The A to Z of the rest of 2013

Last week we looked at Quarter One of 2013 - the first three months have some gems in them... well, hopefully. Today we'll stretch out and look to the rest of the year - and we won't even have begun to look at the hardware race.

Arma 3
Now that Bohemia Interactive's developers are out of jail the odds of us seeing Arma 3 in the near future are much higher - an exciting prospect for anyone who likes their military themed shooters to be ultra-realistic and overly ambitious.


Look how they thrust upwards!

Battlefield 4
Well, we know the beta is coming this year. Do I need to sell anyone on this? It'll be an ever-enhanced version of the Frostbite engine, it'll probably be slightly futuristic, it'll looking f**king gorgeous and it'll probably be most worthwhile for the multiplayer.

Company of Heroes 2
The war between the USSR and Germany, otherwise known as the Eastern Front of World War 2, was a dramatically bloody and costly war for both sides. Almost half the deaths of WW2 can be attributed to the war between the Soviets and the Axis forces - though a large percentage of those deaths can be attributed to the weather, not the many other deadly things about war. COH2 aims to make you feel that weather.

DayZ
DayZ could have been game of the year except that it never came out. It's a classic catch-22 - game could be the best game of a year if it only came out that year, but couldn't be game of the year that year if it came out because it was unfinished and therefore possibly not worthy of it.

That's not really a classic Catch-22 in the sense of the phrase I guess. DayZ is awesome though, and we can't wait for the Standalone release!


And here we have xXxElektroSnipahxXx looking very dapper in his jacket and Coyote pack.

EA Sports
FIFA 14, Madden 14, NHL 14 - these are all givens. FIFA will probably be awesome (again) and the others will continue to do things I don't like as much as I want to. This year though, EA Sports has the UFC licence and an obligation (in fans eyes) to deliver a game that is at least as good as THQ's Undisputed series. Also there's at least a 3% chance they'll release a basketball game this year.

F - Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, Dragon Age 3 and Dead Island: Riptide
In honour of Dead Island: Riptide's Special Edition - ripped from the mind of a 12 year old boy - I'm putting a triple D under F! It's a joke about breasts. I'll explain it when you're older. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is a standalone expansion for one of the most innovative games to come out last year, which makes it awesome on two levels. Dragon Age 3 is a sequel to Limimi's favourite Bioware game Dragon Age 2. And Dead Island: Riptide is a sequel to Dead Island - apparently they've built up the melee combat system significantly and made the game worth playing on your own... or so they say.

Grand Theft Auto V
Three characters pulling bank heists in a fictionalised version of Los Angeles which is spatially larger than every other damn GTA game, and it'll have an epic story that everyone will promptly ignore in favour of the ability to drive around just doing stuff. It has sharks. SHARKS.


See? Sharks.

Holy crap I haven't talked about The Last of Us
Sony - alongside Irrational Games - are also trying out the whole "co-op game without having to put up with another human being" thing by way of giving the player a pair of capable characters to look after. The Last of Us looks like it should be great - part survival scavenger game, part relentless hobo killing simulator - and I couldn't be more excited.

Injustice: Gods Amongst Us
Batman fighting Superman. Superman fighting Wonder Woman. The Flash being the second worst character ever (after Aquaman) (and also in this game). The team behind it previously made Mortal Kombat and are focusing on making the stages the stars of this fighting game - it's graphically gorgeous and should be mechanically great too.

Jeepers I forgot Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs
Do you get it? I forgot Amnesia? It's a joke about the fragility of the human memory. Anyway, Amnesia was a terrifying game beloved by Limimi and loathed by anyone who get scared easily by games (that's me). A Machine For Pigs sounds scary based on its name alone, but this one will include outdoor environments and new, scarier AI.

Kickstarter funded games
2012 gave us stacks of ways to spend out money on games that weren't ready to come out yet - 2013 is the year those games come out! Some of the Kickstarter funded games due this year include Shadowrun Returns, Double Fine's Adventure Game, Wasteland 2 and Banner Saga.


Shadowrun Returns I'm particularly hopeful about.

Lego City Undercover
The Lego answer to Grand Theft Auto will put you in the shoes of an undercover cop with the ability to disguise himself, build things and drive a wide array of vehicles. It looks cutesy and silly and I want it so, so much.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is a rerelease of Monster Hunter 3 designed for the WiiU - and featuring 3DS cross-compatibility. It made the list because there will be some of you who bought a WiiU and you now want a cool game to play - well, the Monster Hunter series is pretty awesome (if a little grindy), so now yo've got this!

