Watch Dogs

Publisher: Ubisoft
Release: Late 2013
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Though in recent years, Ubisoft has been happy to milk the Assassin’s Creed licence until its ruddy teats squeaked, let us not forget that the space-wizards-thru-history mega-franchise was born of huge creative risk: a new IP that cost so much develop that, rumour has it, sales didn’t cover the cost of development until its sequels were on shelves. Now, the same gigantic studio, Ubisoft Montreal, has unveiled Watch Dogs – a game with no smaller a scope than Assassin’s Creed, combining the complex sedition of information warfare with brutish third-person action and, it is suspected, with some sort of clever multiplayer/singleplayer crossover. It’s not only a showcase for the kind of polygon-crunching power the cutting edge PC can generate (finally loosed from the shackles of last-gen cross platform releases) but it also establishes a fiction that Ubisoft hopes will see it through the next decade.

Dead Space 3

Publisher: EA
Release: February 8
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The sudden appearance of a co-op mode in this venerable space-horror franchise may sound like the marketing department got a little trigger happy with the back-of-box checklist, but there are reasons to be optimistic. Firstly, didn’t we all the say the same gloomy things about Mass Effect 3’s excellent multiplayer? Secondly, Dead Space already showed it could deliver terror to a twosome in its (actually terrific, sadly undersold) Wii light-gun game. What’s more, the game’s roots have hardly been forgotten: it’s still perfectly possible to play the game on your tod. This one promises to add themes of insanity and perception to the traditional jump-scares and body-horror.

Tomb Raider

Publisher: Square Enix
Release: March 5
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Vulnerability and survival are the watchwords for this reinvention of the Tomb Raider series, which finds a young and unworldly Lara Croft shipwrecked on an island – a far cry from the backflipping, dual-wielding daredevil treasure-seeker who murdered her way through polygonal archeological hoards during the mid-nineties. Crystal Dynamics are certainly brave in taking this iconic character in such a dark, mature direction – but will the cost to our heroine’s empowerment prove too great a price to pay?

Star Wars 1313

Publisher: LucasArts
Release: Late 2013
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“Dark and mature” may not be the go-to description for Star Wars, particularly since LucasArts’ acquisition by the House of Mouse, but such is the promise for this third person actioner. Set in the bowels of Coruscant, the subterranean Level 1313, you take on the role of a bounty hunter embroiled in a murky criminal conspiracy. Early glimpses suggest the game will ignore lightsabers and force powers in favour of gadgetry and guns, and the claims are for a more grounded and gritty fiction, instead of the fruity pangalactic melodrama to which we are accustomed.

Strike Suit Zero

Publisher: Born Ready Games
Release: January 24
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Space combat has proven popular on Kickstarter but the interplanetary dogfighting of Strike Suit Zero wasn’t born from the crowdfunding process. Instead, this rather beautiful off-world blaster had been a while in development already and will be using the $175k it raised to, uh, kickfinish the project, and then kickpolish it, too.

Fortnite

Publisher: Epic Games
Release: TBC 2013
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Perhaps keen to prove that there’s more to Unreal Engine 4 than high-definition beefcakes gunning down space goblins in the destroyed beauty of a future city, Epic Games’ first proof of their new technology will be the cartoonish tower defence game, Fortnite. The clean, chirpy visuals belie technological innovation, however: UE4 will allow players huge freedom in the way they construct their anti-zombie fortifications, editing each wall with a 3×3 grid. The plan is that the game will have a long-tail, with many post-release updates, eventually allowing players to construct Rube Goldberg-style machines of death.

Starforge

Publisher: CodeHatch
Release: TBC 2013
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Minecraft with guns, realistic graphics, and both ground and low-orbit construction. Interested? Starforge is a ridiculously ambitious crowd-funded indie project that’s already come a remarkably long way. You deform terrain and build a fortress to protect yourself from aliens, and when all else fails, use a shotgun to blast them into pieces. If the small team can make those weapons feel nice to fire, it’ll be a winner.

