Let’s face it, 2017 has been something of a mixed bag for quality console games. In fact, we’ve already talked about how 2017 had a lot of disappointments (Mass Effect has broken my heart for the last time.) So with the video game console industry clearly on shaky legs, do we really have anything to look forward to? Will the darkness ever end? As if we didn’t have enough to be mocked about from the master race of PC Gamers. Now here comes 2018, which will no doubt just keep on shoveling more sub-par games onto our shoulders until the entire console industry collapses and society itself begins to end itself. It all started with Silent Hills, that was the death toll, and now we march ever forward into an unknown abyss populated by nothing but the E.T. video game and old snuggies. Why have you forsaken us, Konami?! What have we done to wrong you?!
OK, so while I will never get over the fact that Silent Hills was canceled, I am still something of an optimist, despite what that long-winded and melodramatic previous paragraph suggests. 2018 is actually shaping up to be a stellar year for video games, with some big AAA titles as well as some stellar looking indie games. You see, the future isn’t totally bleak. There’s some killer stuff right around the corner, and they may have flown right under your radar! So let’s put some spring back in your step and get you excited for the new year of games.
25 Keep Your Asgard Up
The God of War franchise has been going strong since, wait, this can’t be right, 2005?! Really? How is there even anything left for Kratos to do? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him both die multiple times, and kill everyone multiple times. Well, what do I know, since apparently after cutting a bloody swathe through the entire pantheon of Greek Gods, he now looks to retire inside the world of Norse mythology. I actually think that’s a cool way to breathe new life into a franchise that has plateaued. Kratos is a pretty basic character, all brooding and muscles, and transporting that basic element into a brand new local is a fairly simple but winning formula. Plus I’ve always personally found Norse Mythology better than Greek Myths. You can’t tell me with a straight face that you wouldn’t love to see Kratos pummel Loki face first into the dirt. Exactly, you could make a three hour game based on that premise alone. That’s a majority of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Follow the Ghost of Sparta in the new trailer here.
24 A Little Closer To Home
The Far Cry series is pretty great. I know it always has its’ detractors, but we have to be honest, most of the games are immensely playable. Sure, they waver in quality, with some being huge and fun to explore, and some being fully completed in a weekend. But Ubisoft has always put a lot of care into these games, taking risks and trying new things, and even if they don’t pan out, they should be commended for that.
Far Cry 5 definitely looks like it is trying out something new. After the tepid response from the previous game, it makes sense that the developers would go back to a formula they know works with interesting characters, but retool it in a way that feels fresh, with setting right here in our own backyard of North America. Set in some backwoods county that has more religious fervor than law enforcement, the newest installment in the Far Cry games looks to be both fun and innovative.
Get lost on the back roads in this trailer.
23 Now With Less Carl
Hold onto your butts, there’s a new Walking Dead video game coming out in 2018! Yes, I’m fully aware that there are already like five games based on The Walking Dead. No, this isn’t from Telltale. It’s actually from Overkill, hence the superfluously foreboding title Overkill’s The Walking Dead. Overkill are the same mad geniuses that brought us Payday 1 & 2 so you can imagine what they will create once they get their hands on everyone’s favorite post-apocalyptic title.
Honestly, the most selling feature for me is that there will be no mention of Clementine. She’s cute, and strong or whatever, but let’s get on to another character. I might also be excited that my research suggests that Merle Dixon might totally show up in this game, and he was way too underused in the show.
Grab a studded bat and take a swing at this new trailer.
22 You Check In, You Don’t Check Out
Two years ago the world was introduced to the topsy turvy world of Until Dawn and we have all been better for it. With celebrity faces and voices to help guide us through the world of prankster and sadistic friends who are also surrounded by Wendigo, this survival horror was an instant classic. With multiple storylines, with decisions that result in multiple endings, this game had a ton of replay value, which is rare in horror games, I find.
So 2018 brings us The Inpatient, a prequel to Until Dawn set 60 years before the events of the game. Little is known about the plot, other than it involves that classic story of a man with amnesia waking up in what is clearly an evil mental institution (it’s been done before, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.) The game promises more of the branching narrative that the first game brought us with brand new locales and characters. It even seems to be aiming for a mostly VR release, which may be a good or bad thing.
