Zork -is- returning (albeit as a browser-based MMO).
http://legendsofzork.com/

I assume you haven't played much of Halo. The aliens never try to take over the earth in the first two games. The first game doesn't take place anywhere near earth. The second game starts on earth, but the aliens aren't trying to take the planet over. They had no idea earth was even the humans homeworld. They were there looking for an artifact.
You should watch the intro to Halo 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkM_q_u2lXw
Would a game with no plot have a intro scene like this?
This is argument is never going to go anywhere so im dropping it after this.

Well, as far as I'm concerned about Halo, in the end of the first game, you were saving the universe or something along those lines
<spoiler>
Because Halo was a weapon designed to get rid of scourge or whatever it's called
</spoiler>
After that, I've never even wanted to play Halo 2 in the first place - yes, I've heard it actually has a good story, but since guy who told me firs Halo had a good story and I got some kind of weird mix of sci-fi clichés, that led to an obvious end.... Well, calling it 'better' than story of Deus Ex, that shocked me, amazed me and did a whole lot of other things to me is a bit too much. And since Halo 2 and 3 are mainstream games as well, I don't suppose story exactly got any better, though I might be wrong there. Hmm, I'm going to watch Halo 2 intro..
Edit: Well, I must admit, Halo 2's intro looks just interesting enough to make me play the game...

I wouldn't call Halo's story brilliant by any means but I did enjoy it. It may not be up to the standards of a good quality novel but it's on par with most feature films. Sure it's a grizzled space marine alone againt the alien horde which, to paraphrase Red Dwarf, has been copied more times than that poster of the tennis girl scratching her butt but being derivative doesn't mean it's BAD, the game itself is done quite well
The most fun you can have in the games is in campaign coop though, that's the best. The regular multiplayer is just the usual FPS fragfest bullshit that, graphics aside, hasn't changed since the mid 90s and felt crap even then.

Halo 2 = gamer's equivalent of porn
Deus Ex = art.

Personally the bits I saw of deus ex bored me, I never got that far in but if i got bored & turned the game off, thats not a good sign. I've managed to finish almost every game I own, mostly through enjoyment but occasionally out of spite or pigheaded determination so not getting far in deus ex is saying something for me.
Personally I'd call the halo games the equivelant of the big budget heavy special effects and relatively light content blockbuster movies. Besides, it can't be porn, I'm pretty sure there's no saxophone in the soundtrack

The plot of Halo.
[Spoilers]
Master Chief, a cyborg space marine, wakes up from cryogenic hybernation only to have the ship he's on attacked by evil aliens that want to destroy the human race. He fights his way to the bridge where the captain gives him the ship's sentient AI Cortana for safe keeping. They land on a strange ring world floating in space and kill more aliens. Then they go and rescue the captain who's being held prisoner by the evil aliens that want to destroy the human race. They find out that the ring is a weapon, so master chief goes on a mission to find a computer. He fights his way all the way to it on foot. Finds it, leaves Cortana there, then fights his way all the way back again. Then he finds out the captain is missing... again... and goes to rescue him... again.
He doesn't find the captain, but instead finds a bunch of balloon monsters that infect living things and turn them into zerglings with guns. Fighting his way through the zerg, he randomly encounters a little robot thingie that seems to know what's going on and teleports him away to another series of identical tunnels that are allot bigger than the previous ones. He fights his way to the top of the series of identical tunnels through the hordes of gun toting zerglings, and retrieves the "key" to Halo. He is then teleported back to the place where he left Cortana who tells him that Halo is not what they thought it was. It's actually a weapon to destroy the zerg... by wiping out all sentient life in the galaxy in order to starve it.
They go try to rescue the captain... again... Because if they blow up the reactors on their crashed ship it will destroy the ring. They go back to the same ship that he was being held on last time, fight their way into it, fall out, fight their way into it again, and finally find the captain, only now he's a giant immobile blob of zerg flesh for whatever reason. Master Chief smashes his face in in order to get the implants they need to destroy the ship and they go back to their ship, fight the stupid little floaty robot one more time, and blow it up as all hell breaks loose. Everyone dies except Cortana and Master Chief.
[/Spoilers]
That's a detailed explanation of the entirety of the plot of Halo 1.
Generic to the extreme. Great presentation, no creativity.
The plot of Deus Ex... is too complicated to explain in a single post, and summing it up would ruin it.
Also, I should point out that Halo two starts with the Master Chief miraculously back on (Well on a station in orbit of) Earth, and one of the characters who died on Halo is whining at him about how he didn't dress up. The game doesn't have an ending. it just ends. Which is probably fitting since Halo 3 doesn't have a beginning, it just begins, dropping the Master Chief, and the guy that's supposed to have died in Halo 1 and another character that hates them both and was no where near the chief at the time in the middle of some jungle with no explanation, where they proceed to, you guessed it, slaughter aliens.