Grand Theft Auto 5

Publisher: Rockstar
Release: Spring 2013
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There’s been no confirmation of Rockstar’s next blockbuster for PC, but it would be a world gone topsy-turvy if Grand Theft Auto 5 was marooned on consoles for ever. This isn’t Red Dead Redemption, a game developed by a studio with around three PC credits to its name – this is GTA, a series whose every main instalment has appeared on PC. And it’s developed by Rockstar North, a team that (even including its legacy as DMA Design) has brought all bar seven of its games to PC. And where are the internet petitions to port Walker over from the Amiga, I might ask?
Guaranteed to be one of the biggest releases of 2013, GTA 5 sees the player take on the role of three different characters trying to make a crust amid the tinseltown glamour and sunbaked squalor of Los Santos. And it’s likely to be an ill-gotten crust at that, given the series’ heritage of exuberant criminality: heists, hits and high-speed chases are all to be expected, interspersed with all the leisure activities a high-rolling hoodlum might desire.

Remember Me

Publisher: Capcom
Release: May
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“We’ll always have Paris,” as the saying goes – not so much in the Neo-Paris of 2084, when memories can be erased or altered by Memory Hunters. You play as one such mnemonic saboteur, called Nilin, herself rendered amnesiac by agents of the oppressive Parisien regime. Thirdperson acrobatics and assassinations ensue as you try to piece together the conspiracy, and featuring the world’s most complicated sounding combat system. You also get to wreck men’s minds by jumping into their memory and replaying events to reconfigure their recollection. Convince someone they killed their girlfriend during an argument, for instance, and you may just drive them to suicide. How lovely.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist

Publisher: Ubisoft
Release: Spring
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Ninja-spy Sam Fisher without voice-actor Michael Ironside is like bread without butter. Talking butter. Sardonic, gravelly-voiced, talking butter. But despite the new vocal chords lent to Fisher, this sixth outing for the sneak-em-up series may yet prove to be more loyal to the action of the earlier games. While Splinter Cell: Conviction saw Sam on the lam, decimating a small army of enemies with little attempt at secrecy, Blacklist’s latest trailers show off non-lethal takedowns – much more to the tastes of the discerning spy.

Lost Planet 3

Publisher: Capcom
Release: January
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Previous instalments in this thirdperson shooter series have been an intriguing but not always comfortable mix of Gears of War and Shadow of the Colossus, with players cooperatively slaying giant beasts and hordes of future-pirates on the world of EDN 3 – in the first instance a bleak ball of ice, thawing to a steaming jungle in its sequel. This game promises to be a prequel, so we can assume a few stiff breezes and frosty mornings. It also promises to be more narrative-led – which is worrying given the entirely charmless fiction of previous games. More worrisome still is the fact that the original developers aren’t on board, replaced by Spark Unlimited, responsible for crimping off the reeking digi-turd which was Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. Brr.

Star Trek

Publisher: Namco Bandai
Release: Early 2013
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Bridging the gap between JJ Abrams’ reboot and the upcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness, this tie-in will certainly deliver Hollywood glitz with its cast – and usually that would be all you could expect. But this is being handled by Digital Extremes, a studio with an admittedly mixed portfolio, but one riding high after the triumphant carnage of the Darkness 2. They may well have the chops to enliven even the most linear thirdperson actioner.

DmC: Devil May Cry

Publisher: Capcom
Release: 25 January 2013
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There were wails of anguish in console-land when this reboot of beloved demon-bashing combo-brawler Devil May Cry was first announced. But if the word from those with review code is good – and so far the mutterings are most auspicious indeed – then few complaints will survive the game’s release. It seems that British devs Ninja Theory may have the moves to make even Bayonetta blush. The one worry is how well it’ll port to PC, a duty outsourced to Polish team QLOC – but a promised 60 FPS, with no maximum limit, is a rather good start.

