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A holiday shopping guide for tactical gamers

For first-person shooters, 2008 was a year of sequels and cautious, incremental forward steps. Although nothing hit the scene with as much force as the previous year’s “Halo 3” or “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” there were several solid titles worth noting by aficionados of pretend violence.

If you know such an aficionado and you’re stumped about holiday gifts — or you are one, and you’re looking for a convenient hint sheet to leave somewhere, strategically — look no further. Here are our top four games reviewed this year in Military Times, plus a trio of recently released titles that would be well-received in any gamer’s stocking.

1. “Rainbow Six Vegas 2”

Amazing multiplayer maps, great weapons and highly realistic graphics made this the year’s top first-person shooter. You’re a member of the elite international counterterrorism team Rainbow, dispatched to eliminate some bad guys running amok in the casinos and hotels of Sin City. As such, the action takes you into theater prop rooms, junkyards and rooms full of one-armed-bandits, all rendered with astonishingly detailed graphics and sound.

The tactics-based campaign will reward diligent players, but the online mode is what makes this “Rainbow Six” worth the price of admission. Everybody can access the same weapons and accessories — including suppressors, laser sights and grenade launchers — which means if you’re getting dominated by your opponents, don’t blame it on the gear. I found that building up enough experience to perform respectably was less a chore than a pleasure.

2. “SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs: Confrontation”

The first installment of the beloved shooter franchise on PlayStation 3 was a gamble, forsaking a single-player campaign mode for an online-only set of multiplayer maps. But after a few weeks of working out the bugs, the gamble seems to have paid off. “Confrontation” has large, intricate maps, game play that’s simple to master and plenty of weapons, from shotguns to sniper rifles. One version of the game also comes boxed with the PlayStation 3’s first official Bluetooth earpiece, which is crucial for use in planning SEAL assaults and no doubt will be useful for future games.

3. “Mercenaries 2: World in Flames”

Imagine having the run of a giant world full of vehicles, aircraft, boats and heavy weapons, all of which can be yours. Such is the computerized version of Venezuela you inhabit in “Mercs 2,” in which you can steal tanks, lasso helicopter skids and call in airstrikes, if you feel like it. You accept a series of missions from rival factions vying to control Venezuela, all in the interest of expanding your dirty-deeds business. Another nice touch is that you can destroy everything you can see — with enough firepower, you can demolish whole office buildings. The map was so big and there were so many different missions, I didn’t even feel like I needed to use my Internet connection.

4. “Call of Duty: World at War”

At last, a World War II game with no precious self-absorption, just guns, tanks and — crucially — flamethrowers. “World at War” isn’t an epochal world-changer like its predecessor, “Modern Warfare,” but “World” does build on the fundamentals of the earlier game. In the multiplayer mode, you still get special advantages for three, five and seven consecutive kills, and you can still unlock new and more powerful weapons as you build experience playing the game. The single-player mode is conventional, but the online experience delivers the wonderful frenzy that “Call of Duty” has made its trademark.

These three additional recent titles have earned a great deal of buzz among the gamerati:

5. “Gears of War 2”

This is the sequel to the original, cover-oriented “Gears of War,” which influenced a recent sub-genre of shooter titles. Instead of charging ahead willy-nilly after bad guys, the game forces you to advance methodically and deliberately from behind doorways or wreckage, taking cover from your enemies. The graphics and gear — including the famous Lancer, a combination rifle/chainsaw — have got people talking.

6. “Fallout 3”

If you’ve ever done a tour of duty in Washington, D.C., and wished for it to be laid to waste by a nuclear strike, this is your video game. As one of a few survivors of a nuclear blast in the National Capital Wasteland, you venture out of your shelter into a huge, familiar map, complete with the Washington Monument, the National Mall and the Pentagon. And oh by the way (as we say in the Pentagon), it’s full of radioactive monsters that need killing.

7. “Tom Clancy’s Endwar”

This futuristic war strategy game puts you in control of one of three giant armies fighting World War III in Europe, Asia or the U.S. Unlike its predecessor strategy games, in “Endwar” you control your forces almost entirely by voice, speaking commands into a headset and watching the troops carry them out. You watch from a “camera” right in the thick of the action, rather than high above the battlefield. Infantry, armor, aircraft and even weapons of mass destruction are available, if the tactical situation calls for them.