For nostalgias sake... Command and Conquer 95! And some Red Alert 1. Brings a tear to my eye. Freewarenow, and you can play in HD too.
Also played original Dota like a madman for 2 years, and I'm pretty damn good at it (yes I know 2 years is such a short time for DotA but whatever). Best strategic game I have ever, ever played in my life, ever. Standard RTS games I never find to be strategic - it's all build orders, rock paper scissors, macro and micro skills not much real original strategic mindgames IMO. Well you CAN have actual strategic battles, but meh ... I never really felt it. DotA on the other hand, from the first game onwards, EVERYTHING is based on mindgames n shiz.
Although DotA games aren't as diverse as, say, SC2 and generally more boring to watch.
Nowadays i'm clocking hours into MW3 (All on the PC) mainly because friends play it. About MW3 I must say the developers suck face. They actually purposefully designed it completely so that noobs would be able to do well with zero skill, at the cost of extremely good players not doing as well as their skill level should command. They did this with ridiculous killstreak rewards, deathstreak rewards, and gun stats in general (FMG9 akimbos, Type95, Striker)
Basically in terms of skill level: player 1 = 3-and-a-half, player 2 = OVER9000 (arbitrary units of identical scale)
Usually leads to score such as: player 1 = 4/10, player 2 = 20/6 (kills/deaths)
instead of (i.e. if this were ACTUALLY a skill based game we would see): player 1 = 1/10, player 2 = 40/1
Quake on the other hand is an example of a truly skill-based game. I don't mean FPS circle strafing skillz or perfect aim and stuff like that, but at a high level go watch some Quake Live replays and just be dumbfounded.
Anyway hows BF3? I may switch to that
But I'm not a fan of this Origin crap