Most Anticipated Games of 2012

Like I said last week, 2011 is going to be a really tough act to follow in terms of great game releases. However, there are quite a few excellent titles to look forward to in 2012, and that’s before you consider the the release of the Playstation Vita, the Wii U, or the possibility of next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft (personally, I doubt that either will release a new console in 2012, but you never know). Continuing with my gaming-related theme of the past couple of weeks, I decided to put together a list of my most anticipated games of 2012. The list is limited to five titles (because I like nice numbers), and therefore there are quite a few honourable mentions. Those honourable mentions include…

  • WipEout 2048
  • Lumines: Electronic Symphony
  • SSX
  • Street Fighter x Tekken
  • Devil May Cry (DmC)
  • Bioshock Infinite
  • Lollipop Chainsaw
  • Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm

I’m sure that there are a few titles that I forgot about. With those out of the way, here are my five most anticipated titles of 2012:

Mass Effect 3: Definitely the most anticipated game on this list, despite how little I know about the storyline (I’ve been intentionally starving myself, for fear of massive spoilers). To be honest, I’m a little scared of how the game is going to turn out, considering how heavy the EA influence seems to be at Bioware. I have a strong suspicion that Dragon Age 2’s… disappointing performance was thanks in large part to EA’s pressure in rushing the product to market (note: I have not played the game, and I can only comment based on the popular reception), and many of EA’s questionable practices of the past year have made me instantly skeptical of anything that the company places its grubby paws over. I suspect that EA is also responsible for the decision to include co-op into Mass Effect 3, and as it turns out, that is the one aspect of the game that I am the least excited for. I’m glad that the co-op isn’t essential for getting the best ending, because there’s pretty much no chance that I will be touching that mode. Mass Effect has always been a game defined by its storyline in my eyes, and if I’m ever in the mood to partake in a pure-gameplay co-op experience, I would much rather go for something like Gears of War 3. Still, even with all of the lingering fears floating around in my mind, I - like many of you - am heavily invested in the Mass Effect storyline, and I’m dying to find out how it ends. Hell, I’m so excited about this game that I’m going to be playing through the first two games over again, just to refresh the story in my mind, and to make sure that my Shepard is ready to go.

Counter-Strike Global Offensive: I actually just purchased a new video card for my computer a few hours ago (as part of Memory Express’s Boxing Day sale), but as it turns out, the most anticipated PC game on list is a game that is running on the positively ancient Source engine. Counter-Strike: Source was a massive part of my gaming life during my early University years (especially the second year, where I was playing for an hour a day regardless of how much work I had to do). Like millions of PC gamers worldwide, I have extremely fond memories of de_dust2, cs_office, and even the original de_dust, despite its horrible imbalances (thankfully, it has been tweaked in Global Offensive). Thankfully, a quick gander at Giant Bomb reveals that the PC version of GO will have dedicated servers and the potential to host games with up to thirty-two players, which means that I will be able to relive my fondest Source memories in all of their glory. You won’t be able to play any ranked matches that have more than ten people, but who cares about that stuff anyways? Counter-Strike isn’t Call of Duty, and if I want ranked matches, matchmaking, and all of those fancy bells and whistles, I’ll walk over to my Xbox 360 and throw Modern Warfare 3 in. To be honest, I’m not sure how strong my Counter-Strike lust is going to be after years of absence and years of playing games like Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 3, but I’m definitely looking forward to finding out.

Grand Theft Auto V: I never played much of Grand Theft Auto IV. For some reason, I just couldn’t get very interested in it, despite the fact that my brother had bought it and it was in the house ready to go. Still, the GTA V trailer is looking really good, and I’m definitely excited about the possibility of running around in a much larger San Andreas-style city. From what I have heard from my friends, one of the big problems of GTA IV was how small the city was in comparison to the sprawling game area that was available in San Andreas, and so if we can somehow get the level of breadth in San Andreas combined with the amount of depth in GTA IV, it will be a success in my books. A lot of people are upset about the more mature approach that Rockstar has taken with their games in recent years, but personally I find that it reflects my personal change as a gamer. In my high school years, I was perfectly content with the silliness of Grand Theft Auto III, where I would sit on top of the casino and snip bystanders and police officers for hours on end. I don’t really feel the same way about reckless, gratuitous violence anymore. I’m not going to get on my high horse and pretend that it has something to do with a so-called maturation process. Rather, it probably just has more to do with my personal mindset. With that said, I’m definitely looking forward to whatever Rockstar has in store for GTA V, especially after experiencing the thoroughly excellent storytelling in Red Dead Redemption.

Starhawk: I wanted to have at least one new IP in the list. Admittedly, Starhawk isn’t really a completely new IP. Rather, it’s a futuristic twist on the Warhawk formula. Even still, it’s looking pretty sharp based on what little we’ve seen of it. I’ll admit that when it comes to multiplayer games on consoles, I tend to be a little difficult to impress. There are definitely quite a few console multiplayer experiences that I enjoy (the Halo series, the Call of Duty series, Gears of War 3, Killzone 3), but overall I tend to gravitate more towards the PC side, which I have always considered to be vastly superior in terms of online multiplayer. I haven’t been truly hooked on a console multiplayer game since Halo 3 back in the day (sadly, Reach has failed to achieve the same impact with me, though I do enjoy it), and I’m hoping that Starhawk can pull me in. I’ve never been a huge fan of flying (I hated any sort of aerial combat in the Battlefield games), so hopefully being a ground-based player is a viable approach in Starhawk. I suppose time will tell.

Final Fantasy XIII-2: I swear, I must be one of the few people who actually enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII. It definitely had its share of flaws, and I’m definitely upset at some of the concessions that the developers made (no world map, no towns, no shops, very few NPCs), but overall I still enjoyed my time with it, and I think that the battle system in that game is a lot more in-depth than people give it credit for. The auto-battle option definitely had the potential to be abused, but you still had to perform your Paradigm Shifts at the right times, and it still required a fair amount of strategic depth. It doesn’t look like the follow-up is going to fix all of my problems with the original game (i.e. it still doesn’t look like you have the ability to control all three characters, and it looks like the game will still end if your party leader dies), but as long as they can take out some of the linearity and put in some of the elements that I feel are essential for any instalment of the Final Fantasy franchise, it’ll be an enjoyable game. The people who hated FFXIII have probably made up their minds already, but for the rest of us, I have a feeling that this will be an RPG worth playing.

Between all of the games coming out this year and all of the games of last year that I haven’t gotten around to playing yet (see my list at the start of last week’s post), I definitely won’t be bored, though I may be broke by the end of it. Oh, and then there’s those Steam sale games that I haven’t even gotten around to installing. Oh Steam…

3 Notes/ Hide

  1. fraaz posted this