Anxious for E3: Nerdist News’ Most Anticipated Games of E3

Assassins and bounty hunters and Legos… Oh my!

E3 may be the only reason such a large portion of the population knows what the Los Angeles Convention Center looks like. Well, that and Nicolas Cage in a priest costume in one of many awkward scenes in Face/Off. This week we’ll be hip deep in new consoles and questionably dressed booth attendants, but move aside booth babes. What we want to get close to are the new games coming down the line. Here are the five games we most want to convince to come home with us after the show.

Star Wars 1313 – The first in-house Star Wars game from LucasArts since The Force Unleashed II, 1313 is a 3rd person action game that will explore the seedy underbelly of Coruscant. You play an as-yet-unannounced bounty hunter enmeshed in the criminal world of the sublevels beneath the capitol planet. So far, 1313 is sounding like the darkest Star Wars game ever made and we’re totally ready to succumb to the dark side.

Lego Batman 2: DC Heroes – With semi annual releases, the Lego franchise is starting to feel a little old hat. Lego Batman 2 is the game that could get us to rebuild and jump on that building-block bandwagon. What could get us this excited for a return to the Legoverse? Two words: Justice League. The most addictive aspect of the Lego games is unlocking innumerable amounts of Lego-ized characters you can play as. Now they’re going to let us loose on the entire DC Universe? That’s like handing us a crack pipe while we’re wearing a nicotine patch.

Tomb Raider – After numerous failed attempts to revitalize the flailing Tomb Raider series, Square Enix is shaking the Etch-A-Sketch clean and remaking Lara Croft from scratch, literally. After surviving a shipwreck, a toned-down and beat-up Lara Croft sets out for adventure on the mysterious island she washed up on. Die-hard fans of the original Lara may be calling this “the Unchartering” of the Tomb Raider franchise, but we say she needed to find a new path.

Dishonored – Based on the trailer, we could have easily knocked this as “Assassin’s Creed: Steampunk.” But with Bioshock Infinite skipping the big show this year, Dishonored may be our only chance to get our alternate history realigned. Bethesda has taken abused genres and turned them on their heads before, so we’ll roll with this one and enjoy starting a one man revolution.

Gears of War: Judgment – The next installment of the Gears of War franchise will be a prequel set 15 years prior to the first entry in the series, during the court-martial of two of our favorite COG Gears, Baird and Cole. By our math, Judgment will take place right around Emergence Day, when the Locust threat was still new and the body count was very, very high. We like those odds. 

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