Under The Radar

A week into the new year and we have seen plenty of lists & talk about all the blockbusting games coming to the PS3 this year.
Top of the pops seemed to be the usual suspects of Killzone 2, God of War III, inFamous, Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain and maybe, just maybe Gran Turismo 5. We also have the multi-platformers of Final Fantasy XIII, SSFIV, Bioshock 2 and obviously Fifa ’10 amongst others to look forward to.

But, what about the forthcoming games that the spotlight hasn’t shined quite so brightly on, and if we were to look a bit deeper into the cave that is the 2009 gaming calender could we unearth some gaming gems?

Here’s a few to look out for.

Quantum Theory.
Featuring armour clad, muscled grunts with guns, comparisons with Gears are obvious, especially when Tecmo’s Team Tachyon director says it’s Japan’s answer to titles like Gears of War, and thats no bad thing because Gears + Japanese ideas and creativity is bound to be amazing, and the other good news is that this great looking game is exclusive to the PS3.

Check out an early vid.

Hydrophobia.
Blade Interactive’s survival adventure game was first seen at last years E3, and whilst the format may not be the most original ever, the setting should certainly make for some original gameplay and set-pieces. According to threespeech Blades MD has described the game as being Die Hard meets the Abyss which sounds great to me.

Expect to hear the word HydroEngine flying around in the run up to the games release, this is Blade Interactive’s fluid dynamics engine… don’t yawn, just have a look at the video on their site it looks great.

Demon’s Souls.
Details are still thin on the ground for “From Software’s” title first seen at TGS ’08, but what little details there are make for some pretty juicy reading. SCEJ’s Takeshi Kajii has said it is a completely open ended RPG, with only the bare minimum of goals. As the game is exclusive to the PS3 it reportedly makes the most of the hardware (unlike some big named, now multi-platform RPG we could mention the scope of the game won’t have to be held back due to ‘size’ limitations)

It looks even better in motion.

Damnation.
Sometimes the English vocabulary just doesn’t seem to have enough words to explain what games are like, so like in shampoo commercials, Codemasters just made one up ‘verticality’
Damnation is Codemaster’s vertical shooter, described in their press release as “vast streaming levels cover miles of horizontal distance, thousands of vertical feet and are flooded with hostile troops. Players will find and fight their own path through each environment” so we can expect lots of acrobatics & death defying leaps amongst all the usual killing and stuff, and it’s multi-player. Cool.

And if you’re not scared of heights you can take a peek at the trailer.

Omikron 2: Karma

You can write what is known about this game on a postage stamp, but what I know is it’s by Quantic Dream, it doesn’t have a publisher yet and is most probably a sequel to the Dreamcast’s Omikron: Nomad Soul, as that games proper sequel was cancelled.

And according to their website “It is a very large project, very ambitious technically but also conceptually. We want to pass at the following stage, to create the most beautiful city imagined in 3D, a real world fascinating recipient of the play. There is a large work of returned for the next gen’, of managements of blur, an important artificial intelligence. One will be able to control vehicles, to build robots and especially to establish and develop confidence and love, friendly relations with other characters.” (Translation website to blame for the weak English)

Whether the game will see the light of day or not with all the work going on in Heavy Rain, is a different matter, but here’s a solitary screen to prove I’m not lying

There are of course many, many more games coming out, but the kettle has boiled and my pot noodle is calling, so post in the comments which gaming delights you’re looking forward to through this year, and they may even feature in a part 2 to this post