ChannelFlip

The 2 games I’m really looking forward to are LittleBigPlanet and Battlefield: Bad Company. Gran Turismo 5 is the game I want most of all but it might not be making 2008 and its looking increasingly likely that Final Fantasy XIII might not either.

Here are some others that look promising;

L.A. Noire
The Agency
Alan Wake
Haze
Killzone 2
Infamous
Heavy Rain

How could you have possibly missed StarCraft II? StarCraft is the national religion of South Korea!

i think you’ve forgotten the most important one by miles….. Starcraft 2! and FF13? The force unleashed though, awesome!

But Katharine, what about Super Smash Bros Brawl, the single title that will out sell all Wii games past and future? Granted you’ve got a good list there, but you’re missing what will most likely be the single best title to ever come out on the Wii. February 10th can’t come soon enough…

Lots of high risk games there that could be brilliant or incredibly disappointing. Spore in particular has huge, huge potential, but I’m quite apprehensive about what it’s actually going to be like to play. Hopefully not another Black & White- a game I’m sure some reviewers are kicking themselves over, I remember a magazine actually gave it 95% when it was released. Oh dear.

I’ve not actually paid any attention to Rage since that tech 5 demo/trailer they released in the summer, but the footage you’ve got looks to be from a slightly later iteration.

GTA IV is the game I bought a 360 for. I almost, almost pre-ordered the seventy quid special edition, but my natural cynicism won out and I’ll settle for crossing everything and hoping the reviews are going before running off and picking up the normal one. Apparently it’s got some fancy animation system in it as well that fixes a lot of that glitchy crap that still plagues modern titles, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

I have to admit I’m quite looking forward to the new Burnout game as well, note entirely sure how the free roaming thing is going to work out because it’s a bit of a pain in the demo, but it feels great and Burnout has always been the don of arcade racers.

FPS wise there’s also Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Turok. Borrowed the first R6 off a mate and really enjoyed single player and multiplayer is meant to be great as well, but it’s going to to have to do something very special to top CoD4 which is pretty much the daddy at present. Turok gets a mention simply because it has dinosaurs in it, creatures that are just as awesome now as they were when you were eight. Oh, the new Battlefield game looks quite entertaining, lots of destructible stuff and ’splodey things.

Force Unleashed for PC? I was under the impression us PC users were getting the shaft once again, where did you get that little tid bit of info?

Whittling the list down to just 10 was so hard! 2008 is gonna be a good year. I am really looking forward to StarCraft 2 which was probably the hardest one not to include here. Heavy Rain also looks interesting from a graphics point of view. And Turok!!! dino-yay! Ah, good times…

Remember guys, this is a list of things I’m watching, but I am hella hoping they will be as good as they seem at this stage.

I stand by my excitement for Star Wars: TFU. I wasn’t lying the trailer actually did give me goosebumps.

And RattyocasteR, I usually wear contacts for the show, but yeah, too many books and video games shot my eyes all to hell.

For me definitely Starcraft 2 is the game I wait for. Hope it will be released in 2008…

In 2008 Project Origin and FarCry 2 will rule. I can’t wait S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky and Fallout 3 also.

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and Army of Two are the games I really really look forward to.

360 exclusives: Alan Wake, Fable 2, Gears of War 2 (?), Halo War, Left 4 Dead, Too Human.

PS3 exclusives: BigLittlePlanet, God of War III (?), Grand Turismo 5, Haze, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid 4, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, L.A. Noire, The Agency.

Multiplat (360 + PS3): Alone in the Dark, Bionic Commando, Brutal Legend, Deus Ex 3, Devil May Cry 4, Duke Nukem Forever, Fallout 3, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic III (rumored), Stars Wars: The Force Unleashed, Street Fighter IV, Tomb Raider: Underworld

PC: StarCraft 2. And Spore. That’s it. (Truthfully, other than Blizzard and Sims, PC gaming is really dead.)

Eight days, inFamous, Project Offset, etc - all these are (1) new, unestablished IPs, (2) from just average or relatively unknown studios, and (3) only have CGI trailers, which are really meaningless - I just don’t want to base my expectations on a few CGI-rendered cinematics and cutscenes; I haven’t seen any actual gameplay footage or preview from those games. So, put all three factors together, there is really no good reason to get all excited over those titles until we see more of them.

Killzone 2 - I deliberately left out Killzone 2 because I believe it is grossly overhyped for no good reason. Reason: the first two games (on PS2 and PSP) were mediocre, and Guerilla has never really delivered an “AAA” game. Sure, Killzone 2 has pretty graphics - but so did Killzone 1. If you look at the history of Guerilla studio, they have a habit of overpromising and then underdelivering. None of Guerilla’s games has ever scored 80% or over at Metacritic and GameRankings. There is absolutely nothing in their track record that could convince me that Killzone 2 will turn out to be a good game.

