2023 was heralded as the biggest year in the history of video games to ever video game a game of videos, and as that incoherent word salad would suggest, it was a busy year. That said, 2024 is shaping up to have quite a few big releases to keep you from finishing that massive backlog you piled up last year because you were so busy tormenting Koroks and trying to get to second base with Shadowheart.
Before we get into it, note that video game release dates are about as reliable as weather forecasts at this point so it’s very possible, if not likely, that a few of these get delayed or otherwise moved around. Also, this is by no means a comprehensive list of everything coming out, just a handful of games we thought you’d like to have on your radar – if something you’re excited for didn’t make the cut, it’s nothing personal! If you want a more thorough roundup, every month we put up a new video detailing that month’s upcoming releases, so keep an eye out for that – the January one is already up.
If you’re sitting around checking your enchanted hourglass waiting on that Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake, good news! Ubisoft whipped up a nice 2.5D Metroidvania to hold you over. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown goes back to the series’ side-scrolling platformer roots, but with some modern twists. That’s it for basically everything released on January 18th.
On January 26th, hot on the heels of last year’s new installments of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, Tekken enters the fray with its eighth entry, which is putting those new-gen consoles through their paces and really showing what Unreal 5 can do. That’s on PS5, Xbox Series and PC.
That same day, on new- and last-gen, is Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. That’s an expensive way of saying Yakuza 8, though the series has officially rebranded to its Japanese name, kinda like how Dragon Quest was Dragon Warrior in the west for decades before finally making the switch. Anyway, notable Dragon Quest player Ichiban Kasuga returns for another wacky hero’s journey, and this time he’s brought along with semi-pro Pocket Circuit racer and UFO catcher enthusiast Kazuma Kiryu.
As you probably heard by now, the Arkham architects at Rocksteady are ditching the Dark Knight and trying their hand at a co-op looter-shooter starring Task Force X, better known as The Suicide Squad. The Squad’s mission? Kill the Justice League. The name of this game? The Suicide Squad Kills The Justice League. The release date? February 2nd, for new-gen and PC.
That same day, if you missed Persona 3 when it was on PS2 and then on PSP and later PS Vita, well, shame on you, but also good news because it’s been fully rebuilt as a new, modern console RPG, and it’s coming to everything but Switch… which is sad, because Switch is the closest thing we have anymore to a PSP or Vita.
The original Helldivers was a tough-as-nails, top-down co-op twin-stick shooter about zapping aliens on other planets, and the sequel takes the core gameplay loop but reinvents it from a third-person perspective, adding quite a bit of scale and complexity to missions, and wearing its Starship Troopers influence even more proudly on its sleeve. Would you like to know more? Well, it hits PS5 and PC on February 8th.
One game that has been in the works for a quite while is Skull and Bones. What began as a spin-off of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag’s naval combat has been delayed something like seven times. So pardon me if I’m skeptical that this game will actually come out on February 16th, but that’s what Ubisoft is saying this time. That’s on new-gen, PC and Amazon Luna.
On the 29th, Cloud, Tifa, Barrett and company are back, joined by quite a few familiar faces and turned loose in a massive, sprawling open-world and infinitely more detailed recreation of the original FF7’s overworld map, which you can travel around by chocobo or on a segway if you so desire. FF7 remake was an incredibly ambitious start and it sounds like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is going to be a substantially larger undertaking in all the best ways.
Homeworld 3 is the long overdue follow up to a beloved deep space strategy game released over 20 years ago. On March 8th, this franchise emerges from cryosleep on PC, so here’s hoping it can adapt to life in the 2020s.
On March 20th, one of the great-grandpappies of survival horror gets a new installment. At a glance, Alone in the Dark might seem like another remake along the lines of what Dead Space and Resident Evil did recently, but it’s being framed as a “revival” – which is fitting, given the southern gothic themes. It’s telling a new story, but longtime fans will likely get some deja vu as it’s taking place in Derceto Manor, where the 1992 original was set.
On March 22nd Dragon’s Dogma 2 drops, the feverishly anticipated sequel to Capcom’s criminally underrated open-world action RPG. This has the same kind of extremely vocal fanbase that Demon’s Souls did before FromSoft dropped Dark Souls and it blew up so big it inspired a whole genre. That’s not to say Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the second coming of Dark Souls, but it’ll probably click with Elden Ring fans dying for a big sprawling western fantasy action RPG with crunchy boss fights.
Meanwhile, if you’re ready to commit seppuku because Sony and Sucker Punch have been Shinobi silent regarding another Ghost of Tsushima, Rise of the Ronin might hold you over – and it’ll likely click with antsy Soulsborne fans too. The PS5-exclusive open-world action RPG comes courtesy of Team Ninja, the studio behind last year’s Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, the Nioh games and of course, Ninja Gaiden.
Still on March 22nd, and considerably less punishing than those last two games, there’s Princess Peach Showtime. Mario’s Mushroom Matriarch takes the spotlight in a long-overdue solo adventure of her own. This isn’t a role-playing game in the conventional sense but the whole thing is framed as a stage production, and Peach dons different costumes to play various roles, each with their own abilities. The stages and setpieces will be just that, in a literal theatrical sense. It’ll be nice to see Peach flexing her dramatic range, so here’s hoping it’s a crowd-pleaser. I probably don’t need to tell you that’s exclusively on Switch.
