February will see the release of Alan Wake on Steam and Alan Wake: American Nightmare on X-Box Live Arcade. The first is the PC release of the previously X-Box 360 exclusive game and will release with both DLC episodes included. If you haven't played Alan Wake it was my game of the year for 2010 so obviously I would recommend it, especially for fans of third person action games.

The latter is the somewhat stand alone follow-on game. There is a time based survival mode and a story mode. But rather than me tell you what I know from rumors, let's have two of the developers and Max Payne (I mean writer Sam Lake) tell you about American Nightmare.

If what's going on in the background in the video is too distracting, be sure to watch it again and pay attention to the developer's this time.

PS: Fans of the original Alan Wake might be interested to know that Sam Lake now has a twitter account and his first tweet was:

Arizona desert was once the floor of a primordial ocean. Not a lake, an ocean.

As mentioned in the last post, there's been a lot of talk recently about the next generation of consoles. Nintendo has already announced the successor to the Wii, but I'll leave it to others to decide if that is a next gen console or just Nintendo playing catch-up. But rumors are now flying about the next X-Box, with components, like the graphics adaptor chip, and the performance being stated. Whether this is real or not remains to be seen but it has caused some discussion on what people want from the next generation of consoles. 

Apparently there are some around Talking about Games who would disagree with my next statement (see Talking about Gamers Episode #123) but the current generation of graphics are satifactory. If you look at the games that are at their peak graphically, like Crysis 2, Batman: Arham City, or Uncharted, a step change up from this is not required. Now, before I get tarred and feathered, I understand that some games could use graphical improvement. But what we know the current generation is capable of is good enough. Developers don't need to be focused on graphical improvements in the next generation (or even for the rest of this generation). 

I think I can live with this level of graphics for a few years.

This post is about the things that I do then want them to be focused on. While thinking about this topic I came up with an initial list that was modified as I wrote the last post on the new IPs of the current generation. In the end I came up with seven improvements I would like to see in the games of the next generation. They are in the order that they were written down so the order is no reflection of priority. The exception is that the last point was saved for last because that's where it naturally fits. Also, not every game needs to have all the improvements. In fact at least one item contradicts some of the others so it's not possible to get all these in one game. ("On with the show, this is it" - if you make the jump) 

So, having completed my posting of my top five games of 2011 and thinking about all the talk about next generation consoles, I started thinking about the impact of the games, specifically the new IP's, of this generation. When I first started thinking about them, I didn't realize how many there have been. But the more that I thought about it, the more I realized there were, and I'm sure a few are still missing. But consider the following list:

• Portal
• Left 4 Dead
• Bioshock
• Gears of War
• Mass Effect
• Uncharted
• Assassin's Creed
• Resistance
• Alan Wake 
• Heavy Rain
• inFamous
• Prototype
• Little Big Planet
• Dead Space
• The Darkness
• Metro (2033 and this year First Light)
• The Witcher
• Crysis
• Batman: Arkham series
• Borderlands
• Dead Rising
• Crackdown
• Dragon Age

Some, like Heavy Rain, and a host of others many of which I didn't include, appear at this point to be dead, with no future games planned in the series. Some had big entrances but the follow ups were not as well received. Some have sequels coming that could determine the fate of the franchise. A few have been spectacular successes and are landmark titles for gaming, at least in the minds of many gamers. (Be sure to engage maximum strength before jumping)

Hey, I'm not one for jumping on bandwagons. Boycotts and other such things seldom (not never) work. But what if we could politely tell Valve we'd like some news, any news about the next Half-Life game? Do you remember the last one, Half-Life 2 Episode 2? Do you remember how it ended? Maybe the trailer for the game will help.

Okay, so here's the deal. A group of Half-Life fans have started up a Steam group - A Call to Communication (Half-Life). Simply being a member of the group could help, but more importantly this Saturday, February 4th, the group is planning to hold an event. Not a sit in, nor a march but a time (2:00 PM EST) to all play Half-Life 2. A Red Letter Day.

Why? Because if we do, we can put Half-Life 2 into the top 10 of the Steam Stats. I think the goal is to put it in the top 10, but I hope we can at least get it into the top 5. The time is now for us to get some new from Valve on the continuation of the series. I, nor do I believe the group, is asking for the game to be released before Valve thinks it's ready. We just want to hear something from them. Putting Half-Life 2 near the top of the play list on Steam seems as nice a way to ask as any.

HT: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Deus Ex is a special game. It remains my favorite game of all time and holds the same spot for PC Gamer. Ion Storm, the same team that did the original, released a sequel a couple of years later. Deus Ex: Invisible War really isn't a bad game, it just doesn't capture whatever it was that made Deus Ex so special. Everyone has at least one change they point out as the problem, from universal ammo to a simplified inventory. Whatever it was, Invisible War was not the successor anyone wanted it to be and so for years it seemed as if the franchise was dead.

