Most Anticipated Games 2017 – Part 2

My taste in games has definitely changed over the last year or so. I’m becoming less interested in the ‘AAA’ scene and more interested in indie games and smaller projects – some of which I’ve already talked about. I think for me, I just don’t get the same buzz from the AAA games, they feel a little samey with some franchises really needed a shakeup – I’m looking at you, Ubisoft, and your open world games! There have also been too many disappointments for me in the last 12 months.

That said, there are still some games that have caught my eye and I will be paying close attention to in 2017.

Mass Effect Andromeda

The Mass Effect series is without a doubt my favourite game series of all time – I’m sure I’ve said this before, yes some people didn’t like the ending but personally it didn’t bother me and the rest of the series being so good more than made up for its shortcomings at the end.

Mass Effect Andromeda looks to change things for the series quite significantly, but I’m optimistic about what the game is going to become.

It takes place just after the events of Mass Effect 2 before the Reaper invasion and your character – one of two siblings taking on the role of a Pathfinder, has a nice little kip for 600 years. Upon waking up you will start a new adventure in the Andromeda Galaxy. You must then start the search for a new place to call home for humanity.

There is still a lot unknown about the core gameplay and how it will differ from past games, but from what we’ve seen so far it looks to take on a more action oriented feel like ME3 rather than the slower paced ME1.

It also looks like the game will have a bigger shift towards exploration with a number of large planets for you to explore both on foot and in your new Mako – the Nomad.

I was initially writing this before the release date was announced and penciled in a late March early April date, looks like I was pretty spot on as it’s coming 23rd March in Europe!

Destiny 2

Destiny has been a complete miss with some people but for me it was a hit. Sure things got off to a rocky start, but over time it went from strength to strength and, in my opinion, got a lot better. But I’m kind of done with it for now; I don’t really feel the need to play it anymore.

I am however excited to see where Destiny 2 will take us. A lot of people are debating and arguing over whether characters should continue or reset, there is a lot of talk about where the story will go and if the Traveller will actually wake up or do… something. We still don’t really know anything about the stranger either. It’s safe to say there is a lot of story that can still be told, whether that is from a fresh start or not doesn’t actually bother me as long as there is some kind of recognition of my previous Guardians actions then I’m ok with starting again.

With so much of the story still being a mystery I think it will follow on from the current one fairly closely. I have a hunch that there will be some kind of epic event that wipes out the current Guardians and maybe Earth gets destroyed or taken, and we have to take it back, something along those lines.

Whatever Destiny 2 holds in store with the story, from a gameplay point of view I hope to see bigger open worlds populated by more NPC’s. I’d like to see towns or outposts that you can visit and get missions from – much like you might see in an MMORPG. I’d love to see more vehicles, ones that can hold multiple people.

There is also the rumour that the game might be coming to PC and if so I’d be very happy, but it might mean I end up buying it twice… You can bet your bottom dollar that we will be seeing and hearing something about Destiny 2 in the not too distant future.

Ghost Recon Wildlands

I’ve got in to Arma 3 quite a bit in the last few months, and Ghost Recons Wildlands kind of gives me that Arma feel – open world, free to do what you want, hordes of weapons and vehicles. Couple that with more in-depth missions and story elements and you could be on for a winner.

Co-op is pretty much King in my eyes, games are so much more fun when playing with others especially ones like this, and being able to travel around the game world with your buddies essentially doing whatever you feel like should provide huge amounts of fun and replayability. Let’s just hope it doesn’t borrow the same mechanics from other Ubi open world games.

Halo Wars 2

Some of my earliest gaming memories are playing Red Alert at my Dads house on the PS2, it was a blast, I loved the Command & Conquer games so much and when Halo Wars came along, I was a big fan of that too. I feel like a lot of RTS games seem to have struggled when coming to consoles, but Halo Wars was a success in terms of the way it played and controlled.

I’m hoping for some serious nostalgia when jumping in to it. But I’m also hoping for some pretty epic battles! It’s been a long time since I’ve played any type of RTS game and things will have no doubt changed quite dramatically in terms of what is achievable with the power now available to devs. In theory we should be able to look forward to some very large scale warfare.

There was a closed Beta for the game a little while back and from what I saw of it I thought it looked really promising and I’m very interested in seeing more.

Star Citizen

Is this going to be out in 2017 with its full potential playable? Probably not, but we should be seeing a fair bit of content coming to it and the impressive looking 3.0 patch should be coming. – fingers crossed.

Every time is see something about Star Citizen I’m blown away. Hearing about people who’ve been in dog fights blowing a hole in a ship, then boarding that ship to kill people on it. Seeing people get blown out of turrets whilst in dogfights, only to then be abandoned by the pilot in space as they jump away. The entire demo from Citizen Con and Gamescom – it’s astounding what they’re trying to achieve with this game and if it does, then it should be truly incredible.

Yes development has been slow, but I feel that in the last 6 months or so it has actually come on quite a long way and that in 2017 we will really start to see some great progress in the game.

The recently released Star Marine looks like a good addition to the game, and Squadron 42 is shaping up to be something pretty special with a stellar cast to boot!

Its a hugely ambitious game with so much detail being put it to even the smallest of things and I really would love to see it succeed.

I’m very close to buying in to it and to be honest, I probably will do in a month or so.

What games are you looking forward to playing this year?

-Will