With the exception of the top few items on the list, I’ll likely wait for the enthusiast blogs to weigh in before I make any purchases, but there’s some good stuff here, including a couple games in which I hadn’t been interested until I did a little checking around.

1-The Last Guardian
Top on the list is a game that I’ve been looking forward to for years. It’s true that I have yet to play through the copy of Ico sitting next to my PS3, but I plan to. Everything I’ve heard about The Last Guardian has made me want to play it even more. The game has been slated to come out in 2012, but whether that’s February or December is anyone’s guess.

2-Thi4f
Yeah, the name is weird as hell. I imagine they’ll give it a colon and a tag line at some point soon. There’s nothing specific to indicate that the game will be coming out in 2012, but I’m hopeful.

3-Amy
The release date on this game has been pushed more than I was in second-grade. It’s a 2012 release now, and I plan to download it on release day. It’s been a while since I played a proper survival horror game, and Amy looks to be a good one. The latest rumor says that Amy will be released next week, so Amy is likely the first chronological release on this list.

4-Dishonored
Slated to come out in the second quarter of the year, Dishonored is a first-person stealth game. That immediately grabbed my attention. When I saw that the people working on the game are the same folks who did Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Thief: Deadly Shadows, I got even more interested. I’ll be keeping my eye on this one.

5-Quantum Conundrum
Quantum Conundrum is a downloadable game for XBLA and PSN, and it should be out early this year. Like Narbacular Drop and Tag: The Power of Paint before it, Quantum Conundrum sounds like exactly the kind of game that Valve would snatch up for use in Portal 3. But this time, instead of portals or spray-on gel, the gimmick is switching between four dimensions that overlap in space. I can see this creating a lot of interesting scenarios for puzzles similar to the ones in Portal.

6-I Am Alive
Another game that’s been delayed quite a bit, I Am Alive is supposed to come out in Q1 this year. The description and environment makes me think of Enslaved without the sci-fi. Post-apocalypse, everyone’s just trying to survive. Some dude has to get from A to B, across the destroyed cityscape.

7-Borderlands 2
Although I had a lot of complaints, I did really enjoy Borderlands. I doubt they’ll have the same ideas for the sequel as I’d once suggested, but I’m hoping for a wealth of improvements. With any luck, that will include a better interface on the PC. It will likely be released in 2012, but there are no guarantees.

8-Monaco
It’s possible that you’ve never heard of a little indie game called Monaco. If not, let me clue you in, because the game sounds like a multiplayer Team Fortress 2 meets Pac Man. Monaco is a top-down 4-player stealth action game wherein players are executing a heist. Each player’s thief has a different role. Maybe yours can pick locks, demolish walls, foil security cameras, or see through walls with infrared. There are gameplay videos on YouTube, and they look awesome. They’ve been planning to release Monaco for a long time, so with any luck we’ll see it very soon.

9-Far Cry 3
After an agonizing first playthrough, I decided that I loved the first Far Cry. The second was somewhat less to my liking, but still fun. The weird thing is that the first few games seemed to have little in common other than the name. No recurring characters, themes, or plots. The game will have the same sandbox feel as Far Cry 2, but add experience-based leveling. They’re adding stealth gameplay as well, which is something I love. We should see Far Cry 3 sometime in 2012.

10-Mass Effect 3
The Mass Effect series is something that everyone seems to love, and yet I’ve never felt nearly as strong about it. The ending of Mass Effect 2 was indeed very good, but overall I can’t help feeling a certain ambivalence for the series. Rather than grabbing it as soon as it comes out on March 6th, I may wait for the price to drop.

11-Journey
Journey is something of a mystery to me, and yet I’m still intrigued. You’re a little pup tent looking thing, travelling through the wilderness towards a mountain. What do you do on those travels? Not sure. Is it fun? No idea. But you can meet other players randomly, since as I understand it, there’s no way to play offline. You can’t communicate with them other than by wordless shouts, but they’re there. What can you do together? I can’t say. Hopefully more info arises before the springtime release, as I’m strangely intrigued.

12-SpyParty
SpyParty is a reverse Turing test in the same vein as the multiplayer mode of Assassins Creed, in which you need to convince other live players that you’re a computer-controlled character. One player is a sniper in the bushes outside a dinner party, and he’s got a single bullet. The other is a spy attending the dinner party who has to steal a single item. You can see where this is going. I watched people playing SpyParty in early 2011 at PAX East, and I’m intrigued.

13-Starcraft 2: The Heart of the Swarm
As underwhelmed as I was at Starcraft 2, the Zerg are my favorite. So I’ll probably pick up the Zerg expansion. As long as I can burrow a huge swarm of zerglings beneath a group of unsuspecting space marines, I’ll be happy. The look on their faces when you pop up in their midst is priceless. Nobody seems to know when the expansion will come out, but 2012 seems reasonable.

