Zelda: Spirit Tracks
I love cel-shaded Zelda. Love it. So the prospect of playing an excellent Phantom Hourglass sequel excites me. The demo was very fun - especially the train portions, where you get to blast those aggravating bull-riding weasels with a satisfying point-blank cannon shot.
Todd Brakke, Staff Writer, 5th E3. Always angry. At everything.
Okay, you asked for it. And if you disqualify my inclusion of Mass Effect 2 I'm going to break you. (But, you know, not in an angry way, because I am not an angry person.)
The Beatles Rock Band
It's Beatles music. It's Rock Band gameplay. It's the genius of Harmonix. This is how sure I am that this game is incapable of sucking: If it does (suck) I will take Brandon's raffle-won copy of Rolling Stone: Drum King off his hands, play it for 20 hours, and write Bill a 3,000 word review of it. We're talking a fate worse than having to watch Star Trek V over and over again for an entire week here. That's how sure I am that this game will not suck.
Mass Effect 2
Bill stipulated that games in this list be something with which we've gone hands-on. Nyah! Nyah! That's what I think of his rules. More to the point, what I've seen of this game makes such rules irrelevant. Improved graphics, especially where the expressiveness of characters is concerned, every planet you can explore is unique, improved dialog flow along with dynamic interruptions of conversations, better flow in combat, and a narrative that is all, "darkness is the new darkness." (Make sense of that statement if you can. I dare you.) This game simply will not suck. Besides, I have been hands-on with Mass Effect 2. It's called Mass Effect 1. That's your proof of concept right there and this sequel is taking that proof and making it... well, more proofy. Or something like that.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
I'm going to go out on a limb with this one because if the game's ability to "read" and "interpret" your play style in order to better scare you doesn't actually work then it's got problems. I'm here to say, though, that it's going to work. It may not be a gaming revolution, but it will get the job done and that will make the entire experience instantly cool. Plus, I loved walking around the game's outright creepy environs, using the Wiimote to aim my flashlight in every possible direction at once. And the notion that fighting is not an option for survival is both novel and compelling. I may have to steal back the Wii I sold last year just so I can play this.
Left 4 Dead 2
Here's what I've got to say to the supposedly 100k strong list of people that are allegedly going to boycott this sequel because it's "too soon" or that "Valve didn't give us enough L4D1 content" or "we got bored protesting the color palette in Diablo III": You're idiots. All of you. Every single one. You say you loved Left 4 Dead? Valve is offering you new campaigns, new specials, new weaponry, a new cast (though I'm less warm to them; I Heart Zoey) and a bunch of other new stuff I could list here but I want to move on to other things in my head. You'll pay for it and you'll like it. And when it's done, you will ask Valve to make Left 4 Dead 3 and have it released in March of 2010. So do us all a favor and just stop embarrassing yourselves. Plus, there's frying pans. If Merry (or was it Pippin?) can use one to smash goblin faces in Fellowship of the Ring then I'm pretty sure they should work against zombies.