So when it was announced that the new Eidos Montreal studio would be doing Deus Ex 3, I was both excited and concerned. If Ion Storm couldn't recapture the Deus Ex magic, what hope did Eidos Montreal have. But still, it was a glimmer of hope. Bioshock wasn't System Shock 3 but as a spiritual successor it recalled much of what made System Shock 2 a great game. Maybe Eidos Montreal could do the same for Deus Ex?

Could Adam Jensen fill JC Denton's trenchcoat?

Bioshock had Ken Levine though. Eidos did not have Warren Spector. However, as news came from the studio about the game they affirmed a love for Deus Ex and a desire to create a game that recaptured that games feel. The main glimmer of hope I had was when it was announced the game would be a prequel, not a sequel. They wouldn't try to make sense of the multiple endings of Deus Ex, which was one of the things that hindered Invisible War. Instead they would go back to the time of mechanical augmentations.  Clearly they were thinking about how to do this right. (Missteps and giant leaps follow the jump)

The poster is available from Valve here.

What can I say about Portal 2 that hasn't been said already. It was on almost every Games of the Year list and was even the top game on some of the lists. In almost any other year it would have been at the top of my list as well, but this year for me it sits at number two. 

It sits at number two not because it is flawed. In nearly every measure Portal 2 is a great game and as I thought about all the elements of the game that are great I wanted to fire it up and play it again. (Let me count the ways - after the jump; bring your long fall boots just in case)

This past weekend I had a conversation (as much as you can over twitter) with Holy Headshot from Everyday Gamers. His opinion of F.E.A.R. 3 is negative, in large part because of the story. He was a big fan of F.E.A.R. 2 and felt the story was lacking in the latest game.

Alma clearly isn't having a good day in F.E.A.R. 3

For me, the story in F.E.A.R. 3 was as good as the story in the other games and did a decent job of tying the two different story lines together. In the first F.E.A.R. you played as Point Man, a new member of a First Encounter Assult Recon team sent in to subdue Paxton Fettel, a psychic with a clone army (Replicas) that he controls. In that game you come to learn that Point Man and Fettel are brothers, sons of Alma, a powerful psychic that has been locked away by Armacham Industries, the same company that cloned the soldiers that Fettel now controls. In the course of that game Point Man kills Fettel.

F.E.A.R. 2 picks up the story with another solder, Michael Becket, who is sent into the same general area as Point Man with the goal of retrieving Genevieve Aristide, a leader of Armacham Industries. Becket learns that he, similar to Point Man and Fettel, is touched with Alma's power and she wants him for some reason. At the end of the game Aristide is able to lock Becket into a chamber with Alma. While Becket is engaged in a psychic battle Alma uses his physical body to try to become pregnant. F.E.A.R. 2 ends with Becket finding out she was successful. (Don't fear, I'll get to the point after the jump).

Don't get me wrong, Mr. Merchant deserves all the praise he has received for playing Wheatley in Portal 2. But just imagine a different, familiar yet new voice, for the role. Another beloved character from the Valve stable. (PS: rated L for language)

So per yesterday's post, #5 on my Top Five Games of 2011 is Serious Sam 3. I should probably note that I had hoped to have played Batman: Arkham City but have not; it is the one game left from 2011 that had a high probability of making my top five. The game that lands in my #4 spot is no stranger to the people around Talking about Games being #2 in the community voting for Game of the Year: Gears of War 3.

Special prize if you can tell me where (Game, Act, Chapter) this screenshot was taken.

Gears 3 was originally slated to be released early in 2011 but got pushed back to late in the year. The game undoubtedly benefited from this move. Gears 3 is the most polished game of the series and this polish is seen in all modes of it's gameplay. The game sports a great campaign, that can also be played in an arcade style mode where players are scored for each chapter. A huge plus to the game is that both of these modes can be played in cooperative mode with up to four players. 

The other multiplayer modes from Gears 2 return, including the TaG favorite Horde mode. Horde mode has been refined in Gears 3, most notably with the ability to build fortifications between waves and huge boss fights at each decade level. I'm not a huge competitive multiplayer gamer but from my limited experience the competitive multiplayer for Gears 3 appears to be more balanced than it was in Gears 2. Having time for a beta of the multiplayer was valuable to achieving this balance. (The new mode and why it's my #4 after the jump)

You, I'm sure, like me long for a simpler time. A time without all the gore that characterizes video games today. I time like the 1960's with flower power. You yearn for a return to the land with fresh produce. Well I've got the game you've been waiting on.

Click the link to see what it looks like with red blood, not hippie blood.

Serious Sam 3: BFE is the game you want. One little tweak in the settings and when you blow some alien scumbag to bits you get flowers, pumpkins, even carrots. Of course, with this being a Serious Sam game, you are going to be seeing a lot of flowers, pumpkins, and carrots.

Serious Sam 3: BFE is the fourth game in the Serious Sam franchise, although Croteam like most everyone seems to want to forget Serious Sam 2, the third game. The first two games, Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter both got the HD treatment from Croteam and are widely available. Serious Sam 3: BFE is a prequel, the BFE being Before First Encounter. (More screenshots and the review after the jump)