Half-Life
Return To Castle Wolfenstein
Undying
Deus Ex 1

and maybe:

System Shock 2 if you like ass-ugly graphics but a good game.
Morrowind if you have no life to spare.

don't get:

Any lame and tedious real-life / WW2 recreation online game *yawn*.

Any vastly overrated outdated pointless shooter.

Any crappy console conversion. 

get

Half-Life
System Shock 2
Max Payne 1 + 2
Deus Ex (1)
Far Cry
PainKiller (out soon)

RTCW is over rated, nice maps, crap gameplay.
soldier of fortune blows, both of them.
I finished project IGI 1, although being a realistic shooter I can draw many comparisons to Far Cry. You ahve to get from A to B, but how you go about this is completely up to you, graphics a bit dated now though.
Blood 2 loller, pants. Get Blood 1! 

...I'll disagree with Frib here, and say BF1942 is pure heroin if you play it on a lan with a bunch of mates. Single player is wank, and online multiplayer is just counterstrike with plane camping. 

I liked and recommend :

HL and opposing force
rtcw for the maps
max payne
MOH:AA for some cool levels/sequences
NOLF 1 & 2 are great, well worth getting
SOF1 is reasonably fun but nothing original, get it only if its cheap
Undying

I dont recommend :

SOF2 cos it sucks.

Also suggest :

ALice
Rune
Elite Force 2 (kickass maps, and very well poslihed.)
AvP 2 for the marine misions
Unreal
Wheel of TIme 

DKT! 

If you buy Breakthrough, i get money. (maybe) 

....kicks serious ass. Gameplay is good (even though there are really only two character types that can win the game easily) and it's all about the atmosphere. 

Get:

Half-Life
Max Payne (and 2)
NOLF 1&2
Undying
System Shock 2
Deus Ex 1 (and possibly 2)

Skip:

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (IMO, truly nothing special. If you want average, banal games, there are lots of others to get.)
Blood 2

I haven't played:

The rest

Also get:

Enclave (for great levels and art)
GTA3 and/or Vice City
Serious Sam (assuming you find it for < $20)

Other possible candidates:

Alice (fun and cool for a while, but gameplay has little depth and the last few levels are frustrating.)
FAKK2
Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project (if you think side scrollers are cool, and you find it for < $20.) 

For mods:

Half-Quake (for Half-Life. Vondur says it's pretty good.)
System Shock 2: Rebirth (for System Shock 2, obviously. Not really a mod, but it has some really cool high-res models that replace the originals. Unfortunately, the pack is not complete and the guy working on it apparently has gone pro.)
I wish I could recommend mods for Alice, but they never released an SDK for it. ;(

Also, I'm sure nitin can recommend some top-quality Half-Life mods. 

... anyone who tested a demo of Doom3 ??? It seems to be really a good FPS, related to screenshots and trailers I've seen on http://www.doom3.com 

i really loved call of duty SP, esp. the russian missions. nothing too ground-breaking, but i really enjoyed the fact that it tries to bring you in as one soldier in a large front instead of the rambo-esque lone soldier against everything. I finally got cable internet last week and CoD being the only game I've installed/played since i reformatted recently, i played a little MP. the multiplayer is a total campfest, although i did have a few fun games of team dm. i'd still recommend it if you're not tired of WW2-era and like SP.

then again, i fall down alot. 

I took another glance at Doom3.com; the screenies are showing an exceptional level of polish now -- wow 

No, no-one's heard of Doom3.

Jeez, lame troll but kinda funny nevertheless. 

can't play ball, can't play ball... 

System Shock 2 is well worth seeking out (I got mine for NZ$5 from Cash Converters.) Sure, the models look poor, but the story and atmosphere are incredible. Known bugs: Some regions of the ship seem to spawn more monsters than elsewhere (e.g. the corridor on level 5 leading to the tram - there always seem to be two arachnids, one assassin, a midwife and kamikaze protocol droid hanging around. Not fun when you need a recharge.)

Half Life: There's a "Game of the Year" edition out with OpForce, CounterStrike and Team Fortress bundled with it. Try getting Poke646 as well if you're going with HL, it's well worth the download. 

That Wrath, what a kidder 

if the low quality models mean that much to you, there's an ongoing project to make hires versions of all ingame models... it's been inactive for a while now, and not all monsters are replaced, but i definatly recommend it if you pick it up.
search for "system shock rebirth"... 

we kicked their asses in the second half! 

I only support England if they're doing well. I umm... can't remember when that last was. 

I'm with wrath on this one. Not that I care anyway (I loathe most sports). 

tsk tsk, a fair weather friend . . . where will you be if Nazis (this time, Undead Nazis!) start knocking on their door?

But I understand the sentiment -- like in the Final Four, which ever team from my state gets there, even though I'm a Chapel Hill Alum, gets my support.

NCState was robbed! 

Chapel Hill alumnus? Cool. I was listening to the radio today and I found it quite amusing to hear all the Chapel Hillians and UNC folks say they were going to cheer for Georgia Tech instead of Duke, just because of the intense rivalry between UNC and Duke. Apparently you're not like that, though, so I can't laugh at you. 

Well, I have already played: Half-Life 1, Soldier of Fortune 1, Max Payne (on PS2), Unreal (but didn't have a chance to get too far, probably worth revisiting)...

thanks for all the insight, Call of Duty seems like a sure bet. 

... and LOL half hour later when I thought about it again.

I needed that.

http://www.spawnpoint.org/wads/scampie_test.txt 

3 days ago I got a phonecall from a friend of my older brother's who works in Sunnyvale, TX as a dental assistant. He went to high school with my brother and he hadn't seen him in some time, but they were great friends in HS.

My brother wasn't home so I told him he'd call him back, and that it was good to hear from him. We talked briefly since I had met him a few times, and I asked him if Sunnyvale was near Dallas. He said not really, and that it was just a small town a few miles east of Mesquite, which was the biggest city nearby. The name struck a chord, and I realized it was where id has their headquarters.

So I said, "Hey have you ever heard of id software? They made Doom, Quake, etc."

He said it was funny I should say that because he was at a bar the other night in Mesquite meeting a woman he met in a personal ad who was from there. Apparently he had an issue with a guy who was trying to talk to this woman at the bar, he was interested in her so he didn't wanna let it go so easy.

Things eventually settled down between them, and the other guy felt bad so he wanted to buy him a drink for being a good sport. They got to talking and he told me it was "Christian from id."

I thought that was pretty cool, so I asked him if they talked about Doom 3.

My brother's friend isn't really into PC gaming too much, but he had played the original Doom a few times, so they talked about that a little bit. He said Christian told him that they were coming out with the latest installment of the Doom series.

My brother's friend out of politeness said he would check it out when he was heading to Wal-Mart the next day to pick up some other stuff. Christian then told him, that it wasn't out yet, but would be released in "about a year, year and a half."

Stunned, I said, "are you sure that's what he said, because I've been following the game a bit, and it was supposed to be out soon"

He said he was almost 99 per cent sure that that's what he said.

We talked for a minute or two more, and then I hung up.

I had totally forgotten about it until now, and I still can't believe it, but I can't see any reason why my brother's friend would lie.

=(