Also, just curious - you have Halo in your other list. Mind elaborating on why you think that deserves any title?
I'll start by addressing the elephant in the room: much like Half-Life, Halo caused a wave of mostly shitty imitators, who took some its concepts but without an understanding of what made them work. So from 2002 onwards you'll see a ton of bland "Halo-killer" games with 2 weapon limit, regenerating health and mandatory vehicle sections that are garbage.
However, Halo is a well-designed game that makes good use of those mechanics, and other mechanics like having a dedicated grenade button (perhaps not the first FPS with a grenade button, but an early adopter, and grenades are an important part of the weapon sandbox). The enemies are varied (this is not a shovelware FPS where all enemies are just the same human soldier) and there are 3 factions (including human marines), making for the occasional 3 way fights later in the game. There is a refreshing variety in the level design which contrasts open and tight spaces. Sometimes those open spaces are vehicle segments, and the vehicles, especially the warthog, are fun to move around in due to their solid controls, especially for the time. As a counterexample, the vehicle/turret segments of Quake 4 are painful. Bungie in 2001, coming out of Myth II's development, had become quite competent in designing encounters, in terms of level geometry, enemy placement and the scripting to make it work.
You do not move as fast as in Quake, but you are not dreadfully sluggish like a protagonist from a generic 2009 shooter, and you don't have a sprint functionality, so movement, and moving-while-shooting, remains important and Halo is still a movement shooter, just not an Arena shooter where you go around at 200 mph strafe-jumping.
On the aesthetic side, the environment art is solid (Forerunner structures, covenant structures, human spaceship interiors), the character and armor design looks good, the music is great, the sound effects are good, the voice acting (callouts and for the brief cutscenes) is good... not much to complain about in that department.
For Halo 3 it's a similar argument, but 2007 is simply a far less competitive year than 2001.
For 2001:
- I haven't played Max Payne
- I haven't played Arcanum (gasp! Worse still, I haven't played a Troika game! I should probably be thrown into a volcano. Although I might play through Bloodlines soon)
- I haven't played Anachronox (I hear it's a bit jank though)
- Red Faction is a lesser shooter
- Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader is good but perhaps lesser to Halo: CE
- Gothic 1 is great but does have quite a bit of a jank; Halo:CE is probably a better experience for not being so jank; I have Gothic 2 in the list for 2002 however
