Top 10 PC games at E3

Here’s a quick run-down of big upcoming titles that we should see more of this coming week at E3. All these titles are confirmed on the PC, and most are also available on consoles too.

1. Bioshock: Infinite

After two thrilling adventures under the sea, it was fairly obvious that post-Bioshock 2, the RPG-cum-shooter would move up into the clouds – or we thought it was obvious anyway.

Given the era’s obsession with air travel, Bioshock Infinite’s art-noveau stylings are more than at home in the steampunk floating city of Columbia. It caused massive excitement towards the end of last year with this incredible gameplay trailer, but little has been heard or seen of it since.

We’re hoping that this week’s E3 proves to be big splash for one of our all-time favourite games series – which also includes spiritual predecessors such as the System Shock games. The gameplay video showed a more cinematic, and possibly more scripted approach, than before. Hopefully this is limited to certain key encounters in the game, leaving the much-loved exploration and trap-setting elements of the game to shine. Then again, with a release date currently pencilled in for anytime in 2012, this could also end up being a big miss at this year’s event.

Computer-controlled companions, with their own powers, are one of the big changes in Infinite

2. Tomb Raider

Taking a leaf from the film industry’s reworking of the Batman and Star Trek, Crystal Dynamics has decided to ‘Reboot’ the Tomb Raider series.
Not that it was in as bad a shape as either of those franchises, with Tomb Raider: Underworld proving an enjoyable romp. Still refreshing this more ‘adult’ platformer is no bad idea.

Lara Croft stays as the key, lone heroine, but in this new continuity she’s just setting out on her adventures – nothing quite as original as an origin story eh? The ship she’s travelling on is wrecked, leaving Lara to survive the rigours of a desolate island alone. It’s that word, survive, that seems key to the new series so far, with Lara scavenging for tools and trying to stay one step ahead of enemies and environmental disasters.

It looks stunning, and has been in development for a couple of years, so we’re hopeful to see lots more of Tomb Raider this week, despite a 2012 release date. If this proves a major success though, then expect reboots of every game that ever had cinematic pretensions.

Dirtier and darker than before, Lara seems to be having a tough day

3. Dead Island

Dead Island rather popped out of nowhere last month, but looks to be a whole heap of fun. Better still, with a launch date later this year you won’t have to wait ages to play it yourself, and there should be plenty to see at E3. It’s a knock-about open world game, kind of Grand Theft Auto meets Far Cry meets Dead Rising. Despite the first person perspective, there looks to be a lot of melee combat involved, though that may be because the big guns only come out later. The zombies have a multi-layered damage model, so you can literally tears chunks off them.

The game also features up to four player co-operative gameplay, which should prove a hoot. We’re hoping that it will run across a local network, without any of that annoying Steam log-in nonsense, but then that might just be because we love our lunchtime LAN games. There’s also vehicles to drive and some semblance of a plot to help push the mayhem along. Developed by the ever-improving Techland studio (behind Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood), this could the developers’ big breakthrough.

Sunny, hot and full of the walking dead – the near-perfect holiday destination

4. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

This is the biggy for us, as we’re all huge fans of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, having put countless hours into exploring the world, killing bandits and pleasing the locals. As per usual, this new iteration of the first-person fantasy RPG is set in another region of the same world, but two hundred years later, and this time there are huge dragons to fight and even talk to.

There’s nothing here to surprise Elder Scrolls veterans yet, with the game looking like a natural development and refinement of previous titles. The open world returns and you can tackle a lot of the content in any order you like. But it’ll be the sheer breadth, depth and quality of that content that should enthral us. If the developers can come up with more in-game gems, like becoming a Vampire, that are both great plots and gameplay changers, then we’ll be pleased.

Our main hope is that the monster levelling system is taken care of, so that your enemies don’t level up so aggressively to keep pace with your own powers. It took a lot of the fun out of the first game, as upon returning to areas with far better abilities, you’d simply find that the enemies had also beefed-up in the meantime. New features confirmed do include weapon forging, dual-wielding of weapons and special finishing moves.

Snowy wastes, craggy mountains and dragons – it’s Adventure Time!

5. Mass Effect 3

Another game that won’t be with us till 2012, but at least it’s scheduled for a Q1 release date. This is the third and final part in Commander Shepherd’s fight to save humanity, and possibly all those other ungrateful races, from the Reapers. Like everyone else we were rather keen on Mass Effect 2, so this is a pretty safe bet.

Improvements revealed to date, and not many are needed to be honest, revolve around more agile and movement around the battlefield and easier movement into and out of cover – we expect it to play closer to Gears of War in this respect. The developer is also promising team-based AI for your enemies, so that they support one another. An intense hail of gunfire to allow a compatriot to flank you would be a great step forward for games.

