Looking Ahead: A Year of Plenty

It's been a long time since I've talked about video games on this blog which, ostensibly, started as a blog about gaming. I've talked a lot about tabletop gaming, of course, but with E3 2014 just around the corner let's get back into the digital age and discuss the upcoming releases in the next year!

As with any first year after the launch of new consoles, 2014 has been fairly devoid of truly amazing titles. When the Xbox 360 and the PS3 released, way back in '05 and '06 respectively, the only standouts at launch were games such as Resistance: Fall of Man and Condemned: Criminal Origins. There were ports of older titles that ended up being released for the new consoles as well but the titles that had been developed specifically to take advantage of the new hardware were few and far between -- and, by and large, were fairly disappointing. And, sadly, that trend didn't really change until after the first year of both consoles being available.

Come 2014 and, though people complain, things are a lot better by comparison. The launch titles offered to first adopters for both consoles were actually a fairly varied selection of big budget games: the Xbox One gave some exclusives, such as Dead Rising 3 and Ryse: Son of Rome; the PS4 had exclusive titles in Killzone: Shadow Fall and the downloadable Resogun; and both consoles had ported versions of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Need for Speed: Rivals and Battlefield 4 ready to play at launch, along with the regular lot of sports titles and a small selection of others. Compared to the previous generation, which relied on smaller ports and brand new IP to sell the new hardware, it seems apparent that Microsoft and Sony finally understand what gamers (and especially first adopters) want in a "next gen" experience.

Of course, since the launch day the offerings for both systems have dried up considerably. There are evident standouts, of course, with titles such as: Outlast (PS4); Thief (both); Titanfall (XBO); inFAMOUS: Second Son (PS4); Child of Light (both); and Trials Fusion (both). But things still seemed to be progressing slowly and there was some definite fatigue being felt by the first adopters who wanted to use their new hardware.

But fear no longer! With May nearly over and June about to begin, things are starting to look up for the gaming community. The month of flowers has brought us such gems as: the sublime Transistor, Supergiant Games' follow-up to the best game of 2011 (Bastion); Wolfenstein: The New Order, a reboot of the very first FPS that, by all accounts, is really quite excellent; and the exceptionally slick Watch_Dogs, which I have been playing to death and simply cannot get enough of. Couple that with Murdered: Soul Suspect, a game dropping this upcoming Tuesday (June 3rd), and things look to be picking up indeed!

So what does the rest of the year hold? What wonderful and exciting titles do we have to look forward to? I'm glad you asked! Despite what appears to be a fairly dry spell during the summer months (which is fairly typical for any year of gaming), the fall and winter months are chock-full of titles to get your blood pumping. Below, you'll find a quick rundown of some of the biggest titles of the year ahead, but please note: I've intentionally omitted titles that do not yet have set release dates. Read on!

• Murdered: Soul Suspect (June 3rd)
• Destiny (September 9)
• Alien: Isolation (October 7)
• Dragon Age: Inquisition (October 7)
• Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (October 7)
• Batman: Arkham Knight (October 14)
• The Evil Within (October 21)
• Evolve (October 21)
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (November 4)
• Far Cry 4 (November 18)

Over the next few weeks, I'll do my best to bring you some previews of these titles, along with any others that I come across. There's lots of excellent content coming to the new console generation and I'd like to provide a source of information for people about it all; I spend so much time explaining new games to my friends, why not spread that out a bit wider and offer a source like that to everyone?

Stay tuned for the first article, hopefully to go up sometime soon this week, which will detail what Murdered: Soul Suspect is all about -- and, depending on when the article goes up, may also include some first impressions of the game. Thanks for reading, everybody!