I the near future, gamers will be treated to the long awaited 3rd-person thriller “Alan Wake”, a title that is based around a best selling novelist who’s worst nightmares, that once only existed in his books, start coming to life while he’s on vacation in a small Washington-based town.  Alan Wake has been in development for quite some time.  It was supposed to be a 2008 release, but the developers pulled a Starcraft 2 until 2010.  Finally, it’s ready to be rolled out.  You can catch this highly anticipated game on May 18, 2010.

Though the next chapter in the Ghost Recon series isn’t an Xbox 360 exclusive, it’s been hailed as a better play via Xbox 360 than the PS3 (specifically in online play and downloadable content).  The new chapter, titled “Future Soldier”, takes place in the near future (not specifically stated when), and has some outstanding features to boast.  New player classes are being introduced (instead of the choose your own weapon system as used in previous GRAW games) that allow you to take of four player roles in combat.  A sniper class and a stealth assault class are two confirmed roles (there is likely a demolition class and perhaps a heavy-gunner class to come as well).  The most crazy-cool class based on looks alone is the stealth class.  You’ll be able to cloak yourself as you patrol a level, forcing your enemies to be on a sharp lookout, as you will be very difficult to spot (you project the images around you, making you nearly invisible)!  This title is due in the fall of 2010.

The game that everyone is talking about is quickly making its way to us.  Halo: Reach is due this fall as well.  Reach is bringing a lot of buzz to the gaming scene based off of Bungie’s drive to rebuild Halo and capture what people have loved best about it over the years, all the while adding new gameplay elements to create a fresh experience for even the veteran Halo players.  Halo Reach focuses on the events leading up to the first Halo.  This means there are an abundance of Spartans on tap for the human race.  You will be assuming the role of one Spartan in a small squad in the battle against the covenant, who are fighting for control of the planet Reach.  In addition to being early in the storyline of Halo, Bungie are bringing big tweaks to the multiplayer experience.  “Loadouts” are being added, which acts as a class system (Battlefield style!), for a player to choose before starting a game/spawning.  New assassination tactics are being used as well for when a player sneaks up on an unsuspecting enemy.  It pays a small homage to Gears of War’s execution system, where the player performs a complex maneuver to kill the enemy.  One example includes a player jumping onto an enemy’s back and beating them to the ground!  The Reach multiplayer Beta is coming May 3, 2010.  So if you still have your ODST discs, keep them a little longer and see for yourself how Halo is changing!

Crackdown 2 is making its way to the Xbox 360 yet again.  Microsoft’s exclusive battle against the massively popular Grand Theft Auto franchise did well on its first outing.  Crackdown 2 hopes to improve upon the foundation the first title laid, while exceeding expectations and creating a truly awesome free-world experience.  The game is expected to land in early July of 2010.  If you haven’t tried Crackdown, but you are a fan of the GTA series, this is a game to check out.  Some may find elements of it that beat out GTA (though GTA still reigns king as far as popularity and overall review scoring).  But it does offer an experience that differs from GTA.  Again, this is an Xbox 360 exclusive.

Peter Molyneux’s epic Fable series continues in its third installment.  Fable 3 will be available at some point in either late 2010 or early 2011.  The date is still TBD, but what we do know is that Fable 3 is going to be the most complete Fable experience to date, with even more character customization and an even larger world to conquer or rid of evil!  The timeline is set around 50 years after the events of Fable 2, and thus the world of Albion has advanced (into an early industrial age from the looks of things).  Expect great things in this already great series!  This is an Xbox 360 exclusive!

Finally, the big bullet delivered to the heart of gamers everywhere for 2011 comes in the form of Marcus Fenix.  April 5, 2011 marks the release of Gears of War 3, the final chapter in the Gears trilogy.  Though not much is known about the title, there is a first-glance trailer up for people to check out.  The inclusion of a new human character in the Delta squad and a never-before-seen enemy raises a lot of curiosity (and many questions, no doubt).  Gears of War 2 was a blast to play through both in single player and multiplayer.  However, many fans of the franchise will remember the rough start on the multiplayer side of things.  Epic released the game with a large quantity of bugs/glitches that hurt the online experience for many for quite some time.  We can be optimistic that Epic won’t follow suit in this third title, as they’ve probably learned their lesson about completing your work before turning it in!  All jokes aside, this will likely be one of the biggest/THE biggest title for the Xbox 360 in 2011 and perhaps over all systems!

