In the next four months gaming will see a concentrated barrage of pure gaming awesomeness. As gamers, we are honored and privileged to be alive in this time to witness this display of gaming goodness. There’s so many big titles coming out that it’s surprising time/space isn’t warped, thus creating some sort of unstable bridge into the virtual realm.

Maybe I’m getting carried away, but the point remains that we’re going to be getting a lot of utterly amazing titles coming our way in the next few months, and, as an avid gamer, I’m planning on playing as many of them as I can physically manage without collapsing from exhaustion. However, I’m a big fan of “what if” scenarios, so I began to ponder on what games I think people should buy if they were only allowed to buy five titles in the next four months. So here we have it, the top five games I think you should play in the coming months.

 

5. Rage

In a market swamped with FPS titles it can be hard to see why people could be excited for Rage, but there’s plenty of good reasons for why you should be excited for id Softwares first game in quite some time. Comparisons to Fallout 3 and Borderlands are ripe thanks to Rage’s post apocalyptic setting, but this isn’t an RPG, it’s a fully bred shooter that also just happens to include insane off-road racing, kick-ass gadgets and some of the most jaw-dropping graphics that have ever graced a console. And it’s all packed onto multiple discs for your gaming pleasure.

 

4. F1 2011

If you’re a petrolhead or F1 lover, there’s little doubt you picked up Codemasters F1 201 last year, and if  you didn’t love it then there’s something wrong with you. But Codemasters haven’t been resting on their laurels for the release of F1 2011. Sure, it contains the usual yearly rule changes like KERs, DRS, car changes and the latest driver positions, but it also contains brand new features like the brilliant online co-op which lets you and a friend join the same team and race an entire season together. Throw in some heavily updated handling to help keep the hardcore realism lovers happy and you’ve got a game that’s looking utterly amazing. And you can knock Vettel off the track!

 

3. Gears of War 3

The epic (don’t start) conclusion to the Gears of War story will finally wrap up all those questions raised in the previous two games, like what the hell is going on with Adam Fenix and the Locust Queen? But if you throw the fate of humanity to one side for the moment, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of new content rammed into Gears of War 3 to ensure this is the series finale that we all deserve. Horde mode has been revamped so you can now build defenses like turrets and walls, encouraging more team-word than ever before. The brand new Beast mode will let us step into the (large) shoes of Locust enemies like the Berserker and take out COG soldiers. Multiplayer has seen some massive changes to its gameplay, as well as new unlockables as you rank up and more. Throw in some shiny new tech to play with like the brutal Silverback mech and Sawn-off Shotgun and Gears of War 3 is looking to be a Game of the Year contender without a shadow of a doubt. But the important thing, the really crucial point, is we finally get to see what happens to the final Carmine brother.

 

2. Battlefield 3

War is hell, but virtual war is awesome. There’s few games out there that can match the chaos and intensity of Battlefield’s multiplayer, and even fewer still that can do it on such a large, epic scale. When Battlefield: Bad Company 2 released last year it gained numerous new fans thanks to its fantastic online battles, and it took the fight to the Call of Duty series by providing a perfect counterpoint to its tighter, more close combat focused gameplay. And Bad Company 2 had tanks. Can’t say no to that. But now its the return of the main Battlefield series, and that means even more carnage is coming to console. Jets will be returning to the multiplayer experience, making it even more of an unnerving experience to be a soldier running across open terrain, along with the ability to go prone, set up your LMG on a tripod, absolutely huge amounts of unlocks and a hell of a lot more. There’s also the new Battlelog service which is a cross-platform social networking service that lets you keep track of Battlefield players across the world. A new co-op mission mode has also been added to the game allowing you and a friend to get busy and kill some bad guys. Only one weak point could exist in Battlefield 3’s armour, and that’s the singleplayer mode, but DICE seem to be making a large effort to ensure that it’s a better experience that previous games in the series.

 

1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

What can possibly be said about this game in such a small space? If you’ve ever played the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, then you know perfectly well why this game is sitting at the top of this list. A vast, sprawling fantasy RPG that looks set to contain hundreds of hours of gameplay and more than enough new features, tweaks and updates to write a thousand-page tome of knowledge. Stand out aspects of the game include Dragons which can ravage entire towns on a whim, a brand new levelling system that does away with set classes and gives you 18 skills and 280 perks to choose from, the ability to forge your own armour and weapons, side-quests that dynamically alter to better suit your character and create more interesting missions, and a new Dragon Shout system that allows you to learn powerful battle cries in the Dragon’s language that can slow down time, teleport or even summon a dragon to your aid and much more. If that’s not enough you can also throw dual wielding spells, weapons or a mixture of both, a total of 16 square miles containing five huge cities and over 150 dungeons to explore, 85 different spells for you to cast and an over-hauled AI system to help bring the world to life. And that’s just a small list of the changes and improvements being made in Skyrim, so do yourself a favour and book yourself a few months off for Skyrim and just immerse yourself in the world.

 

So there we have it, the five games that are coming in the next four months that I believe every gamer should pick up, play and love. However, there’s a lot of other great looking games that are coming out that did’t make this list, like Dark Souls, Modern Warfare 3, Batman: Arkham City and much more.

So, if you could only choose between five games, what would they be?