Golden Compass

Much has been written about the movie that released based on the first book of the series (Golden Compass). With an all star cast and excellent special effects the movie did look like a hit but it failed miserably at the box office.
The series starts of in a parallel universe where humans have daemons as their animal companions somewhat analogous to the concept of souls. The first book is nicely paced and the story of a young girl trying to rescue her friend is quite engaging. However from the primarily adventurous journey in the first book the sequels turn increasingly towards theology and the second and third books feel tacked on to complete a trilogy and in the process encash upon the success of the first book.
The second book is based on a totally different alternate universe with only the protagonist Lyra being the common thread. The plot takes a turn for the worse and Lyra befriends a boy after they escape. The story then becomes about the Magisterium trying to prevent Lyra from committing the original sin.
Go figure! I've never seen such an abrupt plot twist (or rather U-turn) in any series. It totally threw me off, for a moment there I thought I'd started reading another series. Nevertheless I laboured on to finish the series somehow only to be assaulted by the hotchpotch climax at the end.
I would still recommend the first book to fans of alternate reality/ universe sub-genre but proceed at your own risk after that.

Gears of War

I've played quite a bit of the game on the 360 and I was waiting to pick up the PC version, finally managed to buy it at a local store last month. The game looks quite good and I liked the cover mechanism employed during combat. The missions are very good and the skirmishes are staged evenly with the area always providing lots of cover. Even though I prefer more realistic shooters (i.e. no monsters/ aliens) I really liked this game. The story does progress nicely through the missions and provides a good backdrop for the game and its sequels.
The game requires a higher spec'd PC than Half Life 2 but its still easier on the system than Crysis without managing to look too bad. I would recommend this game to any first person shooter fan. Oh and please tell me how to use the chainsaw effectively because somehow I can't get the hang of it.

Crysis

Got this game along in November last year too. This was the reason why I upgraded my PC and as it turned out I could barely play this game in DX9 with high graphic detail. I was even more unhappy when Nvidia launched the 8800GT at a lower price compared to my 8800GTS and it performed much better.
The game looks absolutely gorgeous, hands down its the best looking game bar none. The trouble is that most gaming PCs can either run it with all the eye candy turned on or run it with playable frame rates and the eye candy turned down.
I didn't think that the nano suit concept would be very useful and started playing the game as any other FPS game. Pretty soon though the game does require you to use the cloaking ability or fight a huge amount of enemy troops, which isn't easy even on the easy setting (Ok, so I admit that I play games on the easy setting).
The game play though lacks a certain something, it isn't nearly as fun as it should be and the story falls flat most of the time. For all the open sandbox game play promised by the game I felt that most missions were designed to force the player to use one of the nano suit's abilities and that takes away a lot from the fun factor.
This is only recommended to people wanting to benchmark their gaming PCs.

Call of Duty 4

Got this game in November last year but been busy at work so all my free time was pretty much spent in playing this game (and others) .
I had my doubts about the series moving away from World War 2 to a modern setting, in fact I was really disappointed with this move since I really liked the World War 2 games. I decided to buy the game after reading in a review that the game had a single player campaign. The gaming press was so smitten with the multi player component of this game that the single player campaign wasn't even mentioned in the previews.
The game is fantastic, the missions are very well crafted and move along at a very good pace. The variety of weapons is very good and the game also provides a good mix of stealth and 'Rambo' style missions. Its definitely another winner from the developers at Infinity Ward and highly recommended to first person shooter fans.