I'm a computer science student with aspirations of working as a game developer. I live in the Seattle area and the industry is booming here. So is the competition! While I'm studying, I want to start developing my portfolio as I've heard from multiple sources that one of the best ways to impress recruiters is to actually complete and release a game. My question is whether it might be better to work on one ambitious project (having gotten the typical tutorial type games out of the way: tic-tac-toe, guessing games, space invaders, etc), or perhaps a few smaller projects that highlight various features? For example, my gaming passion is RPGs. Should I work on a full story-driven RPG with a couple of neat features that show off my skills, or a couple of games with smaller scopes to display my adaptability and variety?
Additionally, would it be beneficial to utilize an existing engine such as Unreal or Unity to create a 3D environment (which would force me to rely more heavily on commercial art assets) and be able to focus more on the neat features than on game state machines and other engine type programming? As I would be interested in a career as a programmer, I would think it would be good to show off my ability to create a 2D game from scratch than a pretty 3D game using Unreal. Can anyone offer their input on this? I've got two years of school left and I'd like to pack as much experience as I can into those two years.
Thanks much!