Clang

Publisher: Subutai
Release: February
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A PC arena-based duelling game for one-on-one battles? Sure, fine. That very same thing, but made under the direction of sci-fi author and legendary mega-nerd Neal Stephenson with the input of sword-fighting experts and – lest we forget – named Clang? Yes. Yes, please. The game will introduce a new, more realistic way to control your weapons, apparently, and will be an evolving project with a story and other content added over time.

Smite

Publisher: Hi-Rez Studios
Release: 2013 (closed beta out now)
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Hi-Rez, the makers of the exquisite Tribes: Ascend, have had this thirdperson take on the DotA formula in beta for some time. Instead of defending Ancients with a team of eccentric legendary warriors, however, here you fight to protect your pet minotaur with a cross-pantheon selection of gods taken from major world religions – a fact which has proven controversial with men of the cloth.

Dark

Publisher: Kalypso Media
Release: Q2 2013
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A stealth action game in which players take on the role of a vampire anti-hero attempting to bring down a shadowy corporation in a futuristic cel-shaded city – or “a world of blood and darkness” as the press release rather hysterically puts it. As well as being possessed of supernatural sneakiness, our protagonist can face down the police and all many of night-time terrors with a range of vampiric powers that allow him to turn to smoke or close for the kill with lightning speed.

Devil’s Third

Publisher: TBC
Release: TBC 2013
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Things have been a little quiet since THQ withdrew as the publisher for this thirdperson shooter and melee combat game set on a war-ravaged future Earth. It has good pedigree, coming from a studio forged by principal developers of the Ninja Gaiden games, but neither the presence of near-legendary developers and a multi-million budget proved sufficient reason to keep it on THQ’s slate. We await to hear its fate.

Battle Cry Of Freedom

Publisher: Flying Squirrel Entertainment
Release: TBC 2013
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Ambitious indie multiplayer game set during the American Civil War. Promises battles with more than five hundred players, buildable barricades, trenches, and explosives, and even musicians that can play a range of period-appropriate tunes. It’s still very early days, but worth keeping an eye on.

Furious 4

Publisher: Ubisoft
Release: TBC 2013
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Originally set to be the fourth entry in the po-faced, pseudo-reverent WW2 shooter series, Brothers In Arms, early trailers for Furious 4 took such a divergent and whimsically vicious tone that the project was hurriedly hived off on its own. Since its initial reveal, however, the Tarantino-inspired action caper has been little seen or heard, with Gearbox claiming that there’s been a substantial facelift in the interim.

XCOM

Publisher: 2K Games
Release: TBC 2013
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Another project with an uncertain fate, this action-based reboot of XCOM met with such acrimony from fans of the original turnbased strategy game that its release date scurried off into the distant future, allowing Firaxis’ more loyal squad-tactics remake, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, to take centre-stage. It’s status is now unclear, with development bigwigs like the talented Jordan Thomas leaving for BioShock Infinite. The talk is now of a budget-download only release – quite the switcharound from the original plan. Will it even re-emerge with the XCOM name attached?

Monaco

Publisher: Pocketwatch Games
Release: 2013, or: ‘when it’s done’
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Players take on role of primary-coloured pixellated thieves, each with specialised roles, in this four-player top-down heist game. It’s great: it won the IGF and a whole bunch of other gongs way back in 2010. Where’s it got to since? Sources assure us it is indeed still in development, and not spending ill-gotten gains in the casinos of Rio de Janeiro as rumoured.

Beyond Good And Evil 2

Publisher: Ubisoft
Release: Late 2013
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Every silver lining has a cloud: Michel Ancel’s efforts to resurrect 2D platformer hero Rayman proved so tremendously and ebulliently successful that it has delayed his return to Beyond Good And Evil 2. All that’s been seen of the sequel to the superb off-beat action adventure is a rendered trailer and a few splashes of concept art, but if Ancel’s recent form is anything to go by, we won’t be getting half-measures. 2013 is a push, but crazier things have happened.

