Earlier we published a little article about Xbox One exclusive titles to look forward to over the next year. But those aren’t the only games to get excited about next year. There are several highly-anticipated games coming to several of the new consoles that you should have your eye on. Here’s list of all the new games on the way in 2014 and a little background on each one.
Destiny – Former Halo creators and developers Bungie are out to show the world that they weren’t just a one-trick pony. Halo is no longer theirs, but something as intriguing and adventurous is. Destiny is an open-world shooter that feels like a descendant of the wild world of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). Games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and more all focus on great story arcs that you play through as a unique character that starts from humble origins and becomes one of many heroes to walk the world you’re involved in. Destiny aims to build a shooter that follows a very similar strategy, only instead of this being strictly an MMORPG that uses keyboard and mouse configurations, you’ll be playing something more like an MMOFPS (First Person Shooter). You’ll have missions to complete to advance your character and you’ll be able to play with or against other people in a great big world just waiting to be explored. Things like deep weapon customization and character skill trees will be a part of Destiny as well. You’ll build your character to be proficient in certain ways, so you can play and be powerful as you wish to be but you won’t be some war deity that’s able to take on whatever you wish. Most of the game looks to work similar to Guild Wars 2, where “dynamic events” will happen in real time in a certain area, and you and people in the area will have to work together to overcome a situation that would likely be impossible to conquer by yourself. So far, Destiny looks like it will be an easy nominee for game of the year in 2014. Destiny launches sometime in September according to Bungie.
The Division – Tom Clancy games are never in scarcity. More often then not that’s a good thing, and The Division seeks to drastically improve the brand and introduce a bigger world for you and your friends to adventure, shoot, and survive through. The Division takes place in and around Manhattan, but in a more ravaged and collapsed New York and United States as a whole (from what we’ve seen so far). Gameplay trailers showcase the new Snowdrop engine, which makes The Division look like one of the most beautiful games ever made, both on consoles and PCs. You and your friends will be able to form a squad and search through the city streets and various locations in order to scavenge for food, equipment, weapons and who knows what else. This, of course, means that other people will be scavenging for items, and should you come across other squads/factions within the city, a firefight will almost certainly follow. There are non-competitive objectives to take part in as well, but at no point are you safe from the worlds inhabitants. The one cherry on top of this seemingly excellent new title is the ability to use things like Xbox’s Smartglass application to connect to the game and, from what we’ve been shown through early looks of the game, offer support and scouting to online friends through small drones that can hover several feet over players’ heads. We’re still waiting for an official launch date on this one.
Thief – Square Enix continue to venture outside of their Final Fantasy series with new and re-invigorated installments. Thief is technically a reboot, but is not meant to repeat what it starts back in 1998. You’ll play the character Garrett, and while the plot isn’t fully known yet, we do know that this will be a highly explorative game that highly favors stealth and strategy over combat skills. In fact, the game is designed for you to be incredibly handy in just about everything but all-out combat. You’ll be able to handle yourself in a 1-on-1 situation, but as soon as you find yourself in a 2-on-1 or even more overwhelming situation your only survivable option will be to tuck tail and run. Other games like Assassin’s Creed an Dishonored give you a wider approach to every situation, but Thief aims to stay true to your characters role and strongly encourage you to avoid conflict at all costs. You are a thief, after all. Graphically, Thief looks great and vast. But the way you move about and accomplish objectives requires great attention to little things. For instance, you may need to find a hidden safe or container that holds information or equipment that you need. You will know where to go, but perhaps not exactly sure where to find the item(s). So be ready to look under desks, various rooms, or behind paintings to find what you’re looking for. Thief launches February 25, 2014.
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes/Phantom Pain – Good ol’ Snake is back, but this time he’s not just on PlayStation or Nintendo and he’s a bit older. The primary Metal Gear franchise is finally being released on all platforms, including the Xbox One, without any delays or shenanigans. I remember playing the very first Metal Gear Solid and falling in love with it’s stealth-action formula with a 3rd person camera directly above the player, making for a very interesting and limiting point of view that forced you to play carefully. Metal Gear has since moved to a more over-the-shoulder point of view, but the world Snake exists in has become larger and more free-form than ever before. Your battle-tested skills will make you lethal in so many ways, and however you wish to approach a situation or guarded location is entirely up to you. Ride in the back of a truck with an unknowing driver and get dropped right in the middle of things or go in guns blazing – it doesn’t matter how you go about completing an objective as long as it gets completed. There’s a lot of story that hasn’t been brought forward, but Ground Zeroes acts as a prologue to Phantom Pain and deals with infiltrating an American black site within Cuba called Camp Omega. You’ll be extracting a couple of important targets, but the intention of Ground Zeroes is to get you up to speed with what is going on in Phantom Pain. Ground Zeroes takes places in 1875, just a few months after the events on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Both games look pretty great and could make for stellar experience. Both games currently show a March 18-20 release date of this year as last reported by Konami.
