Upcoming Games

Oh, what a crappy year it has been for gaming. It has been full of busts and letdowns for me personally, but it has been nice to catch up on some older games as well as continuing to work toward fragging n00bs on Modern Warfare 3 with my new(ish) clan: All Fun N Games (shameless shout out):

https://elite.callofduty.com/connect/clan/view/1233622

Great group of guys and pretty competitive on the clan scene. Gives me a reason to constantly go back to an otherwise "meh" online experience, which is

Diablo III is probably the greatest letdown of the year for me thus far. What promised to be a logical progression from the previous game feels overly derivative and clunky. I will finish the game at some point, but over 20 hours into the game you realize how shallow it is. The auction house would have been a nice touch if it actually worked the way it was supposed to when launched. The servers were essentially non-existent the first 7 days and the dual-authentication token on my account broke. This means that for over 10 days since launch I have been unable to play the game, which does not lend itself to actually making me WANT to play the game. All in all, I had very high hopes for this game and yet again Blizzard has let me down. I think my love affair with this developer has run its course. It will take something truly great (WarCraft IV perhaps???!!!) to bring me back to this broken giant.

Other games that I have looked forward to and been disappointed in:
- Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
- Battlefield 3 and the 3GBs of patches that were supposed to fix the tech issues and did not (released Oct 2011 - but still a letdown)
- Twisted Metal
- SSX
- Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City

Games that I am looking forward to in the upcoming part of the year:

Borderlands 2:

It doesn't hurt the animation producer is an old high school chum, but I got completely engrossed in the first game. It was essentially a first person shooter that had some crazy action and a fresh, new outlook on the art direction of the FPS game. Moving from realistic and grim to bright and cartoony, it was a breath of fresh air. I must have poured the better part of 100-200 hours into this game and all the DLC that it offered. Truly a great experience and with 2 boasting more campaign and content (along with 2 new characters) I have nothing but high hopes for this game. I also warned my friend that if I end up wasting my money on this he will never hear the end of it.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2:

Oh, Call of Duty... you somehow know how to make me hate myself for loving to play your games. In fact, I will be the first to recognize that this game is not actually going to be THAT good. I only play these games because I cannot convince any of my other friends to play any other online FPS games. Therefore, this becomes more of a social event than a gaming event for me. Regardless, I will be playing it with my AFnG clan and friends alike. A few things that are worth noting are the revamping of the class load-out systems to a "choose 10" instead of locking in a pre-determined list and "pick 1" from that list and the movement from a kill-based streak to a score-based streak. Are these enough to claim "reinvention" or "innovation"? Probably not, but it will make for some good fun come 11-13-12!!!!

2012-Early 2013 Outlook:
You may notice there are only a few titles here. I think it is mostly due to the fact that my jaded point of view tells me there are only going to be a handful of titles that are actually worth spending money on. As such the above two games are those I have already pre-ordered. The below games are those that I will wait to see how they pan out before actually buying them, but have blipped my radar for potentially good games worth a purchase.
- Metal Gear Rising: Resurgence
- DMC (reboot of Devil May Cry)
- Aliens: Colonial Marines
- Hitman: Absolution
- Assassin's Creed III
- Dishonored