EPTpart 2: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=304617
Alright, final day! Let's get right down to it before those pesky rioters find out where I'm hiding.
Overgrowth: When I watch this trailer I imagine a fight sequence from, say, Kill Bill where I have full agency over each action instead of a few context sensitive buttons that I just mash for a shallow, yet visually impressive, experience and that excites me.
Primal Carnage: A multiplayer fps where you can play as a T-Rex or a velociraptor. That is now a thing and it's called Primal Carnage. My only worry with this game, being a more obscure indie title, is that it might not have a thriving player base.
Quantum Conundrum: Fun fact: Kim Swift and a few other key students from Digipen created a little student project called Narbacular Drop. Narbacular Drop is the game that inspired Portal...which Kim Swift worked on after being hired by Valve. Kim Swift is now making Quantum Conundrum, a first-person physics puzzler. I will buy this.
Rainbow Six Patriots: I have as many reservations about this game as I have reasons to be excited about it. The military fps is a genre I've become quite disillusioned with. They often squander any opportunity they have to be emotionally impactful in favor of being big and badass. Furthermore, if it's a game with Tom Clancy's name attached to it, the story is usually awful. On the other hand, I genuinely get the impression that the team behind Patriots wants that emotional impact to exist beyond 'whoa...they just nuked another nuke! Badass!' If it is well written, I look forward to seeing how they explore something like domestic terrorism because the central conflict of most military shooters is just, 'the Russians are attacking America!' The QTE with the dead-man's switch and the bomb also seems like a very clever use of a rather polarizing mechanic. Cautious optimism is what I have for this game.
Ryse: The Kinect is quite a neat piece of tech, but so far it has proven to be little more than a novelty. It does some things better than any other platform, namely dancing and fitness games - things which are stationary. Child of Eden, a rail shooter, wasn't bad, but I found it more enjoyable with buttons. It lacks something, and that something could be Ryse. Rise of Nightmares shook my confidence in any game on Kinect that grants freedom of motion, but maybe Crytek has a better grasp on the technology than Sega.
Scrolls: My problem with collectible card games is the collecting part. I don't have the money to invest in buying specific powerful cards, or rolling the dice on buying pre-packaged booster packs. I love playing them though. I love the strategy and the deck building, and even the cards themselves; I often just look over some of my MTG cards for inspiration when I have writer's block. That should mean that Scrolls is the perfect game for me unless Mojang implements a really heavy-handed micro transaction system.
Sine Mora: Sine Mora is a shoot 'em up being developed by Suda 51's studio, Grasshopper Manufacture. If you want my thoughts on Suda, go read about Lollipop Chainsaw in part 2. If you want my thoughts on shmups: they are great, and there aren't nearly enough of them. One of the first video games I remember playing was Super Earth Defense Force for the SNES. I want more of these games in my life!
Skullgirls: Skullgirls is going to be an interesting one. The hand-drawn art is beautiful, but the art style is no doubt going to make it a niche game off the bat. It's a new IP and not one with a ton of buzz outside of the fighting game community which narrows its reach even more, and it still isn't guaranteed to do much better, within the community its being made for, than the fairly marginalized Blazblue. Still, it's definitely going to be a good game, and the development is being led by Mike Z for the purpose of being a premiere competitive fighter. It is the most in-touch with the community a fighting game can get and I hope it sees the kind of success it deserves.
Sorcery: Sony's Playstation Move has a similar problem to the Kinect: it lacks games. Kinect has Dance Central, which is an awesome game, but not much else. Move has been implemented into a lot of core shooters like Resistance and Killzone, but both of those work better with the standard controller. What boggles my mind is that the Move has all of the Wii's failures to learn from, and it is arguably a better piece of tech for gaming than the Kinect. That said, Sorcery looks exactly like what the doctor ordered.
South Park: The Game: When I first heard whispers of this game I flashed back immediately to the Nintendo 64 South Park game. It may not have aged well, but it was fun for the time. Leave my nostalgia alone. Anyway, this one has the potential to be even greater. I don't quite trust Obsidian to not put out some buggy bullshit, but I trust the show's creators to not let a sub-par game release while their names are attached to the project.
Splatters: Hmm. Splatters looks like a delightful physics...platformy...surreal...thing. At worst it will be a glorified tech demo - a portend to something even more interesting down the road. More likely it will be a novel and relaxing physics game to chill out with.
Spy Party: Oh, Mr. Hecker. Release this game or send me a beta invite please. One player controls a spy at a party full of AI controlled NPCs and the other player controls a sniper who only has 1 shot to kill the spy. The spy is given a list of objectives which he must accomplish in plain view of the sniper so he must also blend into the crowd of NPCs. It's a game all about mind games and subtlety.
SSX: Deadly Descent: For a while I was worried they would somehow manage to fuck SSX up by taking it in a 'serious' and 'edgy' new direction. Crisis averted. The deadly descents game mode that pits you against things like avalanches and blindingly dark caves looks brilliant to boot.
Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm: Surprise! Did you really expect this not to be on this list? Burrow-move banelings cannot get here fast enough.
Street Fighter x Tekken: Unlike its 3D counterpart, Tekken X Street Fighter, I am actually excited about SFxT. For one, I've actually seen footage of SFxT and it looks incredibly fun. The health bars are still horrid, but I'll learn to look passed that flaw. Also, I just prefer 2D fighters over 3D ones.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2 HD: Finally, after banging their heads against the wall with bad games that nobody wants and peripherals that people want even less, Activision is giving THPS 1 and 2 the HD update treatment. It might sound cynical, but this long after the decline of such a beloved franchise I think that's all anybody really wanted.
Torchlight 2: Torchlight 1 was good, but I found it too repetitive (even for that style of game) to really become infatuated with. Torchlight 2 is going bigger, and that doesn't necessarily mean it will fix my problem with the first. Still, I've had enough time off from the first game to get at least a few dozen hours of enjoyment out of its sequel provided the quality holds up. I also get the feeling that the addition of PvP, the thing that made Diablo 2 a fixture of my adolescent life, will extend my love affair with the game significantly.
Twisted Metal: Following the initial months after the game was announced I was actually nervous about this title. The developers were sending mixed messages about returning vehicles and characters, and for a period of time it seemed as though the cast was going to be homogenized, and only a few fan favorites would be returning. As it turns out, there's a good balance between returning favorites and new unique car/driver combinations. As far as I'm concerned all that's left for Eat Sleep Play to nail is the controls and this will be another classic entry in the Twisted Metal franchise.
War of the Roses: Mount & Blade scratched an itch I didn't know I had - massive Lord of the Rings style medieval battles. How could it not have been obvious that that's a thing I would love? Sure, the combat was slow, sticky, and unresponsive, but that just didn't matter that much to me. War of the Roses looks to iterate on that idea and refine what Mount & Blade did and I look forward to seeing how well Paradox accomplishes that. I just wish there was a more substantial trailer.
Thanks for keeping up with this massive 3 part series, and if you have your eyes on something awesome that didn't get mentioned here please free to post it along with a trailer. Also, see part 1 / 2 for why DotA 2 didn't make it.
