Here are some mini reviews of the games I played as of late. All games should be available via steam. It's just my bloody experience, so you should read game site's reviews too.
Call of Duty - It's quite an old game, but it's the beginning of the series that led to the real good game CoD4. It is based on WWII and it only targets German people so... you might get tired of seeing that over and over. Technical wise, playing is a comfort and no real bugs, weapons are ok, missions are ok, I guess it's worth a go. The good thing about CoD series is that you don't have to go through all the mission briefing and figure out wtf you are supposed to do on each missions but simply you're deployed in the combat zone suddenly and should be able to figure out what to do easily by looking at the HUD. Nowadays it's included in a warchest package on steam for 40 bucks that includes cod1, cod1 expansion and cod2. Recapturing of some of the scenes in related movies was a nice one. (cod1 had Enemy at the Gates scene and cod2 had private ryan scene)
CoD2 - This is still a few years old, but it has made some good amount of progress from cod1 graphically and playability (now you don't have to keep picking up little 'health packs' that magically heals your bullet wounds) and unless you get shot much in a short period of time, you won't die. Once again, WWII theme and you're targetting Germans only... but gameplay wise, took the right approach and just shined it up from cod1.
CoD4 - Wow, I never wow'ed on a game like this. I loved it. Graphic is just great, gameplay is quite good, story is kinda good. The character movement is simply just too natural, you won't believe how smooth they move and act, they move like real humans do. Voice acting was pretty ace too. And they finally stopped targetting Germans on this one
Bioshock - Game reviews had hell of peer reviews ranging from just simply 10 out of 10 to around at worst 8 out of 10. At first thought I didn't like it being some kind of comic horror type, and I wasn't wrong after playing it for several hours. It has this some kind of old western style mixed in a zombie like infested structures that you navigate through. The systems are kind of fresh and the sound and water artist did a tremendous job at making things look nifty, but just wasn't to my taste hunting zombie stuff around. Otherwise should be a good game. (Removed off steam? can't find it - [edit :
seems like it's gone from some countries only... wtf...])
Prey - This came from some development team I never heard of (humanhead studio or something) but using enhanced DooM3 engine and ok, quite well done imo. The graphic is obviously good using D3 engine (although not the newest engine around but it's still good) and the weapons are all fresh and game play wasn't as annoying as I first thought, and basically it's a good old 'shoot the baddies with all your ammunition' and for that, it was a nice game. If you liked D3, this can be a good complement. (Also seems to be removed off steam..)
Conflict : Denied Ops - Due to me liking these war themed fps games, this was a good one for me too. 2 marines crawling through enemy territories to accomplish missions. You can switch between the 2 characters, 1 being the sniper guy and 1 being the heavy weaponry guy (and god hell this guy sounds annoying...
) but system is pretty good, graphic is cool, nothing looks too annoying and plays out smooth, except in some places things get pretty tight and difficult, so you need to play good in some areas. But was a fun game to go through. I even went second round on this game with super hard difficulty and hell, at one point, things became pure impossible and I quit... but overall gg.
STALKER : Shadow of Chernobyl - This looked like a good game, until I played... too bad I think this has potential though. This is fps game, but it has some role playing game style attached, which is somewhat fresh when all fps has linear path with monster/zombie/terrorist popping out from all angle 5 at a time. You ask for mission, carry it out, and earn money and go onto next. It had some technical glitches and character's head waves too much while walking imo, and it gets pretty darn difficult at some point and... Some people say it's a good game, so you might as well find it a gg too. I just hope the next series is a better one, which should come out in March.
Painkiller : Gold edition - Painkiller was a pretty old game but at the time it was released it had cool graphic and had some freshness in it with unique weapons with creative monsters. But when I just played, map looked kinda dull, but the boss characters had their uniqueness, and it's a serious 'DooM' style, 'shoot 'em all up' game and you are confronted by dozens and dozens of monsters and you just blow them all up
May be fun to go through for a no brain shooting. (Though you shoot brains up...)
Hitman : Silent Assassin - Some old game, which had good score and was just $10. But I guess $10 is $10... if this was about year 2k2, maybe it worked, but graphic is quite below average for nowadays (but can't blame for that), and game was a bit cheap imo. But I guess it's somewhat a gg if you play it through.
Portal - It's a all new puzzle in half life universe. If you haven't played and like some puzzling experience, go grab it. If you want to know what it's about, here's a free flash version (obviously content is totally different) some guy made out of the game (pretty impressive actually).
http://armorgames.com/play/107/portal-the-flash-version (This is also part of Orange box, which is a bit more reasonable than buying this standalone)
Dreamfall : The longest journey : This is not an fps game, but story driven novel style game where you get to talk to people, solve problems and puzzles and move onto next scenery. The graphic is quite nice and creative sceneries, voice acting is ok, and story is somewhat ok (though i haven't got to the end), but if you're tired of seeing bullets and blood and ships blowing up, I guess this can give a good rest out of those
Frontlines : Fuel of war : Just played this for some hours and it's a fps game with war theme in the near future and I think the graphic is quite good (obviously that's coz it's released in the last few days on pc.) but the weapons are a not as realistic as CoD series, but it may be their intention. It has good amount of unique weaponry (mini flying choppers
that you can remote control) and the game play is a bit like capturing control points instead of accomplishing certain missions like in CoD. So, it may be more geared toward multiplayer where you get to dominate capture points and single player doesn't have much storyline but you keep moving with all the arsenals and capture places. Looked ok, but was a bit expensive at $50 for me.