still being consistent in theme and energy and really added to a central atmosphere of the game. In addition, the radio personalities in Vice City were the most entertaining out of any game in the series....no matter what radio station you listened to.

Finally....the characters in Vice City were the most interest and best paid homage to crime movies such as Scarface and Carlito's Way.

Second best game in the series would be GTA3, but Vice City definitely take the top spot.

If there is any remake I'd love to see on current generation hardware like PS3, it's the original Silent Hill....keep the main story the same and intact, but maybe add to it, like making Cybil's story a secondary playable scenerio.

In terms of old series I'd like to see brought back with a sequel.....I'd love to see Nintendo bring back Kid Icarus (which there is a rumor they are actually doing it for Wii) and I'd like to see No One Lives Forever 3.