Watch Dogs
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release: Late 2013
Though in recent years, Ubisoft has been happy to milk the Assassin’s Creed licence until its ruddy teats squeaked, let us not forget that the space-wizards-thru-history mega-franchise was born of huge creative risk: a new IP that cost so much develop that, rumour has it, sales didn’t cover the cost of development until its sequels were on shelves. Now, the same gigantic studio, Ubisoft Montreal, has unveiled Watch Dogs – a game with no smaller a scope than Assassin’s Creed, combining the complex sedition of information warfare with brutish third-person action and, it is suspected, with some sort of clever multiplayer/singleplayer crossover. It’s not only a showcase for the kind of polygon-crunching power the cutting edge PC can generate (finally loosed from the shackles of last-gen cross platform releases) but it also establishes a fiction that Ubisoft hopes will see it through the next decade.
Dead Space 3
Publisher: EA
Release: February 8
The sudden appearance of a co-op mode in this venerable space-horror franchise may sound like the marketing department got a little trigger happy with the back-of-box checklist, but there are reasons to be optimistic. Firstly, didn’t we all the say the same gloomy things about Mass Effect 3’s excellent multiplayer? Secondly, Dead Space already showed it could deliver terror to a twosome in its (actually terrific, sadly undersold) Wii light-gun game. What’s more, the game’s roots have hardly been forgotten: it’s still perfectly possible to play the game on your tod. This one promises to add themes of insanity and perception to the traditional jump-scares and body-horror.
Tomb Raider
Publisher: Square Enix
Release: March 5
Vulnerability and survival are the watchwords for this reinvention of the Tomb Raider series, which finds a young and unworldly Lara Croft shipwrecked on an island – a far cry from the backflipping, dual-wielding daredevil treasure-seeker who murdered her way through polygonal archeological hoards during the mid-nineties. Crystal Dynamics are certainly brave in taking this iconic character in such a dark, mature direction – but will the cost to our heroine’s empowerment prove too great a price to pay?
Star Wars 1313
Publisher: LucasArts
Release: Late 2013
“Dark and mature” may not be the go-to description for Star Wars, particularly since LucasArts’ acquisition by the House of Mouse, but such is the promise for this third person actioner. Set in the bowels of Coruscant, the subterranean Level 1313, you take on the role of a bounty hunter embroiled in a murky criminal conspiracy. Early glimpses suggest the game will ignore lightsabers and force powers in favour of gadgetry and guns, and the claims are for a more grounded and gritty fiction, instead of the fruity pangalactic melodrama to which we are accustomed.
Strike Suit Zero
Publisher: Born Ready Games
Release: January 24
Space combat has proven popular on Kickstarter but the interplanetary dogfighting of Strike Suit Zero wasn’t born from the crowdfunding process. Instead, this rather beautiful off-world blaster had been a while in development already and will be using the $175k it raised to, uh, kickfinish the project, and then kickpolish it, too.
Fortnite
Publisher: Epic Games
Release: TBC 2013
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Perhaps keen to prove that there’s more to Unreal Engine 4 than high-definition beefcakes gunning down space goblins in the destroyed beauty of a future city, Epic Games’ first proof of their new technology will be the cartoonish tower defence game, Fortnite. The clean, chirpy visuals belie technological innovation, however: UE4 will allow players huge freedom in the way they construct their anti-zombie fortifications, editing each wall with a 3×3 grid. The plan is that the game will have a long-tail, with many post-release updates, eventually allowing players to construct Rube Goldberg-style machines of death.
Starforge
Publisher: CodeHatch
Release: TBC 2013
Minecraft with guns, realistic graphics, and both ground and low-orbit construction. Interested? Starforge is a ridiculously ambitious crowd-funded indie project that’s already come a remarkably long way. You deform terrain and build a fortress to protect yourself from aliens, and when all else fails, use a shotgun to blast them into pieces. If the small team can make those weapons feel nice to fire, it’ll be a winner.
Grand Theft Auto 5
Publisher: Rockstar
Release: Spring 2013
There’s been no confirmation of Rockstar’s next blockbuster for PC, but it would be a world gone topsy-turvy if Grand Theft Auto 5 was marooned on consoles for ever. This isn’t Red Dead Redemption, a game developed by a studio with around three PC credits to its name – this is GTA, a series whose every main instalment has appeared on PC. And it’s developed by Rockstar North, a team that (even including its legacy as DMA Design) has brought all bar seven of its games to PC. And where are the internet petitions to port Walker over from the Amiga, I might ask?
