Thomas Updated: 8 Aug pm. With the current generation of consoles coming to a close and the next one just around the corner, the year ahead is shaping up to be one of the most exciting the gaming industry's ever seen — and the quality of the new releases just over the horizon looks better than ever, too.
All this week we've been highlighting some of our favorite upcoming titles scheduled to release before the end of , breaking them down by genre to help you get up to speed on what you'll be playing between today and New Year's Eve. On Monday we kicked things off with the Racing genre. Tuesday we tackled Strategy games. Have you played Dust ? YES NO. Was this article informative? In This Article. Another recent convert to the free to play model, Secret World Legends is a game defined in large part by its setting, which reads like every conspiracy theory crackpots dream come true or their worst nightmare realized.
Secret societies, mythological creatures, and evil cults define a world shrouded by mystery and bursting with supernatural horrors. Instead of the standard MMO trope of letting players queue up a practically unlimited number of quests--which leads to lots of mindless fetching and slaying without any sense of overarching purpose--The Secret World focuses on a tight handful of quests at a time, all with clearly defined objectives.
This narrow focus helps emphasize narrative and points a spotlight at the games writing and atmosphere, which is of a fairly uniform high quality. Current page: Page 1. Get the best gaming deals, reviews, product advice, competitions, unmissable gaming news and more!
Page 1 of 3: Page 1 Page 1 Page 2 Page 3. Alan Bradley. See comments. Gaming deals, prizes and latest news. It's been in development for years, but this space-faring MMO has some cool tech under its belt, especially in how it plans to handle thousands of players in a small area at the same time. If you've played sandbox survival games like Empyrean or Space Engineers, you'll be fairly familiar with how Dual Universe works. Everything is destructible and how you can design vehicles and spaceships is completely up to you—as long as you have the resources and skills, of course.
What's cool, though, is that Dual Universe takes that familiar survival sandbox and drops it into a massive galaxy where entire player alliances can cooperate or fight one another. You can design ships and then sell blueprints to others, and there's even a LUA-based scripting language so you can create in-game automation for machines like autopilot protocols or advanced security systems that can also be sold to other players. The ambitions behind Dual Universe are sky-high, but if it succeeds it might be the next big evolutionary leap the genre has been waiting for.
In the world of MMOs, "theme parks" are that movie you like to put on in the background—the one you've seen a thousand times but still love. They don't push you into deep waters like most sandbox MMOs do, instead wrapping you up in a comforting and familiar blanket. They are games that, just like their name implies, are all about having fun as you tour from one attraction to the next. Though they might rely on a time-worn formula, they can still conceal a surprise or two.
These are often the most popular MMOs, and they've earned their reputations with every dungeon, every level, and every quest. No other MMO has had a greater impact on the genre and the entirety of videogames as a whole quite like World of Warcraft. For that reason, putting it anywhere but first on this list just doesn't feel right—even if Final Fantasy 14 is still our best pick for the MMO of it's a tight race, however!
Though it might be getting on in years, World of Warcraft continues to surprise. Shadowlands, its latest expansion, returns to the glory of WoW's early years through a mix of ambitious new systems and one of the best endgames the MMO has ever had.
Whether you love dungeons, raiding, player-versus-player battles, or just exploring a wonderfully charming world, World of Warcraft has you covered. In Shadowlands, there's also unique activites like Torghast, a roguelike dungeon that changes each time you enter it.
There's also fun events like Timewalking that let you revisit old expansion dungeons for cool loot, and World Quests that help you accomplish something meaningful even if you only have 20 minutes to play. There's not a lot of negative things to say about Shadowlands, though. Its story and questing feels tired, but each is such a small fraction of how you'll spend your time in Azeroth that it's hard to get too mad at them.
That said, World of Warcraft's endgame is still very diverse and fun—even if it has frustrating flaws. The path to its throne is littered with the bones of would-be usurpers, but World of Warcraft's unparalleled zeal for bringing the world of Azeroth to life is a force to be reckoned with. Final Fantasy 14's journey has been a long road full of disappointment. Launching in to an overwhelmingly negative response, Square Enix refused to give up and rebuilt the whole game with a new team.
The second iteration, A Realm Reborn, has done a better job of rekindling the love fans had for Final Fantasy better than any recent game in the series. It's at once unflinchingly dedicated to following in World of Warcraft's footsteps while also introducing a host of refreshing ideas—the best being the innovative class system.
Gone are the days of needing a new character for each class: Final Fantasy 14 let's you swap between them whenever you please and there's even room to borrow abilities between classes, just like in the classic Final Fantasy Job system.
But Final Fantasy 14 isn't just about combat, either. Its story starts slow but builds into a grand epic spanning continents across its three expansions, easily rivaling any of the classics like Final Fantasy 7 or It's a journey worth taking, if you have the time, but one thing to keep in mind is that 14's endgame, while offering challenging and memorable boss fights, is scarce.
Updates come at a steady pace, but you'll run the same dungeons and raids dozens of times. Now is a great time to consider playing Final Fantasy 14, though. It's Shadowbringers expansion released in and is easily the best one yet, telling a dramatic and heartfelt story in a parallel universe. While theme parks can be great, not everyone wants to be led by the hand everywhere they go. Some of us like to take our time and smell the roses, while others want to trample those roses as they build an empire with thousands of real players and become a space dictator.
If you're the type of person who likes building a sand castle just to kick it down, sandbox MMOs are where it's at. The freedom and consequence they offer will turn away those looking for a more relaxing experience, but if you truly want to embrace the potential of what an online world can offer, there's never been another choice.
The 18 years that EVE has been around could fill the pages of a textbook actually, it kind of has —but only if you're studying How to Lose Faith in Humanity Its reputation for being a callous, uncaring universe was forged over a decade of war, betrayal, and scandal. But that same spartan culture has also given birth to the kind of camaraderie you'll never find anywhere else. EVE Online is obtuse and complex as hell, and there will be times where you'll stare at the screen, clueless of what to do.
CCP Games gone to great lengths to make EVE easier to understand, but your best teacher will always be the sting of failure. The good news is that a few years ago EVE Online started offering a free-to-play option , letting you dive into its sandbox with a limited set of ships and skills to use. They've since expanded the program, giving free players even more choices of what ships to fly. Those who persevere will find a whole galaxy of possibilities at their fingertips—and really, that's always been EVE's greatest accomplishment.
It's truly a living world where those with the will to rise to the top can find a way—even if that means using all those daggers in the back of the people who trusted them as a foothold.
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