Shoot happens
If you survive them all, there's a world of pad-hurling pain headed your way in the form of Ninja Gaiden 3. And, to top it all off, those pesky zombies will shuffle into crosshairs once more with the European release of Yakuza: Dead Souls and the multiplayer shooter Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive
Taking its cue from the zombies, Ghost Recon Future Soldier also rises from the dead in March, clawing its way out of development purgatory ahead of a slew of war games, with Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Spec Ops: The Line, Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 and Rambo all battling for the high ground in the months before the next Medal of Honour and Call of Duty entries break cover.
Halo 4
Gamers desensitised to real-world shooters needn't worry, though. There's plenty of variation elsewhere in digital gunplay. Cult classics Borderlands, The Darkness, Metro 2033 and Prey all receive sequels towards the end of summer. Overstrike, the co-op spy-fi shooter from Resistance-developer Insomniac, appears to be shaping up nicely for a Q3 release. And it will be interesting to see how successfully 343 Studios fills Bungie's shoes with Halo 4.
But with Ken Levine back at the helm, 2012's most promising shooter – and serious contender for game of the year – has to be Bioshock Infinite, which looks set to arrive around September.
Bioshock Infinite
Talking of titles, FPS games have won the most controversial game of the year three years running with MW2's No Russians, Medal of Honour's playable Taleban and MW3's Chemical Attack. But next year things will be different. The real controversy won't centre on gratuitous depictions of reality - somehow acceptable on celluloid, but not on silicon - but rather on Syndicate and XCOM's sacrilegious transitions to the FPS genre – which would leave the door wide open for Grand Theft Auto V to sweep the boards at next year's Keith Vaz Awards, no doubt.
Mass Effect 3
If you're wondering why I've prattled on about shooting games so much, it's because, once again, the FPS is by far the dominant genre. In fact, unlike 2011's slugfest between shooters and RPGs, there's little concerted competition from any other genre.
There'll be plenty of sports games, of course, with annual cash cows Tiger Woods and Fifa joined in the summer by a deluge of shoddy Olympic-themed motion-controlled compendiums.
Next page: Generation's end
COMMENTS
The Olympics?
"What are you most looking forward to next year? Euro 2012 and the Olympics? "
The Olympics?
Do you mean The Olympics with hordes of cheating, blood-doping, performance-enhancing-drug taking, money-seeking "athletes" in a display pandering to the shallowest kind of national chauvinism by allowing nations to compete against each other in fields of endeavor which have no actual significance whatsoever - scored by dishonest and biased judges and run by the corrupt officials of a corrupt corporation known as the IOC?
Those Olympics?
To answer the original question, no, I am not looking forward to the Olympics.
Write your own damn game then
Complaining that nobody has written games you like is the same as complaining that none of the prostitutes you've hired has really known how to get you off -- unless you lost both hands in the war, which would do a lot to explain your typography now I think about it, you're perfectly capable of doing for yourself, and will find that the attempt does you far more good (and makes you far less annoying) than sitting around whining about how poorly you're served by the commercial fare on offer.
Portal.
Portal got made. OK at its most basic it's a glorified FPS, but in its own way it's original and it's commercially successful. I'd wager that these days if you've got a good enough idea someone will stump up some cash...
so?
*sigh*
If we're going to get re-hashes and repeats, could we at least get a new Baldur's Gate? I've been replaying that since it showed up on Antiques Code Show, and even at 12 years old, it's still a damn fun, damn playable, damn absorbing game. Damn it.
never happen...
console makers like their exclusives.
im hoping that colonial marines makes it this year and isnt the painful game that AVP2 was.
looking forward to a new tombraider too. unchartered was fun but the puzzles were so easy. me and the wife love that type of game and play them together.
im also looking forward to see if splash damage can come up with something. brink was great fun but early problems killed the game a bit and the community died off quick.
devs need to separate pc and console games. im fine with both getting the game but PC shouldnt have the gimped options consoles need.