well in all fairness, it IS an FPS, there's not a lot to do in those other than slaughter the enemy and the story is always an excuse to do just that. At least it's better than the c64 days where the pamphlet you got with the game contained one paragraph of story if you were lucky and was usually a wordy way of saying "Aliens are attacking, you're our last pilot. Go!"

ho ho ho, ha ha ha, ho ho ho, ha ha ha.
Great story, filled with emotion, depth, etc.
:(

Hey, hey, HEY!!! You do NOT talk that way about the beloved C64!
To prove how wrong you are, here is, in full, the backstory that came with the game Creatures (Clyde Radcliff Exterminates All The Unfriendly Repulsive Earth-ridden Slime):
"Out in the nether regions of deepest space (in the far bottom right of the Milky Way) lies a small, insignificant little planet named Blot. Although a pretty place, it's deserted after its inhabitants were forced to flee from an awful fate being called by such an unhip name as Blotians. As soon as they were able, they built a crude but sufficient colony ship and spluttered off into space in search of a trendier planet. Until such a place was found they renamed themselves Fuzzy Wuzzies in search of real hipness.
Unfortunately, a collision with an asteroid led to a crash landing on Earth. As luck would have it, they landed in some blue wobbly stuff commonly known as the Pacific Ocean next to an undiscovered island. After the Fuzzy Wuzzies swam ashore they promptly began building a village and named the island 'The Hippest Place in The Known Universe'.
What the Fuzzies didn't know was the existence of bad tempered Demons living on the far side of the island. These demons were enraged by all the noise made by the cheerful Fuzzies, and hated even more the ridiculously silly island name.
The Demons came up with a cunning plan to put an end to the commotion and general good time being had by these intruders they invited them to the biggest party ever held on the island. Fuzzies cannot resist a good party, and all of them brushed up their fur and attended. But just as they were starting to enjoy themsleves the Demons threw a net over everyone and carted them off to their Torture Chambers.
The only one who wasn't caught was Clyde Radcliff, a tanked up little Fuzzy already throwing up in the bushes. The next morning Clyde woke up with a splitting headache and breath so bad it could scorch a tree at six paces. Nevertheless, our courageous little hero vowed to destroy the Demons and rescue his fellow Fuzzies."
That beats the hell out of most stories for modern games :-D

So, how is that any different from today? ;-)

Well hardly at all but these days almost every game TRIES to have a story, it's just that most of them fail miserably

Indeed. But then I think that if there is no basis for a story anyway (like, if the point of the game is "fly directly upwards and shoot anything that moves"), then "You're our last hope, go for it!" is maybe a more honest approach, than trying to crowbar a convoluted story into a game where it doesn't fit.

I guess im alone in my opinions here. In my defense, I prefer military sci-fi over any other sci-fi, so am more likely to like a military sci-fi plot. Also, (and im aware that im wrong in dooing this) i usually group plot and storytelling together, and just refer to it as plot. Halo did have good storytelling.
Seriously though, you guys don't need get all nasty. I never said any of your favorite games sucked. The closest i came was saying that Deus Ex isn't much of a shooter, and i don't think that's a bad thing. Calling it a shooter is a disservice to that game.