This is obviously a pipe dream and one that will never EVER come true, and any belief otherwise is foolish, but it doesn’t mean we can’t imagine the glory that would befall us if Gaben descended from his floaty throne made of steam clouds and empty wallets, and dropped the bomb of a Half Life 3 beta. While most betas for games tend to be multiplayer, it doesn’t mean that an alpha, beta, or even a screenshot wouldn’t be nice. Of course, Valve doesn’t actually attend E3, or at least haven’t done so for a long time, so our chances are even thinner. The reality is, I had to stick Half Life 3 into the list really, I mean it wouldn’t be a good list of things we want if HL3 didn’t poke it’s head out somewhere.

Last year, there were a few good announcements, and a few great ones. No Man’s Sky was even better sounding than even the greatest. While all we really have to go on is pre-alpha footage and the words of the charmingly bashful Sean Murray, the lead developer of No Man’s Sky. Whether it is his enthusiasm in his design, or the hopeful promises that we all want to believe, No Man’s Sky looks to be huge in both it’s in game universe and it’s success. So to really find out if a game of it’s scale will work, it would be sensible for Hello Games to do some kind of open test. We can hope, can we not?

Since its announcement in 2013, I have been waiting as patiently as is possible for The Division to get a solid release date. The Division looks like someone took DayZ, added RPG elements such as skill trees, put a AAA skin on it and let it lose in an apocalyptic New York city. The latest Tom Clancy title is shaping up to be quite a packed game, with PVP, PVE and cooperative style game play, all in an open world Manhattan. With a survival game that involves open world PVP, it wouldn’t be a surprise if some sort of beta was revealed to ensure the quality that the Division team are obviously striving for. As one of the first AAA titles that tackles the new and popular genre of open world survival craft, it would be a shame if it’s launch encountered issues that could have been avoided with a little first hand research.

DICE has been known for the Battlefield series for a long time now, and whether or not you like all their titles, it is plain to see that not many shooters match the scale and intensity of a Battlefield match. For this reason alone, I have a massive amount of confidence in DICE’s vision of Star Wars Battlefront. Set to release a month before the 7th films Yuletide première, it is likely to bring about a new era of star wars games and merchandise. Star Wars has always had a very large merchandising set up, and there are countless great video games that are thrown in with the mix of toys and other consumer favourites. The previous Battlefront titles being huge favourites in the mass of memorabilia and fun to be had with the Star Wars universe. But with Disney’s purchase of Lucas Arts, and the cancellation of Star Wars 1313, a very promising looking title that placed you in the grittier than usual boots of a bounty hunter, there is a certain amount of pressure to deliver a stellar Star Wars game. With Battlefield titles previously having Betas, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if we found ourselves battling long ago in a galaxy far far away, before the full release of Battlefront.

Though the strongest part of any of the Uncharted title is obviously the single player story, it has its own element of fast paced fun in the multiplayer aspects. Uncharted 3’s multiplayer was even released as a free to play standalone. Though there are obviously restrictions on the free version of Uncharted multiplayer, it still has high octane fun ready for any with a PS3 and the space to download it. With Uncharted 4 bringing the series to the PS4, it would be surprising if Naughty Dog don’t try and make the multiplayer, a more central aspect of the game, after all, games with a decent online mode offer a lot more re-playability. What better way to advertise a game than letting people get their hands on it and have a go at the combat, and what better way to do this without spoiling any storyline, than with a multiplayer beta?

All these titles (with the exception of Half Life 3) are pretty much guaranteed to release either this year or next (though there would be no surprise at all if they took an extra year each to be completed), so it may not be too far fetched to expect to get our hands on one of these titles, or many others, earlier than the full launch. There are plenty of other titles that I would love to get into early, including many indie or crowd funded games, but as mentioned previously, there seems to be a trend of letting people play your games before they are finished. Whether you are for or against this style of development, the sure thing is that Alphas and Betas are essential to gettin