With the arrival of the end of the semester, and it being my final semester of school EVER, I have been thinking a lot about the future. About what it may hold for me, what I will be doing in the coming years, what I will look like, and what games are coming out! If I am going to be quite honest, the lineup of coming games is not super intriguing to me. There are a few games here and there that look cool to me, but ultimately I know that I will not play them. That is the reason why this blog is not titled: Sam’s Top 10 Most Anticipated Games. I am not sure I can come up with 10. The existence of some of the games on this list has not even been confirmed yet, but I have hope… for the future!
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
I have recently been replaying Elden Ring as I grind out my final days as a college student. The experience has been reminding me of how frustrating parts of that game are, but I must prepare myself for the expansion that releases next month. I even watched a two-and-a-half-hour lore video as I was packing up my apartment today to prepare myself for the new juicy story additions. The trailer for this has me very excited. It looks like it will introduce more enemy variety. Some really cool bosses and chump enemies were shown, and some looked like they are going to make me very angry. The trailer also showed off some awesome new weapons and armor, and I believe some new spells were shown as well. I will probably play the expansion on the character that I originally beat the game with, a goblin wizard whose name escapes me as I write this, but it was something like: Pumpert.
XCOM 3
The existence of this game only exists in my head as of writing this post, but I am trying my hardest to will a trailer into existence. XCOM 2 has consumed a worrying amount of my lifetime, and it is a scary thought to imagine what a new and improved installment may do to my adult life. At the end of the second game, the good guys win, and humans and aliens began living together in harmony on earth. This makes it hard to think of a story for a third installment. They released a smaller game called XCOM Chimera Squad, that was about a police force composed of both humans and aliens taking down enemy crime organizations in one specific city. Maybe the elders emerge as a threat once again and the player gets to use their own forces against them. That would be so sick. I have seen people floating around the idea (pun intended) of an ocean-based game, since one of the older versions of XCOM took place at the bottom of the ocean. Cool idea, but I do not see how they could work that into the current narrative.
Judas
Bioshock Infinite is one of my favorite games of all time. If I am remembering correctly, I forgot to include it on my top 10 games list, which is a huge oversight on my part. I dressed up as Booker Dewitt for Halloween one year and even on costume day during spirit week in high school. That game had a chokehold on me. The people who made Bioshock Infinite are making this game, Judas, as well. It is a first-person action story game, similar to the Bioshock series, that takes place on a space station. The art style of the game looks right up my alley. It reminds me of another game I have played, Prey. They seem to have a similar story from what I have seen in the trailer, but Judas seems to have this Borderlands-adjacent energy to it that I am excited to see play out.
Marvel Rivals
I have put an embarrassing amount of hours into Overwatch, and I will continue to do so despite my own best interest. This game seems like it will house a similar gameplay loop. It is a team-based hero shooter, however, it is in third-person, unlike Overwatch. I love the cast of characters they have announced. I will most likely be a Rocket Raccoon, Star Lord, or Dr. Strange main. Games of this genre have struggled to perform in the past, but I am excited to see if it does well. Overwatch has been throwing itself off a cliff for a while now, so maybe this will give me something new to scratch that itch.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Indiana Jones has been my favorite franchise since I was a little kid. Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite movie of all time. I have one hundred percented Lego Indiana Jones, and I have a box set of the original trilogy. The studio behind this game, Machine Games, has put out bangers in the past as well, so I have very high hopes for this. They are the studio behind the most recent Wolfenstein games. Wolfenstein is a series about killing Nazis, so it is a fitting choice of game studio to make an Indiana Jones game as well if you think about it that way. I was not expecting it to be a first-person game when it was announced, but I have faith that it will hold up to my expectations.
Risk of Rain 2: Seekers of the Storm
This is the second expansion to one of my favorite games ever, but it took the developers over a year after PC release of the first one to get it out to us console players. Due to that and a lack of release date, I am keeping my excitement for this reigned in until I can get more information. The DLC will include multiple new survivors to play as. That alone adds hundreds of hours of gameplay, but they are also adding new stages, new items, as well as new enemies. This combined with the sheer amount of quality content already in the game is why I love Risk of Rain 2 so much. They do not skimp out on quality or quantity. They will throw so much cool stuff in your face and I love it.
Hades 2
Hades is a game that I never got to finish, but I absolutely loved it while I was experiencing it. It got taken off of game pass while I was in the middle of playing it, so I lost access to the game in its entirety. I am a broke college student, so I never got the money to buy the full game and complete it. The new protagonist look super sick. She has this witchy aesthetic to her, and that it something I have always loved. The character design in the first game was gorgeous, and it looks like they are sticking with the same style, so I am waiting in excitement to see the art that this new installment will hold. I am also ready to bash my head against a wall while playing it, because the first game was very hard. I am sure the second one will be just as difficult, if not even harder than the original.
Slay the Spire 2
While at school I worked a job where I could just sit in a room and do my homework. Most of that time was actually spent playing Slay the Spire. I was not expecting this game to get a sequel at all, but I was very happy when I saw the trailer come up during the iii initiative livestream a few weeks ago. I am a sucker for board games and for roguelikes, and the original game scratched both of those itches. They showed off two returning characters, the Ironclad and the Silent, as well as a new character. It looks like they will be some sort of necromancer. I am sure I will waste a lot of time on this on as well.
Darkest Dungeon 2 Console Release.
I actually own this game on PC, but my computer is so bad that I do not like to even turn it on. I bought it back when the game came out in early access, so I think I still have access to it. The game got announced for a playstation release date recently, but still no xbox release. What I played of the game was super satisfying. It kept a lot of the charm from the original title, but changed most of the core gameplay in a way that is very refreshing. Let me play It on Xbox!
