Most Anticipated Games of 2009: 40-31
The games to keep an eye on during 2009.
And in the blink of an eye 2009 is upon us, and games like Gears of War 2, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Animal Crossing: Let's go to the City seem like a distant memory. Now, as is the way with the world, we turn to the future without having given the past the time it deserves. Fable 2 creator Peter Molyneux says nothing in 2009 excites him. Well that's not how we feel. Today begins our week-long Most Anticipated Games of 2009 feature, where we compile the 40 games that make us wet with excitement just at the thought of playing them. Here, in the first instalment, we run down from 40 to 31. Read on, and let the hype begin.
40. The Sims 3, EA - PC - February 20
The Sims is a franchise that has passed us by somewhat at VideoGamer.com, but that doesn't mean we're not aware of its widespread appeal. The Sims 3 will likely become one of the best selling PC games of all time, so we're automatically interested. There's a tad more pressure on the game to wow though, seeing as Will Wright's previous game, Spore, failed to be the revolutionary leap forward in gaming everyone thought it would be. More than anything else we're anticipating the endless stream of add-on packs. If there aren't at least two expansions on the market by Christmas 09 we'll out our virtual Sims hats.
39. Armed Assault 2, 505 Games - PC - 2009
As we've said time and time again, Bohemia Interactive Studios are the godfathers of the modern war game. After the groundbreaking Operation Flashpoint, the studio produced ArmA - a spiritual successor that failed to set the world on fire. The boys are now keen to make amends, and ArmA II should be their redemption: an insanely detailed soldier sim with 136 vehicles, razor-sharp AI and 81 weapons to blow your brains across 225 square km of play area. It's a massive undertaking, but BIS know the pressure that's on them: nothing less than excellence will suffice. It was looking good when we last took a look, so don't be put off by the admittedly intimidating level of realism.
User Comments
Tom Butters
TURBO_RAD
Steve
Machetazo
Please enjoy this recent quote from Kazunori Yamauchi, to the publication: "To be honest, I haven't given a lot of thought to GT 5, so I don't have an answer. And it's too early to talk about GT 5 because we still have updates coming out for Prologue.
Is there an ETA on GT 5?
It won't be this year and nothing's scheduled for next. It may be out in 2010, but like I said, we haven't really discussed it yet."
Prototype: I think they're in danger of being overlooked, unfortunately, especially the case if Infamous makes sufficient impact on PS3. Prototype is also just too quiet for its own good.
Yacaman
RoranTK
Pc gaming aint dead as long as devs like relic keep on making games like this
Marink
Saying that, I am looking out for Mad World and Chrono Trigger.
St_Taylor_UK
LSS_Chrome
bencrosaby
NinetiesKid
FantasyMeister
I know Dragon Age is down for TBA 2009 but I'm not getting my hopes up of seeing a console version before 2010 even though "get 'em out the door fast" EA are publishing. And even then, I'm not sure it's for me, 'tis very Baldur's Gatery (as in ye olde PC version) so I'm sure fans of that type of RPG will go nuts for it. I'm not one of them so far.
As for Batman, historically the only decent Batman game, ever, involved Lego, so it would take a major piece of miracle marketing to make me raise a slightly interested eyebrow in this title's direction.
Prototype started out its hype with some great looking CGI, but now the gameplay footage is appearing I'm getting put off, just doesn't 'feel' right, and as for All Points Bulletin I've got a 3 and a half year-old E3 trailer to judge it on, a handful of year-old screenshots for the PC and zero expectation of a 2009 launch on the 360 from a Korean publisher. Do we even know what pricing model they're going to go for? (P2P, microtransactions, standalone etc). So the former has dropped off my hype radar for now and APB has yet to do enough to get on it in the first place.
Which leaves Alpha Protocol. The only justification for hyping this is that Obsidian are developing. It could be awesome. Then again, they haven't shown much and if you do catch any gameplay footage it's in 'blipvert' format, blink and you'll miss it. Looking forward to finding out more about this one, but it's down for 'early 2009' release, I'd have expected to have seen a lot more by now.
P.S. Thank you for this article, I'm struggling for gaming inspiration so looking forward to finding out what the other 30 titles are.