The Elder Scrolls Online – The Elder Scrolls has been around for a while. The recent Skyrim was game of the year in many critics’ eyes and delivered an incredible open world filled with magic, rival factions, cave trolls, and massive dragons. It sounds like Lord of the Rings, but really there are only light ties as the similarities relate more to the historic time periods from which both franchises borrow from, as opposed to World of Warcraft borrowing heavily from Lord of the Rings itself. But Elder Scrolls Online is meant to be Bethesda’s attempt at an MMORPG set in the land of Tamriel and allow you to travel between many of the areas that you’ve experienced through the several installments of the franchise. The main difference is the online aspect, where you’ll be able to play with or against other players. Elder Scrolls has always been excellent in how it allows you to freely progress through main and side story arcs, but the addition of large open world multiplayer has left many fans of the series in a bit of a questionable state. The Elder Scrolls also deals with the first person view mode primarily but doesn’t function like a tight shooter like Call of Duty or TitanFall would, so adding more mayhem to the screen could make it tough to effectively battle opponents. But all will be laid to rest one way or another upon the game’s launch, which is slated for June 2014 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and April 4, 2014 on PC/Mac.
Final Fantasy XV – Yet another massive franchise that features heavy cinematic elements and round-based combat in super-fantasy worlds. Xbox gamers might be familiar with the recent Final Fantasy XIII storyline with Lightning and company, but Final Fantasy XV is a new breed of Final Fantasy, which means entirely new characters and storylines. Final Fantasy has always been a visual spectacle that incorporates incredible on-screen moments and epic battles that feel as if heaven and hell are at all-out war. These games aren’t meant to have any real grounding to reality but that’s kind of what makes them great – the artistic investment typically pays off heavily. Sadly, as has been the case in the past, some characters are hard for older audiences to invest in because of subpar voice acting or poorly written scripts. But most of that gets compensated by the fun and often strategic battles that you’ll endure to reach the story’s end. It should be noted that Square Enix, developer of Final Fantasy, have gone on record to say that they intend Final Fantasy to be a bit of a departure from previous installments and provide a somewhat darker and more vulnerable character set to make everything more believable. Saying it is one thing, doing it is another. But one must figure that anything is possible. With a better story and good voice acting, Final Fantasy stands to impress a lot of gamers that aren’t hell-bent on competition but creativity in their digital entertainment. There is no official release date for Final Fantasy XV, and 2014 hasn’t been assured as a launch window but is entirely possible seeing how the game was showcased at E3 2013, and typically games showcased at E3 tend to come out within 18 months unless any major setbacks occur.
Mad Max – Younger gamers probably have no idea who or what Mad Max is, but we’ll keep it simple and just say that this was an old Mel Gibson movie series about a collapsed-economy earth that features barren wastelands and heavy survival themes. But for gamers, this looks a little bit like Borderlands 2, Rage, and Fallout. The gameplay hasn’t been fully revealed as only a couple of trailers have made their way onto YouTube from E3 2013. We do know that it is open world and has a lot of focus on car combat and customization. Warner Bros. games, the creators of this new title, have put a lot of emphasis on the car combat, touching on the physics of car ramming and the benefits and disadvantages of adding armor or weapon items. Warner Bros. did want to draw the “anti-hero” that the movies created but not focus on the revenge aspects that fans of the movies might expect. At this point it’s about surviving and forging alliances to live in a highly competitive and combative world. There have been some demos put out of the game in the second half of 2013 that made some feel that the combat outside of the cars was a little dumbed down, but seeing how this game was only confirmed for 2014 and they were in pre-alpha build, there is likely still a lot to come. This isn’t a sure-thing in terms of an excellent game, but the new post-apocalyptic theme is becoming more common but typically delivers great experiences where resources are more scarce and you are more free to progress at your own pace (much like Fallout).
