One of my biggest gripes with gaming nowadays is that the market is overflowing with too-frequent sequels and copy/paste FPSes. I know I’m not alone. While our buddies are content with just buying the new* COD or Madden every year, there are a lot of us who are starved for some new blood. Well friends, it’s 2012 and things are looking up. I have three gems here poised to be some of the most innovative games of the year.

*new as in, essentially the same game but with minor improvements/changes

Binary Domain:
Release Date: 2/28/12

Binary Domain is a third-person tactical shooter. You command a squad which assists you on your missions in Tokyo in the year 2080. The highlight of this game is the AI, which follows your commands and learns whether or not to trust you based on your previous decisions. I always love it when I hear a game has innovative AI. It’s always refreshing to have bots that don’t drive off a cliff or forget how to walk around obstacles.

Metro: Last Light
Release Date: 1st Qtr 2013

M:LL is a sequel to the game Metro 2033, a game based off of the novel of the same name (it’s a great read). It takes place in Russia roughly 20 years after nuclear strikes forced the residents to take refuge in the subway systems. What really made Metro 2033 stand out was its emphasis on atmosphere. You could really put yourself inside of the small society that grew in the stations.
Even though it’s an FPS, it’s far from a COD clone. You carry your guns with you from level to level, upgrading or trading them along the way. In between markets you have to scavenge for all your equipment. Your ammo is also your currency, so playing run-and-gun won’t cut it. It was originally intended for this year but was pushed back to 2013. If that means the developers are taking their time and getting it right, then I don’t mind waiting.

Update: The release date for Metro: Last Light has been confirmed for December 31, 2012.

Hitman: Absolution
Release Date: Sometime 2012

It’s been 6 years since Blood Money and Agent 47 is back. When we last saw our friend he shot his way out of his own funeral and went off the grid. Now he’s back new and improved. Hitman is, of course, a stealth game where you play as a paid assasin. Although this is the fifth title in the series, developers promise a brand new experience for fans. New features on the table include a more realistic AI and the new “Instinct” mode, where you can predict what actions your enemies will take.

     I know my way around a computer. Since you’re reading a tech opinion blog I’m sure you do too. We’ve all at one point been dubbed the “computer guy” for casually mentioning torrents or Google Docs. For those of you who aren’t so tech-savvy, I’ll let you in on a little secret. When someone asks me to fix their computer, 90% it is fixed by one of the following:

• Following on screen instructions
• Wait for the problem to go away by itself
• Turn it off and back on

Yeah you read the last one correctly. It’s not a punchline, it actually works. So after my 20 minutes of Kindergarten-level troubleshooting, you look at your fixed computer and demand that I show you how to escape the Matrix.

Now let me talk about hacking. I can hack, and by that I don’t mean making a Facebook status on my friend’s profile when they’re away. I mean cookie sniffing, brute force password cracking,  DDOS attacks (if I can get some help), and using live-discs to access files. You could teach a fourth-grader all of this in an afternoon. It’s best suited for pranking my friends and stealing my neighbor’s WiFi. If I applied to Anonymous, I would be laughed away while every one of my profile pictures were replaced by penises. But if I told non “computer people” about this, they would suddenly start blaming me whenever they see a Tweet they didn’t send or when they get a virus… regardless of their porn habits or where they leave their phone.

If people would spend 10 minutes of research when something goes wrong, they could fix things all by themselves. If it’s so simple then why do we look like IBM employees for knowing that Macs can get viruses? The reason, my friends, is called the Craiglist Penis Effect. To put it simply, the Craigslist Penis Effect states that when everyone around you is a semi-functioning retard, you look like Einstein for knowing 2+2=4. People are lazy, so until that changes let’s sit back and enjoy the gas money and free lemonade we get in exchange for tech support. To make it even easier, here’s a handy flowchart, courtesy of XKCD.

Look at all these hip young people texting. In school, in the car, in bed, on the toilet. This “texting” thing must be really great, right? Right? I’m going to go ahead and assume that you regularly text (cell phones, IM, Twitter, etc), and there’s nothing wrong with that. I do it all the time. I’m just saying that it’s a pretty crappy way to communicate. To someone like me, who’s spent a lot of time being introverted, texting is pretty appealing. You can talk to people without actually talking to them. But when I started transitioning from the “quiet one” to actually enjoying conversation, I realized that it isn’t so great.

Me: Hey what’s up

Friend: Waiting for my mom to pick me up

Me: You’re still at school?

Friend: No I’m at home

Me: Going somewhere?

"lol" she says? Better ask when her last period was.

IT'S SPHERICAL- Josh Nichols

Well boys and girls, moms and dads, basement-dwellers, it’s that time again. The big three are preparing for the next generation of gaming. Rumors about the PS4, WiiU, and Xbox 720 (that’s 2 complete circles, for those of you who never played Tony Hawk) have been swirling around for weeks and I am not excited one bit. If you’re a long time gamer like me then you’ve gotten your fair share of disappointments from the seventh generation. We’re seeing less and less focus on sophisticated games because casual games are cheaper, faster, easier, and actually make a decent amount of money. the companies are starting to lose their grip on us who have been with them for years so they can sell your grandma some worthless pile of pixels on Farmville. If Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo want me to buy their new stuff, I have some demands that need to be met.

Stop Bullshitting Me With the Peripherals

I think the most defining aspect of the current generation is the emphasis on motion control. The Wii took the world by storm and everyone wanted a piece of the action. Now I’m not saying that the Wii, Kinect, and PSMove were bad ideas, but their execution was terrible. We were supposed to have games where you could seamlessly navigate through menus with a wave of your hand, where you could feel like a real boxer, ducking and punching your way to the championship belt. But no. Instead of Fight Night Kinect we’ve gotten countless minigame collections. If you’re going to push these things, don’t leave the actual games out of the equation. Which brings me to my next point…

Take Your Time and Give Us Good Games

Annual sequels, day-one patches, DLC announced before the game is even released. I’m gonna be blunt: it’s a fucking joke. It’s rare that we get a new franchise. You don’t think we have a sequel problem? Last year we saw the release of Zelda 16 and Call of Duty 7. I can’t even remember when we had anything as groundbreaking as Halo: Combat Evolved. I may not even buy an FPS this year because they all look the same. Sure they have their own caveats, but I’m not seeing any serious innovation. I just might hold out until Metro: Last Light in 2013.

It seems like every single game that comes out has bugs in it that you should have found by just taking a regular old console and playing the game. You know, the same way all your customers play it. These are games that represent multi-million dollar investments and are marketed to people worldwide. It wouldn’t kill you to not rush the thing into the ground. 10 years ago, if your game had a game-breaking glitch, you were fucked– and that was that. For the most part you couldn’t patch the game remotely. It had to be done right the first time or you’re out of a job.

I can go along with DLC if it’s maybe 3 months after release and it’s a fair amount of extra content. But that’s not what we get. What we’re getting is a system where they take content away from a game, call it finished, and then sell the rest of it back to us. Nobody likes it. This takes people from a day-one buy to getting the GOTY edition. Now for my last request…

Make the New Platform Worth It

I, personally don’t think we need a new generation now. We’ve pretty much gotten the best picture we can see. You know there are more pixels, but can you really tell the difference between 720p and 1080p? Only a few games are stretching the limits of what our current consoles can do. Only a couple games like L.A. Noire have reached the point where they need multiple discs on Xbox 360. In the last 7 years, our technology really hasn’t advanced enough to justify a new platform. What can the PS4 do that the PS3 can’t? If Sony wants me to buy a new console, the answer better impress me.