Random Shots: Things To Look Forward To In 2010

• Inspired by Blue Kae (that man has a lot to say all of the sudden), I thought I'd take a look at what's coming in the year ahead and tell you what you should be excited about. If you weren't aware that I had that much control over your emotional states, you should have read the fine print on this blog. Suckers.


• World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - The only thing on the MMO scene I'm excited about is "Yet Another WoW Expansion." No one expects this to set the world on fire. (Wait, that's exactly what the expansion is about, right? Anyway, I'm sticking with the metaphor.) But Blizzard knows how to release good, polished content with just enough of a new spin to keep things interesting.


• Diablo III - After enjoying the heck our of Torchlight, I'm really interested to see how Diablo looks. Okay, this won't be coming out in 2010. But I'm allowed to hope Blizzard gets it out early, right? No? Okay. See you in 2011, D3.


• Mass Effect 2 - If there is one game that will drive me back to my 360, it will be ME2. And for no other reason than so I can carry forward my ME1 save game. I liked my Shepard and I can't wait to see what more the universe has in store for her.


• Red Dead Redemption - I'm one of the few people who enjoyed Neversoft's Gun and wished that they would make a sequel. Since that's not likely to happen, who better to make a new Western than the company they were emulating in the first place: Rockstar.


• And because I like to act the contrarian sometimes, here are a few game I'm not looking forward to at all.


• Other MMOs. Any of them. - You name it, I having trouble getting interested about it. SWTOR? STO? DUCO? Not a one. Maybe something will come out of left field and blow everyone away, but I would be surprised based on the current crop of games on the horizon. (Allods Online is getting a lot of beta love, but I maintain a healthy detachment.) The only possible MMO I would look forward to is Guild Wars 2 and no one expects that until the following year. Okay, that and the forthcoming Torchlight MMO. Gee, can we just skip ahead to 2011?


• Starcraft 2 - I don't have anything against SC2, per se. It's just another RTS that I'm never going to play. But there's a part of me, deep down in a place I don't want to admit to, that blames this for delaying everything else Blizzard has coming out. Completely untrue, but there you go. I hope all the rest of you enjoy it for me.


• Not a huge list on either side. It's hard for me to get worked up for anything at all this year. I promise to focus more on the positive list than on the negative one, however. I'm in full support of Yeebo Fernbottom's blogging philosophy: there is too much good stuff out there to dwell on the negative. So I'm dumping negative blogs and I'll try to set a good example for 2010. Unless it's really, really funny.