PC Games That Probably Won't Make 2010

Duke Nukem Forever

Come now. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that this will be the year that DNF will finally see the light of day. This title is no longer eligible for the vapourware award as of 2009, since after the huge media leak in the middle of the year, it became obvious that the game wasn’t fake and that if released, it would have kicked some serious @$$. But the chances of making it in 2010, as much as I’d like to be proved wrong, are about a 0 - 5% chance at most.

Duke Begins

What, you say? Duke Begins was revealed to be in development at one point earlier on in 2009, after everything fell apart for 3D Realms and Duke Nukem Forever. It was initially speculated that 2K Games may have been in charge of this title, but later on it was revealed that Gearbox Software with the mouthy Randy Pitchford at its helm was making the game, supposedly a prequel to not only DNF, but perhaps even other Duke games in the series.

Now Duke Begins is also in some sort of limbo just like Duke Nukem Forever, possibly even cancelled according to a lot of people out there, and Gearbox isn’t talking about it at all.

Seeing as Gearbox’s focus has been on Borderlands for the past while along with the two DLC packs currently out, and Aliens: Colonial Marines somewhere in their plans possibly for this year, It’s doubtful that Duke Begins will see this year, or any year if matters between 3DR and Take-Two aren’t resolved soon, or end badly.

I still hate Take-Two for seemingly screwing over 3DR, maybe even more so than Activision for the whole Modern Warfare 2 and Bobby Kotick debacles like most people. Hell, in my view, if Activision is the Anti-Christ, then Take-Two may well be the devil.

Diablo III

It was announced by Blizzard that this title would likely not be released in 2010 and that the earliest we would see it would be 2011 - more than ten years after Diablo II, rated one of the best games of the last decade. On the upside, it does give them time to perhaps heed the warnings and threats of Diablo fans worldwide to change the art direction. But will they?...

Half-Life 2: Episode 3

The episodic content for Half-Life 2 was a good idea when suggested years ago, but people have realized that it works for certain games and not others. In my opinion, HL 2 is not one of those titles. The whole idea was to release games in episodic format that could be churned out over the period of several months each, instead of waiting a few years for the actual sequel.

Half-Life 2 was released in 2004, and has snapped up many awards over the years, even being proclaimed by some as game of the decade. Episode 1 came out in 2006 and Episode 2 in 2007, but Episode 3 has taken much longer, and one wonders if it’s because a lot of focus was directed on Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 during these last couple of years.

We all hope to see Episode 3 make 2010. Valve at one point suggested there might be an episode 4,5, and 6 depending on what we all thought of the episodic format, but people are all ready wanting a Half-Life 3, and the source engine isn’t young anymore, despite what Valve can do with it. Details were leaked last year, suggesting that Episode 3 would even feature a deaf character along with sign language as a mean of communicating.

Jagged Alliance 3

It’s been over ten years since Jagged Alliance 2, and since then we’ve seen various expansions and mods for this popular turn-based strategy title, including Unfinished Business and Wildfire.

Jagged Alliance 3, along with other JA titles such as Jagged Alliance 3D, was announced years ago, and since then, development has shifted from at least one or two developers, the second of which was reported to have ceased working on the title recently.

Although Jagged Alliance 3D was seemingly released in some form – Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge, albeit with replaced content seeing as the publisher lost the rights to the IP - Jagged Alliance 3’s future is uncertain at the moment, with some even claiming that that they’ve all just thrown in the towel and decided to cancel it.

Thi4f

Currently this title is in pre-production, and has been for several months. Perhaps it’s taking a backseat to Deus Ex 3, also coming out of Eidos Montreal, but set for a release this year. It’s been ages since the last Thief game. 2004 was when Thief: Deadly Shadows came out, but 2000 was when my favourite, Thief II: The Metal Age, was released. That’s nearly ten years, jeez.

Doom 4

This will be the title that id works on after they finish with Rage, which is set to come out this year. There’s been some talk of it within the last year – the fact that it will use the same engine as Rage, the id Tech 5 engine, and that it will be published by Bethesda Softworks. Other than that it’s been pretty quiet, but there have been rumours that suggest that since Doom 3 was essentially a remake of Doom, that Doom 4 would be a remake of Doom 2, and that would be cool.

Prey 2

Prey was originally in development at 3DR back in the mid 90s, but was cancelled and only a decade later was it revived and finally released, of course of going through some major rethinking and using the id Tech 4 engine, and developed by HumanHead studios. There have been rumours of Prey 2 in the last while, but I don’t think it likely that we’ll see it in 2010.

Dead Space 2

The first game, Dead Space, was a hit, hailed for its scary atmosphere, great sound design, and gameplay similar to the System Shock series. In fact some people claimed it was originally supposed to be System Shock 3 because of these similarities. For me it had a bit of a “console” look and feel to it, especially at first, but after playing it for a while it certainly did have something in it that made it a good game. Now the sequel was first said to be coming in 2010 but there have been some rumours that suggest that it won’t be arriving until perhaps 2011.