Rainbow Six Vegas (PC)

Another in the first person shooter series. Again the same storyline about going up against criminals and terrorists. I like the interface updates like the ability to look from behind a wall, the ability to scan behind a door and have teammates attack from one side while you go in from the other.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Updated for modern days with battles in the Middle East and Russia, it has very similar gameplay to the old WWII Call of Duty games. I guess Activision was right that perhaps WWII FPS genre was getting a little tired. But somehow I don't feel as excited playing COD4 as previous games. It's as if the 'Good War' made good and evil clear cut and made killing enemy soldiers in war more acceptable -- of course, there's just no real reasoning with why playing a war simulation is fun at all, but somehow it still is. The graphics are excellent, and the game continues the usual seamless cutscene to gameplay segues. There is a darkly hilarious part the game where it makes a joke of air-to-ground missile induced death and destruction -- from C-130 aircraft. There's a running commentary of detached killing: "there's some combatants exiting that building, engage them", "ka-boom", "you got 'em", "you're free to engage all those", "ka-boom", "wow! this will make quite a hilight reel".

Crysis

I just tried the 1.9GB demo which took hours to download over my slow broadband. The North Koreans decide to take over Islands down by the Phillipines? How do they supply their troops, via Star Trek transporter!? It's first person shooter. The gameplay is easy and intuitive -- except the damn crouch button is 'Z' instead of the Call of Duty 'C' (but this can be customized anyway). The graphics are pretty amazing, so who cares that the story makes no sense?