Cross Of The Dutchman

Publisher: Triangle Studios
Release: TBC 2013
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Though the promised demo has missed its October launch date by some way, the signs are that development on this action adventure title still continues apace. Based on the folk legend of Frisian freedom fighter Pier Gerlofs Donia, this hopes to be a historically loyal recreation of the story and setting, despite the lush caricaturish style.

Zone: Commando

Publisher: Xitol Softworks
Release: February 2013
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Initially set for release in the middle of 2012, this multiplayer sci-fi shooter’s release date has been in hasty retreat. According to Xitol’s Twitter feed, the project is still alive, but there’s still not much to go on beyond pre-alpha screenshots and promises.

Rambo: The Video Game

Publisher: Reef Entertainment
Release: Early 2013
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While Rambo has since become synonymous with action by dint of its excessive sequels, it’s far from certain that the first film, which is largely about a man undergoing a PTSD-induced meltdown in some woodland, will really adequately satisfy as a shooter. Still, it can’t be any worse the Ubisoft’s recent efforts with The Expendables, right?

Legend Of Dungeon

Publisher: RobotLovesKitty
Release: January
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This may just be the reason Kickstarter was invented: to fund a four-player roguelike dungeon crawler with a delicious pixel-art style. And presumably the people who helped it hit its funding target six times over agree.

Super Comboman

Publisher: Interabang Entertainment
Release: May
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A 2D platformer/beat-’em-up hybrid with heavy emphasis on – you may have guessed – combos. Super Comboman sees you rock a sweet mullet and a talking fanny-pack while slamming enemies with an unending string of slickly animated moves. Cute stick-album art-style, too.

Retrovirus

Publisher: Cadenza Interactive
Release: January
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A shooter with six-axes of freedom, Retrovirus matches the zippy pace of FPS games of yore with the stomach-spinning spatial freedom of disorienting shooter classic, Descent. As an agent of the resident anti-virus program, you must defend a computer system from an infectious onslaught with a slew of physics-enhanced weaponry like gravity wells and chain reactions.

Forced

Publisher: BetaDwarf
Release: February
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This arena-based fighting game pitches its top-down co-op combat somewhere between Left 4 Dead and Diablo, with four divergent classes and a cooperative combo system. Players battle together through a series of gladiatorial arenas, defeating waves of gruesome fantasy creatures with the aid of a globular spirit mentor, who can assist them by swiping pick-ups and interacting with things “outside the physical realm”.

Dungeonland

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Release: Q1 2013
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Set in a lethal medieval themepark, Dungeonland is a class-based co-op action game for up to four players. The perspective may put you in mind of Diablo or Torchlight, but with its promise of tossable sheep, ludicrous costumes and frog facts, its tone clearly finds inspiration elsewhere.

Humans Must Answer

Publisher: Sumom Games
Release: TBC 2013
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While one bunch of ex-Stalker developers went on to make Survarium, a multiplayer Stalker game in all but name, others had clearly had quite enough of The Zone and its bleak, unrelenting peril. Instead, they’ve gone on to make a 2D bullet-hell space shooter in which a race of space-faring chickens attempts to wipe out the galactic scourge of mankind.

Mew-Genics

Publisher: Team Meat
Release: TBC 2013
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There have been few clues from developer Team Meat as to what genre this feline-themed game fits into. The occasional screenshots have teased some sort of damage system – that much we know – and Team Meat’s portfolio would suggest a bias towards action. But given that the screenshots also teased “poop-rates” the mind boggles at what sort of action that might be.

State Of Decay

Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Release: TBC 2013
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Undead Labs are a more than a little bit late to the zombie-survival-open-world-game party, but hopefully their entry will be a little less controversial than War Z’s debut. This one promises an ever-evolving world with fortifiable strongholds.

Overgrowth

Publisher: Wolfire Games
Release: TBC 2013
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Anthropomorphised rabbits, wolves, cats, rats and dogs kick seven bells out of each other in this thirdperson kung-fu adventure game set in a pre-industrial world. The spiritual successor to 2005’s Lugaru, it’s been a long, long time in development and the creators’ ambitions have sprawled, expanding on the original’s fluid combat system with context-sensitive attacks, reversals and environmental interaction. It also comes with a sandbox mode and suite of editing tools.

