Upcoming and promising first-person shooters

Although they are still months away, I am already tingling with anticipation. Who wouldn't be? I speak of course of:

• Crysis (jump to Wikipedia article)


• UT3 (jump to Wikipedia article)


• Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (jump to Wikipedia article)

There are, of course, other FPS' that I am very interested to play, such as Portal (jump to Wikipedia article) and Bioshock (jump to Wikipedia article), but these three top the list.
Why Crysis?
What's not to like about Crysis? Built on the magnificent CryEngine2, this beast will certainly show off a lot of new features, including advanced physics (realistic object destruction (including vegetation, terrain, vehicle and rope physics) and particle simulation), realistic 3D ocean technology, advanced lighting (time of day, real time ambient maps, dynamic soft shadows, lightbeams), general rendering improvements (long range view distance, motion blur, depth of field), advanced texture maps (parallax occlusion), as well as character animation improvements (facial animation, parametric skeletal animation system, procedual motion warping). So what's not to like? Probably all the cutting edge hardware you'll need to buy in order to play this game.
Why UT3?
There's no denying it: UT3 will be the next generation of multi-player action. New game types, more maps, and better graphics equals ultimate and unreal fun, especially with other human opponents. That's not to say that playing by yourself won't be much fun - an actual storyline ensures the single-player mode will also be lots of fun (unlike the tournament/ladder system in UT2004), and advanced bot AI ensures that, apart from being able to match with an equally-skilled opponent, you can also communicate via voice to any bots in your team. Yes, you heard me - you can actually give orders to those bots using a more complex and natural voice command model (that is, instead of saying something like "Alpha Defend" in UT2004, you'll be able to say "Defend this room, Malcolm" in UT3. Now that alone will be a lot of fun.
Why Half-Life 2: Episode 2?
To continue the saga. I have been hooked on the Half-Life series since its inital release, and will be curious to play out the captivating plot.
Well, as the release dates for each of these games get closer, my anticipation grows higher... Let the fragging begin...