I love doing these “next year’s most wanted” threads.
ROTK total war: this still looks totally great and they’re putting real novel design effort into it which is possibly the best thing that could ever happen to this genre or to Chinese funding in 2019. March?
Judge Eyes: it will be very surprising if this isn’t just pure candy for people who like the yakuza games or crimes or crime shows
Disco Elysium: it’s like judge eyes except it’s a CRPG that everyone who’s touched seems to adore and apparently the chapo boys are doing the VA now. good year for crime fans
Ori 2: I was underwhelmed by the first but I’m feeling good about Microsoft as a publisher right now plus they hired the Intrusion 2 guy and it will be very pretty
Otogi 3: I wasn’t really excited about this when it was announced as Activision getting a kick at the big ol’ souls can but the last round of videos made it look like Tenchu and now I am irretrievably pumped. Also March.
Noita: this looks Spelunky-level fantastic every time it turns up, it’s like someone committed to making a stone soup sized roguelike as a platformer and they’re actually getting it right. For fans of Norway and low level programming.
Qud: still hasn’t had a full release, still great but could stand to diversify playthroughs a little more in narrative terms given the rest of what it’s doing, let’s hear it for Qud.
The Tingler: Escape from Necron 7: Zoe Quinn has merged with the Barkley team but as more of a The Fly situation so rather than them forming a dev dream team it’s not clear if they’ll be able to learn to use a keyboard and mouse again in time to complete their games, someone help
Pathologic 2: look they should probably ship this already, it’s not exactly going to be a barnstormer and I’ve posted about it every year
Spelunky 2: I don’t know how to handle more than one Spelunky in my life. Will it surpass it as my go-to game-I-play-for-fifteen-minutes? Will it sit comfortably by its side? Will it disappoint? I can’t wait to find out.
Anodyne 2: I need to catch up with Sean Han Tani’s first game in this series, but this new one looks spectacular.
Sekiro: This is exactly the kind of game I hoped From would make after Bloodborne.
Wattam: Any Takahashi Keita game is good by me.
UFO 50: I’m stupid excited for this. That two of the people involved are responsible for two of my favorite games of the last decade–Spelunky and Downwell–is just unbelievably good news.
yeah I’m still expecting KRZ Act 5 (which is a biiiiig one), Polybius PC and Just Cause 4 before I draw any verdicts for the end of this year but I don’t think we’ll see too much else at this point
Anthem is a make or break for Bioware and it sounds like they’re dropping the formula for building on the multiplayer chops.
Rage 2 has a fun floor because of id tech 6 but I could be very, very wrong.
Metro Exodus is among the last of the scoped-up eurogames to come out.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is supposedly 2019?
Daemon X Machina and Left Alive are both interesting enough mecha projects to check out.
Honestly the 2019 Destiny expansion could be lore-fascinating if they cash the checks they’re writing now (this could be said of all Destiny expansions).
This year has been underwhelming compared to 2017 but I think I just need to play Hitman and dig into Forza Horizon 4.
oh yeah I have Rage 2 and Metro Exodus and Youngblood all pretty much even with Just Cause 4 and Hitman 2, like “I wasn’t expecting a sequel to any of these so soon but I’m sure they’ll all be solid”
I’ve had a fun year, on top of still looking forward to KRZ.5 I’ve hugely enjoyed forza / planetoid pioneers / deadfire / sprint vector and semi-hugely enjoyed monhun / dead cells / wreckfest / bloodstained / six ages, plus this was the year that everyone took notice of how good siege had become and I played a huge amount of that.
i guess I also want all of the other ninja games year of the ninja: playstation middleware grass ninja, from ninja, from-clone ninja 2, super super nintendo ninja