Christmas evening: the presents have been shared and you're left wondering how on earth you're going to fit in all of these AAA games without either losing your job or missing sleep for the next six months. There's always that rogue thought though, 2011 is almost over and soon 2012 will come around and with it all those new games that we've been watching for years. These games are going to be fun but THOSE games are going to be more than fun, they're going to be more exciting, better looking and…more expensive. Forget that last one…
Botchweed have been taking a sneak peak as to what people have been searching for on Google, a list of games that people are either looking forward to or are hoping are released next year (guess which one I added that qualifier for).
In first place, Grand Theft Auto V; this isn't exactly surprising. Not only will GTAV have an absolutely huge launch, but there simply isn't enough information at this point to keep everybody happy. The trailer released a few weeks ago may well be the very definition of teaser. Rockstar will continue to be happy, in second place is Max Payne 3, the long awaited continuation to the series and a game presumed dead until relatively recently.
Halo 4 is in third place, a game that had to appear somewhere. This is in the face of worries about the slow sales on Halo Anniversary, a game that some people expected to be as big a system seller as Halo 3. In fact, that doesn't seem to have happened and, for whatever reason, the sales seem to have actually been rather underwhelming for a title like Halo.
Fourth place is taken by Half Life 3, perhaps thanks to those t-shirts recently seen being worn by a Valve employee at a developer's conference. Finally, the majority of people had given up on seeing another Half-Life sequel in their lifetime and they go ahead and pull something like this out of the hat.
Fifth place goes to Mass Effect 3 and who can be surprised considering the amount of advertising Commander Shepherd does?
Of course, this isn't a fantastic indicator of which games are going to be bought the most or even which games people are looking forward to (although they're all big hitters). Instead, see this as the top five games people want more information on – I can definitely see why.