Ni No Kuni
JRPG developed by Level 5 (of Professor Layton and Dark Cloud fame) and Studio Ghibli (Award winning anime studio responsible for Princess Mononoke and My Neighbour Totoro.) It looks cute in that anime style and I’m sure JRPG nerds around the world will lose their **** over it.

Oh hell I've got nothing for the letter O
Splinter Cell: Blacklist doesn't look as stealthy as some of the other games in the series, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be bad - just different. It's all about tagging dudes and executing them on the fly, and I think I saw some climbing stuff in the demo I saw which makes me think the teams at Ubisoft are bleeding into one another again, and the Splinter Cell dudes were walking past the Assassin's Creed office and they were like 'Woah climbing stuff is awesome' and they threw it in there.


Yeah, just hanging around, shooting some dudes.

Pokemon X and Y
A PSA - do not google Pokemon X Videos. Anyway, you know the deal here. There are Pokemon that are free and they need to be captured and their spirits need to be crushed through constant beatings (delivered by other pokemons). It's like a reverse of the emancipation proclamation. I watched Django Unchained last night and it's getting to me.

Quantic Dream's Beyond: Two Souls
I wasn't a fan of Heavy Rain, but that doesn't mean everyone hated it! And now David Cage is back, with a brand new 'game' which will involve lots of story and lots of decisions but a thin link between your choices and what the game actually does. There is supernatural stuff in this one, but hopefully no Matrix Giant Cockroaches, so if everything goes according to plan it won't go silly like Fahrenheit.

Remember Me
A highly stylised futuristic beat-em-up, Remember Me puts players in the shoes of a memory hunter in Neo Paris. I guess it's Johnny Mnemonic in France? The protagonist is female, so it'd be Janey Mnemonic, but still. Remember that movie, Johnny Mnemonic? Ironically, I don't. Here, have a trailer.

Star Wars 1313
You're a Bounty Hunter on Coruscant working your way through a conspiracy. In case the name and the planet didn't tip you off here, it's a Star Wars game. And it looks freaking gorgeous. I personally can't believe it took anyone this long to make a game where you're a bounty hunter in the Star Wars universe... speaking of the Star Wars universe games, where the hell is Republic Commando 2?


Holy crap he shot that man in the *****. TO DEATH.

Total War: Rome 2
TWR is my favourite of the TW series. Roman history is awesome, Total War games are awesome, Creative Assembly is awesome, videogames in general are awesome, the word awesome is not so awesome. Anyway I'm excited for Total War: Rome 2 and you should be too.

Ummm let's talk about Rainbow Six Patriots
Let's all face the facts. Rainbow Six Patriots will probably be a really cool game, but the odds of it being anything like that epic bloody trailer they accidentally leaked two years ago are slim. It'll still probably be cool though.

Vania: Lords of Shadow 2, Castle
Holy heck this one was a stretch, right? I loved Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and Junglist was a fan as well - despite the game not sharing as many elements with previous Castlevania games as everyone might have liked. As long as they keep the great parts and eliminate the weaker elements, Lords of Shadow 2 should be great.

Watch Dogs
A Grand Theft Auto style world combined with Ubisoft's parkour gameplay plus a crazy hacking ability dealy and a whole heap of meta-as-hell cross platform things is Watch Dogs in a too-long sentence. Watch this trailer to see it in action.


Holding the gun sideways, sliding over a car bonnet in the rain. A bit more blood and it could be a John Woo film.

X Rebirth
Enter an open-ended world of space travel, space piracy, space trading, space construction and space combat. In spaceships. X Rebirth is the first true sequel in the unstoppable X series in 5 years - though the developers, Egosoft, are treating it as more of a reboot than a sequel. It's coming out sometime this year - but no date has been announced yet.

Yes! THQ's games are still coming out, just with different publishers
For all the details on this one, just head through to our epic rundown from yesterday.

Zounds this Alphabet idea was poorly thought out
Hahaha this entire idiotic idea came about when I had written out Arma 3, Battlefield 4, COH2 and DayZ and I realised there was a coincidence there I couldn't ignore. Without looking into whether there was a game coming out that started with the letter Q (at the very least) I decided to just leap straight to making a A to Z of games in 2013. I think I got through it ok though. Nobody will notice that the plan didn't work, right?

Next week we're going to look at the hardware of 2013, because so far we haven't mentioned any of it.