Call of Duty 4- Great first person shooter game. It has a fun single-player campaign, but the real joy is when you get to go online and take everyone else out. C&C3/ Red Alert 3- Not bad games. Like most other RTS's, they definately take some practice to be able to beat the computer on anything higher than easy, and it takes even more practice to beat other people online. However, if you like large scale games, you will have a hard time going back to C&C once you play the following two games... Supreme Commander- A traditional RTS, except bigger. Much, much bigger. The scale on this game is incredible. How can you beat destroying giant robots with other giant robots? The campaign is neat because each mission isn't a normal short little mission. You will have a task that would make up an entire mission on other games. Once you complete the task, the map expands, and you get another task that is normally the equivilant of an entire mission in other games. Once you complete that, you get more map and another task. This is a must buy in my opinion. Sins of a Solar Empire- A RTS, but not a "traditional" one. It is a mix between RTS and 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) games. Set in space, you are fighting large scale battles, and the goal is to colonize planets while pushing back your enemy's borders and protecting your own. This is one big damn game. I recently completed a game that was over 8 hours long. You can play on anything from small 5 planet systems to huge galaxies that have 5+ interconnected systems that each have 20 or more planets. This is also another good must-buy in my book.
Nobody mentioned Bioshock yet?!? World In Conflict is an interresting What If... RTS... For a fun FPS in the style of Doom and Duke Nukem you might try Serious Sam 1 & 2... Inspired by the X-Com games; UFO: Aftermath, Aftershock & Afterlight... Company Of Heroes, a WWII RTS, get the Anthology... And if you never played them Warcraft III and it's expansion...
+1. Especially regarding Deus Ex. Plus, if you can find a copy of it on eBay or someplace, you have to try a little RPG called Planescape: Torment - the only computer RPG adventure set in the AD&D Planescape campaign. I cannot praise this game enough - the story is one of the very best I've ever experienced, and the characters are literally unforgettable. (If you do get hold of it, make sure you patch it using the official and the unofficial patches, the former of which helps treat the infamous slowdown bug, and the latter of which restores discarded and broken story elements to get it as close to its original vision as possible.) If you liked Knights of the Old Republic, you'll find quite a few similarities with this older game.
Even if you're not really into FPS stuff, Steven, you ought to give this one a whirl. You're someone who'd appreciate / be amused by some aspects of DX's story more than most. It's also a hell of a lot of fun, and when you've played it often enough there are some quite decent mods for it out there. Half-Life also rocks. (I really need to get around to HL2 one of these days.)
If you like Civ4 then you might want to try the standalone expansion Civ4: Colonization. It's a remake of the classic Sid Meier's Colonization from the early 90s but in the Civ4 engine, and though it has some issues it is a pretty good update on the original. It is micromanagement heavy tough and geared more towards trading and resource management than conflict. Empire: Total War is pretty good but it still needs a patch or two to fix some AI issues in the campaign mode. Like all Total War games it is geared towards war so there is no intricate diplomacy, but the battles are great fun and the inclusion of gunpowder units helps differentiate this instalment from the previous games in the series. If you want a game with intricate diplomacy you could try Europa Universalis 3, the grand strategy game which allows you to pick almost any nation which existed between the 15th-19th century. There is no way to win the game, it is a political sandbox where you try to craft whatever form of empire you wish to rule. It takes some time to get used to and the battles aren't that great, it is like the antithesis of the Total War series. Galactic Civilizations 2 is good, though you really need the two expansion packs and all the patches to get the full experience. You design and construct your own spaceships and then try to expand your empire across the galaxy. You should play it on the biggest map size available because it is frikkin' huge! C&C3 is good fun, although it is fairly basic; collect Tiberium, build units, smash enemy. Buy sometimes that's exactly what you want from a game, a simple yet challenging experience.
Cool, thanks for the suggestions guys. I have to admit that some of the games listed I have been looking at from time to time. Now, I just have to get my hard drive back from repair. Hey, how about the same deal like we were going to do with B5? You know, you buy me a copy and I'll play it.
Plants vs. Zombies is a game that i am playing way too much of right now. it's a really fun Tower Defense-esque game.
I need to get that as soon as my finances allow. Gettign back to FPS, Half-Life 2 is pretty much obligatory. And Left 4 Dead is a good one to start with if you're at all curious about online multi-player. Oh, and another vote for the two Homeworld games. I remember it was the first game I played after I bought my first dedicated graphics card, and giggling like a schoolgirl at the 3d interior of the motherships docking bay.