If you want to do everything those games do, you can get Panda3D for free, and it has built-in shaders and physics. I never took the time to learn how to use it, but apparently it's not too hard. However, if you want the support of this community and a really easy way to start making games, use DarkBASIC. DarkBASIC Classic is really easy to learn but is limited in features. That's what I'm using. There is also DarkBASIC Pro, which is newer and has way more features. I guess Panda3D is at least as good as DarkBASIC Pro, not that it's better, and DarkBASIC Classic is a good place to start, but by no means is good for really modern games. They're all good 3D game engines with support for 3rd party plugins, 3D sound and collision, so I would recommend any of them. Of course, there are many, many game engines, so I can't really recommend a "best" one. They all require programming, however. If you're not prepared to program, then you can't expect to make a game as in-depth as Halo or anything. Not even a BF or SWBF type game would be possible without you doing some programming, so technically there is no easy way.
WINNER list:
Latch, Lee Bamber, TDK, TheComet
Thanks for the help!
