ROODY YOGURT'S TOP FIVE ANTICIPATED GAMES OF 2012!!!
#1 - WHATEVER GAME BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN AND JACK WELCH IS RELEASING TODAY
I only found out about this game like 14 hours ago, when I saw Jonsey's retweet about it (which said it was coming out tomorrow). Truth be told, there were aspects of their first game that I did not enjoy, and I had a bit of a conflicting opinion on their second game, Hoosegow. The first time I played it, during a ClubFloyd, I thought it was the future of IF- a great game in which NPCs notice everything you do and comment accordingly. The second time I played it, I thought some of the puzzles were a bit weak, and it wasn't the masterpiece I initially thought it was.
That said, Ben and Jack still have one of those admirable creative partnerships where they really seem to work together well. I've never been in an extremely productive collaboration (largely due to myself), so two people who work together well just mystifies me on some level. Having accomplished that, new games by this duo always have the possibility of blowing previous works out of the water.
Plus, both Ben and Jack are friendly guys, and Jack *really* struck me as a super-cool, laid-back fellow when I met them at PAX East, so I'd like to see them write the awesome game their enthusiasm and intelligence merits.
Runners-up: Whatever games ICJ or loafingcoyote release this year.
EDIT: I realized later that they were most likely announcing a game a part of this TMBG mini-comp, where a bunch of people wrote games inspired by Apollo whatever songs. Here, I was thinking it was one of those surprise, oh-here's-a-full-game announcements. Oh, well.
#2 - MAX PAYNE 3
This one gets second place just because moreso than most of the other games on my "top 5" list, I might actually play this one. Max Payne 2, while not a
terrible game, was enough of a disappointment that I don't think the series really has any integrity left to save.
Still, in this third installment, Mr. Payne is going to motherfucking
Brazil, and I can't think of a finer place I'd want to go to shoot scum of the earth. I don't really care how much the game preserves the series' 'noir' sense or whatever else the crybabies are crying about; I just want the sun to shine brightly as I shoot people around buildings huddled together on steep inclines.
#3 - THE SECRET WORLD
Now we get into the games I won't even play! The Secret World is a MMORPG. Oddly enough, it's also supposed to be a
level-less MMORPG, so I imagine it's not going to be all grinding, making Korean kids rich and crap.
It's designed by this guy named Ragnar Tornquist, who was the creative mind behind the adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. Now, it's not like this guy shits gold, but both TLJ and Dreamfall have some great aspects and I look forward to dude returning to the series.
It is my hope that The Secret World is either so awesomely cool that I enjoy reading the occasional article about it (I waste enough time without getting hooked on MMORPGs) or it fails miserably, forcing Tornquist to go back to adventure games.
Either way, I look forward to its release!
#4 - THE WALKING DEAD
Speaking of adventure games, let's talk about Walking Dead. Having never read the graphic novels (comics? I don't even remember what it's based on), it took both the tv show to both awaken and kill my interest in the Walking Dead universe.
Unfortunately, Telltale Games, makers of various episodic adventure game series, in their pursuit of bigger and better intellectual properties (other recent games have been based on Back to the Future and Jurassic Park), have gotten mixed up with WD and are releasing a game on it.
I have no intent to pick the game up (the show
really killed my interest), but the sooner that WD comes out (and fails), the sooner that Telltale Games might go back to the adventure games I want to support.
#5 - BIOSHOCK INFINITE
(This was going to be one of the Game of Thrones games but I couldn't find a nice picture to link to)
Yeah, I'm still curious how Bioshock Infinite turns out. I'll probably wait 5 or 6 months to pick it up, though, if at all.
Runner-up: Any Game of Thrones games that come out this year-
I don't intend to pick any of these up, but as a fan of the book series, I like seeing these screen shots and stuff as a visualization of some of the things I've read about. Plus, as long as Game of Thrones is somewhat successful pop-culturally, the tv show will do well (which I have been enjoying), and that gives GRRM more incentive to finish the series before he dies.