My 5 Most Anticipated Games
thing for us in terms of games, so anticipation is the only thing I have in this time of the year. Even with this year's E3 being kinda boring, except for Nintendo, there are still some quality-titles out there, that keep my blood pumping in this cold european summer-time.
5: Starcraft 2
Finally, after 10 years of waiting, Blizzard continues with their legendary starcraft-saga. I've already had the chance to play the beta of the game and It was nothing short of amazing. The 3 races all feel very distinct from each other and are, most importantly, fun to play. Some old tactics like zerg-rush (kekeke...) are still functional, but with the addition of many new units and the removal of some old ones, the community has allready developed many new tactics. It looks like it will be very balanced and I'll probably be playing this for a long time. Further adding to the longetivity of Starcraft 2 is the map-editor. They showed some amazing maps off at the last blizz-con and there are allready several very creative user-made ones out there.
With that in mind, I allmost completely forgot about the single-player of the game, untill I saw this trailer at the nba-finals. It reminded me of the fact, that Blizzard is pretty damn good in writing stories and their presentation is pretty god-like aswell. It is a blizzard-title after all, so I can expect excellent single- and multi-player.
Had I written this blog a year ago, starcraft 2 would be at the top of the list, but now Starcraft 2's release is right around the corner. I'm looking forward to getting destroyed by everyone else in b.net 2.0, but I can tame my anticipation for at least 1 month now...hopefully.
Make no mistake, war is coming...
4: The Witcher 2
I never played the first Witcher (which is going to change, as soon as I get a new pc), so naturally this didn't gather my information at first, but since I love me some WRPGs, I eventually took a look at it and I was really blown away by it. They only showed about 9 minutes of gameplay, but what you can see there is nothing short of amazing. It pretty much looks like a RPG that I would develop, if I had any talent, lololo. Likable main-character? Check. Well written dialogue? Check. Great story? Most likely check. Good Fighting-system? Check. Gorgeous art-style and graphics? Check. And so on. They've also got the promise of decisions with real consequences, a feature that everybody tries to focus on in their games, but mostly fails. We'll see about this one.
From what I've gathered, they improved pretty much everything from the first witcher, which is considered by many to be one of the best WRPGs in the last time. Another positive thing to hear is that they are focusing on the pc-version of the game first and then port it to the consoles later. WRPGs have always worked better on the PC and CD project Red seemed to notice that aswell.
Good WRPGs are pretty rare nowadays, with not much to look forward besides Bioware's titles, but this one seems to do everything right and I can't wait to get my hands on it!
Secondary sex organs. In this very picture.
3: The Last Guardian
Team ICO could be one of my favorite developers, if they only would focus on giving us a good game at first and then on stuff like presentation, atmosphere and all that jazz. Shadow of the Colossus was a deeply flawed game in terms of gameplay, but otherwise it did everything right and better than most other developers. They know how to make their games seem epic, but not how make them feel epic.
The Last Guardian on the other hand seems to give us an enjoyable experience with the buddy-system between the little boy and the griphon. We haven't seen anything in terms of gameplay and how they will incorporate the interaction between the boy and his blob...eh, gryphon, so I can't help but be excited. This game has a tremendous chance to be awesome, since Team ICO is experienced in handling gigantic monsters and this time it's on our side! AWESOME! (maybe...)
This game has the most chance to fail on this list, but if Team ICO gets their shit together, this will be one of the best things ever!
.....
2: Guild Wars 2
Guild Wars is one of my favourite games of all time, I spent so much time in both PvP and PvE, it's absolutely ridiculous. The main gameplay-philosphy of guildwars was, that skill counts more than time or more like: time shouldn't matter at all. You could travel anywhere you've allready been with one mouse-click, max-level in the game was 20 and you could achieve that in one or two days, if you're even moderately skilled and most of the game could be played all alone with Henchmen and heroes if you wanted to. From max-level on it was all about the way you played your character and not how godlike his equipment was. The main-drives of the game were the well told story-missions, that were actually fun to play, unlike 99,9% of the missions in world of warcraft and the excellent pvp-part of the game, that wasn't just fun to play and more balanced than any other RPG, but had real-life prizes to boost for the best guilds.
The biggest complaint, that everyone had with Guild Wars seemed to be the missing connectivity, since everything outside of the towns was instanced. It didn't really feel like a big, connected world, but rather a collection of small maps and the pve-aspect suffered from that. Guildwars 2 is going to change all that and not only make the game take part in open gigantic world without load-screens, but also take it one step further and make the world really interactive, with events happening without your involvement. In terms of pvp: The devs noticed, that it was already perfect in Guild Wars, so they are going to import that system and add things that they couldn't have done before, like gigantic battles between 200-men armies.
I'm almost afraid of this game, because I know it will suck my real-life dry like Guild Wars did, but on the other hand I don't have any real-life anyway. Gaming is my king and FOREVER MAY HE REIGN!
IT IS TIME FOR LEGENDS TO BECOME REAL!
1: Portal 2
FUCK. YEAH! GAME OF THE YEAR OF ALL YEARS CONFIRMED!
Portal was easily my favorite game of this generation, with it's innovative game-mechanics and sharply written humor. It made my bleak, cynical little heart fill with glee and provived me with one of the best experiences in all of gaming. Surprisingly the gaming-gods seemingly heard my unspoken prayers and announced Portal 2. I guess Gabe Newell likes to work on this aswell. So, what makes the sequel so great.
Everything! The setting is the withered and broken apart aperture science and resembles the second part of Portal a bit, which was easily the best part of the game. While the story of the first game was great, it was essentially just a test-experiment gone wrong with an unexpected villain. Most of the actually story went on in your head, since you were thrown into the aperture science complex without any explanation of who you are, why you're there, what happened with the complex and how you got there. Portal 2 seems to focus more on dialog, characters and plot and I'm totally fine with that.
Portals are once again the main-focus of the game, but they've added many new features to toy around with like the repulsion gel, that makes you walk real fast or jump real high and I am sure they will add even more until the game's release. The most important part of the game though, at least for me, is the addition of co-op play. Yes, co-op play in something that doesn't involve (space-)marines running around in deserts, shooting terrorists. I don't think I have to tell you that 4 portals are infinitly better than 2 and I can't wait to see what Valve is going to do with 2 player co-op.
All in all, there is nothing that keeps me as excited for it's release as Portal 2 and I am sure it will be a triumph!
We're a lot alike, you and I. You tested me, I tested you. You killed me, I... oh no, wait... I guess I haven't killed you yet. Food for thought.
So, yeah. Those are my 5 most anticipated games at the time. Honorable mentions go out to:
enslaved-beautiful graphics, unique setting, but gameplay didn't impress me that much
diablo 3-Looks good, but if I could choose, I would always choose guild wars 2 over this
little big planet 2-would probably be place 6, looks very good and I am eagerly awaiting it, since I broke my lbp-disc
trine 2-Looks like trine with online co-op. Trine was cool, but the games on the list do more than just add some new levels