Guaranteed to be one of the biggest releases of 2013, GTA 5 sees the player take on the role of three different characters trying to make a crust amid the tinseltown glamour and sunbaked squalor of Los Santos. And it’s likely to be an ill-gotten crust at that, given the series’ heritage of exuberant criminality: heists, hits and high-speed chases are all to be expected, interspersed with all the leisure activities a high-rolling hoodlum might desire.
Remember Me
Publisher: Capcom
Release: May
“We’ll always have Paris,” as the saying goes – not so much in the Neo-Paris of 2084, when memories can be erased or altered by Memory Hunters. You play as one such mnemonic saboteur, called Nilin, herself rendered amnesiac by agents of the oppressive Parisien regime. Thirdperson acrobatics and assassinations ensue as you try to piece together the conspiracy, and featuring the world’s mostcomplicated sounding combat system. You also get to wreck men’s minds by jumping into their memory and replaying events to reconfigure their recollection. Convince someone they killed their girlfriend during an argument, for instance, and you may just drive them to suicide. How lovely.
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release: Spring
Ninja-spy Sam Fisher without voice-actor Michael Ironside is like bread without butter. Talking butter. Sardonic, gravelly-voiced, talking butter. But despite the new vocal chords lent to Fisher, this sixth outing for the sneak-em-up series may yet prove to be more loyal to the action of the earlier games. While Splinter Cell: Conviction saw Sam on the lam, decimating a small army of enemies with little attempt at secrecy, Blacklist’s latest trailers show off non-lethal takedowns – much more to the tastes of the discerning spy.
Lost Planet 3
Publisher: Capcom
Release: January
Previous instalments in this thirdperson shooter series have been an intriguing but not always comfortable mix of Gears of War and Shadow of the Colossus, with players cooperatively slaying giant beasts and hordes of future-pirates on the world of EDN 3 – in the first instance a bleak ball of ice, thawing to a steaming jungle in its sequel. This game promises to be a prequel, so we can assume a few stiff breezes and frosty mornings. It also promises to be more narrative-led – which is worrying given the entirely charmless fiction of previous games. More worrisome still is the fact that the original developers aren’t on board, replaced by Spark Unlimited, responsible for crimping off the reeking digi-turd which was Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. Brr.
Star Trek
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Release: Early 2013
Bridging the gap between JJ Abrams’ reboot and the upcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness, this tie-in will certainly deliver Hollywood glitz with its cast – and usually that would be all you could expect. But this is being handled by Digital Extremes, a studio with an admittedly mixed portfolio, but one riding high after the triumphant carnage of the Darkness 2. They may well have the chops to enliven even the most linear thirdperson actioner
Publisher: Kalypso Media
Release: Q2 2013
A stealth action game in which players take on the role of a vampire anti-hero attempting to bring down a shadowy corporation in a futuristic cel-shaded city – or “a world of blood and darkness” as the press release rather hysterically puts it. As well as being possessed of supernatural sneakiness, our protagonist can face down the police and all many of night-time terrors with a range of vampiric powers that allow him to turn to smoke or close for the kill with lightning speed.
Devil’s Third
Publisher: TBC
Release: TBC 2013
Things have been a little quiet since THQ withdrew as the publisher for this thirdperson shooter and melee combat game set on a war-ravaged future Earth. It has good pedigree, coming from a studio forged by principal developers of the Ninja Gaiden games, but neither the presence of near-legendary developers and a multi-million budget proved sufficient reason to keep it on THQ’s slate. We await to hear its fate.
Furious 4
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release: TBC 2013
Originally set to be the fourth entry in the po-faced, pseudo-reverent WW2 shooter series, Brothers In Arms, early trailers for Furious 4 took such a divergent and whimsically vicious tone that the project was hurriedly hived off on its own. Since its initial reveal, however, the Tarantino-inspired action caper has been little seen or heard, with Gearbox claiming that there’s been a substantial facelift in the interim.
