3 Most anticipated Games of 2014

Thief 

February 25 for PS3 / PS4 / XB360 / XB1 / PC

As that simple title suggests, this Thief is a reboot of the stealth action series that began back in 1998 and last gave us Deadly Shadows a full decade ago. You play once again as the master thief Garrett, who uses his wits and stealth moves to steal from the rich in a steampunk-inspired fantasy world (that also happens to be suffering from a bit of the plague). Garrett will be played by a different actor this time, whose movements were incorporated into the game via motion capture.

The Sims 4 

tbd fall for PC 

It's time to brush up on your Simlish. EA's massively successful and surprisingly compelling furniture-buying/TV-watching/house-cleaning/sleeping simulation The Sims returns for its fourth go-around this fall, and it already seems to have learned at least one lesson from the publisher's disastrous SimCity reboot: it will be a completely offline, single-player game. (Of course, your Sims 3 saves won't carry over to the new game, but that's a different story.)Sims 4 will have a greater focus on emotions—whatever those are—and will undoubtedly be followed by a half dozen expensive expansions in the coming years.

Dark Souls II 

March 11 for PS3 / XB360 | tbd spring for PC

A sequel to the notoriously challenging 2011 action-RPG game Dark Souls, Dark Souls II retains the previous game's controls and extreme difficulty level, but puts you in a world that's twice as large. (It's a completely different setting than the prior game.) Sure, the early going is reported to be "more accessible" to newcomers, but rest assured that the game was designed to be hard. Note that while the PC release has been delayed slightly, the PC version should be much stronger out of the gate than the previous game (which required modding to improve the graphics).