14-Prototype 2
Prototype and Infamous are similar in a lot of ways, but I have to say that I prefer Prototype. Why? It’s probably because I like the gliding better in Prototype than in Infamous, and I prefer running up walls to clowly climbing them. It’s not at all because I like leaping from 10 story buildings to elbow drop a tank and then eat the guys who jump out of it before it explodes. Not at all. April 24th. Prototype 2.

15-Diablo 3
Diablo is the king of isometric action RPGs. I’ve played Torchlight, Heroes of Norrath, Sacred 2, all the Dungeon Sieges, and a bunch of others I can’t remember right now. Mostly I play them multiplayer with my wife. But everyone likes Diablo the best. If I recall correctly, there’s a huge DRM issue here that might dissuade me from buying the game at all, but if they do away with it I’ll likely get a copy eventually.

16-Mechwarrior Online
You know what I love about the Mechwarrior games? I love that they’re relatively slow-paced. I love it when my mech is marching STOMP STOMP STOMP through the mountains and I get a missile lock warning and I know that I’ve got about seven seconds before the LRMs hit. Even more, I love to customize my mech. I love deciding that I can remove two heat sinks in the left arm so that I can move the autocannon ammo there, making room for short range missiles in the torso. I love to spend a half hour figuring out exactly the right way to customize my mech. It’s fun.

If reports are to be believed, the new Mechwarrior game is due out in Q2, and will make light, medium, and assault mechs into an analog of character classes, making each useful in their own ways. You’ll also be able to play with a number of other people, which to me is both a pro and a con. I always loved the single-player campaigns in Mechwarrior, and I have no desire to go online and have my ass kicked by a thirteen-year-old. We’ll see how this one shapes up.

17-Prey 2
Prey 2 seems like it’s going to have close to nothing to do with the first game in the series. It’s the same thing that the Far Cry series did between its first two games: new game, same name. That’s fine with me, because although I finished the original Prey, I thought it kind of stunk. I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground on reviews for the game once it comes out this summer, although I may wait for it to hit the bargain bin.

18-Torchlight 2
I played Torchlight, but I was never able to get into it quite the way everyone else did. Still, the fact that it’s going to be multiplayer makes it a good candidate for me to play with my wife. To that end, I may end up buying it.

19-Bioshock Infinite
Like Mass Effect, Bioshock is a series that everyone seems to love. Well, everyone else loves it. Not me. I played both Bioshock games and was underwhelmed both times. I’ll probably do the same thing with Bioshock Infinite that I did with the other two games. I’ll play it a year or so after it’s released, picking it up for under $20.

20-Alan Wake (PC)
People with XBox 360s played Alan Wake a while ago, but PC gamers like myself have to wait for “early 2012”, when the PC version is supposed to come out. The gameplay videos I’ve seen don’t draw me, but I’ve heard friends rave about how much they loved the game, so I’ll likely try it out.

And that’s what I see coming in 2012. No idea if the Wii U will be out this year, but CES is next week, and we should learn a lot more about it then.

Trine 2
As I mentioned recently, the release of Trine 2 completely caught me off-guard. Since I’ve still got a bunch of PSN dollars from a card I bought a while back, I’ll likely snatch this one up on December 6th. I loved the first one, and it’s the only platinum PSN trophy I’ve got.

Amy
Amy was supposed to come out in September, then on Halloween. Then it was supposed to come out in November. Guess what? November is over now. Still no Amy. But the videos look so good. Let’s hope that the delay has given the game extra polish. I loves me a good survival horror game.

The Last Guardian
This release date has been pushed and pushed, and currently sits at some point in 2012. It’s probably my number one most-anticipated game for 2012. Oh, look. It was my most-anticipated game for 2011 too.

Mechwarrior Online
The latest in the Mechwarrior series has been re-envisioned quite a few times, but now looks to be a free-to-play title. It may very well be the first free-to-play game I actually try. I’ve been a big fan of Mechwarrior, if not a fan of online multiplayer games.

Pixeljunk Monsters Browser Game
What’s even more ridiculous than Greg wanting to play a free-to-play online multiplayer game? I’ll tell you what. Greg wanting to play a browser-based MMO. My love for Pixeljunk Monsters is that strong. Hopefully the browser game is half as good as the amazing PSP edition.

This year, it’s not necessarily the sheer number of games that’s got me pinned down, it’s the fact that there are three big ones, and they’re all huge. I’m already 10% of the way into Batman: Arkham City, and I’m really enjoying it. They’ve integrated some of the fighting moves so well that I find myself stunned when Batman smashes guys’ heads together mid-fight, or slams somebody into a wall, or ends the fight by dangling a guy over the edge of a building and interrogating him. The game is definately a game-of-the-year contender, and may prove to be better than Portal 2, which is saying a lot.

