4) Bayonetta (360, PS3)

Hideki Kamiya, creator of Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami, seeks to resurrect the third-person hack-and-slash game. At first glance, Bayonetta looks like Devil May Cry with a female protagonist and wonderfully sexy, over-the-top, "gun heels" (that’s right, the heels on her boots are revolvers; how cool is that?), but Kamiya insists that it’s an entirely different beast. It’s hard to tell until we get a chance to play it, but the differences between games in the genre are often very subtle nuances that may not be apparent at first glance. Given Kamiya’s track record, I’d say he knows what he’s doing and that there’s a reason he’s not just making a sequel to an existing franchise. With Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, and God of War all in full-on sequel mode, this could make for a fresh reinvention of the genre.

3) Madworld (Wii)

Since the closure of wunderkind studio, Clover, creators of such titles as Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and God Hand, many of their members branched off to form Platinum Games. Madworld will be their maiden game, and it looks to be a worthy successor to their legacy. Utilizing cel-shaded graphics with a black and white with red all over color scheme, Mad World looks a bit like Frank Miller’s Sin City in full 3D. The story deals with an organization of terrorists taking over Varrigan City and reducing it into a Running Man-esque game show called, "Death Watch" where citizens must kill each other for survival. The idea is that you’ll gain a higher rating based on how varied and clever your murdering is, and from what we’ve seen so far, you can throw thugs onto a giant dartboard of spikes, kick them into an iron maiden, impale a sign post through their heads, hold their bodies against a moving train, or stick to the good ’ol chainsaw-to-the-head strategy. Really, it makes No More Heroes look like a trip to Disneyland, and I for one, couldn’t be happier.