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor – Also from Warner Bros., Monolith Games (F.E.A.R.) is all about the Lord of the Rings universe but doesn’t focus on the story arcs of the movies but sits in the timeline in between The Hobbit and LOTR. The emphasis seems to be about the rings of power and features sandbox style play, which will surely be incredible given the draw and depth to Tolkein’s Middle Earth. One of the story developers is responsible for the fantastic Red Dead Redemption and Monolith themselves have experiences in darker-themed action titles so we’d expect this to be an excellent licenses game, which is currently intended to be a single-player only experience much like Skyrim. The team is taking into consideration every possible part of the important people and places of Middle Earth but won’t necessarily copy too much from what is known about the history of the universe. As the developers have said, it takes place during a time of transition so it almost acts as a sequel to The Hobbit and a prequel to LOTR. The return of Sauron seems to be a focal point of interest and fuels a lot of the reason for the events that unfold during this game, likely tying into the historical story-telling moments that The Fellowship of the Ring dove into to explain the origins of the one ring and its power. Due out at an undetermined time within 2014, Shadow of Mordor is one to watch if you’re a fan of Tolkein’s world or can appreciate the great story and immersive aspects that typically come in a game that focuses 100% on single player experiences rather than the competitive nature of multiplayer.
Watch Dogs – Due out in the spring of 2014, Watch Dogs is the digital hackers version of Grand Theft Auto, only so much prettier you’d almost hate to go back and look at GTA. However, unlike Grand Theft Auto, you play a good guy without a badge. You’ll engage in information acquisition and warfare, setting out to support the citizens of Chicago, IL by acting as a vigilante who goes after criminals that may be getting away with illegal or illicit activity that gets passed by authorities or gets dismissed in a court of law. Aiden Pearce, the main character and vigilante at-hand, uses his technical skills to gain access to Chicago’s Central Operating System, a computer mainframe that monitors and controls nearly everything in the city. It’s through Aiden’s hacking into this system that grants him important information that leads to the tracking and catching of all the bad guys of interest. This is one to keep an eye on, folks. If you’re into games like Grand Theft Auto, Crackdown and Saints Row, this is likely to tickle your fancy quite well.
Wolfenstein: The New Order – The ninth installment of the Wolfenstein franchise will take place during the 1960s, continuing to focus on a fictional alternative universe where the Nazis won World War 2. Players will experience this new title as William Blazkowicz (say that five times fast) where European powers are tasked with launching a counter-offensive to dethrone Nazi reign. You will apparently be going after prototype super weapons that have been developed by Nazi scientists. For those that have been playing each Wolfenstein title and are familiar with the progression so far, the idea is that Blazkowicz has suffered some kind of amnesia during a mission that takes place between the previous game and this one and ended up in an asylum for 14 years. This will be a game about an advanced Nazi army and impossible odds as you set out to save the world. Confirmed for 2014, Wolfenstein: The New Order is still awaiting a locked-in release date, but for now expect it sometime in the late summer or fall timeframe.
Star Wars: Battlefront 3 – Electronic Arts and DICE, currently responsible for the massive shooter Battlefield 4, are in progress of making the follow up to the hugely anticipated Star Wars: Battlefront/Battlefront 2. Battlefront 3 continues the large-scale warfare that helped plug shooter gaps on earlier Xbox and PlayStation consoles and were received extremely well give that Star Wars games rarely turned out well at the time. But this is a confirmed deal after so many years of Star Wars fans wishing for the return of Battlefront, and could release in 2014. Right now, EA have anticipated an early 2015 release date but some have already begun taking preorders for the title. This leads us to believe that there is a slight possibility that Battlefront 3 could drop on us in 2014, but don’t hold your breath too long on that one. 2014 is already a crowded game market with other big shooters on consoles or about to be and given that DICE and EA had such a horrific launch of Battlefield 4 they’re likely to take their time in making sure this bad boy is ready to go. After all, the combined hatred of all Star Wars fans finding out that their much-anticipated gem is broken at launch would likely be enough Force power to kill all of EA and DICE developers wherever they are. It’s likely that they learned their lesson and Battlefront 3 won’t suffer the same fate as Battlefield 4. If you haven’t played any Battlefront games, Battlefield is a good starting point for imagination but it does have its subtle tweaks. No copy-and-paste methods here.
And that about wraps it up. So much to look forward to in 2014, and there could be even more on the way that we don’t yet know about. Or perhaps there are a few smaller-billed titles that could end up blowing us all away. 2014 will be perhaps the best quality-wise games year in history. The real question is, will you have enough cash to throw at all of these likely-awesome titles? If not, you can always pick them up used, borrow from a friend, or just wait for them to go on sale either digitally or with the physical disc. XOGS will keep you updated as these games get ready to release.
Xbox One Game Source 