5. Watch Dogs
Watch Dogs (or WATCH_DOGS if you prefer) already has the dubious accolade of having changed things permanently. By introducing us to the word 'mingleplayer' to describe its multi-player component, it has forever tainted the sacred English language. Despite that most heinous of trespasses, the title, delayed until next year has a number of features that have already wowed onlookers, by actually being quite original. Watch Dogs is a game about information warfare and hacking. The protagonist Aiden Smith is as likely to hack into a traffic system to cause a startling car accident and slip away from a gunfight as he is to resort to actually shooting someone. Although many of aspects of the game look familiar enough to fans of open-world games, some of the ideas could truly break new ground. Of particular note is the aforementioned online component, which can see another player secretly join your game and attempt to stealthily extract data from your smart phone as you go about your normal business. If they're successful, the game turns into a tense cat and mouse experience as you attempt to retrieve the stolen data - expect spirited parkour chases and epic gunfights. The most exciting thing about this mode is the intense paranoia it could bring to the game, knowing that at any point someone could be stalking you silently from the rooftops, or simply blending in with the impressively rendered open world. Expect to start shooting at shadows or freaking out at the suspicious actions of nearby NPCs as you come to recognize that safety is just an illusion.