I need to buy a new laptop and was looking for suggestions.

-I'd like to be able to play games on medium at least (Witcher 2, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Alan Awake)

-price range: 600-1000$ (800$ target, and would like to get the best bang for the buck)

Look at the Asus units, lots of bang for the buck.

Any thoughts on this?
MSI GP60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152458

Yes that's an awesome purchase ! Just stay away from Intel Graphics Chipset.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152458
How about this?

if you want to custom your gaming laptop for good price.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php

Ill look into that tonight.

is the gtx 660m better than the gt 740m?  The benchmark scores I've seen give a huge advantage to the 660, which is strange bc the cheaper laptop has the better gpu.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152458

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152393

The 660M and 740M can range from being absolutely identical, right down to the 660M being superior.

They both share the same amount of Shaders, almost similar clockspeeds and even one version of the 740M uses the 660M's core.
However, with the 740M you can be gambling between DDR3 and GDDR5 memory, which is where the difference is.

I would personally go the 660M at any rate.

Thats the one I'm leaning toward.  Would it be worth waiting for a price drop?  It's listed at 929.99 (-11%).  The model came out 11 months ago.

Well. I actually looked at the laptops this time. :P

The MSI GP60 essentially has: More energy efficient CPU, also Quad Core, albeit clocked 200mhz lower. (You wouldn't notice the clockspeed deficit, as It should turbo higher on 2 threads.)

GPU's are essentially the same, the 740M would probably have lower clockspeeds, but that model does use GDDR5.

Whether that's worth the extra $20 is entirely up to you.