As perhaps the best year ever for video games draws to a close, I wonder if 2010 can even come close to giving me the satisfaction I was blessed with in The Year of the Ox. I mean, we had the first truly great Batman game. Perhaps the greatest modern-day first-person shooter in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The newest installment of Resident Evil was disappointing, but it’s like sex and pizza: even the bad kind is good. Infamous would have been my game of the year if Batman hadn’t been released a few months later.
So where do we go from here? These are my hopes for 2010.
Gran Turismo 5 has been teasing me more than Candi at the Hustler Club. I bought GT5: Prologue way back in what seems like 1999. Month after month, and now year after year, I was told the release of the full version of the game was just around the corner. Now, it is rumored that Sony will be releasing GT5 to the North American market in the summer. All I can say is; there better be a car that brings John Lennon and George Harrison back to life so that they can reunite with Paul and Ringo for another Beatles’ album. Anything short of that will be an epic shortcoming by everyone involved in this project. There is simply no way that GT5 can live up to the expectation built by the numerous push-backs and additional development time. I say this having recently downloaded the Time Trial Challenge. I found the visuals to be spectacular, the controls a little funky (using the PS3 controller instead of a full wheel/pedal/shifter assembly is not recommended), and some of the physics a touch off. If this is what the actual game play is like, I will be severely disappointed at minimum, and bloodthirstily enraged most likely.
February will see the release of BioShock 2. I wouldn’t say I’m excited for it, but I can’t stand up at work right now, for fear of a lengthy meeting with HR. I was late to the party playing the original (summer ’09 late), but I loved it. And now, you play as a Big Daddy. That’s awesome, but I hope they improve on the field-of-view issue from the first BioShock. I’m a little hesitant about the game however. The story in the original was so compelling, the twists were so well executed (A man chooses!), that I’m worried an attempt at a sequel will be less like Die Hard 2 and more like Ghostbusters 2. But I will definitely be picking this one up on release day.
Red Dead Redemption (Q2 release) is looking good to me for two reasons. One, I loved Red Dead Revolver, and if RDR2 is anywhere near as good, I’ll be very happy. Two, I’m looking for a new Western-themed game to wash the awful taste of Call of Juarez 2 out of my mouth.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who is a little hesitant for Max Payne 3. The first MP was magnificent, the second very good. But after watching that filmed monstrosity that was the Max Payne movie, and now that the series creator and original developer are off the project, I don’t expect good things to come from MP3.
All I can really hope for is that 2010 gives me what I really want from a video game. That EA Sports has the guts and sense of humor to go with the title “PGA Tour ’11: Layin’ Wood With Tiger”*. Happy New Year, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.
*Note: If anyone from EA Sports is reading this, and you actually use my idea, I expect to be handsomely compensated for my creativity.
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