5 top picks for 2010 - Military Video Games, computer games, games, gaming - Navy Times

5 top picks for 2010

Here are five video games scheduled for release in 2010 that look, from afar, as though they could carry on noble traditions, break new ground or just be really cool.

Game release dates shift like sands in the Sahara, so if one of these piques your interest, check online to be sure publishers have decided when it’s going to appear. At least two of these games, “Splinter Cell” and “Star Wars Battlefront,” have been delayed before.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Scheduled release: Early March

I had a great time with the good-natured numbskulls of “Bad Company” when they appeared back in 2008, destroying everything in their environments, jumping into lots of cool vehicles and lusting after all that precious, precious gold.

The title was successful enough that publisher Electronic Arts is bringing back the boys for another go-round, and if it has the smooth gameplay and luscious graphics of the original, this one will be another winner. All it needs is a true team-deathmatch multiplayer mode, which the first “Bad Company” rejected in favor of its own attack-and-defend-the-gold game.

Sure, we all love gold, but you can’t ask gamers to put anything before mayhem.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

Scheduled release: April

The real-life National Security Agency says it doesn’t have agents like Sam Fisher, the “splinter cell” operative whose outfit, heart and budget are all the blackest black.

Fisher, voiced by the incomparable Michael Ironside, had a bad time his last time out in “Double Agent,” and observers have been looking for “Conviction” to inject new high-speed dynamics and try its hand at a cooperative campaign mode.

Ideally, “Conviction” will put Fisher in the high-pressure environments where he’s best and eliminate its predecessors’ irksome “Myst”-style puzzles.

Medal of Honor

Scheduled release: Fall

The “Medal of Honor” series has been a cut-rate shooter franchise for several years, inhaling the exhaust of “Call of Duty,” in particular, as it blew everyone away with “Modern Warfare” and ended the World War II genre — I wish — with “World at War.”

The new game is reinventing itself with a modern-day story that takes place among today’s troops in Afghanistan.

That sounds like fun. Relevant locales, modern weapons and advanced accessories all could make this the first “Medal of Honor” worth playing in a long time.

Halo: Reach

Scheduled release: September

After a failed overture to the strategy-game set with “Halo Wars” and a half-sequel in “Halo: ODST” — which disappointed many hard-core players, although I really liked it — “Reach” is the next actual, no-foolin’, for-real new title in the “Halo” series.

The prequel tells the story of the ill-fated Reach colony, where humanity encountered some unpleasantness at the hands of invading aliens.

As a prequel, “Reach” promises a new story, which should satisfy the die-hard fans, and it’d be great if it incorporated all the refinements now common in game-dom, such as a sprint mode and unlockable weapons.

On top of all that, one hopes it will have a few more unexpected tricks up its sleeve.

Star Wars Battlefront 3

Scheduled release: November?

Or maybe never. As feared a year ago, this title is reappearing on my 2010 most-anticipated list. That’s how strongly the world needs this game.

In the first two “Battlefront” installments, you fought as a rebel or imperial foot soldier in some of the greatest nerd battles of all time, including at the invasion of Hoth, in the forests of Endor or even on the desert sands of Tatooine. (And, yes, there was junk in there from the stupid prequels, too.)

In “Battlefront 2” you even got to unlock and play as Jedi or Sith heroes. But those titles were written for earlier-generation PlayStations and XBoxes, and what humanity needs more than ever is a “Star Wars Battlefront” that will enable gamers to witness the firepower of today’s fully armed and operational consoles.