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The year ahead
Five games to look for in 2005
BY MITCH KRPATA

Predicting the future of games is always tricky. Though many highly-anticipated titles (like Halo 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3) deliver, there are always the baffling disappointments like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Guessing sleeper hits is even tougher; at this time last year, did anyone think Katamari Damacy would make the splash it has?

Nevertheless, I'm nothing if not desperate for column space, so here I'd like to present five games to keep an eye on as 2005 progresses.

Mercenaries (Published by LucasArts; for PlayStation 2 and Xbox)

"Finally," you're thinking, "someone made a military-themed shooter!" Your sarcasm is not appreciated. Despite the glut of recent World War II- and Vietnam-themed titles, there's always room in my collection for good, solid games. Mercenaries, though it has received relatively little hype, seems like it could be the war genre's answer to Grand Theft Auto.

Mercenaries is subtitled Playground of Destruction, and that could not be more apt. The game has you playing as one of three soldiers of fortune – Chris Jacobs, a tough American; Jennifer Mui, a stealthy Brit; and Mattias Nilsson, a mustachioed Swede operating just on the right side of bloodlust. The character you select dictates how you'll play the game (shades of System Shock 2, an unheralded classic), but even more so the open-ended gameplay allows you to play however you feel like.

Among the many missions, your goal is to kill 52 warlords, each represented by mock playing cards (topical much?). To do so, you'll need to gain the trust of warring factions by killing and capturing a bevy of bad-asses. There are vehicles to drive, defenses to slip by, installations to bomb, and much more. Mercenaries could be the sleeper hit of the year – and it comes out in January.

The Legend of Zelda (Published by Nintendo, for Nintendo GameCube)

You just can't keep a fan boy down. For my money, the Zelda series has never come close to matching the dizzying heights it attained with the SNES iteration A Link to the Past. I was so disappointed with Ocarina of Time that it actually took me – get this – five years to complete it, and even then I did so only out of a sense of obligation. As a result, I never even tried Majora's Mask, and my half-hearted stab at Wind Waker failed to bring me back into the fold. Yet I'm excited about this newest version for the GameCube.

For one thing, it seems like it's actually going to be aimed at adults – and not in some facile, sophomoric way (like including seven dozen different dismemberment animations for Link's enemies). In a basic sense, I was getting tired of Nintendo asking me to play as a twee little pixie in what should have been a gripping adventure epic. If the gameplay is as world-beating as the few screenshots we've seen, then gamers are in for a hell of a ride.

Final Fantasy XII (Published by Square Enix; for PlayStation 2)

What was I saying about being a fan boy? The Final Fantasy series is one that really gets me frothing at the mouth. It wasn't always this way. When I was younger and had a shorter attention span, anything that didn't involve alien beasts exploding in a frenzy of limbs and viscera didn't seem worth my while. It wasn't until college, when I downloaded an NES emulator and played through the original Final Fantasy, dropping my GPA about three-10ths of a point in the process, that I finally understood what the whole series was about. Complex characters involved in a novelistic storyline that offered operatic highs and endless worlds – now that's what games are supposed to be.

But Square (now Square Enix) has made some, er, interesting decisions since releasing the terrific Final Fantasy X for the PS2. There was FFXI, a persistent online game (it might have been good, but I know better than to get involved with such a mistress), and FFX-2, which, while I didn't play it, I was led to believe featured Yuna as a pop starlet. No thanks.

FFXII is a return to form in a sense, but at the same time it promises a totally new experience. The camera and gameplay will resemble that of FFXI more than any of the more traditional entries in the series, but the storyline and overall feel of the experience should be what fans of the series have been waiting for. Hell, it's already got airships and Chocobos. Throw Cid in there and I'll be happy no matter what else happens.

Destroy All Humans! (Published by THQ; for PlayStation 2 and Xbox)

If Mercenaries has all the potential to be the sleeper hit of the year, Destroy All Humans! runs a close second (surprise – the two games are developed by the same company, Pandemic Studios). This game is shaping up to be X-Com: UFO Defense through a funhouse mirror. You play not as a brave human helping humanity make a last stand against an overwhelming alien force, but instead as a misanthropic extraterrestrial intent on – you guessed it – destroying all humans.

The wacky sci-fi edge is a fresh take not only on the genre, but on what we've come to expect from games lately. Sure, lots of games have you fighting aliens, but few have you romping through suburbs searching for human brains to make yourself more powerful. Just from hearing the description, who wouldn't want to play this game? With an open environment and what seem like dozens of gameplay quirks, Destroy All Humans! could be one of the biggest winners of the new year.

Xbox 2 (TBA)

Okay, this isn't a game per se, and it's not even officially coming out in 2005. The key word is "officially." The rumor mill is whirring double-time with claims that Microsoft is planning an early launch in order to beat the PlayStation 3 to the punch – possibly by Christmas. Little else is known at this point about Bill Gates's latest revenue juggernaut, but let's be honest: we're all going to get the Xbox 2. Microsoft, despite a few missteps, has shown the world how it's done with Xbox Live, and even though the PS3 will almost certainly include more robust online capabilities than its predecessor, the Xbox leads the pack on this front. The second edition can't get here soon enough.

Happy New Year, gamers, and remember to go outside once in awhile.


Issue Date: December 31, 2004 - January 6, 2005
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