Aren’t Guitar Hero 3 and GTA 4 coming out this year?
Super Mario Galaxy
I’m really looking forward to Bioshock and, of course, Spore, if the latter is actually coming out this year.
I wasn’t particularly looking forward to Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific, but I saw that it had been released recently and picked it up. I’m having a blast playing a US submarine skipper in WWII. My first mission involved delivering a spy from Pearl Harbor right into Osaka, Japan. :eek: I’ve successfully inserted the spy in the dead of night and am now trying to sneak out of enemy waters.
I should also list Storm of War: Battle of Britain, the latest combat flight simulator from Oleg Maddox, but I rather doubt it’s coming out this year.
Duke Nukem Forever
Oh wait, I thought you said “century”, not “year”
I don’t mean to poop in your torpedo tubes, but SH4 is a disaster. It’s one of the buggiest games I’ve ever seen. Many virtual stations in the sub flat out don’t work, the radar doesn’t work, the sound volume is messed up, the chronometer doesn’t work, crew members die for no reason, the sub can’t be repaired sometimes, and of course many CTDs. Those are only the severe bugs… after two patches! Truly a mind boggling mess. They even set up a special website for bug reporting at www.sh4bugs.com, but it looks like it’s down now. Probably has a bug.
Anyhoo, games I’m looking forward to:
Spore
Super Mario Galaxy
Bioshock
That’s 'bout it.
That sums me up. I don’t fall for hype machines anymore. The only time I get anxious for a game is when it goes gold and has only a week till ship date.
Spore. That’s it.
I know the odds are long, but I’m not a religious man and this is the closest I have to belief in a heaven.
I know all about those reported problems. Doesn’t stop me from enjoying the game. While many are real, many others are due to over-analyzing pedants who can’t accept that the game is different from Silent Hunter III.
ETA: I follow the discussions over at Subsim where many others are enjoying the games as well, bugs and all.
Whats that game where you shoot the floor and a wall and it creates a transport tube and when you go through the hole in the floor you end up on the wall?
That demo was way cool to watch.
Brian
If my computer could hack it I’d be all over that. But it ain’t, so I won’t be.
Usually I’m not the type to bitch about bugs, but the broken chronometer really screws it up for me. Without it you can’t play in simulation mode without doing some funky math tricks. Also, I’m not happy with how you can’t interact with the virtual stations. That was one of the coolest parts about SH3. Mainly though, it’s the chronometer that chafes my hide.
Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles. A remake of Chi no Rondo, an updated Symphony of the Night and a port of the original TurboGrafx-16 version of Rondo. All on the PSP.
I cannot express how excited I am at the prospect. Especially the thought of a portable SotN.
Woah, thanks for telling me. I didn’t realize it was out yet.
I loved SH3 (especially after user-made mods fixed a lot of bad design features)
Edit: Just saw the post below it saying it was a trainwreck.
Weird.
When I read about it last year, I thought they said they were just working with/expanding the SH3 engine which, while it has its flaws, isn’t critically buggy.
Gonna try the Conan MMOG. Also, will lock myself in a dark room with headphones on and probably pee myself while playing Bioshock.
You don’t know about the 3 minute rule? Take a range and bearing to the target and mark your navigation map. Wait three minutes; you can use the stopwatch for this, since that works. Take a second range and bearing to the target and make a second mark. Use the ruler to measure the distance between the two marks. Multiply by 20 and you’ll get the target’s speed in knots. As an added bonus you’ll have the target’s heading and hence can figure out the angle on the bow. [Full disclosure: I’m playing on automated targetting right now, but I’ve successfully used the 3 minute rule in the past.]
As for the virtual stations, that was cool and all, but I spend most of my time on the 2D navigation map anyway. What’s really annoying me are some missing status commands from SH3, most notably the range at current speed. In the vast expanse of the Pacific, you really, really worry about running out of fuel. At least the crew actually stands watches now and you don’t have to micromanage their sleep cycles.
I wouldn’t exactly call it a trainwreck. It’s mostly functional, but it has far more bugs than you would expect from a straight expansion of the SH3 engine.
