For an FPS, Team Fortress Classic was one of the highest skill-oriented games ever made (I'd put many RTS above most FPS, however, and even a few RPGs would qualify), so I'm interested to see how TF2 turns out. There are suggestions that they may have made it less skill-based, which would irk me personally, but we'll see.

Ok let me add Valve to my personal list of amazing developers (Nintendo, Capcom, Namco and now Valve).

Hurray! For some reason not enough people know about HL2 or Valve in general...

The Source engine in itself is a remarkable piece of software engineering. For that alone I think Valve deserves recognition. What they are able to do with those system requirements is simply amazing. And on top of that they have proven to be able to add new mechanics and an interesting storyline to keep you hooked.

The teams behind HL2/Portals/TF2 are some of the best developers out there. There are a lot of devs who come up with content that is arguably better but their ability to do so much with so little makes them the best imo.

So awesome. I can't wait!

Oh, I dunno. Valve has produced two "full" titles: Half Life and Half Life 2. Both are ranked in the top 15 games of all time on metacritic, and are the only PC games to make the list in any form. Both the HL 1/2 have sold over 8 million copies to date, and they actually still sell reasonably well. Valve has peers, certainly, but I don't think there are any developers that are clearly above them in quality. 

 Not only they produce high graphics and story games with low hardware expectations. They also manage to get them out with not so much bugs! Valve is the Software game company for me. This company shows how PC gaming has to be made. Truly, i love them, and can't wait to get my hands on EP2.

Aaaaaaaah give orange box pleeeease

Wow!

That game looks so hard it scares me :S

since it appears everyone in here is raving about the source engine, let me ask one damn question.

Why the hell are barrels made out of rubber in CS: Source?