I am not a gamer. I play games and I am supposedly quite good at them (not at TF2, I suck at TF2), but overall, I am not a gamer. In fact, I don’t even own a console and never have. That might be due to the fact that up until a short while ago I lived with my parents, people who absolutely hated the idea of video games. Anyways, I was playing System Shock 2 last night (yes, I was fortunate enough to have obtained it) when I found myself reading about it on Wikipedia. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the urge to look up a game I had found once, and it took me quite some time to find it, but eventually I did.
It’s called Mirror’s Edge, and it’s a first person fighting game, apparently. Well, not quite–it’s sort of an adventure game too. It also involves Parkour or Street Running or something like that and looks totally sweet. The guys developing it are DICE; they’re the same crew behind Battlefield Heroes or whatever that WWII-Themed Free TF2 Clone is. By the way, Free TF2 Clone is enough to sell me on something, and being WWII-Themed is enough to hook me on it.
See where I’m going with this?
I’ve decided to compile a list of games that I am heavily anticipating, no matter how much they might suck or how much ass they might kick. In no particular order, here’s a list of announced games I can’t wait to see:
- STALKER: Clear Sky. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl was a great game, but was also the only game that didn’t particularly enjoy running on my Vista-based PC. It was pretty buggy and crashed a lot; so much so that I never actually completed the game with its “actual” ending. Occasionally I’ll turn it on and hope it’ll work, but it never does. Clear Sky is a prequel which will hopefully be less buggy, especially given that it’s programmed with DX10, which means that Vista will just have to get along nicely with it.
- Deus Ex 3. Need I say more? I’ve never played Deus Ex, although I did find myself a copy and am going to install it just as soon as I finish System Shock 2, but I hear good things about both it and its sequel. Of course, I’ve heard bad things about the sequel too, but I’ll just have to judge that for myself.
- Half Life 2: Episode 3. I absolutely hate the level design in Half Life 2 and its subsequent episodes, but the game manages to be entertaining anyways. The pistol is annoying as hell, unless you play the game with all the sound turned off, and then you’ll find yourself actually favoring it as it’s a fun weapon to use. I really wish they’d give it a new sound effect. Frankly, I’ve done a lot of googling (and read the book) on Half Life 2, and most of what they cut, given what I’ve seen, looks like it could have made the game better. After playing it, I honestly felt cheated. Then again, it was fun and better than most games I’d played.
- Fallout 3. It goes without saying that first person adventure-shooter games are some of the best I’ve ever played. STALKER and System Shock were fantastic, and right now I have this tremendous urge to go reinstall Bioshock and beat it a third time. Is this some sort of weird bi-monthly Bioshock thingy? I don’t know. Fallout 3 is a post-apocalyptic game (+10 awesome points), has FPS elements (+10 awesome points), and… hell, it’s Fallout (+9001 awesome points). It’s going to be worth playing, especially with a company like Bethesda doing the production. Apparently Oblivion IV was one of the best PC games ever made (at least IGN seemed to think so), which means that I’ll have high hopes for this game.
- Mirror’s Edge: I really said all I wanted to about this game.
- The Crossing: Single Player and Multiplayer combined? Count me in! Now if only games like Half Life 2, Bioshock, and Call of Duty could have co-op play… Did I mention the Knights Templar? It has Knights Templar. Also, it looks gorgeous. I have never seen such a good looking Source game except perhaps…
- Left 4 Dead. Co-op. Zombies. I can play as a girl. I’m sold.
- Aliens: Colonial Marines. Gearbox Software has made a ton of great games. I absolutely loved beating Opposing Force and Blue Shift and still go back to them occasionally. Their port of Halo was great, especially in light of the Halo 2 port, since they put the kind of care into their port that turned a genuinely great console game into a genuinely nice PC shooter. Let’s face it, Halo isn’t a great shooter; it’s just one of the best you can get on a console. I love the Alien film franchise and am watching Aliens for the first time (remember what I said about parents not liking video games? That went for films as well). So far Alien3’s quadrilogy cut is the best Alien film I’ve seen (it was the only one they had available to rent at the time I got it), and Aliens Vs. Predator 2 was a genuinely scary game, so I have high hopes for Aliens: Colonial Marines.
