The Best Games 2008 Has Yet to Offer

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Developer: EALA
Publisher: EA
Genre: Real-time Strategy
Estimated Release Date: Oct. 27th

What makes it so tasty? Red Alert was one of my favorite C&C series so naturally we’re all looking forward to this one. Hopefully the design team took into consideration what players didn’t like about C&C3, built on that, and make Red Alert 3 all it can be. Mr. EA: Tear down that wall and free the flock of seagulls!

Quicktime HD (71MB) / Flash SD (28MB)Crysis Warhead
Developer: Crytek
Publisher: EA
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Estimated Release Date: Sept. 16th

What makes it so tasty? It’s more Crysis! Minus the bugs, with better graphics, and improved performance (or so they say). A few years ago we’d call an offering like this an “expansion pack” (or disgruntled Crysis players today a “patch”) but it is a stand-alone product that seems to offer more content than a typical add-on. Whatever they want to classify it as – the price is right at a mere $29.95.

Fallout 3
Developer: Bethesda
Publisher: Bethesda
Genre: Role-Playing
Estimated Release Date: Oct. 7th

What makes it so tasty? It’s Oblivion with guns, man. You can even transfer your old TES4 character files over and everything! Oh, just kidding; mostly. To be honest I’d be perfectly happy with that system but Fallout 3 offers oh-so much more. How much more? I’m going to have to play more myself to find out, but we’re going to give Bethesda (a.k.a. “The Great Satan”) the benefit of the doubt.

WMV HD (153MB) / Flash SD (39MB)

Left 4 Dead
Developer: Valve
Publisher: Valve
Genre: Multiplayer First-Person Shooter
Estimated Release Date: Nov. 4th

What makes it so tasty? Well lets see…

1) It’s a Valve game.

2) Is centered around co-operative gameplay.

3) You can even play as the zombies if you want (hello, griefers)!

Need I say more? Didn’t think so! A single player mode with bot support would be fun though.

WMV HD (156MB) / Flash SD (53MB)

Project Origin
Developer: Monolith
Publisher: Warner Brothers
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Estimated Release Date: Oct. 1st

What makes it so tasty? In case you didn’t know – Project Origin is actually F.E.A.R. 2. If you didn’t care for F.E.A.R., you can scratch P.O. off your list, but the rest of us will be happily dodging creepy little girls and clones troopers to notice. Did I mention it has power armor? Oh yeah…

WMV HD (60MB) / Flash SD (16MB)

Spore
Developer: EA Maxis
Publisher: EA
Genre: You Tell Me
Estimated Release Date: Sept 7th

What makes it so tasty? I think Maxis has a real chance to put the Sims where it belongs: in the deepest, darkest, dungeon where EA keeps the other franchises it has killed off over the years. I think promoting science and evolution in games is better than pimping decoration and dating any day of the week. That is, until they get the expansion bug and push out Spore: Cells Gone Wild…

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky
Developer: GSC GameWorld
Publisher: Deep Silver
Genre: First-Person-Shooter
Estimated Release Date: Aug. 29th

What makes it so tasty? I think everyone can agree that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. didn’t ship in the best of shape. What makes Clear Sky so compelling is that (hopefully) all of the big bugs have been ironed out via the older patches and updates. Oh, and it has all of those new fangled graphical (DX10 included) enhancements as well that should give any hardware enthusiast a run for their money.

DirectX 10 Flythrough – WMV HD (267MB) / Flash SD (87MB)

StarCraft 2
Developer: Blizzard
Publisher: Blizzardvision
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Estimated Release Date: December

What makes it so tasty? Dude, it’s F’N StarCraft 2! The release date is a bit iffy at the moment, but we’d be insane to leave the game off the list if it has any chance of being released this year.

WMV HD (346MB) / Xvid HD (542MB) / Flash SD (116MB)

Warhammer Online
Developer: Mythic
Publisher: EA
Genre: Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game
Estimated Release Date: Sept. 18th (servers go live)

What makes it so tasty? Warhammer Online could be the best Dark Age of Camelot expansion yet! Ho, ho, ho. Seriously though, WAR seems to borrow the best DAOC had to offer and uses the infinitely more interesting Warhammer Universe as its canvas. I was hooked on Camelot for like six years, so hopefully they don’t make it as good, ‘cause I kinda like having a life now.

World of WarCraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Developer: Blizzard
Publisher: Blizzardvision
Genre: Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game
Estimated Release Date: Nov. 3rd

What makes it so tasty? How can elventy million active players be wrong?

Vehicle Combat – WMV HD (37MB) / Flash SD (12MB)