Half Life 2, o the pain and joy.

Half-Life 2 is a great game with two fallbacks. The first one is the fact that the story ends where it did. I can't say much more on it's ending without giving it away. Just know that this laid-back gamer was extremely mad that the story came to an abrupt end.

The second problem with Half-Life 2 is Counter-Strike: Source. Counter-Strike is a very popular in-house modification to the original Half-Life. So when it came time to create the multiplayer aspect of the game the developers decided to upgrade Counter-Strike and add that as their multiplayer facet of the game. If this was just a straight port of the original it would have been an asset to the game, but instead of just porting the mod they started reworking some of the finer points of the game. Counter-Strike: Source looks like Counter-Strike but does not feel like Counter-Strike. Inevitably it is just a mire shadow of the original instead of a upgrade.

All in all the single-player game is awesome. The story is in-depth and well-written. The graphics are beautiful and stand out even on lower-end gaming rigs. The clever use of level design and special effects are aweing. Even with the other two mentioned shortcomings this is the best FPS to date.