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Killer games: Five shooters to look forward to in ’09

Remember when Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus showed Keanu Reeves’ Neo what the real world actually looked like after Neo had been slurped out of his tube in “The Matrix”? It was a scarred, black, barren wasteland. “Welcome to the desert of the real,” Morpheus told him.

That’s what January is to new video games. No disrespect to the computer-animated version of Howie Mandel in Zoo Games’ “Deal or No Deal,” but it’s going to be slim pickings in the pretend-violence world until at least the middle of February. That said, we have a lot to look forward to in 2009, including sequels to at least two — and maybe even three — of my favorite games of all time. Here’s a look at what a little patience will yield this year in the video game world.

Many publishers have only revealed approximate release schedules for titles in the coming year; other games’ drop dates have already changed at least once. Dates are the latest available when Military Times went to press.

Feb. 10: ‘FEAR 2: Project Origin’

A sequel to the well-received 2005 fightin’-monsters-in-the-shadows shooter, “Project Origin” takes place just before the end of the first game, pitting your special operations team against a powerful superpsychic who makes life unpleasant for everyone. The sequel promises more scary encounters with bad guys and monsters, both of whom it’s probably best to kill immediately.

Spring: ‘Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard’

A self-knowing parody of 25 years’ worth of action-game tropes, the early hype for “Matt Hazard” makes me really excited about a video game that’s willing to mock the world of video games. Hazard is a best-selling, tough-as-nails death-dealer (a lot like Master Chief of “Halo” fame, or Duke Nukem) who starts his career in 8-bit “Contra”-style shooters and rises to the top of the genre. But when he runs out of bad guys to kill, his bosses at the gaming company do their best to force him into retirement, making him star in “Mario Kart”-inspired children’s games. In “Eat Lead,” you play as Matt, trying to stay alive in a meta-world constantly being changed by its programmers, being moved in an instant from a modern-style “CounterStrike” world to a Wild West shooter. If it works, this game will not only be fun, it will give the gaming industry a much-needed tweak on the nose.

Spring: ‘Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising’

The original, groundbreaking “Operation Flashpoint” is one of the greatest first-person shooters ever made, with the smartest bad guys, most-accurate weapons and best squad behavior. In “Flashpoint,” you were a U.S. soldier in the 1980s defending three small islands from rogue Soviet invaders who behaved just like their real-life counterparts: They would outflank you if they could, call in reinforcements, vector in air support — and they could drop you with a single shot from across the map. But you could kill their sentries without alerting every other bad guy in the game; drive any vehicle or aircraft; and achieve your mission goals any way you wanted — you could kill the three Spetsnaz commanders with your sniper rifle if you felt like it, but you could also steal a helicopter and liquidate them Michael Bay style. These virtues have since become common in video games, but “Flashpoint” was among the first to have them. Superhuman bad guys and blocky graphics meant that only true tactics-nerds really gave “Flashpoint” its due, but if programmers apply the same formula with Chinese bad guys in “Dragon Rising,” this thing is going to be huge.

Fall: ‘Halo 3: ODST’

Time for some real talk: Neither of the two sequels to the original “Halo” were that great, were they? Some interesting new boards, interesting new weapons, but nothing compared with the epochal power of “Halo” and its amazing multiplayer mode. My theory is that no right-thinking gamer wants to play as an alien when he could play as Master Chief, but that shouldn’t be a concern in “ODST,” which promises human-centric shooter action as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. These troopers are the airborne rangers of tomorrow, dropping in self-contained pods from spaceships in orbit to ruin the afternoons of occupying aliens. As an expansion to “Halo 3,” “ODST” is promising because it likely will dispense with space-opera story lines and focus on multiplayer fightin’ in the future city of New Mombassa, which gamers will remember was the most fun segment of “Halo 2.”

Sometime: ‘Star Wars: Battlefront III’

Publisher LucasArts hasn’t even acknowledged this game exists, but the Web is already in a minor tizzy over leaked early concept art and amazingly cool animation. The first two “Star Wars: Battlefront” titles were endlessly re-playable, graphically gorgeous big-board shooters in which you could choose from a menu of familiar Star Wars characters — including Jedi and Sith in the second game — to lay waste to your opponents in large-scale maneuver warfare. You had access to all the weapons and vehicles found in the classic movies (and the terrible prequels), and you could play either side, defending Echo Base from Darth Vader’s AT-AT walkers or taking down the Rebels’ defenses. Early buzz for the third game indicates even richer graphics, bigger maps and more playable characters, although my suspicion is that fighting the Empire as an Ewok will only be for the hardest-core. The problem is that “Battlefront III’s” development reportedly has been troubled by technical problems and behind-the-scenes tension, so although I’d love to see it as soon as possible, it’s possible this title could appear on the list of what-to-look-for in 2010.