Well, it all depends on what your preferences are and your time frame. Typically, if you want excellent single-player games, you might have to dig around in the past a bit. Adventure, puzzle, and strategy games tend to promise a lot of hours. If you have access to some old DOS-based operating systems or DOSBox, you've opened up a huge library...if you can find any of the games. Personally, I stand by these games: Fallout (the original - I'm a purist) PlaneScape: Torment Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura (has its share of bugs and bad programming, but it's quite an extensive game, and worth checking out if you can get it for cheap) The Longest Journey (and its sequel, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, which isn't quite as good, but still worth playing) StarCraft (a most excellent campaign with outstanding voice acting...I doubt you haven't heard of this one) Age of Empires II Civilization IV (IMO, the most balanced game in the series) Alpha Centauri Diablo II The Rainbow Six series (up until R6: Raven Shield) Heroes of Might & Magic III Europa Universalis III (kind of a break from its predecessors, but my favorite) Fallout Tactics Company of Heroes (a so-so campaign, but good if you're interested in playing against the A.I.) The Baldur's Gate series The Command & Conquer series (multiplayer on C&C is nothing special, so that issue is pretty much settled) The Half-Life series The Call of Duty series (intense, but ultimately, you could probably beat every single CoD on the PC in a matter of a day or two) Galactic Civilizations II The Brothers in Arms series The Doom series Most anything by Maxis (i.e. SimCity, The Sims, SimFarm, SimAnt, etc.) The Hitman series The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher's Bay (excellent use of a movie property, which is rare; the only problem is that it's way too short) The King's Quest series (particularly King's Quest VI) Final Fantasy VII (a little different from the PS version, but pretty much just as good) S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (buggy in some parts, but think post-apocalyptic Oblivion; the mods available can turn this game into something completely different - and much better) And plenty of others... As for previous comments, World in Conflict's single-player was an abysmal disappointment for me. I managed to clear the campaign on Hard difficulty with all the secondary objective awards in one sitting...that is, within the same day, in a matter of hours. Its real strength lies in its multiplayer, which pretty much disqualifies it.
I would have to say that I lean toward Half-Life 2, ESPECIALLY in the texture department. I will say that, despite that Doom 3 was incredibly dark throughout most of the game, the lighting effects were and are still really damn good-looking.
I would have to say that some of my favorite video game characters would be April Ryan, Sam Fisher, and Solid Snake - I like well developed characters. There are some video game characters that I would put on the list, like Link, Gordon Freeman, or the Vault Dweller, but they really don't have any personalities to speak of, so I decided to leave them off. Edit: For that matter, I add The Boss and Gray Fox (as appearing in Metal Gear Solid), and perhaps Admiral Gerard DuGalle as well.
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