Warframe

Publisher: Digital Extremes
Release: TBC 2013
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You wait for one free-to-play online shooter with a disyllabic name beginning “War-”, and then two come along at once. Not to be confused with Crytek’s near future blamfest Warface, Digital Extreme’s effort is a procedurally generated co-op affair set in a sci-fi universe. Players take on the role of the Tenno, a race of space-ninjas battling against their former overlords, the Grineer, by suiting up with specialised exoskeletons known as Warframes.

Archeblade

Publisher: Codebrush Games
Release: March 2013
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A third-person multiplayer brawler which combines the character-specific movesets and combos of arcade fighting games with the cooperative tactics of a team-shooter. The devs were forced to cancel their Kickstarter, but still say the game is on schedule for its March release.

The Showdown Effect

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Release: Q1 2013
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A sort of 2D side-scrolling Action: Half Life, The Showdown Effect features up to eight players battling it out with weapons ripped from the hands of cheesy 80s action heroes. It’s a roll-call of cliches – but Magicka creators Arrowhead Studios have shown themselves to be pretty pithy fellows. You can sign up for that macho madness at The Showdown Effect’s beta page.

Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2

Publisher: Konami
Release: TBC 2013
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Though the first Lords of Shadow missed a PC release, the vampire-hunting yarn was a pleasant surprise for many in the console world, winning players round with a highly competent (if derivative) mix of thirdperson action, exploration and puzzling. The sequel skips from medieval times to the modern day, with the protagonist, now going under the name of Dracula, awaking from a long slumber. Expect the acrobatic hacking and slashing of enormous supernatural creatures and enough of the red stuff to defeat even the most powerful of detergent cleaners.

Sacred Citadel

Publisher: Deep Silver
Release: TBC 2013
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A three player side-scrolling beat-em-up with a rather sumptuous art-style, Sacred Citadel sees players overthrow the oppressive Ashen empire with a slew of melee combos and acrobatic death-dealing. It also promises to update the arcade formula with RPG-lite upgrades and, according to the website, “flawless gameplay”. Good to know.

Akaneiro: Demon Hunters

Publisher: Spicy Horse Games
Release: Early 2013
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Another action-RPG paying homage to Diablo, Akaneiro: Demon Hunters has the considerable advantage of Spicy Horse Games’ aesthetic sense, which introduces an ink-wash art style to the faux-isometric click-fest. It’s also very, very loosely based on Red Riding Hood, transposing the story to feudal Japan and introducing hordes of monsters to splatter apart. It may be a slight departure from canon, but it’ll be free-to-play and co-op, so who’s complaining?

Ether One

Publisher: White Paper Games
Release: Early 2013
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First person adventure that takes place in the ‘broken mental structures’ of a woman called Jean. It’s the first part of two, and it’s got lofty aims – the devs claim to want to ‘explore the importance and fragility of human memories’.

The Adventurer

Publisher: The Farm 51
Release: TBC 2013
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An action adventure FPS set in the 30s with a globetrotting, treasure-hunting theme – sounds more like an Indiana game than and indie game. The Adventurer doesn’t seem abashed about its inspiration though, promising tomb raiding, traps, lost treasure and a list of exotic locations from Egypt to the Arctic.

Zwei

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Release: Late 2013
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Zwei’s the codename for the first project from Bethesda-owned, Shinji Mikami-headed Tango Gameworks. They’re keeping tight-lipped about its contents, but one thing has been promised: it’ll be a return to the celebrated Resident Evil developer’s formative genre of survival horror.