For me at least, the only company that has consistently kept their hype-to-release ratio in the green is Valve Software. I’ve never been disappointed with their products regardless of the hype. Half-Life 2 was the most excited I’ve ever been for a release, and also the most satisfied I’ve ever been with a release as well. I can’t recall any other title not being a profound disappointment when it comes to being completely immersed in the story, characters and environment. As such, I’m like an excited little puppy waiting for this fall’s release of Episode 2, along with Team Fortress 2 and Portal. I love the mystery of the HL universe and the way it unfolds in a painfully slow way … kinda like Lost.
I suppose BioShock doesn’t hold the same appeal for me, being more fantasy-based and open-ended. I also find disappearing/reappearing enemies to be ridiculously annoying. This was one of the first gameplay elements I noticed in the trailers that I’m sure would aggravate me. It also doesn’t look to have much of a character focus either, because it is so open-ended, but that remains to be seen. I guess I like captivating stories and solid characters more than open-ended gameplay because I feel like I’m actually working towards a goal than getting drawn into the repetitive cycle of levelling up just for levelling’s sake … which happens to be the big reason (besides the preponderance of leet-speaking 12-year-olds) that I don’t play MMOs. BioShock’s environments look terrific, but micromanaging spells and potions isn’t my favorite thing to do in any game either, though I’m probably in the minority on that sentiment.
I guess it doesn’t count since it won’t be out this year, but something tells me that Blizzard will be taking the covers off of a highly-anticipated non-MMO sequel before long. Those of you who’ve seen the easter eggs in WarCraft III know about it already. If that wasn’t enough, they were dropping hints about it earlier this year, and even more rumors about it have been stirred up just earlier this week. I refuse to get excited about it yet, but I’m betting that StarCraft II is their big release for 2008. I only hope they learn from the success of recent RTS entries like Supreme Commander or Company of Heroes about what a strategy title should look and play like. IMO, WC3 and WoW looked overly cartoony and cheaply animated upon release and still do, so my hope would be that they’re setting their sights a little higher in terms of realism and scale with SC2.
Oh yeah, DNF FTW. Sometime before I die, God willing.
I disagree. StarCraft 2 should play like StarCraft, not CoH or SupCom. It’s not like StarCraft had extremely unique gameplay, it just perfected established elements. Blizzard is a refiner, not a pioneer.
Between Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and WoW, I’ve lost all faith in Blizzard. They’ve gotten too big for their own good. Whenever I see an ad for BlizzCon I roll my eyes so hard my neck nearly breaks from the centrifugal force. I’m almost positive their new secret special project will be SC2, as they’re not going to sit on that golden egg forever. I just don’t think they can handle it any more. From what I understand, all the geniuses left Blizzard when they turned into a brain eating MMO zombie.
Oh, I never said it shouldn’t play like StarCraft, I only said Blizzard could learn a lesson from what gamers expect in a successful RTS now. Basically, a larger scale and more realism. Blizzard’s always done cartoony, but I think it’s high time they evolve the look of their games to better match the quality of their stunning cinematics. There’s going to be a disconnect for me, personally, if their games don’t start to resemble their cinematics as the hardware price/performance gap continues to narrow. Many titles can put forth a good effort now at achieving realism, so if Blizzard doesn’t put up, I’ll be disappointed. I suppose they’ve always purposefully been “behind the technology curve” to encourage wider availability of their titles to everyone, but prices for DX9 & 10 video cards will only continue to drop this year. For whatever reason, the blocky 3D of the current crop of WarCraft titles seems to be a hit with, well, the leet-speaking basement-dwellers and their sworn enemies, the Korean Dance Dance Revolution tank-rushing baby-eating tourney clans. Maybe it’s an anime thing. Yes, I know anime isn’t Korean.
Shame all their talent’s gone, but StarCraft 2 will be the defining moment for Blizzard, their chance at redemption for proving whether they have, in fact, gotten too big for their own good. I think Bill Roper was quoted as saying they don’t want to become associated as an MMO developer when he alluded to StarCraft 2 as their next title, so I’m willing to give them a chance.
That is, of course, unless they’re planning World of StarCraft for a followup release in 2009 …
GTA4, I will buy an XBox360 to play it.
After much debate about finances, I’ve decided that I’m going to get an Xbox 360. Only for like three games too.
Elder Scrolls; Oblivion
GTA4
And Fable2 (if its even coming out this year, which I doubt)