Banjo-Kazooie 3 and Perfect Dark 2 (rumored) - It’s the same reason with Killzone 2 why I leave out Banjo-Threeie and Perfect Dark 2. Nowadays Rare is a such crappy studio that makes such crappy games. Microsoft should really just pull the plug on Rare already.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the PC - It’s canned after LucasArts saw how badly all the PC heavy hitters like Unreal Tournament and Crysis flopped - really bad - in the NPD October and November sales data. Why any rational developer would still want to make PC games from this point onward is beyond me. It’s really game over for the PC. (And BioWare needs to bring Dragon Age to 360!)

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic III - Now, from all the bits and pieces I’ve read, I really think BioWare and LucasArts are working on KOTOR 3, and it’s a single-player RPG. I’ve read that LucasArts had been working on pre-production internally, but then was so impressed by Mass Effect previews that they finally made a deal with BioWare to take over the project (file this under “rumors”.)

KOTOR 3 will probably be multiplat for 360 and PS3 because it’s from LucasArts and BioWare aka an EA company, neither of which does exclusives. Then again, because of its secrecy (which is a Microsoft’s M.O.,) and it’s supposedly based an upgraded version of Mass Effect engine (which is currently not available for the PS3,) and the LucasArts-BioWare deal was made before the EA buyout, so it’s also possible that KOTOR 3 will stay 360 exclusive. But I’m leaning towards it’s going multiplat. I just think that BioWare will go completely multiplat very soon.

I hear a lot of moaning from the Fallout fanboys that they’re selling out to cater to twitch gamers like myself who can’t be bothered with this turn based malarky and that the only thing it’s retaining is the 50s atmosphere and universe and as such it’s not a true Fallout game. That could just be the fanboys though.

Gutted that Haze is a PS3 exclusive, it looks quite incredibly cool.

Did someone mention a Firefly game!? To the google-mobile methinks.

ktchong: Alan Wake and Left 4 Dead are coming to the PC, L4D is supposed to be PC exclusive at first.

Loving the show Katharine. Keep up the good work and Merry Christmas.

@Adam: Xbox 360 gamers will get to play Alan Wake and Left 4 Dead, and it’s highly unlikely that 360 gamers will play them on some PCs that are going to be demanding and expensive. Alan Wake’s PC requirements are speculated to be even more spectacular than Crysis’.

Even though Alan Wake and Left 4 Dead are semi-exclusive for the 360, they will likely move 360s. BioShock sold over two million units worldwide, and about 75 to 80 percent of them were sold on 360, according to SimExchange and VG Chartz. And 360 sales got a spike immediately soon after BioShock came out (and shortly before Halo 3 release.)

Given the recent sales data for Crysis, UT3 PC, Hellgate, and Gears of War PC, I’d say not too many people will bother with the PC versions of Alan Wake and Left 4 Dead - but their 360 versions will sell millions of units. (For reference, Mass Effect - a 360 exclusive that was released shortly *after* those four major huge PC titles - has already sold more than all four, *combined*.)

Hey, why didn’t Katharine has not reviewed BioShock, the Game of the Year pretty much everywhere? Oh well, it’s too late now.

Also, Rage is rumored to have been delayed to the second half of 2009.

I didn’t review Bioshock because it was out before PlayDigital existed.

Two titles I’m looking forward to in 2008 are: “Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway” and “Mercenaries 2: World in Flames”!

Hm. Are you going to have a new video this week?

Happy New Year guys. Thanks for all the recent comments and good wishes. Just to let you know our first show of 2008 will be going up on Monday when we will return to our normal Mon/Wed/Fri schedule. Don’t forget to check out the new shows on Unwired and Discus then too.

Chrimbo Gaming? CoD4 multiplayer still has me in it’s grasp. I also took the plunge and bought the Orange Box for my ageing PC and have been very pleasantly surprised at how well it runs. I am now also a fully paid up member of the ‘dear god portal is the best game ever’ club. Fantastic stuff. Ep1 was a bit dreary, Ep2 is shaping up ok and TF2 is comedy gold.

I’m still not convinced by actual mechanics of the shooty bits of HL2, which should really ruin the whole thing, but Valve are so good at everything else that I love it anyway.

