Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Famous for their amazing recreations of Japanese cities and cheerfully absurd tone, the Like a Dragon games have mostly followed the exploits of reluctant gangster Kazuma Kiryu – but this time we’re with in Hawaii, with relative newcomer Ichiban Kasuga and a colourfully strange cast of allies, including one that can murder people with a mop and another with spiked balls for hands. One for those in the mood for a tropical escape that’ll also make you laugh.
• PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC, 26 January
Tekken 8
No other genre blends the stylish and ridiculous like the fighting game, and this latest in Namco’s long-running series throws a promising cast of leopard-men, cyborgs, topless muscle-bound martial artists, boxers and assassins into the ring. An unexpectedly cute new single-player Arcade Quest mode will teach players the basics before they go up against each other online.
• PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC, 26 January
Pacific Drive
Drive out into the Pacific north-west in your continually breaking-down car in the midst of a supernatural anomaly, find supplies and avoid all the sentient-seeming lightning, and repair the trusty vehicle at the garage afterwards – that is, if you survive the excursion. A survival game where the relationship between car and player is the star of the show.
• PlayStation 5, PC, 22 February
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Square Enix has spent about a decade so far remaking its 1997 classic Final Fantasy VII as a beautiful, technically astounding trilogy, and this is the second part. Rejoin Cloud Strife and his party as they attempt to stop ashen-haired supervillain Sephiroth from killing their world. Tetsuya Nomura’s stunning character designs and Nobuo Uematsu’s original score have been remixed and modernised, but haven’t lost their power.
• PlayStation 5, 29 February
Life By You
The first serious competitor to The Sims in more than 20 years gives you an almost worrying level of control and intervention in your little simulants’ lives, letting you drop into their days and either watch them go about their business, or tweak what they say and how they behave. With tremendous potential for player-led storytelling and experimentation, this social sandbox might reveal more than we’d like about our inner nature.
• PC, 5 March
Dragon’s Dogma II
There’s never been a game quite like 2012’s Dragon’s Dogma, Tolkien-esque high-fantasy seen through a Japanese lens. This unlikely sequel returns us to a dangerous fantasy world full of melodrama and enormous beasts. Accompanied by a team of companions that you design yourself, right down to the width of their cheekbones, you head out into the wilds and try your luck against dragons, wraiths and whatever else is lurking. A fantasy game for people who love to fight.
• PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC, 22 March
Baby Steps
Nate is a total loser, but when he is zapped from the comforting surroundings of his parents’ basement to a baffling swamp, he must learn to put one foot in front of the other. As a player you wrestle with the controller to plant Nate’s individual feet on the ground, keeping him upright as much as possible to avoid soiling his already quite grubby adult onesie. A surreal Australian comedy.
• PlayStation 5, PC, summer 2024
Hades II
In Supergiant’s Hades, we took control of Zagreus, the unexpectedly sexy son of Hades, trying to fight his way out of the underworld through a seemingly eternal cycle of death and rebirth. The sequel casts us as his sister Melinoë, princess of the underworld, to take the fight even further than the boundaries of hell. Expect exceptionally clever writing and thirsty interpretations of Greek mythology.
• PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC, summer 2024
Star Wars Outlaws
The Star Wars fatigue is real right now, but nonetheless, Ubisoft Massive’s take on the galaxy far, far away is intriguing. The first ever open-world Star Wars game has you playing a characterful space rogue called Kay Vess, dossing around the galaxy doing crimes with a cute little furry land-axolotl. It looks grimy and exciting and fun, and lets you loose on several iconic Star Wars planets.
• PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC, 2024
Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Described by its developers as “like an unnecessarily horny seaside postcard”, this bizarre adventure game channels the spirit of the Beano and Viz. In a fictional northern town, you help the residents with their bizarro problems, from Big Ron’s Big Pie Shop to the local allotment.
• PlayStation 5, PC, Nintendo Switch, 2024
Animal Well
An eerie and mysterious pixel-art spelunking game that its creator hopes will keep players busy for years trying to unearth its many secrets. You are a little blob of a creature down in the depths, using whatever you can find to distract the larger creatures and prevent them from eating you.
• PlayStation 5, PC, Nintendo Switch, 2024
Still Wakes the Deep
A horror-tinged thriller set on an oil rig in the North Sea in the 1970s, from the masters of immersive storytelling at The Chinese Room, who made Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Witness its super-detailed recreation of Scottish oil rig workers and their grim environment, with its relentlessly brown interiors and steel-grey churning sea – and find out what lurks beneath the drill.
• PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC, 2024
The Plucky Squire
This excessively charming platform game sees its tiny hero leaping from the pages of a storybook into a real-world bedroom – an idea (and an art style) that’s impossible to resist. Looks like a cross between Pikmin and Adventure Time.
• PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC, Nintendo Switch, 2024
Avowed
Starfield was fine and all, but it’s been so long since we’ve had a proper first-person fantasy role-playing epic, and it’ll be years before Bethesda finally releases its follow-up to 2011’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. But here are RPG veterans Obsidian, stepping in with a very fun-looking swords’n’sorcery story to scratch that itch.
• Xbox Series S/X, PC, 2024
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II
Viking mythology is not exactly cheerful at the best of times, and the original Hellblade took its heroine Senua through some pretty gruesome trials and distressingly literal manifestations of mental illness. It was compellingly ambitious, and the sequel continues Senua’s journey, this time accompanied by other warriors as well as the voices in her head.
• Xbox Series S/X, PC, 2024