In about two weeks, Skyrim comes out. I’ve got to play it on PC for the mods, which means that I’ll likely be buying a new graphics card for my 4-year-old PC. As huge as Arkham City is looking to be, Skyrim is likely to dwarf it in scale. The only game I’ve ever spent more time on than Oblivion was Ultima V on my Commodore 64.

Lastly, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The bonus here for me is that unlike the other two games, I’ll let my four-year-old daughter watch me play Zelda, which means there’ll be more hours in which to play, because if Twilight Princess is any measure, Skyward Sword is gonna be another long-ass game.

It’ll probably be nearing the end of 2012 by the time I’m done with all three of these.

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.

Have you heard about Dungeons? It’s a new game coming out very soon – February 8th – and I’m fairly excited about it.

I loved Bullfrog’s Dungeon Keeper. It was a great game that embraced the player’s creativity and gave free reign to create a huge and customized dungeon. This new game looks like it’s going after much the same thing. I don’t know much about it, but apparently the goal is to lure in adventurers, make them happy by giving them good challenges and lots of treasure, and then slay them.

The game releases on February 8th, and February 10th on Steam, but I’m going to be sure to read reviews before dropping any money on it. My hopes are high, but then again my hopes were high for the steaming pile of crap that was Grotesque Tactics.

Ico / Shadow of the Colossus Collection

This spring, Playstation is going to be re-releasing a high-definition version of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus as a packed-together collection. I’m not too interested in the fact that it’s going to be 3D-enabled, but I’ll buy it just to replay Shadow of the Colossus in HD, and to try out Ico, which I’ve never had the pleasure of playing.

Dead Space 2

January 25th is only about a month away, and knowing me I won’t buy Dead Space 2 on release day. But I’m definitely going to play. I loved the first game.

Batman: Arkham City

I was late to the party on Arkham Asylum, but I played the game in 2010 and loved it. Sequel? Yes, please. Maybe I’ll get a copy of Arkham City before it’s a year old.

Dragon Age 2

For me, 2009 and 2010 were largely about Dragon Age. I absolutely love the setting and the strategic combat, but I’ve been seriously overexposed. And while Dragon Age was fantastic, I did not love Awakening. As a result, I may not pick up Dragon Age 2 on March 8th with everyone else.

Beyond Good and Evil HD

The thought of playing my favorite game of all time in HD with remastered character models and getting trophies gives me great joy. I’m gonna photograph every animal, win every race, and collect every pearl. Again. It’s coming out sometime in 2011, although nobody seems to know when.

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge

I’ve been looking for a good co-op RPG to play with my wife ever since we finished Trine and discovered that Sacred 2 is kind of lame. There is very little information out there about the game, and I may wait to see some reviews before dropping the money for two copies. What I do know is that you play as a male warrior who uses two-handed melee weapons and a female archer. Co-op is the main focus of the game, and the gameplay videos look very good. Time will tell. May 10th.

Portal 2

There’s been a lot of hype and a lot of excitement around the impending release of Portal 2. Now scheduled for April 20, 2011, this sequel sees the addition of elements from one of Lungfishopolis’s Free Game Friday titles: TAG: The Power of Paint. Turns out that Valve bought out the TAG crew in the same way that they bought the Narbacular Drop crew for the first Portal game. Portal 2 looks amazing, and I’ll likely download it from Steam on April 20th.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I don’t yet have a motionPlus controller, and this game may force me to buy one. I missed the boat on A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker. Twilight Princess was the first Zelda game I’d played since borrowing a friend’s NES back in the day. And I love Twilight Princess. I’ve got very high hopes for Skyward Sword, and I likely will be buying this one on release day. That’s supposed to be sometime in early 2011, but there’s been no announcement.

The Last Guardian

I’ve been looking forward to The Last Guardian for a long time. You play a defenseless boy, and must of the gameplay appears to be stealth-based. Your only means of attack is via your huge flying puppy dog companion Trico: the titular last guardian. Given team Ico’s track record, this one should be good.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Before Skyrim was announced recently, I would quickly have answered that The Last Guardian was my most-looked-forward-to game. I loved Oblivion. I really really loved Oblivion. A sequel? Yes, please. And I’ll just say goodbye to another 200 hours of my life.

Simply awesome. You can check out more images here.

Borderlands 2
It’s true, a Gearbox designer called a Borderlands sequel “a no brainer”, but there’s been no talk and no word about it yet. It’s very likely not yet in development. There are a lot of things I’d love to see done differently with Borderlands 2, and I’m really hopeful that my ideas are common-sense enough to be implemented in a Borderlands sequel. The game was a lot of fun, but it had the potential to be truly great.

