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[Grendus]

Fallout: New Vegas, which is probably my favorite game of all time, did a lot of things very right:

-It's ludicrously mod-able, to the point where at some point it stops being FNV and starts being its own game creation engine.
-The ending was a good compromise in terms of the players choices impacting the ending - instead of a shallow "good" and "bad" ending or a "choose your ending in the last mission" ending, New Vegas went with a more modular ending where many of the different areas and factions of the game had their own ending based on how the Courier dealt with that faction (and occasionally something global, like which main faction he/she sided with).
-The DLC was mostly expansion packs and all of them were worth the price - I'd buy a full length game based on Dead Money, it was a BRILLIANT add on.
-The combat was satisfying, striking a good balance between high lethality while giving the player plenty of options, and all of the weapons were viable. Moving all of the Big Guns into the other weapon categories (guns, energy weapons, and explosives) was a good move, in Fallout 3 you couldn't find any Big Guns until the end of the game and by that point you didn't have the skill to use them effectively.

[Deon]

-The ending was a good compromise in terms of the players choices impacting the ending - instead of a shallow "good" and "bad" ending or a "choose your ending in the last mission" ending, New Vegas went with a more modular ending where many of the different areas and factions of the game had their own ending based on how the Courier dealt with that faction (and occasionally something global, like which main faction he/she sided with).

Every Fallout game does it! I wish more games did it.

[Jopax]

Any Relic RTS for mixing up the formula just enough that it's fresh but still instantly familiar. CoH nailed atmosphere like very little games manage to, especially RTS games. You didn't feel you were playing an RTS so much as you were fighting a bloody war with real people dying. Very very awesome.

And then there's DoW2:Chaos Rising. To date, the only RTS (and game actually) that had a proper morality system in place. It wasn't arbitrary (well as much as the imperial laws are), it had impact on both gameplay and story and was awesomely done. Most games have the idea of morality wrong, they present good/bad or whatever they call it as two same choices, and you pick whichever you feel like, they maybe impact the story or some of your abilities, but you rarely get a really really tough choice that tempts you to go the other way. CR had this, since going corrupt had tons of boons for your squad, they'd get new abilities, more powerful gear, and in certain cases missions would be easier if you did the bad thing. As such, the struggle to remain pure was accurately depicted, suddenly you realise just how hard it is for the Marines to remain loyal, when giving in to Chaos is so easy.
Another great touch is how the ending itself is affected, you don't immediately realise how corruption is affecting the story (apart from the prevalent everybody could be a traitor stuff, but that's always present in 40k) until the traitor is revealed. And then you realise that your strongest unit/champion the one you kitted out with all the cool stuff has turned on you, and now you have to fight  the monster that you created. Even when you do defeat him you still have to win the rest of the mission (which is kinda annoying towards the end) and then you realise that your troops still aren't safe because they're all now under suspicion for treason, because of your actions.

[inEQUALITY]

Any Relic RTS

I second this. Relic has done some superb jobs on their games.

While you mention DoW 2 - which I shied away from because of the lack of playable races - the first DoW has always been an RTS I enjoy time and time again. I have a friend that I play it with almost every time we get together to LAN. The lore, the units, the gameplay, all of it is so incredibly awesome. Even the little added touch of being able to 'paint' your units' color schemes and being able to import your own badges for your army was just incredibly satisfying. Nothing quite like hot pink Dark Eldar crushing the Sisters of Battle.

[Grendus]

-The ending was a good compromise in terms of the players choices impacting the ending - instead of a shallow "good" and "bad" ending or a "choose your ending in the last mission" ending, New Vegas went with a more modular ending where many of the different areas and factions of the game had their own ending based on how the Courier dealt with that faction (and occasionally something global, like which main faction he/she sided with).

Every Fallout game does it! I wish more games did it.

Fallout 3 did not, which was a shame. Unfortunately, I have a sad suspicion that Bethesda will not let Obsidian do Fallout 4 because New Vegas got lower reviews - mostly because reviewers mistakenly called it a sequel to Fallout 3 and docked points for reusing the same engine. If they had called it a true sequel to Fallout 2, it would have done much, much better. Even with the minimalist ending though it was a great way to wrap up and actually have the players choices affect the ending without having to animate multiple endings.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

People need to get over their shit with this new engine stuff. If you produce Planescape: Torment and then you give me another game that's just as good in the exact same engine, I'm happy putting down those ducats. But the second game had better fix everything that was stupid about the first one that couldn't be fixed because of time constraints.

I guess I'm saying if they have a choice between producing another engine with a different bunch of problems, or reusing an engine and refining it so it doesn't have problems, I'd prefer the latter.

That said, I want to see more art assets, more sound, more music. If you don't have to develop a new engine, you should develop your existing engine. If it's exactly the same toolkit with a couple new items that's not cool. For example FF X and FF X-2. They made the right call in labeling it a sequel, because they reused entire areas. I guess enough changed for people to buy it.