Any further word on a forum? Looking forward to the new episode blah etc, also, are you going to shut Stephen Fry up now? For some reason HMV couldn’t be bothered to stock the quiz DVD and we had to make do with a freebie one that came with a sunday paper that shall remain un-named. It featured the most unsettling menu music ever and I have also discovered that the 360 doesn’t play those quiz game DVD thingies properly.

Yet I’m still waiting for a review of Singstar!

Katharine, you can add Soul Calibur IV to the “Most Wanted List”.

It’s just been announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that Soul Calibur IV will feature Darth Vader and Yoda. With lightsabre. And Force Powers.

The bummer is Darth Vader is going to be on the PS3 version, and Yoda on the Xbox 360 version.

We are moving from a critical look at the ACTUAL games of the year before and dissecting it so we get better games in the future, to a fluffy look at the hype of future games that many times are not worthy of the hype when actually played.

Both at the height of PC gaming in the late 90’s, and the height of any given console in the early 00’s, we had little of this ‘looking forward to next year’ and much more of a critical look at the previous. Game of the Year Awards were given much more prominence than they do now, and each machine had it’s own winners followed by an overall Game of the Year for all formats. nowadays we just get multiformat awards mostly that means that many games miss out that deserve recognition - STALKER and The Witcher anyone?

With more PS3’s being sold as blue-ray movie players than gaming console, 360 sales only on a par with XBox sales and with PC game sales struggling mightily, this change of emphasis does not seem to be helping at all. If 7 of the above 10 titles turned out to be crap, for example, we would have wasted all that time and effort, and ultimately done a disservice to video gaming. Much better to stick to REAL previews and actual reviews along with general news items. Not all this ‘greatest 10 games not yet out that may or may not be any good’!

Oh, and for PC gamers, the list would be different, as would it on PS3 and 360 and Wii and DS and…… Maybe multi-format reporting should go back to what it used to be - reporting all on formats SEPERATELY and EQUALLY, rather than a multi mish-mash that leaves so many good games out!: (STALKER: Clear Sky, Mass Effect (PC), Borderlands, Empire Total War, and of course, FALLOUT 3!!!!!!!)

Sorry you feel that way John, but I figure that taking one 5 minute episode to look at what’s on the horizon is no disservice to the gaming community. I didn’t want to do a retrospective of the year as the show had only been running since October so a lot of the games included wouldn’t have had a full review to viewers to go back to to see how far they agreed with my findings. Next year though I will totally take your comments on board. I also see what you mean about different platforms. I am in two minds. In one sense, if the show expands, it would be great to be able to do platform by platform analysis of the year (and also in general cover more games across more platforms), but on the other hand, I am a multi-platform gamer and while obviously you have to review to a particular platform, I am trying to encourage video-gaming as a whole rather that enforcing a partisan approach. Thanks for the comments though. The considered discussion on how to approach this kind of thing is very much appreciated.

Katherine: Thank you for the response. I would just say that very few gamers are multi-format players as maybe you HAVE to be. In the real world, gamers have their main machine that they mostly play on, and want to read about games for. In fact, I would say, as a PC gamer, that most gamers ;second machine’ is a PC, and that is barely taken into account in most media reporting of games on the PC format!

If you are going to cover all the formats on this site, you will need more ‘Part two’s’ or longer articles. It is just ridiculous that in order to keep to a 5 minute episode you end up not including a title like Fallout 3, Bethesda’s first title after Oblivion and title with such a venerable history and therefore a lot of interest from a wide range of gamers.

As a PC gamer, this is why ‘multi-format’ worries me. It seems that so often, this means ‘console gaming’ not truly ‘multi-format’. Your choice for the ‘Top 10 titles of 2008′ shows this.

As a new site, I wish you well. Your choice of format has lots of competition and it cannot be easy choosing what you decide to cover. I just hope you can be equally computer game orientated as video game slanted. An example would be covering Commodore 64/Atari emulation rather than console and coin-op. I did enjoy your Amiga emulation coverage, but thought the earlier,. much more successful (best selling home gaming computer of the 80’s/90’s) Commodore 64 emulation market (the largest) would have been a more logical place to start. Maybe because it was before you time?

I can’t for the life of me understand how GTAIV & MGS4 are only 8th & 7th respectively!

They are the top two, hands down.

@Cropolite:
You realize there are people that have different tastes than you do?
I am not too hyped about GTA IV, for example. It may look much better than the last GTAs did, but other than that: It’s a GTA, I doubt it will be much different from the older ones, at least they aren’t advertising with innovations at all.
Also, MGS4 will be interesting, but there are still people around that are not MGS fans, and thus, don’t await MGS4 as badly as you seemingly do.
I’m not trying to be offensive, I’m just saying that there are people who aren’t waiting for the next GTA or MGS.