So, we get down to it, my favorite genres of games, as of lately I'm a hybrid of FPS and RPG mainly, mostly due to the preponderance of them in the market lately, but I favor those two genres the most.

That being said...

1.) Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC)

There is Halo, there is Duke Nukem, there is Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, you name it, nothing in the genre is better than this game in my opinion. The fast paced perfectly balanced weapons, diverse maps, great team modes, polished graphics (were top of the line upon release) and the buckets of copious gore.

That and the Flak Cannon, the greatest weapon in FPS history.

I generally regard myself as a good, to maybe great FPS player, but there are clearly many more people out there who are better than me at a given game like Halo or CoD 4 or whatever. I can probably hold my own against experts and pros, but won't win... That is not the case in this game. I WILL own you if you play me at this game (assuming my connection isn't crappy... but that's always a possibility).

My friend and I in college would play this game 2 players against like 5 or so on capture the flag and win 90% of the time. We played the first night it came out from 9 at night to 7 in the morning or so.

A damn shame that Unreal Tournament 3 became a shadow of its former glory, especially on the PS3 and 360. Twitch FPSes belong on the PC, there is no question.

Hail to the King! (Sorry Duke...)

2.) Gears of War (Xbox 360)

From the house that Unreal Tournament built (Epic) comes Gears of War. Another extremely high quality shooter... of the 3rd person variety. For about a year this was the undisputed graphical king of the console game world, and even today holds its own against the best. But it also contains extreme gore to satisfy the bloodlust in all of us, and best of all, it is the most tactical shooter I've played in... well ever. Let's just say it didn't invent the cover mechanic but sure as hell perfected it, so much that GTA 4 copied it.

Not only is the gameplay solid, the story is intriguing (but not well fleshed out). But who cares when you have an amazing action game and a cast of characters with diverse personalities. It's like an interactive buddy movie... with blood and gore.

I've beaten this game on Casual, Hardcore and Insane a number of times, by myself and with a friend, and it's never boring, always entertaining, and I am waiting for November to come with the excitement of Christmas morning.

3.) Perfect Dark (Nintendo 64)

I still say this is the greatest split screen deathmatch (vs. bots or otherwise) game on a console. I've played this game with friends for over 5 days of solid play time, something unheard of outside of a huge RPG or MMO or online game. Hell, my brother who didn't even really play a game unless it was a racing game or sports game played it for over 26 hours on his character.

Sniping, using grenade launchers and shotties, slow mo, explosive fun, you name it this game had it. Hell, we had people lining up to play it. The main game wasn't bad either, better than the sequel.

Sorry, but Golden Eye may have started the trend, but this game perfected it in every way and this game just proves that the N64 was a multiplayer system through and through.

4.) Duke Nukem 3D (PC)

This is the game that got me addicted to the FPS genre... not Doom, not Quake (although I owned a group of 5 people guarding the BFG room in Quake 3, but that's another story), but this game.

Violence, Strippers, Aliens and Swearing, what more could a 15 year old ask for at the time?

Among my favorite weapons of the game are the pipe bombs and shrink gun. The pipe bombs were soooo useful, and if deployed en masse, could easily crash my computer which boasted a whopping 120 mhz pentium and I think an unheard of 32 mb ram at the time. Anyways, the game was just as much fun killing aliens as it was blowing up innocents and destructible environments.

And what the hell happened to the same level of level diversity and location difference that appeared in this game but is strangely absent in a lot of games now?

Duke Nukem Forever can't come soon enough.

5.) Halo 3 (Xbox 360)

Why did I do this???

Halo 1 was utterly generic and full of cliched crap and undelivered hype... and home to the single worst stage in any game in history. Yes, the Library. Halo 2 stepped up the level diversity, but didn't add a whole lot to the formula. Halo 3 didn't add a whole lot more to the base formula outside of a few weapons and items (which are quite handy in a battle). And the graphics on a flagship game of the 360 pretty damn bad.

Why did it make my Top 5? Because a bunch of drunk grad students blowing each other up until 3 in the morning is probably somewhere on my top 10 things to do.

I admit, the multiplayer is pretty damn fun and can see the appeal. So much so that I've blown a lot of time playing this with friends since it's release. If nothing else, the multiplayer keeps me coming back.

I didn't say it's the best FPS, I said it's my 5th favorite, nothing more.

That about sums it up.