Question : Best New Games?

I'd like some opinions on any new PC games, either just released or soon to be released that might be a bit hit.

I'm looking for mainly FPS (1st person shooters), action, MMORPGs, RPGs, or strategey games.

to make it easier to read, try to format it something like:

Genre -
Title -
why you think it ROCKS!!! -

I used to work retail and kept up to date with the latest releases but now that I have left that job (thank God!) and I kinda feel out of the loop.  Any opinions will be appreciated.  Full points will be awarded to anyone that can give me a date when Halo2 will be out for PC :)  

Answer : Best New Games?

Being a regular gamer, i have recently been impressed with:

Genre: FPS/ Driving
Title: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Rocks because: Improves upon the previous version (Vice City) - better graphics, ALOT more missions, huge map, humour...
You can now eat, exercise, change your clothes, get your hair cut, get a tattoo, perform burglaries, enter car races, take over rival gang territory - all this from my experience of the game so far(and i've only completed less than a quarterof the game so far!)
Downside: Unfortunately this game features ALOT of swearing - i mean every other word is a swear word...

Genre: MMORPG
Title: World of Warcraft
Rocks because: Biggest online game ever - and its been out less than a year! Excellent graphics, wide range of characters and classes to chose from, 1000's of missions to complete, optional PVP, 1000's of items of varied quality and rarity, character professions (such as mining, leatherwork, blacksmithing, alchemy), Auction house system (the ability to sell items you find/create or you can bid on other people's auctions), several multi-player dungeons (known as instances) which encourages players to join together to complete missions, Battle Grounds (Horde vs Alliance Capture the Flag), regular updates, plus loads more!

I have been playing WoW for almost 6 months now and it is easily the best game i have ever played (and believe me, i have played alot!). You start off choosing your character - with 8 character types to chose from including: Dwarf, Human, Undead, Orc, Troll and Night Elf) and then chose your character classe (Rogue, Hunter, Warrior, Paladin, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Priest, Druid) - each with Unique spells, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Each character has skills which are specific to them, and from level 10 upto level 60 you get a talent point for every level which you can invest into 3 talent trees which improve your skills in different ways (like increasing damage of a skill, decreasing the casting time of a spell, or even giving you an additional skill which you would otherwise be unable to get).

You then enter the game as your chosen character at level 1. You are given a few 'tutorial' missions to do, which should quite quickly get you up to level 10 - where you get your first class specific skill (such as pet taming for Hunter, better demon summoning for Warlock, shapeshifting form for Druid, etc). You are quite often given a mission to deliver an item/message to someone in the next area - hence allowing you to do more quests and to fight higher level monsters. However, you do not have to stay in your own classes area (for example if you start as a dwarf you can go and do quests in the Night Elf area) or you can just concentrate on gaining money (either from your chosen profession or by killing enemys).

At level 40, you can get a mount to ride to increase your movement speed - some classes have to pay the 90 gold to get theirs, whereas the Paladin and Warlock both get free mounts - the mount depending on your chosen race (night elf can ride tigers, humans get horses, dwarfs get rams, trolls get raptors, etc).

At level 60 (the highest level you can get currently), you get the chance to enter high-level dungeons, where you can get rare and extremely power items for killing certain boss-enemies, the only draw back being that if another person of the same class is in your group then they could get the item instead of you (based on a 1-100 dice rolling system with highest roll winning).

The best part of the game in my opinion, is the other people who play it. Depending on what server you join, there can be 1000's of people playing, and you quite often find yourself teaming up with people to complete hard missions - and you quite often find that they may whisper you ingame asking if you want to go to dungeons with them and their group.

The graphics are excellent: - characters look and move realistically, you can make them dance (each race does a different dance - lol @ night elf Michael Jackson dance!). The Dwarfen city of Ironforge is visually stunning, the place is huge, with lava pouring down from the ceiling into a large vat which you can walk round.

Downside: A monthly subscription is required, but if you take out the 6 month subscription it drops the price by quite alot (£8 or roughly $15) per month. Every once in while you may experience lag - but this is normally limited to the main cities where 100's of people are at once.