Glitches, lag, and exploits are killing the game’s wholesome experience first started having when it first launched.  Since launch, several gamers (who must have no lives whatsoever) have managed to find out how to use exploits on weapons such as the Javelin (using it as a giant bomb that detonates as soon as the player is killed, killing everyone within a country mile of the explosion).  While that exploit was patched recently, another glitch came about for “boosting”.  Using a still unknown method, gamers can switch their public Xbox Live match (or PS Network match) and make it a private match, allowing manipulation of the rules and pushing the game onto the small map known as Rust.  Having 18 players on such a small map with “free for all” settings allows those that are the quickest and get best position to have a field day with kills (free of time limits).  Personally, I’ve encountered people that have reached 200+ kills and only saw around 30 deaths.  How’s that for a boost to your K/D ratio?  Also, there’s a huge uproar in the community about the lack of dedicated servers.

Console gamers are starting to learn about how wonderful the world of PC gaming tends to be because of the use of dedicated servers.  They are basically game machines (servers/computers) set up to run the game and render all the action without supporting a local player.  The server’s internet connection broadcasts out to all the client players in the game and thus everyone has equal opportunity to have a solid connection (if their internet connection is in fact high speed).  While it is possible to see very good connections with the current setup, it’s rare.  <50ms ping games are what your machine will search for.  However, you’re probably getting more of a 75-100ms ping host when you find a decent game.  The problem?  100ms is a longer ping time than say the host’s “0″ms ping (a host has no lag since the game is being played from their machine) and thus the host sees everything that happens before you do.  For instance, a big problem is you running from a spray of bullets.  You duck around the corner just in time, only to still be killed when you thought you should have been safe.  On your console, you were.  On the host’s console, you weren’t.  The “killcam” reveals what actually happened and you’re left saying “that’s not what happened!”  It’s a common tune amongst gamers right now in MW2.

These problems create a lot of frustration and anger among the dedicated players.  Modern Warfare 2 is a great game, but Infinity Ward is taking their time getting updates rolled out.  The word is there are multiple patches coming, but when?  Also, it’s being rumored that IW/Activision already worked on map packs for the game but held them back from release to create greater profits when they roll out some downloadable content.  You may have noticed that there aren’t a lot of maps to choose from in MW2.  Thus the possibility of IW holding back as many as half a dozen (one rumor claimed ten) map packs would be maddening and in poor taste for such a treasured development company when we only have a small selection from the start.

This all plays against Modern Warfare 2.  Why?  Well you might get too frustrated to play the game after a while, but more importantly there are two competitors on their way for the first half of 2010 that may prove to be better in the end.  Who are these competitors?  Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is set to release in the earlier part of 2010.  It boasts gorgeous graphics (more gorgeous than Modern Warfare 2) with destructible environments in multiplayer.  The other competitor is the first Medal of Honor entry into the modern combat-style arena.  It, too, boasts great visuals and promising promising multiplayer experiences.  But, at this point, Bad Company 2 promises dedicated servers for the online multiplayer portion of their game, both on PC and console.  This is a big deal, as players will experience the best connections possible during their game play.  No word yet on MoH’s entry for dedicated servers, but it’s definitely possible.

Modern Warfare 2 has some rough competition coming.  If it wants to stay atop the charts with it’s impressive online population and fun factor, it needs some fixes and expandable content to find its way to gamers soon.  Otherwise, MW2′s lifespan may be cut short to other entries who get it right the first time around.

Your experience in Modern Warfare 2 will easily trump its predecessor in most areas.  The campaign is a little more diverse and carries a strong storyline (although some are calling it not as strong as CoD4’s story), but where this game takes its steps forward is through multiplayer.  A new section of the game comes in the form of Special Ops.  This is where you’ll be able to play through special instances with either one or two players.  Unique objectives with either time limits, score goals, or just straight up survival objectives all come together to form a five-stage progression in which each stage is unlocked by obtaining a set number of “stars”.  More stars are awarded for completing a Special Ops mission at a higher difficulty (difficulty ranges from normal to veteran-styles and awards between one and three stars).  Many of the instances here reflect upon the campaign levels, but many also vary as to what goals need to be met.

Of course, this game boasts a solid multiplayer experience.  Infinity Ward carved out an even deeper multiplayer experience, offering new perks (and creating different levels of perks that are unlocked by using them in gameplay), larger maps, and new gametypes.  The basic experience is still very much the same as CoD4.  Modern Warfare 2 offers customizations left and right, allowing you to not only customize your weapons but also your killstreak bonuses (UAV, Airstrike, Helicopters, Stealth Bomber, Gunships, and the very awesome “Care Package” drop which offers a specific killstreak bonus).  IW also added deathstreak bonuses that kick in when you die repeatedly without nabbing a kill to help balance out the less-experienced players with the more experienced ones.  Things like bonus health, martyrdom, class steals, etc. all come in to play and help you get back on the offensive.