Dungeon Keeper 3
It’s been a long time since we saw any kind of Dungeon Keeper game. Ten years ago, Dungeon Keeper 3 was cancelled and there’s been no real word about the series since. It’s not impossible that the series will be resurrected though, and I’m very hopeful that if it is, the third game will be more like the first than like the second.

Plants vs Zombies 2
After initially becoming addicted to Plants vs Zombies, I played the crap out of it, and it remains one of only two games on which I’ve ever gotten 100% completion on the achievements. Popcap has released sequels to Bejeweled, Zuma, Peggle, and Bookworm have all gotten sequels, so a Plants vs Zombies sequel isn’t beyond the realm of imagination.

Ultima Offline
…or something to that effect. I played and loved the first five Ultima games on my Commodore 64 back in the day. I’m ready to try The Ultima 6 Project, which is a Dungeon Siege-powered remake of the game I never played. But having missed so many Ultima games was a shame. After 2000, the only Ultima to be had was Ultima Online, and you know how I feel about MMO games. If they could reboot the Ultima series, I would be quite pleased. Of course, that’s less than likely at this point.

The Sequel to Heavy Rain
This game will almost definitely happen, although if it’s out before 2014 I’d be a bit surprised. I loved Indigo Prophecy. I loved Heavy Rain too, for different reasons. If Quantic Dream puts out another game in their interactive fiction series, I’m there.

Resident Evil 6
Another inevitable title. A Resident Evil sequel is as predictable as a Final Fantasy sequel. But so far, the series has shown that the even-numbered titles are the good ones. I’m hoping that this holds true with Resident Evil 6. Maybe they can learn something from Dead Space.

Half-Life 3
There has been no word anywhere about a potential third volume in Valve’s epic tale. Right now, everybody’s too concerned about the potential release of a Half-Life 2 episode 3. And while I admit my own eagerness for that game, I’m curious as to where Valve can go with a legitimate sequel: a third Half-Life installment. The game’s story alone is one of the biggest draws to me, and Half-Life has already brought Gordon Freeman down the rabbit hole and back more times than I can count. What’s next?

Psychonauts 2
Aside from a page on DoubleFine’s site which seems to have been set in place more to debunk rumors than to announce anything, there is no word about a Psychonauts sequel. Still, I think it’s more likely than not that a sequel will eventually appear. I loved the original game, and I’m very hopeful that the sequel will be up to the same standards.

Pixeljunk Monsters 2
There are currently four released games in the Pixeljunk series: Racers, Monsters, Eden, and Shooter. The only one I’ve loved has been 1-2: Pixeljunk Monsters. I bought the game years ago and I’m still playing it nearly every week. There’s been speculation about 1-5 being Pixeljunk Dungeons, which sounds excellent, but following word of Pixeljunk Shooter 2 and Pixeljunk Racers: Second Lap, it’s unclear as to whether these games are just expansions like Pixeljunk Monsters Encore was, or whether they’re legitimate sequels. (2-1 and 2-4) If another Pixeljunk Monsters game ever comes out, I’m buying it on release date.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 tops my list. After the teaser trailer, we got a kickass cutscene-looking movie of Jade parkouring through a villiage, on the run from what appear to be Alpha Section troops. But there’s no word as to whether the game will actually be made. Please please mister Ancel sir, make the game.

Half Life 2, Episode 3 is also a game I can’t wait to play. Aside from brief mentions of the integration of sign language into the game, there’s been no real word on it. No release date. But I’m hoping that the brief glimpse of the Aperture Science ship at the end of Episode 2 means that they’ll integrate the Portal world and give Gordan Freeman a portal gun. How much would that kick ass?

Mechwarrior 5 has also been announced, but there’s very little news. I’ve read that they intend to change the game so that light mechs and heavy mechs will all have their individual roles, similar to classes in RPG games. No longer will light and medium mechs be merely stepping stones to that 100 ton assault mech. I don’t know quite how they’ll pull this off, but it should be interesting.

The third (and potentially final) episode in the Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness series hasn’t even officially been announced yet, but you know it’s coming. I had a blast with the first two games. The comedy is totally ridiculous, and very very Penny-Arcade. I love beating up mimes, hobos, and barbershop quartets with garden implements.

Starcraft: Ghost was delayed “indefinitely”. But it seemed to combine two things I really like: Stealth gameplay, and the Starcraft universe. Watching a mutalisk come at you in first-person would be awesome. I really hope that Blizzard picks the project back up at some point.

The fourth game in the Thief series is going by the working name “Thi4f”. With the horrible jumping and climbing mechanics in Thief: Deadly shadows, the developers have quite a ways to go if they want their game to compete in a game climate that includes titles like Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia. Given that they have no choice but to improve, the fourth thief game should kick ass.

And that’s my list. Starcraft: Ghost may be vaporware, and maybe BGE2, but most are just undated games.