XCOM
Publisher: 2K Games
Release: TBC 2013
Another project with an uncertain fate, this action-based reboot of XCOM met with such acrimony from fans of the original turnbased strategy game that its release date scurried off into the distant future, allowing Firaxis’ more loyal squad-tactics remake, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, to take centre-stage. It’s status is now unclear, with development bigwigs like the talented Jordan Thomas leaving for BioShock Infinite. The talk is now of a budget-download only release – quite the switcharound from the original plan. Will it even re-emerge with the XCOM name attached?
Beyond Good And Evil 2
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release: Late 2013
Every silver lining has a cloud: Michel Ancel’s efforts to resurrect 2D platformer hero Rayman proved so tremendously and ebulliently successful that it has delayed his return to Beyond Good And Evil 2. All that’s been seen of the sequel to the superb off-beat action adventure is a rendered trailer and a few splashes of concept art, but if Ancel’s recent form is anything to go by, we won’t be getting half-measures. 2013 is a push, but crazier things have happened.
Rambo: The Video Game
Publisher: Reef Entertainment
Release: Early 2013
While Rambo has since become synonymous with action by dint of its excessive sequels, it’s far from certain that the first film, which is largely about a man undergoing a PTSD-induced meltdown in some woodland, will really adequately satisfy as a shooter. Still, it can’t be any worse the Ubisoft’s recent efforts with The Expendables, right?
State Of Decay
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Release: TBC 2013
Undead Labs are a more than a little bit late to the zombie-survival-open-world-game party, but hopefully their entry will be a little less controversial than War Z’s debut. This one promises an ever-evolving world with fortifiable strongholds.
Warframe
Publisher: Digital Extremes
Release: TBC 2013
You wait for one free-to-play online shooter with a disyllabic name beginning “War-”, and then two come along at once. Not to be confused with Crytek’s near future blamfest Warface, Digital Extreme’s effort is a procedurally generated co-op affair set in a sci-fi universe. Players take on the role of the Tenno, a race of space-ninjas battling against their former overlords, the Grineer, by suiting up with specialised exoskeletons known as Warframes.
Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2
Publisher: Konami
Release: TBC 2013
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Though the first Lords of Shadow missed a PC release, the vampire-hunting yarn was a pleasant surprise for many in the console world, winning players round with a highly competent (if derivative) mix of thirdperson action, exploration and puzzling. The sequel skips from medieval times to the modern day, with the protagonist, now going under the name of Dracula, awaking from a long slumber. Expect the acrobatic hacking and slashing of enormous supernatural creatures and enough of the red stuff to defeat even the most powerful of detergent cleaners.
Ether One
Publisher: White Paper Games
Release: Early 2013
First person adventure that takes place in the ‘broken mental structures’ of a woman called Jean. It’s the first part of two, and it’s got lofty aims – the devs claim to want to ‘explore the importance and fragility of human memories’.
The Adventurer
Publisher: The Farm 51
Release: TBC 2013
An action adventure FPS set in the 30s with a globetrotting, treasure-hunting theme – sounds more like an Indiana game than and indie game. The Adventurer doesn’t seem abashed about its inspiration though, promising tomb raiding, traps, lost treasure and a list of exotic locations from Egypt to the Arctic.
Zwei
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Release: Late 2013
Zwei’s the codename for the first project from Bethesda-owned, Shinji Mikami-headed Tango Gameworks. They’re keeping tight-lipped about its contents, but one thing has been promised: it’ll be a return to the celebrated Resident Evil developer’s formative genre of survival horror.
Collateral
Publisher: Dancing Dinosaur Games
Release: TBC 2013
Pitched as a cyberpunk taxi-driving game, Collateral’s twitchy car combat recalls something of the Twisted Metal series – except here, the cars fly, dogfighting amid a garish, futuristic cityscape. It’s not likely to be an overly serious dystopian vision, however, as witnessed by the giant, bloated Elvis statue in the city centre and the numerous nods to The Fifth Element.
The Dead Linger
Publisher: Sandswept Studios
Release: 2013
Another first-person zombie survival game promising the world – in this case literally, since the game boasts a “planet-sized” post-apocalypse to roam. This is quite a small planet, however, going by the wiki’s figure of 25,000 square kilometers. But unlike Day Z, here it’s all procedurally generated and the claim is that you can interact with anything you see. It’s a long way from fulfilling all of its pledged feature-set however, with a good deal of work to be done to get before it competes either visually or mechanically with existing zombie shooters. Paid alpha access is already available at a reduced rate.
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