At the E3 convention in Los Angeles last week I got to see a lot of what the video game industry has to offer in the coming year. Hands down, the best technology I saw at the show came from Microsoft in the form of Project Natal, the company’s motion-sensing system which detects your body movements and relegates the handheld controller to the dust bin. But since that system isn’t part of a game yet, I can’t give it an award as the best new game.
In my view, the following are my picks for the best games shown at the event. These are the games that left me with my jaw hanging open. They’re titles that I want to play as well as some that I think will be blockbusters (regardless of whether they’re debuting in 2009 or 2010). I’m limiting my choices to games where I saw some actual game play, and I haven’t included the “top sleeper” or the “top kids games” because those lists are coming later. Feel free to challenge my list with opinions of your own. I’ve put the games in order, starting with the best.
1. Alan Wake (developer: Remedy Entertainment, publisher: Microsoft, platform: Xbox 360). This game is a “psychological action thriller” with an intriguing plot. It revolves around Alan Wake, a bestselling writer who’s had writer’s block for two years. He visits the idyllic Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls with his wife, only to find that she has vanished. Wake is now stuck in a nightmare because his latest work, a thriller that he can’t remember writing, is coming true word by word in front of his eyes. The work is inspired by creepy Stephen King novels such as Insomnia and the TV show Twin Peaks. That all sounds nice, but I enjoyed the execution of the idea. The game is paced like a horror movie, revealing things slowly. Wake finds that during the night, evil spirits possess the dead and living objects. Anything in the living environment, from a bulldozer to a tree, can become your deadly enemy once it is animated with evil. The resulting physics effects are quite cool, including what happens when the player summons a tornado. The only thing that holds the evil beings back is light. That forces the gamer to be on a constant hunt for flares and flashlight batteries, or for a well-lit haven. It’s quite satisfying to turn the tables on those nightmarish creatures when you shine a light on them with your light beams. The combination of clever plot, satisfying action, spooky sound, and horror-movie pacing could make this into a truly riveting game. The game debuts in the spring of 2010.
2. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (developer: Naughty Dog, publisher: Sony, platform: PlayStation 3). Here’s a rare sequel that might just be as good as or better than the original game, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, which debuted in 2007 as a kind of male version of Tomb Raider. Naughty Dog showed off a scene from the game that starts atop a building with sweeping views of an entire city, showing off the graphics power of the PlayStation 3. Then Nathan Drake and his female companion have to start jumping and running for their lives as a helicopter gunship pursues them, cannons blaring. The duo then has to take out a bunch of thugs who hide behind obstacles, all the while trying to escape the helicopter. This was probably the most spellbinding scene at the show. If the game can live up to that one scene, Sony has a winner on its hands that could spread beyond the 2.6 million gamers who bought the first one. It debuts this fall.
3. BioShock 2 (2K Marin, Digital Extremes, publisher: Take-Two Interactive, platforms: PS 3, PC, Xbox 360). The original BioShock was one of the most delightfully original and terrifying horror-shooter games of 2007. I can’t tell you how much fun I had playing that game from beginning to end. The sequel returns 10 years after the events of the first game to the underwater city of Rapture, an art deco-style utopia that has been torn apart by a civil war. Now the player suits up as a powerful Big Daddy, a massive armored soldier armed with a rivet gun and a giant drill. The first game had an intricate plot, and this one promises more story-based first-person shooter combat. You have to figure out why “little sister” girls are being snatched around the world, and you have to deal with a new kind of villain, dubbed the Big Sister. Multiplayer online gaming is being developed separately by Digital Extremes. The original game had no online component, but this part of the game actually takes place in a different time in the storyline, before the fall of Rapture. Just as in the single-player game, you have endless options for arming yourself with different kinds of weapons and powers. This is a sequel, but I dare say it’s going to be a lot more original than some “original” titles. The game debuts Oct. 30.
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (developer: Infinity Ward, publisher: Activision Blizzard, platforms: Xbox 360, PS 3, PC). Infinity Ward rocked the first-person shooter market when it came out with the riveting Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game in 2007. Now it’s back with different world crises but the same intense combat that has become the trademark of the series. You play the role of a special forces commando with a mission to take down terrorists in a variety of hot spots. One of the places you go is an icy mountain in Russia, where you have to scale a cliff with ice picks and then take out guards with a silencer. At some point, all hell breaks loose and you have to hijack a snowmobile and take out fleeing bad guys. Nobody creates intense and memorable fighting moments like Infinity Ward. It debuts in holiday 2009.
5. Avatar (developer: Ubisoft, publisher: Ubisoft, platforms: multiple, TBA). James Cameron’s sci-fi movie Avatar has been 14 years in the making. Cameron talked about the plot of the film for the first time at E3. The game is set on a distant world called Pandora where humans, compelled by a ravenous transtellar corporation, are pillaging a rainforest planet for its natural resources. They’re opposed by fantastic creatures who are 10-feet-tall and have blue skin. They have all of the help of various creatures from the rainforest, from hammerhead rhinos to flying dragons. I saw the game in a dark theater with 3-D glasses, viewing it on a 103-inch Panasonic plasma TV. The world of Pandora is gorgeous, with a night sky that shows of the lights, or biolumescence, in all living creatures. Since humans can’t breathe the air of Pandora, they developed a hybrid, or Avatar, that mixes human and alien DNA. Ubisoft isn’t duplicating the movie; rather, it is creating new plots for the game that pit the humans, hybrids, and indigenous natives against each other. You can play either the high-tech armed humans or the creatures who have the home turf advantage. The art direction is beautiful in this game. In some vistas, you can see the scenery of the lush landscape for miles. The game will answer which is more badass: guns or beasts.
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