Console Gaming – What to expect in 2012

Minecraft – XBL Q2 2012

A digital equivalent of being addicted to LEGO should be hitting the Xbox marketplace soon.  The game it’s self has been an absolute sensation, going from a quiet corner of fans to a cult phenomenon fairly quickly, with people crafting their little blocks into everything from log cabins to full scale (and I really mean full scale) replicas of Star Treks Enterprise, naturally these people have a lot of time on their hands, but even casual players can have fun exploring the sandbox world this game has to offer. Bonus for Kinect owners is that the game will offer support for all the keen arm wigglers out there.

The game offers up two game play styles, the first being “Survival”, where you gather resources to maintain health and hunger. The second play style is “Creative”, giving you unlimited resources, the ability to fly, no need for health or food, so you can craft whatever the heck you like.  Soon you pickaxe loving block fans on the Xbox will be able to dig yourself a survival hole or construct a 800ft tall keyboard cat. Of course you could always pick up the current PC version and get started right now.

I Am Alive – PSN / XBL March 2012

I Am Alive, quite an ironic game title for a game that I’m sure will be intent on you dying, a lot. Set after something called “The Event”, which has left the word in a stereotypical post-apocalyptic scrapheap.  Players will be challenged to take the ideas of “survival” to the extreme, toxic ash filled streets, less than favourable inhabitants, who are also all just trying to survive, leaving morals a distant memory for the most part.

You will be forced to keep a close watch on your stamina and resources, you can’t just shoot your way through like they do in the movies, you can climb buildings, but you’re not playing Assassins Creed here, climbing is no easy task in the real world and it’s no different here. You will have to resort to intimidation, evasion, and luck, when you think your way through confrontations and obstacles, or basically you’re going to take a dirt nap.

Expect to be trying not to die some time next month in what is set to be a highlight of downloadable games for 2012.

Journey – PS3 Spring

Another contender for the question, can games be art? From the creative minds at That Game Company, who also created the games Flow and Flower, which in the vaguest terms can be described as a game where you’re a single cell life form that can evolve a bit and a game where you are the wind, controlling both of these with the six axis and an occasional button press to go a bit faster, yet both Flow and Flower had me captivated for hours on end, the games were beautifully simplistic and far from boring. I don’t doubt that Journey will be any different.

The premise in Journey is your alone, you are in a desert and you’re going to walk to a faraway location on a mountain. So if the last two games where Swim and Wind, then this game is Walk. Along the way the player can meet other players, online via the PlayStation network, but the place is so vast and so lonely, you might not! You are most likely on your own. The two players can assist one another but you can’t communicate using speech or text, you can’t see each other name, but the idea is that it would be like being lost in a desert for days only to finally find someone else who is also lost, but doesn’t speak your language, so you journey together.

If the last games are anything to go by, this game will be breath taking and emotionally inspiring, a great change of pace for the FPS generation.