GregHowley.com

A while back, I wrote about games to which I was really looking forward. Some of the games I'd written about have already come out, and some of them I've already played. For example, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Brain Age 2, and Bioshock. Crysis is one I have yet to play. I'll likely wait six months or so until I get a new PC.

Anyway, here are the games to which I'm most looking forward, saving my most anticipated games until last.

• Assassins Creed - April is a pretty big month for games, and it all starts on April 8th with Assassins Creed for the PC. I'll likely wait until I get a new PC to grab a copy.
• The Witcher: Enhanced Edition - The "completed version" of The Witcher is coming out in May. I'll likely buy it from Steam once I get a new PC.
• Wii Fit - On April 25th, Nintendo is releasing their highly-anticipated game Wii Fit, which ships with the "Wii Balance Board", and proports to do for your body what Brain Age did for your mind. Which honestly isn't a whole lot, but it might be fun. The game tracks your weight and potential weight loss goals. Its exercise games are divided into four categories: yoga, muscle-building, aerobic, and balance activities. The games include tightrope walking and skiing, and all game activities seem to be controlled via the balance board. Sure, the game will probably cost about a hundred bucks, but I'll probably get it anyway, especially since there are rumored to be an additional ten or so games in development that use the Wii Balance Board. Wii Fit releases in the U.S. on May 19.
• Metal Gear Solid 4 - Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4 is a game many gamers have been looking forward to for quite a while. I've only ever played MGS2. I missed the first title in the series, although I now own a copy, and I've also got a copy of MGS3 that I've been meaning to play. From what I've experienced in Metal Gear Solid 2, I can say that the series is complex, bizarre, funny, and has one of the most convoluted plotlines you'll find in a video game. Did I mention that the game sometimes seems like it's 50% cutscenes? I started playing MGS3 one time, but 25 minutes into the opening cutscene, which you can't pause, Lia started crying. I'll have to start over some time when I've got more time. Anyway, once I finish the third game, I'll be interested to play the fourth.
• Dragon Quest IX - The latest title in the Dragon Quest series is coming out for the Nintendo DS. It's going to be released in 2008 in Japan, but there's not yet any word as to when the game will be released in the U.S. But when it is released, I'm all over it. It's been a while since I've played a DragonQuest game - I think the last 4 or 5 have flown completely under my radar.
• LittleBigPlanet - Now that I'm likely to buy a PS3 in the next month or so, I'm allowed to be excited about upcoming PS3 games. LittleBigPlanet is a platformer that makes extensive use of physics, and lets players create their own levels. Also, the game's soundtrack supposedly reacts to your in-game actions, which sounds really neat. LittleBigPlanet should be out for the PS3 in September.
• N+ - My brother was telling me recently about a XBLA game called N+ that reminded me a lot of the old Commodore 64 game Jumpman. In N+, you play as a stick figure navigating one of about a billion game levels. It sounds like a lot of fun. On April 23rd, they're releasing it for the Nintendo DS, and I'll be picking up a copy.
• LIT - This game was recently announced for the Wii, and bills itself as a survival horror puzzler. Survival horror puzzler?? After the other puzzle mashups I've played recently, you can count me in. Joystiq has some good pictures from the game.
• Puzzle Quest: Galactrix - Speaking of good puzzle mashups, I'm looking forward to Galactrix quite a lot. It's now an official sequel to the original Puzzle Quest, but in space! Sounds a bit like where Limozeen and Josie and the Pussycats went when they ran out of ideas, but in the case of Puzzle Quest, I have confidence.
• Insecticide - There's little out there in terms of news about this upcoming LucasArts game. 1up seems to have the best coverage out there, and a lot of images. Insecticide is an adventure game with third-person shooter elements. It strikes me as a film noir game with a Psychonauts animation style. Maybe I won't get Maniac Mansion on the DS anytime soon, but Insecticide on the DS might be just the thing.
• Mass Effect - While Xbox 360 owners have been raving about this game for the past year, I've just been waiting patiently. On May 6th, it comes out for the PC. I may have a new machine by then, so maybe I'll be able to finally give it a shot.
• Heavy Rain: The Orgami Killer - this is a game in the same spirit as Indigo Prophecy, which was a great game despite the fact that the plot fell apart towards the end. What made it great was the game's engine and controls. At its heart, an adventure game. But plenty of action elements. While not technically a sequel, Heavy Rain is made by the same people, and I'm hoping for the same kind of product, minus the screwy plot. And hopefully they find their way out of uncanny valley.
• Crayon Physics Deluxe - There's been a lot of talk recently about Crayon Physics Deluxe, and with good reason. It looks damn cool. Navigate a ball through various levels by drawing platforms and ramps with crayon. I've found no details about what platforms the game will run on, but I can assume it will be on XBox Live Arcade. I hope it comes out for Nintendo DS - the stylus would be perfect.
• Mario Kart Wii - I'll be snatching up a copy of Kart Wii as soon as it's out on April 27th. Since buying the DS version of MarioKart, I've learned what a fantastic franchise it is, and I don't even like racing games. The Wii version will allow you to use your own Miis, and race against 11 other people online. Sounds like a lot of fun.
• Black Mesa: Source - I've been waiting a loong time for the guys over at Black Mesa: Source to release their game. It's a remake of the original Half-Life with all new textures, using the Half-Life 2 engine. Quite an undertaking, I'm sure. But I hate waiting.
• Spore - This game has been so long coming and includes so much gameplay that I don't even know where to start. The game has five phases which are almost like five separate games. In the tide pool phase, you play a pacman-like game. As you eat more, you get DNA points to spend on improvements to your microbe. Right from this point, you begin customizing your creature. The creature phase is where you first bump into creatures created by other Spore players. The internet-enabled aspects of this game are just amazing. The creature phase has a balanced ecosystem, including predators which may be player-created. The goals of the Creature Phase are to hunt food, reproduce, and avoid being eaten. The tribal phase is a real-time strategy game in which you try to increase the size of your tribe to enter the civilization phase, which is like SimCity. This eventually moves along to the space phase, where you can leave your planet, populate other planets, and encounter other (player-created) life forms. The whole thing seems just amazing.
• Half-Life 2: Episode 3 - I know this one may be surprisingly high up on my list, but I effing love the Half-Life franchise, and I'm dying to see how Valve wraps up the Half-Life 2 storyline.
• Starcraft 2 - It's about time. Nobody seems to really know if Starcraft 2 will even come out in 2008. But I don't care. Let Blizzard take its time and put out a game with the quality of the original. The new sinking supply depots, dashing Zealots, and exploding zerglings look amazing. We've also got cliff-jumping marines, teleporting Protoss, and Zerg using the creep as an attack form. This game is like the second coming. Of Starcraft.
• Fallout 3 - And here it is, my most-looked forward to game. Fallout 3. I absolutely loved the first two games. Granted, they're now outdated, but they were fantastic. The dark humor and sarcastic parody were beautiful, and I loved the SPECIAL system, with its perks and traits. These should all remain intact in Fallout 3, which will now run on Bethesda's Oblivion engine. This makes me think that mods will also be very doable, given the number of mods that came out for Oblivion. I hear things about the game all the time, and I'm a frequenter of the Bethesda Blog. Everything I hear about the game just makes me look forward to it even more.

Of course, in the meantime there are a bunch of games that are already out that I'm really looking forward to playing, like Lunar Knights, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, World in Conflict, Universe At War, Crysis, and Gears of War. It's tough to make time to play all these.