So Grand Theft Auto IV arrived. Well, "arrived" in the same sense that an asteroid colliding with Earth would "arrive". This particular arrival left a huge $500 million impact crater. Now it's kind of hard to see what with all the dust and hype. Plus, if you're like me, you're probably going to be busy until 2009 driving around Liberty City looking for all 200 pigeons to shoot. Eleven down, 179 to go! Someone check my math on that.

Lucky for the pigeons, 2008 is still young. Brace yourself for more arrivals. Here, for your consideration, are the five Best of the Rest of the Year, presented alphabetically, because, girls, you're all pretty.

(Safe Harbor: Judgments of "best" are forward-looking statements subject to changes and variations which are not reasonably predictable and which could significantly affect future results).

Fallout 3

For ten years, the vault has been closed on this grim and funny post-apocalyptic saga, which presented moral choices that would make GTA blanch. Soon you can open the doors again and plunge into your own personal post-apocalypse, with the faithful Dogmeat by your side. Think S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but more polished and less Russian.

As anyone who played one of the earliest Elder Scrolls games can tell you, Bethesda has been doing open worlds before they were even possible. Now the developer is marrying the beautiful expanse of Oblivion with the refreshingly unique setting of Fallout. Detractors – and there are entire websites teeming with them – dismiss Fallout 3 as Oblivion with guns. But the joke's on them. Who in his right mind wouldn't think that Oblivion with guns would be frickin' awesome?

How long you have to wait: Until "Fall 2008"

Left 4 Dead

Do you like zombie movies? Of course you do. Here is another rare game that "gets" zombie movies. I'm not talking about dribbling them out a few at a time, Resident Evil-style, in between silly puzzles, dialogue from Japan, and crazy boss battles. I'm talking swarms of the undead, shambling towards you and hungry for brains. And you're not on your own. Left 4 Dead is a cooperative multiplayer game.

Across a variety of maps, the task is simple – get from point A to point B while covering each other's asses – but it won't be easy. You'll have to gather the best weapons you can find as you work your way to the chopper (it's always a chopper, isn't it?). And you aren't just facing mindless undead. Left 4 Dead also works as a team-based game, with one team trying to escape, and the other controlling various uber-zombies who can lay traps, set up ambushes, and coordinate zombie assaults.

Although the premise is great, the real cause for excitement is that Left 4 Dead is from the perfectionists at Valve who brought you the various Half-Lives, Team Fortress 2, and Portal.

How long you have to wait: Unspecified, but probably late in 2008

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

You know that sense of disappointment you get in Grand Theft Auto IV when you fire an RPG at a building and it remains unscathed? Mercenaries will never do you that way. These buildings know enough to yield to an RPG. But that's just for starters. Order your own tank, call in a daisy cutter, or recruit your own army. With these assets, pretty much everything can come crumbling down. Stealing cars? A peccadillo. Try carpet bombing a city block.

The first Mercenaries was a glorious showcase of freedom meeting firepower, hence the subtitle "Playground of Destruction". You're a mercenary who can navigate among competing factions for different missions, blowing the crap out a detailed sandbox world along the way. This time the developers are going to South America and they're not content to just destroy buildings. In this sandbox, the jungles will burn. Hence the subtitle "World in Flames"?

How long you have to wait: Until August 31, 2008

Spore

Whatever Spore is, it's going to be different. And that counts for a lot when so many games have numbers after their names. The funky creature creator promises almost endless possibilities. The middle parts of the game suggest a crazy mash-up of questing, city building, and conquest. But the most intriguing bit of Spore is how it'll ultimately turn into an online exploration of player-content, navigated via spaceship instead of web browser.

Spore's almost inconceivable concept of single-celled organism to interstellar civilization comes from the mind of Sims creator Will Wright. But as of last year, the hands-on gameplay guy is Soren Johnson, the designer who reworked the venerable Civilization series and gave us Civilization IV, arguably the great strategy game ever made. If anyone can come up with a great idea, it's Wright. And if anyone can give a great idea great gameplay, it's Johnson.

How long you have to wait: Until September 7, 2008, although you can download the creature creator on June 17th

Starcraft II

If you listen closely, you can hear a buzzing sound. That's South Korea ready to explode with anticipation. It's been ten years since Blizzard all but reinvented real time strategy games by co-opting the Warhammer 40,000A.D. license to come up with their own strange universe, in which humans, icky bugs, and mysterious aliens fought each other over distant worlds, inexplicably afflicting South Korea with a national obsession bordering on hysteria. But even among us level-headed North Americans, Starcraft established the model for real time strategy games: three very different races, each almost its own separate game.

Whether Blizzard can do it again remains to be seen. Real time strategy games have come a long way (it's almost painful trying to play the original Starcraft). Blizzard can't rely on its usual trick of imitating an established genre and then polishing the dickens out of it. The best case scenario: Starcraft II lifts the genre out of its relatively hardcore niche and makes it fun for everyone again. The worst case scenario: After ten long years, those of us who like RTSs get to revisit one of our favorite universes.

How long you have to wait: Okay, I'm going to level with you. This one might not even make it this year. Blizzard is notorious for just skipping the holidays, so Starcraft II may very well slip into 2009.