Prepare to make your video game wish list longer. It may be early, but quality titles already are hitting store shelves in 2010 and plenty more are on the way, prompting talk that this could be The Best Year In Gaming Ever. Here’s a look at what will rock RedEye’s gaming socks off this year.
Bayonetta
PS3, Xbox 360
Release date: Available now
How’s this for a game premise? A witch who resembles Sarah Palin and is clothed almost exclusively in a suitof her own hair battles scary-looking angel creatures. Ridiculous, yes, but “Bayonetta” works due to its gripping gameplay and graphics so visually stimulating it makes “Avatar” the movie seem inert by comparison.
Mass Effect 2
Xbox 360, PC
Release date: Jan. 26
Don’t write it off as just another space opera; the plot and dialogue from Bioware’s first foray in the series was so complex and nuanced it made “Star Wars” look like the “Teletubbies.” The sequel looks bigger and better.
Dante’s Inferno
PS3, Xbox 360, PSP
Release date: February
Based extremely loosely on the medieval poem in “The Divine Comedy,” “Inferno” is a frenetic action game that lets you fight through numerous circles of hell. It may tempt me to pick up the source material for the first time since 10th-grade lit class.
Bioshock 2
PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Release date: Feb. 9
On paper, what seemed like an utterly nonessential prequel is shaping up quite nicely. The promise of suiting up as a fearsome Big Daddy and a new multiplayer mode have me itching to dive under the sea and explore Rapture once more.
Heavy Rain
PS3
Release date: Feb. 23
Not to be confused with the waterlogged 1998 Christian Slater flick “Hard Rain,” this graphically intense thriller may set a new standard in games that feel remarkably like movies.
I Am Alive
PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii
Release date: Spring
Call me a homer, but I’m quaking in anticipation of “I Am Alive,” a survival-action game that takes place in a post-apocalyptic Chicago after a major earthquake. For the record, it’s not about what happens after the Cubs finally win a World Series.
Metroid: Other M
Wii
Release date: None confirmed
Things Nintendo says about it sound good: a return to the original game’s style, a darker story and a mix of 2-D and 3-D graphics. But the bottom line is simple: It’s freakin’ “Metroid”! It’s a must-buy!
