Ahh, summer. It’s the time for trips to Disneyworld, pina coladas, and day trips to the oceanside. It’s also the time of year when I’m totally unable to use my PC, because my PC sits in my office on the third floor where it’s 110 degrees during the day. Air conditioning might lower the temperature by 20 degrees, but that doesn’t help much. So I’ve had to put aside Bioshock 2 and Starcraft 2 and instead play games on my Playstation 3 in the air-conditioned living room. I’m playing Beyond Good and Evil HD, in which I’m quite disapointed – I’ll have more to say on that matter at a later time. I’m also enjoying Dead Nation, Super Chime Deluxe, and trying to decide whether to start Metal Gear Solid 4 or Metroid Prime next. Yes, that Metroid Prime – I’ve never played it.
So often, I play games months or years after they’ve been released. They cost a hell of a lot less that way, and I get to check out the games I missed. That said, here are the games coming out in 2011 that I’m dying to get my hands on as soon as they’re released.
July 19th: Limbo
It’s been around on the XBox live marketplace forever, but the Playstation folks haven’t yet had the chance to try Limbo. I still know very little about it, but it seems like the second coming of Braid. Limbo comes out next week, and I’m all over it.
Sometime in September: Amy
I love survival horror, so this innovative take grabbed my attention. When Alice: Madness Returns came out, I thought it was Amy. Oops. Then Catherine came out and I made the mistake again and had to google things to find out that the game I was interested in was actually “Amy“. In Amy, you’re trying to survive (or maybe escape) a plague-ridden city while protecting a little autistic girl who is strangely immune to the plague. Oddly, being near her cures you, so you’ve got to both protect her and use her as a type of healer.
9/27: The Ico/Shadow of the Colossus Collection
I love HD remakes of some of my favorite last-generation games, but I sincerely hope that Team Ico puts more attention into the camera controls than the studio that remade Beyond Good and Evil HD. I absolutely loved Shadow of the Colossus, and I think it’s got perhaps the best video game soundtrack ever made. I’ve never played Ico, and I’m very much looking forward to it.
10/18: Arkham City
Last night, I briefly jumped back into Batman: Arkham Asylum to grab an extra trophy I’d missed. What a great game. I’d passed on Arkham Asylum for the first year after its release because it was a comic property, and generally those games are terrible. I’m so glad that I was wrong. I’ll snatch up Arkham City much sooner this time.
11/11: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Oblivion was the first Elder Scrolls game I played, and I lost hundreds of hours to its gameplay. Luckily, by the time Skyrim is released, I’ll have been able to access my PC long enough to have finished both Starcraft 2 and Bioshock 2, and I’ll be ready for a new time sink.
Skyward Sword
The Wii is effectively a dead console. I’m still planning on using it to play Metroid Prime, but other than Skyward Sword, there are no new Wii games, which is a sad shame. But I recently played Wind Waker, and replayed Twilight Princess through the first dungeon. I really love Zelda games, and I’m looking forward to a new one.
