Here's a pointlessly subjective question for you. I'm home in NZ at the moment and there are actually shops selling PC games, not just console ones, as in Japan.
Aside from RoF I haven't played a game in years (I did try Total War again but put it away out of fear of listing everything I hold dear to game addiction)so I'm very out of date.
In the games shop I saw a few titles which caught my eye and appealed to me. They've all been well-reviewed and all have different good points, so I was wondering if your personal experience of them has thrown up any special gems worth sharing. Which would you say is a 'must play'for whatever reason?

Batman Arkham Asylum
Batman Arkham City
Company of Heroes 2
Call of Duty 3?4?both?
Mass Effect 2?3?
Assassin's Creed
Men of War
Syndicate
X:Com
(Total War latest but I won't allow myself to)
Bioshock latest one
Something based on a Russian novel, survival in a post-apocalytic world, forget the name but I'd heard of bit and it looked interesting

I highly recommend the Mass Effect games if you have the slightest interest in epic sci fi opera. It's very reminiscent of Babylon 5.

Do you mean "Stalker", based on "Roadside Picnic" by Boris and Arkadi Strugatzki? "Call of Pripyat" and "Shadow of Chernobyl" were quite good.

I think the one in the shop is no3. I've read there's at least some effort in it to catch you up on what went before.

Hi Archer, sorry, not Stalker but something far more recent. The name utterly eludes me at the moment, sorry.

Or it could be Metro: First Light.

Oops, forgot "Metro 2033" completely, although I enjoyed the game (and both novels by Dmitri Gluchowski) very much. Haven't tried "Last Light" yet.

Im a fan of Men of War. Really like how you ca npull down to the tight third person view and the control and view mechanics. Line of sight means somthing too.

Metro! That's the one! So, is it any good?

Did you find MoW to be a good mix of fun and reasonable realism? I've never played that kind of game but it looks a blast, as long as the mission types and tactics needed are fairly real. I don't mean, SimHQ rivet counter real, but you know what I mean...

I really enjoyed Metro 2033. Great atmosphere and story but the difficulty could be frustrating at times. The ammo is very scarce so make every shot count.

The 2 batman games are a total blast!
But you definitely need a good game pad to enjoy it best.
If you like the character, then setting and acting are SO GOOD that you'll be left wanting for more!

In complete truth I think the selection of games you wrote is a complete must have except Syndicate which is a poor effort of squeeze money out of the memory of the first one.

Care must be taken with the two Call of duty as the game play is very run&gun and basically out of a Michael Bay wet dream. I totally adore the �ber-over the line action-packed-impossible-mission genre. Definitely not tactical nor ponderous. Go and kill them all.

About the Call of duty games... I meant the Single player campaign. I lack the reflex to compete multi player...

Agreed. Very fun, incredibly well made and really good looking game. Just about any screenshot looks like it should be in a magazine or something. Kick back with a controller and have fun.
Mass Effect is best played 1,2,3...IMO ME1 was the best, but they're all really good. Very cinematic. You create a character in any game, but you can import him/her to the next game. So you can create a character in ME1 and play them through ME3, with your decisions in the previous game(s) having an impact in subsequent games. You can pick up and play any one of them, but they do play out a continuous story.

For COD single player, COD 2 (WWII) was really good and COD 4 (modern) was good. Since then they just haven't done much for me.

Bioshock 1 is a must-play, but not for challenging game play. It's for the world they created and the story to go with it. As a shooter it's basic. Bioshock 2 was done by a different group and not as good. The new one is supposed to be another must-play, but I'm waiting on the price to drop.

I got really bored with the Metro games and they are so badly optimised it's a joke. The first one still runs at lower than it should FPS.

I second the Bioshock recommendation. It's one of the best first person shooters I've ever played.

Thanks a lot guys. They all looked worth a look so your comments have been very helpful.

Third vote for the original Bioshock. Probably the best game I've ever played on so many levels!

I'm surprised that Bioshock Inifinite doesn't come close to the accomplishments of the first one, though I can see it's more designed for mass appeal.

I don't know the hard numbers but I'm sure the development costs for Infinite were a lot more compared to the original Bioshock. Higher budget usually entails making the game appeal to a broader market in order to have a better chance of making a profit.

Plus, Bioshock has the bee swarm attack. I forget what they call it, but that's my favorite weapon of all time, just to watch it work.