Graphics look to have stepped up another notch, though as long as the gameplay isn’t broken and the plot comes to a suitably climatic finale, then whatever other changes are made will just be icing on the cake.

A banker, it’s impossible to see BioWare going wrong with this final instalment

6. Star Wars: The Old Republic

Coming out later this year, though MMOs are notoriously prone to slipping their release dates, this could be the game that not only takes a significant dent out of World of Warcraft’s subscription base, but could also act as a ‘gateway drug’ to the wider gaming community who have always wondered what all the MMO fuss is about.

BioWare has taken the template of its incredibly-successful Knights of the Old Republic single-player RPGs (last seen in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords) and opened it up for team play online. Even if you like to explore solo, you won’t be totally alone, as your character can have companions to help plug the deficiencies in your own character class.

Cover mechanics, a la Mass Effect, make a rare appearance in an MMO. BioWare also promise that characters will be more flexible than in most games in the genre, so parties don’t need particular classes to undertake particular tasks, or to fight at full effectiveness. Classes include Troopers, Smugglers, various Jedi and Bounty Hunters. So that’ll be 10,000 Boba Fett wannabes on every server from day one.

MMOs often don’t look their best on teh crowded and hectic show floor of E3, but with a more action basis and being so close to completion, there should be something worth seeing.

That creature looks familiar, but the chance to play Jedi with others is certainly a first

7. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The original Deus Ex was one of the greatest PC games of all-time, but its sequel – Invisible War – produced mixed feelings in many fans. This prequel may put the license back on top, but we’re certainly not going to get our hopes up until we’ve played it ourselves.

The gameplay appears to follow earlier iterations, with choice being a key element in how you approach things, and this giving the game a lot of replay potential. What’s definitely in place are tactical choices, so you can augment your cybernetic agent with numerous powers and equipment to better exploit a more stealthy or violent approach.

The real key, though, will be whether there are meaningful choices in the plot, as with the original, leading to varying endings. All the production work looks stellar, as you’d expect from Final Fantasy publishers Square Enix, but will all those flashy cutscenes get in the way of telling a multiply-branched story?

If you haven’t played Deus Ex, then the mixture of hiding and shooting most closely approximates Metal Gear Solid, and with a Japanese publisher now on board it may become closer still to that franchise.

8. Rage

With a release date set for September, and a marketing campaign already running alongside TV hit The Walking Dead, we can expect Rage to be pretty much finished for the show floor at E3 2011.

Developed by id, the legendary minds behind Doom and Quake, this will be first outing of its new id Tech 5 engine. The game moves away from the claustrophobic horror of Doom 3 into an expansive post-apocalyptic world. It mixes elements of RPGs such as Elder Scrolls, with buggy racing from console racers such as MotorStorm and of course classic Doom-styled shooting with oversized shotguns and the like.

Your main enemies appear to be the usual bunch of irradiated mutant folk, though id is promising a big half-time twist, with a whole new set of bad guys looking likely. It’s hard to call this one, as its been in development for ages, but if the blend of elements comes off, it could easily be game of the year.

We hope the AI is capable of a little more than charging at a man with a loaded gun – stoopid muties

9. Battlefield 3

Battlefield is often portrayed as the thinking man’s multiplayer shooter – in contrast at least to big rival Modern Warfare (see below). Previous iterations of the main series passed-up any serious single-player action for a dedicated multi-player scrap with a plethora of vehicles and maps that went well beyond being simple environments – such as the assault off the carrier in the original game.

After a couple of offshoots, most recently Bad Company 2, the main series is back and its got a big cinematic single-player campaign. Blending the gung-ho antics of Call of Duty with the grittier and more realistic feel of TV show Generation Kill, this looks to be an incredibly capable attempt to knock Call of Duty of its pedestal.

After a recent knock-out 12-minute gameplay trailer, we can’t wait to get hands-on with this on the show floor.

Battlefield adds a chunky single-player campaign to its usually excellent multi-player mayhem

10. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Our key concern for Modern warfare 3 isn’t the much-publicised change in management at developer Infinity Ward, but rather that the game is bound to be designed around the technical limitations of the current bbatch of aging console hardware. However powerful your PC may be, and it will no doubt look very pretty on current hardware, the developers may be finding that increasing the scope and breadth of the gameplay is simply impossible when exactly the same single-player experience has to work the 360 and PS3.

All that aside, we still can’t wait to see what new maps, weapons and perks the developers come up with, we’d happily leave the single player to one side permanently if the multiplayer could be released today. The ongoing lack of proper dedicated servers, unless you want to rent your own, is an issue – but for simple, satisfying gunplay with a great advancement system MW3 will be hard to beat.

Can the new management at Infinity Ward push Modern Warfare any further?