Countdown to E3 2014: Our Top 5 Most Anticipated Games: #5

One week from today, Brad, Nick and Chris (Davis) will be on the streets of Los Angeles to discover all the exciting games and hidden gems that deserve your attention in the coming year and we're exceptionally excited.  In anticipation, we felt it appropriate to tell you guys our Top 5 most anticipated games of E3.  Today, we bring you our #5 picks.

Brad's #5: The Evil Within

I want to believe. Or rather, I don't want to believe. The previews for The Evil Within have been terrible. The game is supposedly ugly, disjointed, unoriginal, and not very scary. But the game just got delayed another 2 months, so hopefully some of the issues of polish get ironed out. Not to mention, The Evil Within is being directed by Shinji Mikami. So I have to believe. They call this a Resident Evil 4 clone -- but RE4 is one of the all time great action games! And that's also a Mikami game! He also directed Godhand, Vanquish, and assisted with Shadows of the Damned!

I'm finally getting some hands on with the game at E3 this year, and I'm hoping the combat it at least fun. I don't care if it isn't scary. Resident Evil was never scary. I want fun weapons, a good upgrade system, and tense, well designed combat scenarios. This is what Mikami is good at, and I have FAITH dammit! I could care less about visuals and scares at this point. I just want a fun game. It has to be good. IT HAS TO! BELIEVE IN MIKAMI!!!

Nick's #5: Alien Isolation

It’s no secret that I revere theAlienfranchise for what many would call “the wrong reasons” and despite my historical love for sequels, I really can’t standAliensin comparison to it’s predecessor and immediate successor. The films that featured a single alien always evoked feelings of claustrophobia and imminent doom in ways that the big budget, meat-head, shoot-em up of a sequel ever did. Naturally, I am very excited for Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation because of it’s choice of source material and it’s apparent roots in the survival horror genre.

Next week at E3, we will be getting our first hands-on impressions of the game and despite the long, sad history of Alien games, I can’t help but be overcome with anticipation and a little bit of dread. I’ll be frank… the game might suck. It’s really hard to create and balance a proper survival horror game in general and to have a studio with almost no history working within this genre at work on this game, there is a lot of room for the game to fall apart. Early impressions have commented on the game’s difficulty which worries me a little but if the atmosphere is done right, I will close my eyes, open my arms, and embrace the Alien game I have always wanted.

The game was quietly announced a few months ago with a release date of October 7th announced shortly thereafter; A shorter reveal-to-release cycle that is quite rare these days. Unfortunately, the game is poised to compete with some serious competition in October so I am actually hoping the game slips to November or even December. Either way, we’ll be playing the game next week and my fingers (and toes) are crossed for a successful showing.

Chris' #5: Homefront: The Revolution

New game announcements the week prior to E3 is par for the course and many of these can quickly turn into some of the biggest sources of E3 hype.  Case in point, Homefront’s sequel, The Revolution, was just announced today and I find myself quite excited by it.  Homefront itself was one of my most hyped and, upon release, most loathed titles of 2011 thanks to terrible gameplay mechanics, a lackluster multiplayer suite and a story that’s just as laughably bad as its script.  It one of the titles that directly contributed to the downfall of THQ.  After THQ went under, Crytek snatched the IP like a thief in the night and assigned the development of the sequel to Crytek UK, otherwise known as Free Radical.

Free Radical, known for their work on Timesplitters and their rather lackluster successor Haze, have been working on this sequel for years in secret and it’s early details sound very enticing.  A 4-player cooperative online shooter set in an occupied Philadelphia?  Sounds cool but once you begin to read further is where it gets interesting.  Hit and run insurgent tactics ala Red Faction Guerrilla?  A sandbox environment highly reminiscent of City 17?  Oh, hell yes.  It may be a bit early to put this one on my hype list but any chance I get to experience a game that has even the smallest inklings of Freedom Fighters gets my attention so I can only hope that it plays just as well as it sounds like it could.