As 2011 draws to a close we leave the year behind with some really good game releases we had big titles such as: Battlefield 3, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Starwars: The Old Republic, Portal 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution to mention a few! It will be a hard year to beat in terms of game releases as all of the above games have been highly anticipated by gamer fans all over the world, at least that’s what people might think before looking at what’s (probably) coming out in 2012…
I probably only need to mention one game developer in order for 2012 to be a strong competitor to 2011 in terms of heavy-hitting game releases: Blizzard (activision). Starting off we’ve (almost surely) got a Diablo III release on our hands in early (hopefully Q1) 2012. I say almost surely because, as always, Blizzard assures us with quotes such as: “We will release it when it’s done” and “soon”, but as the first release date was expected in 2011 and the beta’s been going on for a while I think we’re pretty safe with a 2012 release. Diablo III continues the fight against the evil in the realm of Sanctuary, 20 years has passed since we fought against Diablo and his forces in Diablo 2. I won’t go into detail about the game, as much as I would like I feel like I’d go on a 1000 word story about the universe and why I am jumping up and down waiting for release. I will just say this: hours and hours of multiplayer (and/or singleplayer) fun, new bosses, new classes, real money auction houses and what I can only expect to be an incredibly epic storyline aided by amazing cinematics.
Blizzard also hope to release the second installment of Starcraft 2 in 2012, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. Where we play as Zerg in the campaign in order to help Sarah Kerrigan get control of the alien race. There will also be a lot of changes in the multiplayer, new units added, such as the Shredder, Viper and Oracle while some old ones get removed or changed, namely the Carrier, the Thor (now 1 max).
There might even be more coming from the Blizzard team as estimates have been made of a Mists of Pandaria release in Q4 2012, while a lot of people, including myself have long since given up on WoW they still do have incredible subscription numbers so I’m sure quite a few would really want a 2012 release for the newest expansion, although personally I think it’s a bit optimistic and I’d rather say it’ll come out early-mid 2013.
But Blizzard aren’t the only ones bringing something to the party in 2012, BioWare joins in with the highly anticipated final chapter of the Mass Effect-series: Mass Effect 3. Just like with ME 2 you will be able to import your previous characters into the game and in ME3 these will change the way the game ends, at least to some extent, which sounds really interesting. With a release date set to March 6th (US), 8th (AU) and 9th (EU) it looks like we have a great first quarter to look forward to.
2k Games also seems to have jumped on the sequel bandwagon with their tentative July 30th release date for the “Roleplaying Shooter” : Borderlands 2. Borderlands 2 continues five years after the events of the original game on the planet Pandora. Just like before you can play one of four characters, but none carry over from the first one, although their styles do look a bit familiar… but technically all playable characters are new ones. The storyline on the other hand brings back a lot of recognisible characters such as the mysterious guardian angel and claptrap.
There are a lot more games that will be released in 2012 but as you might understand we can’t name them all here. A few others are titles such as Max Payne III, Hitman: Absolution, SSX, Syndicate and Prototype 2. I’m sure the coming year will be a very productive one for all the game studios out there and we at Azuricate would like to end this segment by saying Happy New Year!
