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I've recently realized that the games coming out in 2014 include a few that I'd forgotten about. I'd like to go over those now, as there's some pretty cool stuff here.

I've already gotten a season pass to season two of Telltale's The Walking Dead video game series, as the first season was my favorite game that I played in 2013. I've got Episode One on my machine at home, and have yet to play it. I'm waiting for an evening where I can sit down for three or four solid hours and go through the whole episode in one night. Those nights are rare, but I'm not feeling rushed. Telltale has done some good stuff lately. I'm also looking forward to their take on the Game of Thrones setting, which may come before the end of 2014.

Transistor is a game that everyone's been talking about and anticipating. I haven't followed much of the news, because if it's got the same Darren Korb music and the same narrator, I'm in. I trust the developers at SuperGiant to deliver a good gameplay experience. The summary from Wikipedia says Red, a young singer, has come into possession of the mysterious Transistor. The Transistor is a powerful intelligent sword. The Process wants both her and the Transistor and is relentlessly pursuing her.The game combines free movement in real time with a planning mode. When Red's action bar is filled she can enter planning mode. From there the player can map out a series of movements and actions to take (each consuming a bit of the action bar) and then execute them with super-speed. Afterwards Red must dodge enemies until her action meter fills again. Transistor Trailer

Quadrilateral Cowboy is an upcoming puzzle game about being a hacker in the 1980s. I've been loving the media that pander to 80s nostalgia - stuff like Super 8, Ready Player One and No More Kings, and I'm not sure how deep this one will go with the nostalgia angle, but Blendo Games has done a few games that I've absolutely loved. Namely: Gravity Bone, Atom Zombie Smasher, and Air Forte. Quadrilateral Cowboy, apparently, requires you to actually write code, which I can only assume is drastically simplified, in order to override secirity systems and infiltrate buildings. The vulnerabilities you'll be exploiting will no doubt be the likes of what you'd see in movies penned by poorly educated screenwriters, but it sounds like fun to me. Quadrilateral Cowboy trailer

Jazzpunk reminds me a bit of Grim Fandango, a game still tottering at the peak of my wall of shame. I never finished Grim Fandango, and I feel that I've missed out on something fundemental. But I still have my boxed copy in my man cave, and I've got user mods for the game that have been sitting on my home PC's desktop for the past two years, and I swear I'll get to it someday just after I finish Far Cry 3 and The Walking Dead Season 2 and Monaco and Minecraft and... damn it. I hope to play Grim Fandango to completion someday.

Jazzpunk is a comedy advanture game set in an alternate-reality cold war world, plagued by corporate espionage, CyberCrime™ and sentient martinis. It sounds sufficiently ridiculous and hilarious. Jazzpunk trailer

Pillars of Eternity is a new game made in the spirit of Baldur's Gate, which means I'm all over it when it comes out. But it's one of three upcoming games that I should really group together here. The others are the aforementioned Wasteland 2, which is also an isometric throwback, and Torment: Tides of Numenara, which is an unofficial sequel to Planescape: Torment. These three have a lot in common. It's a bit ironic that between Wasteland, Baldur's Gate, and Planescape: Torment, everyone's favorite seems to have been Torment, but that was the one that I never enjoyed. Still, these three games all look very good. I will, as ever, be checking out reviews to see what to buy, but I'm anticipating these three games eagerly.

Pillars of Eternity Trailer
Wasteland 2 Trailer
Torment: Tides of Numenera Trailer

I've said nearly everything I want to about Dragon Age: Inquisition and the Thief remake in my last upcoming games article, but to recap, I hope Dragon Age 3 is good because the first one was awesome and the second was unplayable for me. And I'm hopeful that Thief 3 is as good as Thief: Deadly Shadows. Last year's Dishonored was a fantastic game, and for me it completely stole Thief's throne. However, if Thief focuses more on stealing and less on killing, it's very possible that I'll enjoy it even more than Dishonored.