Fallout 3

Future's so dark, I gotta wear a Haz-Mat suit. Worth: $60
based on 360 retail

No really, it's good radiation.

This sprawling, radioactive sandbox RPG is the most dualistic game I've ever played. It's huge, but you know it's just a small portion of the actual world affected by the story. There's a palpable sense of scarcity, yet you can always find more ammo. It's gorgeously rendered, but bleakly monotonous.

It's also super-gory. Heads, arms, legs, (and sometimes all of these) come flying off at least half of your victims. It's so detailed that you can actually see your enemies' eyeballs burst out of their sockets and land on the ground, where they remain for your gruesome inspection.

The world is spectacularly well realized, but this accuracy to post-apocalyptia is also a turn-off to the GamerGal. As she puts it, "You go from one desolate shithole, turn a corner, and surprise! Another desolate shithole!" While the monchromatic and uniformly forlorn game-world is pretty depressing, it's also fascinating, and jammed with things to see, do, and of course, blast into limbless gore-splattered torsos.

I loved Bethesda's earlier RPGs (Morrowind and Oblivion) and I love Fallout 3 also. If you like the idea of a big RPG / FPS / 3rdPS / sandbox mix (and I'll bet you do) than you may also enjoy devoting an entire month of late nights to playing this game. This may be the best game of 2008, which has been an excellent year. I give it my highest recommendation.

PROS: Big, fun world. Well-written characters and stories. Excellent weapons and armor. Good mini-games for locks/hacking.
CONS: Very short main quest. Leveling up stops very early at 20. Main quest has unsatisfying finale.

(Reading my CONS make me realize that I'm looking for more of a good thing.)