This week sees the biggest gaming event of the year kick off – E3 2012 in Los Angeles. We’ll be there all week bringing you the best of the show. There will be big announcements from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, plus plenty to see from big publishers such as UbiSoft and Electronic Arts. With the current generation of consoles reaching the end of their lives, PC games are looking very much next generation. 2012 looks like a great year for desktop gaming.
Here are the games I’m really looking forward to seeing this year.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
The recently announced Black Ops 2 takes the series into the near future of 2025. US reliance on drones and robots in the military backfires spectacularly. Enemies take control of the mechanized military and turn it against American cities. In a first for the series, Call of Duty Black Ops 2 will feature a ‘branching story’, so the single player campaign will feel less linear, it will also make the game more re-playable, with different endings.
We’re hoping to see some of the multiplayer at E3 too, as this has so far remained under wraps.
Dishonored
I first saw Dishonored in 2011 at Gamescom in Cologne. It’s a fantastic looking game set in a fictional city of Dunwall. It looks like a mix of Victorian Britain and ‘steampunk’ – the world is full of steam-powered robotics, and huge mustaches. It’s a first-person stealth game at heart, but the lead character Corvo Attano has some special powers that make Dishonored really unique. He can freeze time, possess living creatures, teleport, and summon plagues of attacking rats. These powers can be combined really creatively, and I was very impressed with what I saw last year.
We’ll be taking a closer look at this later in the week.
Assassin’s Creed III
Like Call of Duty, this is another massive franchise that was in danger of getting lazy. A new civil war setting and protagonist take care of that. Featuring Boston and New York, Assassin’s Creed III looks like a great shake up to the historical franchise. With more guns around in the civil war, the gameplay has been shaken up quite a lot, and it looks pretty tough.
Borderlands 2
Borderlands 2 is another title we saw last year, so we’re hoping for more at E3. The first game was great, and it looks like Gearbox have really pushed themselves for the sequel. The cel-shading looks even more impressive, the customization has been ramped up, and there’s four player co-op play too. The weaponry is really varied, and the enemy AI is looking very clever. This looks like a true blockbuster and we can’t wait to get our hands on it.
Crysis 3
Crysis has built a reputation as the best looking shooter around, and part three will be no exception.
It’s set in 2047, in a New York that’s been encased in a giant ‘NanoDome’ – and this looks incredible, with the city having been retaken by plantlife, it’s a really lush looking environment. Prophet’s amazing nano-suit has yet more upgrades, and of course the crossbow that features heavily in the trailers released so far.
DOTA 2
This sequel to the popular Warcraft III mod, DOTA 2 is being developed by Valve, which rarely puts a foot wrong with its releases. Beta testing has been extensive, so it should be really well balanced when it’s finally released. It will also be a free to play title, meaning getting into the real time strategy will be easier than ever. Whether Valve can make DOTA 2 as accessible as its other online titles like Team Fortress 2 will be interesting to see – the DOTA 2 community is notoriously hard on newbies and who knows how they’ll react to thousands of players with no idea what they’re doing!
Counter Strike: Global Offensive
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive follows on from the online multiplayer phenomenon Counter-Strike, another game that started out as a mod (for Half-Life). This will be playable at E3, and everything we’ve heard so far sounds great. Valve hasn’t tried to reinvent the game, simply update it so it looks more 2012. This means some things we’re used to, like health regeneration, won’t happen in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It’s an unforgiving game, but all the more tense and enjoyable for it.
SimCity
The new SimCity is looking really special. Not scheduled for release until 2013, we hope to see more of it this week. According to the developer Maxis, technology has caught up with its ideas, meaning this new game will be even deeper. It’s been too long since JonVille‘s inhabitants have been subjected to my terrible town planning, and in this game I’ll be able to be a terrible neighbor in multiplayer too!
Stay tuned for more E3 coverage all week!