Check out the trailer here.
21 Started At The Bottom
The Last Night began life after creators Tim and Adrien Soret participated in a six day, cyper-punk themed game jam. The game they developed was gorgeous, and won the competition. After the brothers made the game free to play online, people wanted more, so Sorets rolled up their sleeves on got to work giving the people what they want. That was almost four years ago, and the culmination of all that work comes out next year.
The premise of the game seems to be a dystopian future where most of the world lives in prosperity and leisure. Except your character, of course, otherwise there would be no conflict. If you want to play a game of boring leisure go play The Sims. There’s talk of elements of stealth, gunfights and more pixelated sci-fi than you can shake a stick at.
Oggle the pixelated glory in this trailer.
20 Swing Into The New Year
Anyone who didn’t like Spider-Man: Homecoming is either a skinwalker or Andrew Garfield. It was charming, with fun action, well fleshed out characters and a pleasant dose of comedy. This game is not affiliated with that movie in any way, but you can bet your web-shooters that it will be riding that wave of excitement. Developed by Insomniac Games, who brought us stuff like Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet & Clank, the game will focus on a 23 year old Spider-Man who has recently defeated his longtime enemy, The Kingpin. That all sounds like standard comic book fare, and I don’t say that with any ill intent. Comic books are the bees knees, and a good comic book game can be incredible. In fact, the old tie-in games for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies had a good run of being fun. Let’s hope this new title can tap into some of that old magic.
Let this trailer tingle your spidey senses.
19 The True Agony Is Waiting
I love horror, and I especially love horror video games. Seeing something evil up on the screen is awesome, but being legitimately hunted by something sinister, where instead of shouting out the characters how to best survive, you are actually in control of the situation, now that’s immersion. You don’t run upstairs to get away from the serial killer, you run out the front door and scream forever and ever. We all feel that we are smarter than those screen characters. But are we smart enough to escape Hell itself?
That seems to be the working premise for the new game Agony. Playing as a demon called a Martyr and having been stripped of all your memories, you must use your new powers of possessing people to find a way to get the heck out of heck. All of the artwork and trailers have let audiences know this is going to be a brutal affair, so if that is your cup of red tea, 2018 is looking pretty good.
Brace yourself for this painfully great trailer.
18 A Reason To Smile
It’s almost impossible that you haven’t heard of We Happy Few. A psychological trip to an alternate timeline version of England, where people stay in a constant state of synthetic bliss through drugs use. You need to stay happy in this world, lest you be labelled a “downer” at which point the citizens will all reject you and hunt you. Yeah, it sounds like kind of a trippy and depressing mess, which should be fun.
Looking like a mix of Bioshock and Brave New World this game seems like it will work out your mind as much as your thumbs. The aesthetics of the game looks beautifully retro while also maintaining that dystopian and horrifying feel. By the way, if that didn’t sound like enough high tension, this game totally has permadeath. When’s the last time a developer had the guts to add that to their game?
The newest trailer will put a grin on your face.
17 Putting Detroit Back On The Map
Developer Quantic Dream could let me down over and over again and I would still probably forgive them (although Beyond: Two Souls really tested that theory.) I loved Heavy Rain despite some of its’ more insane moments. It was, at its’ core, a detective story, and video games do not have enough of those. So when they announced that they were going to release a neo-noir thriller, I was all over that like glitches in a Quantic Dream game.
Detroit: Become Human does not look like a new story, with it really looking like a riff on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and to a lesser extent Blade Runner. That being said, there are a thousand ways to make a story about androids struggling with their new found sentience that would keep it captivating, plus the presence of permadeath and multiple endings make this an actual storytelling experience.
Become more than human in this awesome trailer.
