Even though Stuart Black’s no longer involved in the project, this has gone far enough in development to be the spiritual successor to Black - and we like that a lot. The world’s having its biggest power struggle yet, and a former U.S. military soldier called Jackson get recruited into ‘the Network,’ which is essentially a glossy mercenary unit we imagine. There’ll be a heavy emphasis on environmental destruction, with almost everything collapsing under the gunfire of your meaty weapons. Killing targets gets you upgrades which add a ridiculous WMD bent on the game world. It’s going to be blam-tastic.
id Software comes home to bring us all back to the nightmarish hell of post-apocalyptica. It’s survival of the fittest in this first person shooter, where you have to fight all kinds of bandits and mutants in a world ravished by a colliding asteroid. As this is id we’re talking about - creators of Doom, Castle Wolfenstein and Quake among others - you can expect a whole heap of devastating weaponry, dingy and grim environments and side quests via bandit clans. Add the bespoke Rage engine that’s powering the game and you’ll have one hell of a ride on your hands.
Team Bondi’s gangster mystery title looks like its finally going to be released, thanks to the support of Rockstar - and it’s looking absolutely fantastic. Using a new kind of motion capture, characters move in a scarily realistic way, with some of the best facial animation I’ve seen in any game to date. Solving cases that lead to the overarching mystery of the Black Dahlia murders in the 1940s, you’ll get to investigate crime scenes, interrogate witnesses and piece together clues to crack the mysteries and get promoted. If you watch one game this year, this is it.
Goichi ‘Suda51’ Suda is a total rockstar, with his games always containing some kind of punk auteurism that makes you pine for the 1970s again. Shadows of the Damned, a horror/thriller adventure that sees Garcia Hotspur travel into hell to save his true love, doesn’t get away without some outrageous rock influences, with Garcia sporting a studded leather jacket, a shotgun with skulls on it and a huge motorbike. Third-person gunfights against a heavy metal soundtrack is just the sort of thing we need for Hallowe’en. The most important thing however, is Suda51’s collaboration with Resident Evil 4 director Shinji Mikami on the project - you’re going to want this game.
If games are art, then Jenova Chen has proven to be a master of his craft. Previous PS3 download titles Flow and Flower have blurred the line between entertainment and passive enjoyment, and upcoming project Journey looks to do exactly the same. As the name suggests, you play as a mysterious character traversing a vast sand landscape exploring a mysterious civilisation. Online play has been hinted, but complete anonymity seems to be the aim of this game. Strangers who meet online and don’t know one another, with nothing but them and the sand between them. Very intriguing.
While we’re on indie developers, let’s focus on Jonathon Blow’s latest work. Blow surprised everyone with his convention-breaking platformer Braid back in 2008, and is tackling the puzzle genre with The Witness. Players explore an island in a first-person perspective, interacting with various mazes to unlock the land’s secrets. Clearly inspired by Myst in some fashion, Blow has said we can expect more puzzling elements than mazes. We can’t wait.
There’s something to be said for cheesy action games that have a little bit of charm to them. Konami’s NeverDead, directed by Shinta Nojiri (Metal Gear Acid - so suitably weird, then) and developed by Rebellion, puts you in the shoes of a wisecracking demon hunter called Bryce. The perk? His curse - he can’t die. Cue plenty of skyscraper-sized demons looking to test that theory by exploding Bryce into little bits… until you rebuild him by rolling around collecting body parts of course. A quirky little third person shooter, and could be good for a laugh.
These are the ten likely to be the next big blockbusters - providing nothing catastrophic happens to their development of course! Naturally, there are loads of new-IP games coming out in 2011 that we’ve not been able to fit in here. Let us know what you’re looking forward to - whether they’re on this list or not - in the SPOnG forums below. Our final part of the 2011 Hit List focuses on Cult games. Stay tuned!