Collateral

Publisher: Dancing Dinosaur Games
Release: TBC 2013
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Pitched as a cyberpunk taxi-driving game, Collateral’s twitchy car combat recalls something of the Twisted Metal series – except here, the cars fly, dogfighting amid a garish, futuristic cityscape. It’s not likely to be an overly serious dystopian vision, however, as witnessed by the giant, bloated Elvis statue in the city centre and the numerous nods to The Fifth Element.

Tiny Barbarian DX

Publisher: StarQuail Games
Release: January
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What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to play retro 2D action games, much like the excellent free Tiny Barbarian. Following that success, StarQuail Games have successfully Kickstarted Tiny Barbarian DX – a series of four further short-form adventures which expand our diminutive hero’s combos, improve platforming, add boss-fights and giant mounts and even boost the protagonist’s height by a whole pixel. The first episode is due in January with the rest to follow shortly after.

Volgarr The Viking

Publisher: Crazy Viking Studios
Release: February
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This sidescrolling action game almost doubled its Kickstarter target and is already well on its way to completion. The game comes from a veteran duo of 2D arcade games, and lists a number of venerable influences – Super Ghouls and Ghosts, Castlevania and Rastan – promising to adapt the best ideas from each into this violent hack-and-slash.

The Dead Linger

Publisher: Sandswept Studios
Release: 2013
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Another first-person zombie survival game promising the world – in this case literally, since the game boasts a “planet-sized” post-apocalypse to roam. This is quite a small planet, however, going by the wiki’s figure of 25,000 square kilometers. But unlike Day Z, here it’s all procedurally generated and the claim is that you can interact with anything you see. It’s a long way from fulfilling all of its pledged feature-set however, with a good deal of work to be done to get before it competes either visually or mechanically with existing zombie shooters. Paid alpha access is already available at a reduced rate.

Nekro

Publisher: darkForge Games
Release: Q4 2013
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A top-down action game that namechecks Dungeon Keeper and Myth, Nekro sees you take on the eponymous role of a dark lord of the undead, raising monsters from the ground to raze townships to the ground. The more you destroy, the more powerful you become, and you can even craft your own spells by combining reagents you find around the randomly generated world. Even better, the game has defecating pigs.

Zombie Playground

Publisher: Massive Black Inc
Release: March
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It all started with Jason Chan’s awesome illustration of a group of kids battling the shambling grey hordes from atop a helter-skelter. Some time (and near enough $170k of Kickstarter funding) later, and that pre-teen zompocalypse concept has congealed into a thirdperson team-shooter. Though it may be viewed through a child’s imagination, with fanciful touches like tentacled biology-class mannequins and neon-coloured toy guns that fire actual sizzling plasma death, the copious gore attests to the fact that this is certainly not a game for kids. It’s got a pumping soundtrack too, courtesy of hip-hop producer Aesop Rock.

Moon Intern

Publisher: LarryPixel
Release: November
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On the surface a side-scrolling action game, Moon Intern quickly reveals itself to be something much more reactive and dynamic, with missions, jobs and events being generated on the fly to suit your playstyle. One day you may find yourself delivering lightbulbs and the next exorcising a haunted space station – each mission allowing for a variety of solutions, and whichever you choose biases the selection of future missions towards either action or puzzle. Some events are so drastic that they may change your relationship with every NPC in the colony. Thrillingly ambitious stuff, wrapped in a charming retro presentation.

Mercenary Kings

Publisher: Tribute Games
Release: May
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The creators of Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and Wizorb return with another retro-styled title, this time in the vein of Metal Slug – but with weapon crafting. They’re also looking to build in some of the co-op magic of games like Monster Hunter and Phantasy Star Online, with the superbly eccentric talents of master pixel-pusher Paul Robertson providing art direction.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch

Publisher: Young Horses
Release: TBC 2013
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If you’re not inspired to buy Octodad: Dadliest Catch for the pun alone, you can test the waters with the free original game, in which you attempt to control the flailing limbs of a sea-creature attempting basic domestic chores. Similar cephalopod-based physics-enhanced calamity is promised in this sequel, as our protagonist attempts to conceal his nautical origins from his increasingly suspicious human wife.