With another huge year on the cards for the gaming industry, there’s certainly no shortage of titles for us to choose from, but we’ve done our best to narrow things down to twenty of our top picks for 2012...
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
If you ask
PC gamers of a certain vintage what the best multiplayer first person shooter of all time is, there’s a fair chance that one of the various flavours of
Counter-Strike will come back as one of the most popular answers. For those of you who don’t know, Counter Strike started life as a simple mod for the original
Half-Life before making it as its own fully fledged series, and now it’s about to make its console debut, as well as returning to the PC in Q2 of 2012.
It’s already had a closed beta which went quite well, so it’s all looking particularly rosy for its launch later in the year. Whether or not it’s going to have quite the same appeal among console players as it has managed to have for their PC counterparts remains to be seen however, especially given the dominance of the
Call of Duty franchise on
PS3 and
Xbox 360.
Dishonored
Any
Bethesda game tends to carry a certain amount of hype, and rightly so. However
Dishonored has so far managed to slip under the radar of most people despite looking quite promising. Developed by
Arkane Studios, a less than prolific development studio based in France, the game is yet another stealth based action title for 2012, signalling a real return to prominence for an off shoot genre that had taken something of a back seat in recent years.
An open world game at heart, Dishonoured takes place in a strange mish-mash of past and future, echoing the dystopian settings familiar to lovers of
cyberpunk fiction, so it’s not surprising to learn that co-lead designer
Harvey Smith was heavily involved in the earlier
Deus Ex titles. Since cunning and guile are going to be oh so important in the game, you’re going to need to make the best possible use of your environment and a number of nifty gadgets and gizmos.
Dishonored is set to land during the summer, and it’s a title that we’re pretty sure we’ll all be seeing much more of in the coming months. Indeed it’s one that we’re going to be keeping a close eye on ourselves, to stay tuned for a full preview in the near future.
Far Cry 3
The second instalment in the series, developed by
Crytek, might not have been much use, but the original
Far Cry showed some signs of becoming a truly great first person shooter franchise when it debuted, which means that hopes are still relatively high for the success of
Ubisoft Montreal’s Far Cry 3 when it’s released later this year.
Following the same open world format as the previous instalments in the series,
Far Cry 3 is set to take place on a tropical island in the Pacific, which will give the developers a chance to show off the changes that have been made to Far Cry’s
Dunia Engine, particularly those focusing on water dynamics and behaviour.
With a map that is claimed to be as much as ten times larger than that found last time around, Far Cry 3 should surprise some people who are getting increasingly tired of copy cat FPS titles.
Agent
Aside from
Grand Theft Auto V,
Rockstar are also working on a brand new title, a single player stealth based action adventure going by the name of Agent. Taking advantage of the surprisingly underused
Cold War setting, the official blurb for the game claims that it will explore
“the world of counter-intelligence, espionage and political assassinations” which suggests that it will carry a much darker and more serious tone than previous Rockstar titles.
The game, which has been signed up by Sony as a
PlayStation 3 exclusive, is one that Rockstar claim is only possible on the PS3, so we should be able to expect some technically mind blowing that will change the face of the gaming landscape forever. Okay well maybe not, but it does seem that Rockstar are really getting behind this as being something of a groundbreaking title. Hopefully it’s a little bit more ground breaking than
L.A. Noire at least...
Devil’s Third
Devil’s Third, developed by
Valhalla Game Studios, is another title that many are expecting great things from when it’s released towards the end of 2012. Unfortunately, with its launch being so far away, there’s not a huge amount known about what the third person shooter will offer to gamers.
Using the
Darksiders 2 engine, and coming from the mind of Tomonobu Itagaki who is best known for his creative work on both the
Dead or Alive and
Ninja Gaiden series’, the chances of this being one of the stand out titles of the year are high in our eyes. With a focus said to be placed on melee combat and hand to hand fighting, as well as typical shooter mechanics, Devil’s Third should be able to carve a niche out for itself.
Those of you who are slightly worried about the promise of another Japanese developed third person shooter, traditionally not the strong point of Eastern developers, need only take a look at the excellent Vanquish to see that it’s a genre that the Japanese certainly have a lot to offer within. Recent rumours are suggesting that the game is also likely to make an appearance on the
Wii U, as well as the
PS3 and
Xbox 360, which is definitely good news for Nintendo fans everywhere.