Games I give a toss about

As I sat pondering what to write about earlier today, I decided that it’s about time I put something up that wasn’t WAR related, but then I realised that there just aren’t a huge amount of games coming out this year that I give a toss about.

On the MMO side the only one in the near future I’m intrigued by is Star Wars: The Old Republic. Not because I’m expecting anything particularly great, innovative or wonderful, it’s simply because it’s Star Wars, made by Bioware and I quite like the idea of a more story driven game. So I think it should provide a nice, albeit temporary, distraction for a month or two. Other than that, there’s nothing grabbing me. Yeah I know people are going all hype monkey for Guild Wars 2, but I think it will be very average WoW style game with dubious looking hi fantasy nonsense, just like the first one. Actually, I’ll be blunt… I think it will be more of the same old shite, just like the first one. I don’t care what vids and other hype people go on about, I’ve not seen anything that impresses me and I certainly don’t consider a 1v1v1 server based PvP set up to be comparable with genuine 3 factions. Oh and the races look stupid. Crappy mutant gnome space alien rubbish. Sorry folks, it's gonna be all fur coat and no knickers. GW2 is just not working for me, apart from no sub fee of course.

What else is there this year MMO wise? The Secret World has some nice ideas, but it’s Funcom and since they’ve repeatedly smothered my hopes with a steaming pile of buggy, badly supported turd (Anarchy Online and Age of Conan I am looking at you!), I think I’m done with Funcom games. Honestly I really liked both of those games, but they were so badly supported and so broken for years that I just can’t be arsed with them anymore.

Oh there is one that could be good: Prime BFD. A brief summary of the game for me would be; small developer, big ideas, impressive development pace, but dodgy looking artwork. The whole Ben 10 alien style is not for me, but the gameplay is intriguing and this could be something worth watching.

On the single player side there’s again only a few games I’m interested in.:

Football Manager 2012 (a “soccer” game for those poor uneducated souls living in armoured handball land)
The games I’ve played more than anything else are the Football Manager series. Every year it’s updated and every year I end up addicted to it. That’s quite a common thing in the UK, as us Brits do love our football and the monstrous sales figures for these games say it all. Conveniently it’s one of the few games my wife doesn’t think is weird or stupid.

Space Marine
Relic’s face smushing Space Marine game will rock, even if it’s shit. You control a space marine, you have access to that most delightful armoury of doom in all Sci-Fi settings. Bolters, melta-guns plasma weapons, thunder hammers, power fists and so on. And you get to maim things and revel in gory 40k style mayhem. What’s not to like?

Mass Effect 3
Can’t remember when it’s out, but can’t wait. I LOVE these games.

Skyrim
I liked Daggerfall. I really enjoyed Morrowind. I absolutely loved Oblivion. Everything I’ve seen of Skyrim so far suggests Bethseda’s Elder Scrolls series will take yet another step towards gaming perfection and I might just explode in a squiggly mess of gaming man juice. I can’t bloody wait for this to come out, alas I must wait until November 11th. It’s pretty much a given that I will be having a break from all other games once this comes out.

And that’s about it. Now, you may notice that list doesn’t include Wrath of Heroes. I’ve not forgotten it; it’s just that I’m not that excited about playing it. I hope it does really well, but only so that WAR gets some benefits from it. Sure, I’m quite looking forward to trying it out and will do my bit with the beta, yet based purely on the type of game it is, I know long term I would only dabble with it in drips and drabs and then after a few months forget about it. That’s no slight on the game, it’s just I’d rather play a MMO and if WoH doesn’t result in WAR progressing, then in time I will have moved on and be busy with another MMO. I do like the few things coming WAR's way right now, but at the moment there isn't much exciting in my MMO future. That will change.