PC Games of E3 2009: A Priority Hit List

Let's cut to the chase.

Star Wars: The Old Republic - This one's pretty obvious. BioWare just made an appearance at EA's press conference and showed off a new "cinematic" trailer that was much, much more impressive looking than the trailers it showed last year when the game was formally announced. Then again, this is E3, which is traditionally the time and place for snazzy trailers. Still, this year's E3 will be the first time BioWare actually shows off some of The Old Republic's actual gameplay, and considering that the developer is trying to cram all the single-player story stuff it's become famous for into a massively multiplayer online game, this will be something worth seeing.

Supreme Commander 2 - The original Supreme Commander was both a great real-time strategy game and an impressive technical achievement. Developer Gas Powered Games was, and still is, fronted by designer Chris Taylor, who has been quoted as saying "I like things big," hence, the huge, epic scale of Taylor's award-winning Total Annihilation and the huger scale of Supreme Commander. The studio most recently took a detour with the multiplayer strategy game Demigod, but now that it's back on track to develop a more traditional RTS--and a Supreme Commander sequel at that--it'd be a good idea to sit up and pay attention.

Crysis 2 - The original Crysis was the game everyone wanted and the one nobody could run once it was released. It offered a combination of satisfying shooting action, superhuman powers, small-scale infantry battles, epic-scale alien battles, and graphics that were, at the time, the absolute cutting edge. Crysis 2 was also just revealed at the EA press conference, and though we got barely a glimpse, we expect to see and hear more as the show continues.

APB - I feel like I've been chasing this one for a while. APB is the next game from Real-Time Worlds, founded by Rockstar scion Dave Jones, who seemed like he would dive right in and focus on creating this game...then threw everyone a curveball when his team suddenly announced it would produce Crackdown, the cel-shaded supercop game that seemed to do quite well for itself. Now, the RTW team is apparently back to working full tilt on APB. Will it be a massively multiplayer Grand Theft Auto? We'll find out in the coming days.

League of Legends: Clash of Fates - You may not be familiar with the name, but this is the next game from the creators of the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III. And incidentally, zillions of people still play DOTA. Though it's been followed by the aforementioned Demigod, it will receive its spiritual sequel in League of Legends, which I've played and can tell you is every bit as fast-paced and addictive as DOTA, but better in every way. That's a good thing. We'll have new updates on this one in the coming days as well.