Although, it’s debatable. I think the Hitman series is worthy of honorable mention. It’s for the Quentin Tarantino and Dan Brown in all of us.
I highly recommend Painkiller if you just want to mow down enemies.
Red Faction is also great and probably only about $5 nowadays. Fully destructable environments (Don’t want to find the key to a door? Blow up the door frame with a rocket!). Also had a pretty good story line.
The end combat was far too easy: just circle-strafe the guy.
Another shout out for Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2. For all of me they’re the best FPS out there. Plus they did a great job of building the atmosphere of the game as well. And there’s a couple of jaw-dropping moments that almost had me applauding.
Wow. After** years **of being casually interested in this game (mostly for the location) seeing the youtube videos have made me completely lose interest in it. The audio is terrible, the gunplay is clinical and simplistic, the physics seem laughable (giant crates rolling over if you shoot them? HA!), character taking an extreme amount of bullets, the rat things. Yeah. Did the framerate look choppy too?
Not sure what I was expecting but it seems like HL2 + F.E.A.R. + Far Cry. The graphics are amazing but it will remain to be seen if they will even ship a product. So…
I like playing Project Reality, a reality mod for Battlefied 2, but the OP said he wasn’t into online play.
I agree. I’m not much of one for FPSes (I’ve never managed to get all the techniques down), though of course I played Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. (Also Dark Forces, Unreal Tournament, and Duke Nukem 3D.) However, I did play Ghost Recon with some friends over the network in college. Not that I was very good at it but I liked it more than the strafe-jump-shoot-twitch-twitch-twitch of a lot of FPSes out there. There’s a reason one of my favorite levels in any FPS is “Facing Worlds” in Unreal Tournament.
I always loved sniping some poor SOB’s head off while they where near the top of the oposing tower. If you did it jusdt right you could watch their head tumble down the side of the tower. Good stuff man.
Oh and the U4e mods for UT where awesome! its funny to watch 20 guys run like hell from a little doll that says “Mama” And who doesn’t want to fight with a lightsaber, or booby trap a hallway with sticky granades.
Check this review on planet unreal.
And the UT2004 mod should be here
Again, I’m going way back on this one, but I really liked Blood II: The Chosen. Gotta love an FPS that lets you use a Tesla Cannon, a 1920’s style Death Ray, a Voodoo Doll, a Singularity Generator, and a Phantasm Orb as weapons. There was even life leaching eldritch fire: Bonus!
Personally I care way more about the environment of a game. I’m so sick of water treatment plants, underground steam tunnels, and office buildings - I want full outdoor environments and day and night cycles. I’m also sick of alien spaceships (PREY, Doom 3 and part of the upcoming Crysis) because it’s so easy to make up tubes-and-switches-and-random-machinery for alien environments. I’m much more impressed with real-life environments done well. So I’m willing to forgive some of the other possible problems with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. if it at least gives me what I want in that department.
Have you tried Undying? It might be different enough to be refreshing to you.
The Call of Duty games are your best bet, given that you seem to like the wargame variants.
It’s the best FPS I’ve ever played.
Thanks again.
So many great suggestions (I checked the reviews for many of them).
Looks like I’ll go for one or two of:
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Soldier of Fortune (or maybe SoF-II if the original isn’t available)
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Half-Life 2
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Unreal Tournament (2004)
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Call of Duty (or maybe CoD 2 if the first isn’t available)
Any last minute advice? Remember, I’m not into multiplayer or internet play. Thanks.
I have an original Soldier of Fortune disc, if you’d like it I’ll send it to you. PM me.
PMing is disabled on this board, you’d do better to put your e-mail on your profile.
I swear by Alien Vs Predator; it´s the most chilling thing I´ve played.
When it´s late at night, everything is quiet in your room and you go down a dark corridor with your radar thingy going blip-blip-blip and out of nowhere an ass-ugly alien jumps at you a-screeching and a-clawing… I developed a good leg musculature from all of those jumps in my chair!
No, seriously; it may be a bit old but it´s a great game. You get to play on three different sides (human, alien and predator) each one with it´s own set of goodies; the colonial marines have some awesome armament, the predators with their vision modes, plasma weapons (the plasma pistol actually sucks royally) and the awesome alien “wall walk”, man does that requieres some spatial awareness! And of course the head bite, oh goodie, so satisfying; almost as much as the crunchy sound of an alien head when you nail it with your pulse rifle…
I have to install that game again! 
I have to say that Return to Castle Wolfenstein was the most scary, atmospheric FPS I’ve ever played. (Second place would be AvP, but I find the enviroments tend to lose a bit of their creepy “edge” if you’re staring at them through night-vision equipment most of the time. Still pretty good, though.)
You’ve probably already made your decision by now, but if you decide to get Half-Life 2 I’d get the Steam version (download it - never leave your house!) I think Call of Duty 2 is also available on Steam now.
Two games and never leave your house!
I enjoyed both games and have replayed both in their entirety.
I have to give another shout-out to Far Cry. I hated the Trigens as well but was constantly amused by the mercenary talk. “Hey, you in the shirt!”
My roommate in college had that game. He was playing it one night with the sound somewhat too high, as I was trying to get to sleep. I was almost asleep when there was this awful sound that started me wide awake and scared the crap out of me. I don’t remember what I did to him for that.
Thanks so much! Please check your e-mail.
I love Half-Life and looking through the on line downloads. I’ve played Half-life, counterstrike and Blue Shift. Will I have fun with Half-Life 1: Source? I probably haven’t played Half life for 3 years, so probably an old episode is cool but double checking here.
It’s only $9.99 on line. I’m just trying to kill a couple days over the holiday and not have Half-life take over every spare minute for the next month if I buy one of the super all-in-one compliations.
I’ve also got a doggy machine.