Six Awesome-Looking Games I Won't Have Nearly Enough Time For
Gaming is far and away my favorite hobby, but it's also extremely time-consuming. This appears to be doubly true for a new breed of upcoming current-gen games, which are leveraging the power of new hardware and the gaming community's love of open-world environments to create adventures that are poised to obliterate my free time.
The next two years look especially hopeless considering my personal play style, which usually involves a lot of aimless wandering, unplanned chaos, and obsessive collecting/crafting. It's for those reasons that I am both salivating over and fearing the following games.
Just
Cause 3
Few games offer up a more fun and consequence-free sandbox
than the Just Cause series. The last installment was one of my
favorite games of last generation, and it appears Avalanche is super-sizing
everything for the next outing. The new wingsuit looks like it transforms Rico
into a full-blown superhero, and having an unlimited supply of C4 at your
disposal is yet another sign that the developer knows gonzo chaos will always
trump realism when you're trying to overthrow a ruthless dictator. A greater
emphasis on physics and destructibility pretty much guarantees that I'll be spending
an absurd number of hours orchestrating crazy explosions (and probably blowing
myself up in the process).
Ghost
Recon: Wildlands
The announcement of Ghost Recon: Wildlands at E3 was a surprise,
but it's already made my short list of anticipated games. I enjoyed a few of
the older games in the series, and am glad Ubisoft is eschewing the futuristic setting of...virtually every other military shooter on the market right now for
something more grounded in reality. However, the big selling points are the four-player
co-op and massive open world – coordinating and approaching missions the way
you want to sounds like it's putting the "tactical" back into tactical shooter, which would be a welcome shift in focus.
The big question is whether Ubisoft can fill the world with enough
missions and distractions to make it worth going off the beaten path. I've lost
plenty of hours roaming the landscapes in Ubisoft's Far Cry series; if
Wildlands can deliver a more realistic world that's focused on co-op, it may
hold my attention long after other military shooters lose their appeal.
Mad
Max
Avalanche sure knows how to sink its hooks in me. The second
game from the developer on this list stars one of the coolest post-apocalyptic anti-heroes
of film, who seems like a perfect fit for open-world mayhem. In addition to
exploring the wasteland and taking down enemy outposts, you can also completely
customize your car with a variety performance upgrades and bandit-puncturing
weaponry. Mad Max is yet another game that takes its combat cues from the
Arkham series – the last game to ape Rocksteady's approach to combat was Shadow
of Mordor, which kept me slicing off orc heads long after most gamers moved
onto other adventures (which reminds me – I really need to go back and finish Shadow
of Mordor). Hopefully Avalanche can nail the vehicular combat, because I can
see myself spending days happily combing the wasteland for scrap to build the ultimate death
machine.
Coming Up Next: Three more games destined to take over 99 percent of my gaming time...
Horizon
Zero Dawn
I was never able to get into the bleak, by-the-numbers world
of the Killzone series, but Guerrilla Games' new IP had me at "robot dinosaurs."
It didn't take long for the announcement
trailer to sell me on the prehistoric future setting, and protagonist Aloy
is already more memorable than any character in the Killzone series. Horizon
also reportedly puts a big emphasis on collecting items and crafting your own
weapons, and some tools tease unique gameplay mechanics, such as the ropecaster's
ability to tether hulking robo-beasts to the ground. Horizon promises a gigantic open world full of different tribes to discover and interact with – did I
mention the robot dinosaurs?
Fallout
4
If Fallout 4 was the only game coming out in 2015, I still
wouldn't have enough time for it. Bethesda has been responsible for some of my
all-time favorite
games, and yet I don't think I've ever finished a single entry in the
Fallout and Elder Scrolls series. They are as close to genuine role-playing as
it gets, and for me that apparently involves a lot of crafting, obsessively stealing
everything I can get my hands on, and undertaking every mission except the main
storyline. What can I say? Not everyone is hero material – some of us are
content with just being wandering kleptomaniacs.
I've been keeping a watchful eye on the new additions to Fallout 4 (perhaps too watchful), and the ability to craft your own guns and build custom outposts are two more awesome distractions that will likely keep me from ever seeing credits. I have no idea how I'm going to find enough time to play Fallout 4 – maybe I'll just give up sleeping?
No
Man's Sky
This one isn't even fair. No Man's Sky reportedly contains
over 18 quintillion planet-sized(!) planets to explore, which are populated by
unique landscapes, creatures, and plant life. A lot of the gameplay is still a
mystery, but we know you'll be doing a lot of exploring and discovering. Those
basic activities (which are bolstered by the knowledge that not even the
developer has seen what you're seeing) kept me engrossed in MineCraft for a
stupid amount of time. Exploring new, wholly unique worlds was one of the
main wishes on my dream
sci-fi game list, and it appears No Man's Sky is delivering that
experience. We still don't know when the game is going to come out, but when it
does, my social life is officially over.
What upcoming game will be your biggest time sink? Share your fears in the comments below...