After a great fall with plenty of new games I still have a backlog consisting of Fallout 3, Dead Space (360), Red Alert 3, X3 Terran Conflict, and Sins of a Solar Empire together with a couple of older games like Assassins Creed (360), Hitman Blood Money (360) and Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare (360). However, it has as always been a bit calmer around Christmas as December and January are normally pretty quiet months. The rest of the year though seems to bring a lot of new games worth waiting for. 2009 is already under way and it is about time to start looking ahead for the games to come. The following games which have confirmed release dates first third of 2009 are the ones I expect the most of.
While January is a totally quiet month, February has a couple of titles worth watching out for. First out is the next addition to the horror shooter F.E.A.R. from 2005. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin hits the shelves on February 10th. The first game was a very good shooter with great explosions and scary moments. I still think my laptop is named Alma after one of the characters in the game and I am looking forward to facing here again. I have seen a couple of in-game videos and I am not that impressed. However, based on the fun I had with the previous game I will most likely check out this game closer when it is released. Next up is the downloadable content to Grand Theft Auto IV. Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned will be available February 17th through Xbox Live to 360 owners only. GTA IV was criticized because of the lack of checkpoints, too high realism (in other words no fun), poor cars, annoying friends and so on. Despite all this, it was claimed game of the year, received great critics and I loved it. It is therefore natural to look forward to the next extension of the game. Hopefully, they have fixed a few of the mentioned problems.
I am really looking forward to March as it will give us a few great games. First up is the highly anticipated strategy title Empire Total War which will be out March 3rd. 10 days later, the 13th, it is time to kill zombies again. I really enjoyed killing zombies in Left 4 Dead and I want more. Resident Evil 5 looks very promising and I am in particular looking forward to the two player mode. Hopefully it will be as fun as it looks. The last game on my March list is Guitar Hero Metallica which will be available in the U.S. on March 29th. However, it is not available here in Europe until May (why do we get everything later?). As fan of Metallica for almost the last 20 years I really am looking forward to the game after trying Guitar Hero World Tour a while back.
April promises us another strategy gem. A new expansion to the Company of Heroes series, Tales of Valor, will be available on April 13th. I really enjoyed the last installment of this real time strategy title and I am looking forward to the next one. Company of Heroes was actually the first strategy game I have played which was quite hard to beat. When that is said, I have not played that many strategy games the last years but it was a thrill struggling (though sometimes quite frustrating) with a decent computer controlled adversary.
Other titles you might want to look out for: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II on February 18th, The Sims 3 on February 20th, The Godfather 2 on February 24th, Killzone 2 on February 27th, Halo Wars on March 3rd, Tom Clancy’s EndWar sometime in March/April, Dragon Age: Origins on March 23, Stormrise on March 24th, and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena sometime in March. While I do have super high expectations for all of these, you might fancy them.
[gamelist mode=tracking user=jayzon69 filter=random limit=8 view=table]
I also maintain a list at Gamespot of the games I am tracking (some of which you should see above). If you are interested in other PC games you might want to see this extensive list created by Adrian Werner (great job Adrian). International readers might want to check out the GT countdown and if you ware a Norwegian you might want to see what Norwegian news reporters are waiting for as well: Aftenposten, Gamer, Itavisen, and Vg.
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