Anyway, if you’re looking for an ass kicking, mark your calendar for August 20th because that’s when the long awaited Black Myth Wukong will finally make its journey westward. Developed by Chinese studio Game Science, this Soulslike pulls from the classic folktale, Journey to the West, which was the original inspiration for Dragon Ball, and was loosely adapted into a video game back in 2010 in Ninja Theory’s Enslaved: Odyssey To The West. Our preview from last year says it’s definitely got some soulsborne DNA, but plays in a way that’s all its own. That’s on new-gen and PC.
Meanwhile, a few weeks and about 38,000 years later, there’s Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, which drops September 9th. Gears of War’s muscle-bound dudes in power armor with chainsaw guns copied Warhammer 40K’s homework just a bit, so it was only fair Warhammer did the same. Back in 2011, the original Space Marine was widely praised as a totally solid Gears-like set against the utterly bonkers backdrop of Games Workshop’s tabletop game. Now, a whole middle schooler’s lifetime later, it’s getting a sequel, which looks to take full advantage of new-gen hardware to render massive swarms of tyranids for you to brutally eviscerate in the name of the Emperor.
Continuing the Warhammer 40K naming convention of Aggressive Word plus Type of Melee Weapon followed by a number, there’s also Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga. The follow up to Ninja Theory’s 2017 sleeper hit, Senua’s Sacrifice, Senua’s Saga looks to be raising the bar in every possible way while maintaining its blend of dark fantasy and psychological horror, with a heavy emphasis on the psychology. That’s on Xbox Series and PC but we do not have a release date quite yet.
Also on Xbox Series and PC with no hard release date is STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl, though that does currently have a release window of sometime in the first quarter of 2024. Considering this game’s development was put on hold so members of the Ukrainian team could step away from their desks to defend their country from invading Russian forces, I don’t think anyone will fault the studio for the long wait, or get mad if the release gets delayed further. It looks like a massively ambitious game and the original is a modern classic, though maybe not exactly modern anymore. In the time since the last STALKER game was released, the actual Chernobyl exclusion zone has become a tourist destination.
From this point onward, the rest of the games listed don’t have release dates or release windows at all – it’s the wild west! Speaking of which, one of these games is Star Wars Outlaws, and it’s wild it took this long to get a game that can be described as “GTA but with speeder bikes and blasters and Jabba the Hutt.” From the looks of things, that’s what Outlaws is shaping up to be – though, to be precise, it’s a Ubisoft game so a more apt comparison might be Watch Dogs with Womp Rats. I’m definitely not complaining at the prospect of an open-world Star Wars game that focuses on the scum and villainy of that galaxy far, far away. I will, however, complain if Bossk and Dengar and Zuckuss don’t show up. Boba Fett’s fine.
Supergiant Games has been chugging along for over a decade regularly putting out colorful, deceptively complex games that have consistently pleased critics and fans alike, and Hades was met with such a unanimously positive reception you can’t blame them for making Hades 2.
For any Persona fans rolling their eyes at all the casual newcomers flocking to Persona 3 Reload, I have just the thing, which you probably already know about: Metaphor: ReFantazio, a brand new RPG in a new universe from a ton of people behind the Shin Megami Tensei / Persona series,
If you want a JRPG that doesn’t go quite as hard in the paint or the fonts in the graphic design department, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remakes the beloved Gamecube game for Switch, which should be a nice follow-up to the Super Mario RPG remake we got in 2023.
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 is yet another long awaited sequel that became even more long-awaited after the decision was made to go back to square one in the hands of a new developer, but the good news is that new developer is The Chinese Room, the studio behind the Amnesia games and Dear Esther.
If the words “Seiken Densetsu” means anything to you, you’re probably well aware of Visions of Mana, but if you’re not it’s the first mainline entry in Square Enix’s beloved ‘Mana’ action-RPG series that got its start as a final fantasy spinoff on the original Game Boy.
There’s no shortage of big, fat fantasy RPGs being cooked up by the various Xbox Game Studios, and Avowed looks like a nice amuse-bouche for anybody licking their chops for Fable or Skyrim 2: Dragon Born Again AKA The Elder Scrolls 6.
This list isn’t alphabetical but Zenless Zone Zero has too many Zs in the title to not put it last. It’s the next free-to-play action RPG from the Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail team, and this one has a super stylish quasi-futuristic urban setting, and is coming to mobile and PC, and probably console at a later date.
Speaking of which, Genshin is expected to hit Switch at some point – and there’s the very good possibility that Nintendo will drop a new console entirely, whether that’s a Super Switch, a Switch-U or something else entirely, which of course will have its share of new games at launch and thereafter.
There’s a ton of stuff we haven’t covered: Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is likely to be a substantial expansion to an already massive game, there are rumblings about the next Doom game, possibly a prequel, and then other long-awaited sequels like Metroid Prime 4 and Dragon Age: The Dread Wolf Rises, to name a few.
Let us know in the comments if we’ve missed a game you’re looking forward to in 2024.