- Max Payne 3. The first two games were a blast, and while I liked the graphics and bullet time of Max Payne 2 better than the original, there was something about the first game’s feel that kicked more ass. Besides that, it had a Pancor Jackhammer. Any game with a Pancor Jackhammer is alright by me. Probably. To this day, Max Payne is one of the only Third Person Shooters I truly enjoy.
- Earth No More. Yes, I know, I know, it’s a game by 3D Realms, and Prey was absolutely terrible, but still, it sounds cool.
- Alan Wake. I’m not sure what to say about it. It looks gorgeous and scary, and if it manages to do what it’s trying to do, well, I’ll be a huge fan.
- Bioshock 2. No one, as far as I am aware, denies that Bioshock was a great game. I felt that it was far more simplistic than System Shock 2, and while I have been playing the aforementioned game, I have seen numerous similarities, including levels (Garden and Hydroponics levels where you have to put something into the air; Medical level, Mall level with a casino and so forth, etc.), cameras and turrets, and so forth. Like Yahtzee said on Zero Punctuation, Bioshock isn’t just a successor to System Shock 2, it is System Shock 2. I’d say that it’s actually a retarded clone of System Shock 2. Bioshock is like the good looking, cool, attractive person that you like to hang out with, but System Shock 2 is its better proportioned, more intelligent older sibling. Bioshock 2 will no doubt be Bioshock’s twin, in which case we can have us a threesome, which will be pretty fun.
- They. It reminds me of a mediocre anime I saw once called Yukikaze (or Battle Fairy Yukikaze if you want to translate it exactly) and that sounds cool enough. Weird alien things in machines sounds awesome. I want to play this. Plus, it’s a mystery game.
- Far Cry 2. Yeah, um… it’s not Far Cry, guys. It isn’t. No matter what you do or how you do it, it won’t be Far Cry. That said, what Far Cry 2 claims to be looks like a fascinating game with an incredibly high replay factor. Count me in.
- Brütal Legend. It just looks awesome. Plus, it’s from the guy who did Psychonauts and Grim Fandango, Tim Schafer!
- The Hunt. It’s basically where everyone is hunting you for a reality TV show. Reminds me a little bit of Battle Royale. The company’s website doesn’t have the best English on it, but still… I’ll be interested in seeing how it turns out. Then again, I said the same thing about Conflict: Denied Ops and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, both of which were terrible games that I only played a few levels of. They both has enormous potential and ended up sucking. Conflict’s main problem was crappy/downright weird controls.
- Tiberium. It takes place in the Command & Conquer Universe; need I say more? I will: The trailer looks totally badass and it looks like we’ll get to use a railgun! I am a little worried, though, as I hated Conflict: Denied Ops and both Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter games, both of which used squad control, and Tiberium uses it as well…
- Resistance 2 and Killzone 2. FPSes in very unique universes; originality in video games is always a plus. A lot of people liked the first two games in their respective franchises. Too bad they’re for PS3 only; I don’t have the cash to purchase one right now. They both have killer graphics too! Besides that, Haze is coming out shortly, and I’d love to give that a whirl.
- Mercenaries 2 looks totally sweet. I want it. I want it more than I want Grand Theft Auto IV.
- Velvet Assassin looks great as well, but I can’t really tell you that much about it.
- Duke Nukem Forever. Yes. That’s all I need to say.
I’ll be interested in seeing where Crysis 2 and Call of Duty 5 go, but I can’t say I’ll play them with much enthusiasm. Call of Duty 5 should focus on the Pacific War, with Australian and American forces; I’d love to see that and very few video games have even touched on that theatre, which in my mind was always more interesting. Jungle combat was great in Far Cry, after all. Crysis 2, again, jungle combat, but the game seemed bored with itself, with dialog from a 90s B action movie and uninspiring weapons. I loved the ability to modify my guns, but the maps were a tad more linear then Far Cry and there just wasn’t that much variation overall. We shall see what we shall see, eh? Project Origin is the same way: Eh. Its predecessor, FEAR, was just another run and gun shooter with some weird horror elements and terrible lighting. I just beat Perseus Mandate the other day and honestly have no desire to play any of the games in the series again. They were just boring. Not only that, but it sucks when I see it on a list of “scariest games,” because FEAR wasn’t that scary, really, especially when you compare it with a game like Penumbra, which I refuse to play because it terrified me so much. I keep telling myself I’ll get back to it and I never do.
Next I’ll be taking a look at games I wish would come out, but probably won’t, and upcoming mods I’m anticipating.