16 Don’t Call Them Zombies
Playstation really pushed DAYS GONE on audiences at E3, like it was going to be the next The Last of Us. Let me tell you right now, it will not be. The Last of Us was a interesting because it presented something that wasn’t zombies, though they essentially functioned like zombies. Not to mention, it’s a world populated with moral ambiguity, with a character that starts as a caring dad and does a full progression to find himself back in that role, sacrificing humanity to get there. DAYS GONE took a carbon copy of the Norman Reedus character Daryll from Walking Dead and transplanted him into a less interesting world. PS can gush over the weather and day/night physics all it wants, this game looks boring as heck, because we have played this exact game before. Honestly, the character is a former bounty hunter. How lame is that? Could the attempt at being cool be more transparent? Also, in order to distance themselves from the zombie cliche, this game calls their monsters “freakers” despite them just being rotten and crazy corpses.
Prepare to see more of the same in this trailer.
15 This Franchise Is Still Alive
I am not overly familiar with the Front Mission franchise of games and associated media, but considering they started in 1995 and will have a new game coming out in 2018, there must be something to them that keeps fans coming back. The basic plot of the Front Mission universe is that during the 21st and 22nd century, multiple conflicts arise between supranational unions. These stories tend to be standalone, but weave throughout a continuous universe.
Most of the games in the franchise are turn based affairs, but Left Alone seems to be a third person shooter set within this theoretical realm of conflict. Outside of that, I have very little details. Even the trailer gave us very little, simply showing a futuristic Russian town under siege by huge war mechs. And that’s all we get, coupled with some melodramatic quotes about the nature of man.
See if you can make more sense out of the trailer here.
14 Games Find A Way
The Jurassic Park franchise has a pretty storied history of video games, some good, some bad. Heck, I bet you can’t go see a movie at your local theatre without seeing some form of Jurassic Park arcade game absolutely obliterating the source material with some hyper brutality. With the recent Jurassic World a few years behind us and with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom coming out in 2018, it makes sense that someone would want to capitalize on the recent outbreak of dino-fever (second worst thing to catch after Hulkamania.)
Jurassic World: Evolution is basically Sim City but with a huge dinosaur themed park that will inevitably break down and cause people to get eaten. We pretty much have this exact game on our phones right now, but it will be cool to see what the console version adds to it, especially since it is being released to coincide with the new movie. Maybe some memorable characters from the film franchise will make a few guest appearances.
Evolve your taste in video games with this new trailer.
13 What Is Best In Life?
Set within the awesome and violent world of Conan The Barbarian comes an open world experience where, after being rescued from the titular Conan, you must set out for yourself into The Exiled Lands. You’ll meet your standard fare of hyenas, crocodiles and rhinos, as well as the less-standard-for-us but more-standard-for-Conan bunch of dinosaurs, undead creatures and plain human savages. Not to worry, some of those savages can enthralled by you, and end up working for you to provide supplies.
While at first glance this whole thing seems like a reskinned Elder Scrolls that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Besides, Conan has been around longer, plus there are way more skimpy outfits and decapitations in Conan then there could ever be in Skyrim. So sharpen your axe and prepare to see your enemies driven before you, because 2018 is going to slap you right in the middle of the days of high adventure with Conan Exiles.
Crom! Look at this trailer!
12 This Game Will Suck!
And when I say suck, I mean blood. Next year brings us Vampyr which is going to be about, well, I guess the title says it all. Set during the 1918 spanish flu pandemic, you will play a doctor newly infected with vampirism. How will this affect your Hippocratic Oath? The game promises to leave this question up to the player, with the ability to complete the game without causing any other deaths. We know this kind of thing can be done, we saw it executed near flawlessly in Dishonored. Also, like Dishonored, we know that if we play through it peacefully, we are going to play through it again as bloodthirsty as possible. So already this game is promising to have a lot of replayability. It also claims that different sections of the locale, 1918 London, can be destroyed via your actions, which sounds awesome. I mean, if you are into wanton destruction, maybe that isn’t everyone’s thing.
Whet your whistle on this trailer.
11 Old West, New Faces
It’s easy to forget how completely cool the full trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2 was after it got overshadowed by the announcement of the Nintendo Switch. I have nothing against the Switch, I’m sure it is a great system and has a ton of features and portability and Mario’s mustache is more detailed than ever, but seriously, they could have let RDR2 have a few more moments in the spotlight. The first two games (don’t ask about the naming and numerical sequencing, it’s worse than the Rambo movies) knocked it out of the park, and as far as I can tell, the same vigor is going to be brought into the new title.
