I haven't understood the whole "2013 will be the best gaming year, ever!" thing.
This is going to be a lame-duck year, as developers gear-up for the new console, consumers dry-up with regard to funneling cash into the existing consoles, and the games we do get are primarily the third and fourth and sixth iteration of a franchise. And, on top of that, even more shitty DRM and always-on crap (hello, SimCity, which I looked forward to for years and will now probably not buy out of principal!).
This won't be a terrible year, but it's not going to be a glorious year, either. The real bright spot of 2013 is going to be the excitement over new-consoles, which is an excitement we haven't had the pleasure of for almost a decade. If you want to know what year is going to be amazing, look toward 2016, when the new consoles are out and developers are on their second or third game and really starting to make the most out of the new hardware.
In the meantime, there will be a lot of smaller games (think of some upcoming indies and kickstarter projects) to come out this year and next, which will keep things enjoyable.
As for the original poster's list. I'm pretty much exhausted with regard to every title there. They may end up being fine games, but no part of me is squealing in excitement at the prospect of yet another fucking Gears of War game, another Tomb Raider game, another Splinter Cell game, another Dead Space game (getting worse as the series drags on), or a Crysis game (the engine is far more interesting than the extremely bland genre tech-demo that Crysis always is), another Lost Planet (honestly, the first one really turned me off to the point that I haven't felt compelled to give the second one a try, even). The only title on that list that I'm looking forward to is Bioshock Infinite, which I'm approaching with apprehension so as not to be disappointed.
Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls will hopefully be incredible, but . . . there's always room to be let down. They're a couple of my most anticipated for the year, but I'm not assuming they're going to be amazing, at all. GTA V is a pretty reliable blast and hopefully they've learned a lot after GTA IV. SimCity . . . I'm disappointed in the direction it seems to be going, with comments like "we didn't include subway systems this time, because it's hard to do and why do something that isn't going to have pretty shiny graphics for the player to drool over!" and the shitty DRM masked under "it's so you can play with all your friends who . . . don't even play SimCity!". A lot of the rest is just . . . not my wheel house. Nothing with super-heros or comic book characters or rosters of dudes fighting each other in a 2D plane does anything for me.
But . . . does anyone have a list of amazing RPGs coming out? Especially western style RPGs? Anything where you control a party of characters and maybe do so from a top-down or isometric view? How about sim games that aren't racing games or Sim City? How about big online shooters that aren't BF4? (I'm not being rhetorical, I'm sincerely looking for titles, here, because I can't htink of any at the moment).
Oh - and are there any awesome MMOs coming out in 2013?
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