All in all, Modern Warfare 2 comes off strong on all fronts.  The only complaint that one could make deals with the campaign’s length.  On Hardened we were able to complete the campaign in under seven hours.  A little disappointing, but then again there is lots of great moments in the campaign.  So while it is short, it is sweet.    These days, however, gamers are expecting bigger, better, and longer experiences with the story.  Infinity Ward would benefit from pushing a longer, more fleshed out story in a third game, which is expected and hinted at through the campaign.  Still, with all that Modern Warfare 2 packages in, there is nothing here that will let any gamer down.  Modern Warfare 2 will hit the top of the charts for online population (MW2 boasted around 1 million+ players online simultaneously during its first week, rivaling the unofficial record set by Halo 3 of approximately 1.2 million) and will stay there for quite some time.  The folks over at Bungie better have great things to come in their Reach title planned for next year if they want to claim the throne over this goliath.  Modern Warfare 2 simply rocks.

Grade: 95 (A)

What makes the campaign portion so enjoyable is the storytelling element that’s introduced to the Halo franchise.  You, the rookie, start your story 6 hours after deployment.  You patch the pieces of the past together by finding clues scattered around parts of New Mombassa (which you navigate in an open-world setting) until you’ve collected all the parts.  There’s a lot of story here that does a great job of filling in the background details of the Halo story thus far, landing just  prior to the events that transpire in Halo 3.  Amongst the noteworthy for ODST are the voice actors.  Nathan Fillion (of the TV series Firefly and Castle) voices Buck, the squad leader.  Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica) voices Dare, Space Command’s officer sent in to take command of Buck’s squad in a special interest mission.  Also, Adam Baldwin (Firefly) joins the crew as Dutch.  To say the least, the voice acting in ODST trumps all three previous Halo entries, giving the story and the game as a whole a more accessible feel.  You might actually feel like you’re there.  Everything about this game creates intrigue and curiosity.

Firefight, the new 4-player cooperative mode, will give ODST it’s true longevity.  The campaign itself could be beaten in 3-4 hours if you play it on the easiest settings.  A heroic difficulty will likely lend you 6-8 solid hours of gameplay.  Thus if you’re a more seasoned first-person-shooter gamer, you’ll want to start from this difficulty to get the most out of your game.  But Firefight is hard.  It requires cooperation and some strategy to make it deep within the progression of enemies that gradually get harder.  Firefight is much like Horde mode for Gears of War.  You face waves of enemies that become increasingly harder, mostly because of the skulls that are activated that increase the difficulty.  You can play Firefight on any of the game’s four difficulty settings, but only Heroic or Legendary will yield the much desired Vidmaster achievement that many will be fighting for to earn their “Recon” armor (if you play a lot of Halo, you know what this is).

If you’re a die hard Halo fan, you need to play this game.  If you’re a casual player, rent it.  There’s nothing truly innovating here in the general eye of the gaming world.  But to Halo fans, this will feel fresh and new, all the while preserving the familiarity of the Halo franchise to date.  The biggest pitfall is the campaign length.  The second biggest is the lack of a true expansion on the current multiplayer side of things.  Firefight aside, ODST uses the Halo 3 multiplayer, including only three new maps and a handful of achievements.  That’s it!?  Unfortunately, yes.  While ODST shines enough to leave these empty spots in the background, they’re still there.  Bungie missed some opportunities to fully flesh this title out and give it more life.  ODST includes an invite to the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta that has yet to be scheduled.  That’s probably the best thing those who purchase ODST have to look forward to.  Reach is promised to be new and exciting.  One can only hope.  ODST will likely find its way to your no-longer-played stash within six months unless you absolutely love Firefight.  At least Bungie saved some face by packaging all of the multiplayer maps released over Xbox Live since Halo 3′s launch two years ago on to one standalone disc.

Grade: 87/100 (B)

The campaign is also said to be short & sweet.  Early reports say it’s between 3-6 hours, which all depends on the difficulty you tackle it in.  If you want a longer experience, try your first run through on Heroic.  It’s not impossible-seeming, but it’s no walk in the park either.  That should land you an extra hour or two pretty easily.  For those of you who aren’t considered as “skilled” as others, just go with Normal.  Easy is for weak minded and near brain-dead players!  One way or another, Halo fans will definitely be pleased with the outcome of the game.  And if you didn’t already know, ODST comes with a beta opt-in for Halo: Recon, scheduled for next year.  What that means is still up in the air, but it’s quite possible that Recon will end up being a larger scale title with a more full campaign component (and pray that it also means strides forward in multiplayer innovation).

http://halo.xbox.com/article-Halo-Legends-Waypoint.html