The game is a prequel, and other than the inclusion of Dutch, the antagonist from the last game, little is known about the plot. There seems to be some sort of need to collect money that your character is owed, and the same sense of moral ambiguity that snaked throughout the adventures of John Marston seems to be a reoccurring theme here as well.
Feast your eyes on the trailer here.
10 What Year Is It?
The original ToeJam & Earl franchise was weird. That’s all I’m gonna say to describe it. Weird. ToeJam had three legs and eye stalks, while wearing a backwards baseball cap and a large gold medallion. Earl sported hightops and sunglasses, while being a fat, orange weirdo. These two crash land on earth and hijinks ensue.
I’m next to certain the original game meant to be a satire of 1991’s culture, so transporting these characters into consoles for modern audiences might not be the smartest idea. Duke Nukem tried the same move, and all the jokes that our fragile little minds laughed at in the nineties are too jaded for even a chortle after years of the internet. So 2018’s ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove might not meet the fanfare it is expecting, but I’ve been wrong before.
Funk out to the newest trailer, which is admittedly pretty cool.
9 Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
Sometimes I get really fed up with having to obliterate other players, or, more accurately, being mercilessly obliterated BY other players. It’s nice when games promote cooperation between two players to get a task done. In that spirit comes A Way Out, which some reviewers are already claiming is the perfect co-op game. A bold claim for a game that has yet to be released, but from what we’ve seen, the potential is there.
A story driven game about two convicts on the lam, the duo will be controlled by two different players, either through online play or split screen. There is no single player campaign, which is actually pretty weird, but also kind of cool. The story for both characters unfolds simultaneously. so you’d better learn to play nice if you expect to see any advancements. This can either be a great experience or instantly make you hate strangers, I’m guessing.
Decide whether this is a good idea or a bad one by checking out the trailer here.
8 The Geometry Of This Game Is All Wrong
I have a huge soft spot for H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. He was such a fluent writer (getting past all the rampant racism, which I’ll admit is a bitter pill to swallow) that genuinely refused to properly describe many of his creatures because he believed that the human mind couldn’t handle the nature of these abstract horrors. Of course, he was also prone to fainting spells, so maybe he was projecting his own weaknesses a bit.
Next year plans to give us another attempt at submerging us in the horrors of The Old Ones with the upcoming Call of Cthulhu not to be confused with a similarly named games for years gone by. This one promises to be extra weird as you play a private investigator tasked with looking into the murder of an entire family. As you can expect, this leads to you uncovering a conspiracy to bring Cthulhu back to life, which isn’t optimal.
7 Not Alone In The Trenches
The game Ad Infinitum has been on my radar for a while now, so when I hear they are planning a 2018 release, I’m a bit skeptical. It seems like this game has had one cool trailer floating around the internet for a few years, but there has been a peak in activity as of late, so let’s hope this game actually ends up seeing the light of day.
Set in the trenches of some unknown World War 1 conflict, you’ll play an unarmed soldier desperately trying to stay alive. The thing is, the enemy’s gunfire isn’t the only thing trying to kill you, there’s something else in those foxholes with you. Looking a lot like Amnesia but with more overhead explosions, I’ve been excited for this game for years, and so should you. The trailer shows you just enough of a vague monster to send chills down your spine, and those are the best kinds of monsters.
Take cover from this trailer.
6 Protect Your Booty
The upcoming Sea of Thieves looks to be an interesting addition to the X-Box library, mostly because the first review of it claimed it was one of the funniest games they had ever played. Comedy isn’t something that is at the forefront of a review, so that definitely peaked my curiosity. A sea faring epic with moments of mysticism and comedy woven throughout? That sounds like the Monkey Island franchise come back to haunt us in the best way imaginable.
The game claims to be an open world, cooperative multiplayer experience, which sounds dazzling, and all trailers have shown the art style to be both mesmerizing and quirky. Not going for realism and instead going for a cartoonish, exaggerated look, this upcoming title will probably be worth countless hours of swashbuckling fun for you and your friends.
Feel the spray of the sea on your face with the latest trailer here.
