Hybridized Shooters

The primary play verb here is still “pull trigger,” but other elements  - RPG elements, non-linearity and sandbox gameplay - change the nature of interaction significantly.




1. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
PS3/PS2/X360/PC
EA/Pandemic
August 31
Mercs 2 feels like it will be wonderfully excessive and bombastic, even by the standards of a genre that prioritizes big explosions. It’s also going to benefit significantly by beating most of its competition to market, which gives the game an open playing field for at least a little while. But even if it didn’t have that it would still be unique in its crazy, cheeseball envisioning of the genre’s uber-masculinity, which gives the game its own (snarling, Swedish) face in a crowded arena. This is yet another strong contender for platinum status.




2. Far Cry 2
PC/X360/PS3
Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal
Fall 2008
If only all sequels were as ambitious as Far Cry 2. Under the eye of Splinter Cell veteran creative director Clint Hocking, the game gets more and more interesting with every reveal—the rarely visited African locale was just the start. Now we know that Far Cry 2 will take its predecessor’s open world and varied mission structure and bring it to the extreme—the world is gigantic, and the ways it can be manipulated to achieve your ends are many. Burning the savannah is an option, as is flooding dry river beds, but perhaps most importantly such actions are actually options, not necessary steps to achieve success. Perhaps the game’s setting will be a tough sell, and the competition is certainly stiff, but seven digits is certainly conceivable here.



3. Borderlands
X360/PS3/PC
2K Games/Gearbox
Q1 2009
Borderlands getting pushed out of the holiday crush should be recognized as a significant boon for the game. Over the holiday, it would have been a new IP sitting at the table with dozens of hot sequels, meaning many would have ignored its unique charms—the open science fiction world, the RPG styled character growth, the vehicular combat, the hundreds of thousands of weapons. The whole package is so compelling that the game begs to be judged on its own merits.




4. Crysis Warhead
PC
EA/Crytek
September 16
The original Crysis was probably the most important PC exclusive of 2007 and almost certainly the year’s single most impressive graphical showcase. It also turned out that rumors of its retail death didn’t have any weight to them. So the quick turnaround on Warhead makes perfect business sense—the brand’s still fresh in the market, and a year of hardware advancements means less people will be intimidated by the game’s GPU-obliterating ambitiousness. Warhead still feels like it wants to be a stand-alone expansion rather than a sequel, which might hurt its sales (and in turn boost catalog sales of Crysis). But it’s technically brilliant, expands on the best parts of the original, and is priced to move. It’ll be a slow burn to a million, and it might not get there until it’s bundled with its predecessor in a gold edition or some such.




5. STALKER: Clear Sky
PC
GSC Game World/Deep Silver
August 29
Strange, lovable STALKER did so much new and wonderful in the shooter genre it should have sold remarkably—and it did, though primarily in Eastern Europe. So even if Clear Sky was just more of the same, it would still be charmingly culturally opaque, buggy, and a must-play. But Clear Sky is also revving up the graphics, and further exploring the first game’s underdeveloped factions system. The CIS will buy it up to the million, no question. The rest of the world…won’t buy nearly enough of it.

 

6. Huxley
PC/X360
Webzen/NHN
Holiday 2008
Huxley’s not gotten a PR push in quite a while, but that doesn’t mean we’re still not eager to see it. There’s definitely a space in the market for an MMOFPS, especially on the MMO-anemic, shooter-loving Xbox 360. Huxley’s also made some big promises, including huge battles among hundreds of players and an arsenal that spans hundreds of weapons. At the very least, seeing Korean massive game sensibilities applied to the west’s favorite twitch genre will make for an interesting market experiment that everyone should be watching and learning from. But that doesn’t mean it will be strong competition; there’s no telling how well it will sell, since there’s no pricing scheme in place yet.

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