Sure, sure, we’re all still deeply buried beneath the holiday deluge, but it’s never too early to start coveting the new year’s new games. So here’s a sneak peak at some of the original titles that our thumbs are already sweating over.

Heavy Rain (PS3) Quantic Dreams/Sony
Quantic Dreams’ underrated supernatural adventure Indigo Prophecy was the closest gaming has come to a choose-your-own-adventure cinematic experience. Alas, budget cuts resulted in an abrupt, confusing and perhaps unfinished ending. But Sony's thrown its support behind Heavy Rain as an PS3 exclusive and writer/director David Cage has penned a 2000-page script to cover all possible narrative choices for his “interactive drama.” "The story is not told in cut scenes like in most games. It's told through player's actions,” he assured reporters at the Leipzig Game Convention. “You don't watch the story, you actually play it.”o hopefully the French studio’s long-awaited film-noir follow-up will truly follow through on its predecessor’s promise.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) Rocksteady
Superheroes may be soaring on the big screen, but there’s not yet been a similarly ambitious game—but perhaps that will change with the latest Batman game from Eidos. Rather than being movie tie-in, the Dark Knight’s inaugural now-gen effort is an original story written by Paul Dini (of the brilliant '90s-era Batman: The Animated Series) and inspired by, if sadly not adapted from, Grant Morrison’s cult classic graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. Set in the titular prison for the criminally insane, this game looks dark, twisted and, dare we say, BioShock-esque. 
As a fanboy bonus, Dini brought along his old cartoon cohorts, Mark Hamil and Kevin Conroy, to voice the Joker and Batman. 

Noby Noby Boy (PS3) Namco Bandai
Katamari Damacy creator, and onetime art student, Keita Takahashi is trying to out-surreal himself with his latest effort. Last time out we rolled a sticky ball around an ever-shrinking world, this time we get to control a rainbow-coloured caterpillar-esque creature by stretching its ends in opposite directions. Also you eat, and excrete, stuff. Plus, there are donuts. No, I have no idea how it will play either. But I do know the adorable downloadable PSN game will start out on Earth (colourful screenshots reveal barnyard animals will be involved) before stretching out to the moon and other planets. Should lay claim to the year’s strangest game at the very least.

MadWorld (Wii) PlatinumGames/Sega
Atsushi Inaba’s Clover Studio fall apart not long after they released Okami, but he brought many of his former employees to the less-elegantly titled company PlatinumGames where they’re about to release his newest effort MadWorld. Like last year’s No More Heroes, it will be an ultra-violent game for the family-friendly console. It will also feature stylized, Sin City-inspired graphics—i.e. black and white and blood-red all over. The story concerns a city taken over by terrorists who turn it into a giant life-or-death reality game show.
It’s already proving to be too violent for the old Axis powers—it won’t be released in Germany and may stay off store shelves in Japan, too. 

Ninokuni: The Another World (Nintendo DS)
This hand-held role-player marks the first foray into gaming by Japan’s most acclaimed animation house Studio Ghibli, home to Hayao Miyzaki (Spirited Away). Ghibli will be collaborating with Level-5, who recently scored well with their Professor Layton and the Curious Village and have established RPG cred with the Dragon Quest series and Rogue Galaxy.  
Not much is known about the except that the story involves a young teenager who accidentally caused his mother’s death and who soon finds himself in an alternate reality where his pet cat is a king. Based on pedigree alone, this should be amazing.

Dante's Inferno (Xbox 360, PS3)
Licensed games suck, right? But what if they’re licensed from a 14th century canticle? Yep, EA is not just using Dante’s name in vain, they’re actually basing this third-person horror epic on the first part of Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy (though I doubt we’ll see a Purgatorio or a Paradiso game). It’s only been recently announced—So far all EA has promised is “an abducted soul, a lifetime of sins, a journey to the depths of despair”—but I read it in school and setting a game in Dante’s hell sounds like a pretty scary premise.
With nine increasingly hardcore circles of hell, minotaur guards, flaming heretics, biblical giants and Satan as the mother of all boss battles, this could be a damn fine game.