I found CoD4 engaging, but I find it hard to rave about it in the same vein that most people on this here forum seem to. The story is by no means great and some of the characters anger me, however the SAS missions can be extremely fun as can some of the American missions (assuming you play without sound to drown out that terrible "rap" music).
Gears of War surprised me a lot, I enjoy the story and ive got to say that when it wasn't deleting my saved games it deserved most of the hype it got on the 360. Like CoD4, its nowhere near a gaming messiah but its still a fantastic play and I must say I feel that the third person perspective really works.
As for Crysis, seeing as there is very little story in the first installment of the trilogy I cannot rave about it, The suit however can be extremely fun to mess with. The problem I have is that I could play HL2 + Episodes which have the fun dynamic and a story that even at the end of HL2 gives some closure.
The Witchers been talked about here and although I agree that it is a good game, its nowhere near GOTY imo. The combat system isn't great, a lot lazier than Oblivions. I often found that using a silver sword in the fast style would take down even the big baddies meaning that all I was doing was pointing and clicking most of the time. The story is also somewhat dire and I stopped caring about most of the characters, especially when the two main women were turned into a boning card game race. Also no STD's, no consequences to those actions. For a game im slating here though, it is a fun experience with gorgeous environments.
Stalker passes the 6 month criteria but its a good game. The story isn't fantastic and a lot of small features that could have made the game great are missing. You may as well wait for Clear Sky.
Ill end on Bioshock which quite frankly I thought was fantastic. I do agree that a lot of it could have been handled better and on the whole the game would have benefited from not being dumbed down (thankyou console kids). The story is better than most out there, and the way some of the twists are revealed just defies awesomeness.
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