Perhaps a running article in Jade Gamer magazine?
I've stated to bookmark potentially tasty games that are due for release, so that I don't lose track of them. I figured I may as well share my thoughts since they're not riddled with jade, but optimism (hope). Some games may actually be already out, but I haven't yet considered looking for them.
Fallout: New Vegas http://www.game.co.uk/Games/PC-Games-an ... n1Z1z13fsw
Diablo III http://www.game.co.uk/Games/PC-Games-an ... n1Z1z13fsw
Starcraft II http://www.game.co.uk/Games/PC-Games-an ... n1Z1z13frr
Space Rangers 2 http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... %20rangers
Black Mirror II http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/05 ... mirror-ii/
Shogun II: Total War http://www.gametrailers.com/player/100900.html
Men of War: Assault Squad http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/05 ... ult-squad/
Metro 2033 http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/metro2033
Civ V http://www.civilization5.com/
Amnesia: Dark Descent http://www.amnesiagame.com/#main
Deus Ex 3
Red Orchestra 2http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/07/fact-o-pics-red-orchestra-heroes-of-stalingrad/
Fallout: New Vegas
Actually pretty skeptical about this one. FO3 was a money-grabbing, broad-audience, piss-weak RPG with even weaker atmosphere. I'm interested to see if they will break away from the Oblivion mould and bring me back to RPG's. So far I haven't seen any piece of info on gameplay, so I will have to reserve my judgement and reserve a slot for this game in my honored radar list.
Diablo III
Really looking forward to this. I hope they maintain the top-down element as much as possible because for the past few years, having to rotate the fucking camera due to columns blocking my view has destroyed RPG's. How about concentrating on making one camera angle as visually beautiful and functional as possible, rather than attempting to hail that 3D is the dogs-bollocks and that RSI and basic usability principles are myth. Let's hope they keep a decent level of freedom and abstraction too.
Starcraft II
I'm quite into strategy games. They can be a real creative outlet. Starcraft was an obvious hit and I would like Starcraft 2 to be something along the lines of C&C III, maybe even with a hint of AOE III. A healthy skirmish mode vs CPU is enough to keep me happy, but an MP mode can bring about epic co-op play. Rinox would agree
Space Rangers 2
I think this is out. I've seen that it's described as a strategy-RPG of some kind and that overall reviews (even Metacritic) are pretty high. I hope that it's something along the lines of Men of War, but obviously don't expect it to be. I should really do a bit more reading on this one.
Black Mirror II
I think this is out too. I know almost nothing about it other than 1 screenshot and the genre, adventure. It's one of those games like Broken Sword whereby the gaming world is a series of breathtaking backdrops and your character must go away and dive in the story. I've recently tried to play Nikopol, which is a similar kind of concept, but it didn't come off. Me loves atmosphere.
Shogun II: Total War
This is a rumour, but i've seen it on RPS, and as much as that site irritates me, there could be some degree of truth in claiming that Shogun 2 may be on the horizon. I'm 50/50 on this. My jaded half tells me it's going to be another Rome mod as we've seen in the previous 3 installations of Total War, which means it's going to sport the usual (frankly broken) campaign map and the same pretty (but moronic) battles. I'd like to see them break away from the current campaign map and revisit the idea of provincial maps we see in the original Shogun and Medieval. Maybe even throw in a subset of territories, like county equivalents or something.
Men of War: Assault Squad
OMG OMG OMG OMG. Apparently the focus on this standalone expansion is MP / Co-op and a smaller hero-like scale, perhaps more along the lines of Soldiers: Heroes of WW2. Which i'm fine with to be honest because the larger battles in MoW were too unwieldy and although it gave me a genuine mega-hardon spending 2 hours equipping each man manually one-by-one and setting him off into his own squad / platoon, the game didn't cater for company sized fighting. (No logistics and no inventory / roster management). You ended up picking up 4 of your hardest, most ultra armoured and gunned men to do the mission anyway
Metro 2033
I think this is out too. It kinda fell below my radar since it must have been hit by some kind of jade-jammer. It's interesting to me because the concept and atmosphere is sound. What worries me is that apparently it's riddled with bugs. So fuck that. If it gets fixed I may give it a whirl.
Civ V
No brainer! Although I say that with slight reluctance because Civ 4, to me, wasn't very good. Was it the shift to 3D perhaps? Hmmmmmm... what do you think? Anyway, I hope they don't continue to dumb down the series.
Amnesia: Dark Descent
This one was pointed out by Rinox actually, and it's due out in Q3 I think. There's a 20% pre-order discount at the official website, which is tempting. It's like Penumbra. Basically, this game is all about drawing into a creepy and atmospheric world and then, occasionally, make you fully and utterly shit yourself with horror. I'm pretty fresh to this genre, but I can see how this works.
Deus Ex 3: Well, Deus Ex 2 was gash in my opinion. It was clearly consolified to death. Hopefully we will see something grand with the 3rd helping. Totally not hyped up about it though.
Red Orchestra 2: OMG, this is big! RO1 (well - in truth Darkest Hour) is unique in terms on FPS. It throws you into a gritty yet pretty real WW2 environment in a kind of semi-simulation kind of way. The maps in DH are extremely well designed. Hopefully, RO2 will be just as awesome. Good news is it's based on Unreal 3 engine.
