Those definitely aren't the 5 FPS's that defined the genre.
And I don't really agree with any of the points... except Far Cry 3, that's a great game (albeit just not one that's going to be genre-defining).
My thinking is this (FPSs only):
Best pacing: Crysis 2 (the weapons customisation and firemode selection are also worth a mention)
Best Atmosphere: Metro 2033 (it's very immersive IMO; I also haven't played SShock2 yet)
Best Sandbox: Far Cry 3 (very organic, nice story too)
Best Shooting/Weapons: Painkiller (even if it looks dated, the weapons are nicely differentiated and there's a variety of nice enemies - what more could you want?)
Best Online Experience: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.402047-Battlefield-Bad-Company-2-Multiplayer] (more streamlined than BF2 and also: destruction physics!) | Blacklight: Retribution (best CQC combat) | Planetside 2 (best large scale battles)
if it weren't FPSs only, Just Cause 2 would be there together with Far Cry 3.
This show is kinda useless, since "Top 5" doesn't mean anything, especially if it isn't categorized and just put in front of our faces like this. Also: QUAKE?!? QUAKE?!?
Let's also reap on Half-Life for a bit, since it's such a nice, convenient, big, fat target. It's got a nice pacing going on, but it's still... really overrated. It's a bit monotone at times. It's ugly. Really ugly. And also a bit too hard (but then again my aim has always been bad when it came to quickly aligning my sights on something). The Source engine has a CRUDE destruction system (if you examine it closely, you'll see it only supports big things falling apart into specifically modeled smaller things, and everything will always fall apart as a whole). Comparing both physics and destruction to the CryEngine, the CryEngine wins. But in terms of performance, SOURCE can't be beat. It runs on everything, even the worst of machines, and it runs smoothly.
