2022 is almost over, which means it's basically over already, and who cares about the old, lets only care about the new!
But really, what are folks looking forward to next year? For me...
Legends of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - BOTW is one of my favorite Zelda games of all time, I'm not 100% sure if it's THE top, but it's pretty close. Not that it doesn't have issues, but I'm hoping that's solved with this sequel. Less shrines, bigger and more dungeons with proper boss fights, better music, and while I don't hate the weapon degrading feature, I think it would be better to not have that and maybe work out something new, like add blacksmithing that lets you create a few custom weapons that you can carry on you and switch between and upgrade. There's a lot they can do to make this game pretty crazy.
Atomic Heart - It's like you took Bioshock, the future-retro scifi feel of Wolfenstein, replaced Nazi's with the Soviet Union, and then you had in Mick Gordon for the music and I'm into it. I'm not like 100% crazy about it yet, but what I've seen looks really cool.
Street Fighter 6 - I've never really devoted a lot of time to fighting games, I've played them very casually since I was a kid, but never really got good at any. I tried to remedy that with SFV, but that game was so bad, I just never tried. SF6 though, it looks like it'll have a lot of cool singleplayer content which is a big plus for me and it's also just looking like a crazy awesome fighter, so I'm hoping to give it a real go this time.
Final Fantasy 16 - I like that the series is going back to its much more "traditional fantasy" setting, which hasn't been seen in the main line games since like the early days of the series. Not that I played those ones, I started with FF7, but this seems like a big change of pace from what they've been doing for like 20 years at least. Gameplay looks really cool and I'm glad we are sticking with the action rpg stuff.
Resident Evil 4 Remake - The original game was one of my favorite RE games until everything from RE7 and up came out, and I'm not 100% sure on placement now, but it was still an awesome game for the time. I'm hoping this game keeps a lot of what I liked from that game, while adding in new stuff to spice it up. I know it's not gonna be the same game and I'm cool with that, the cheesy story and dialogue is funny, but not necessary to me, though I can still see a lot of elements sticking around with some ramped up horror to it.
Honorable Mentions
Wild Hearts - It looks like someone trying to make an alternative to Monster Hunter and that's great. Monster Hunter Rise didn't really win me over entirely and until Monster Hunter World 2 happens, this could be a nice stop gap, or just a good game on its own.
Dead Island 2 - I'm still a sucker for zombie games and while this game has had such a journey to get here, it seems to be happening. With Dying Light being a more serious experience, this could be a nice alternative to that series, filling the gap left by Dead Rising fading off as a series.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - Again another I'm looking forward to that will likely be a good game, but not amped for it either. The first game was cool, but it had some jank to it and dragged abit here and there, but was a very solid game. Hopefully this really expands things.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League - This one is real low for me, it has potential to be awesome, but I'm not keen on the gameplay idea of it at all. I'd much rather have just had something like another Arkham game with some different Bat Family (Gotham Knights, but actually good), but we'll see.
Armored Core 6 - I love mechs and I liked AC2 back in the PS2 days, but I'm wondering what a post Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring FromSoftware does with the series as the game almost has a Souls vibe to it lol
STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl - This would go in my list proper, but there's no telling if this game happens or not. The devs are Ukranian, so the issues with the game are quite clear. It was already delayed into 2023 because of it and it's likely to get delayed again, but we'll see as I'd love to see the studio revive the series. I want to love this, though I am worried they might try to modernize the series a little too much and not like add more depth and details and a deeper world to explore from the previous games, but who knows, we'll see.
Death Stranding 2 - This one is unlikely to come out next year, it's probably 2024 or 2025, but I'm stupid excited for this game. Death Stranding turned out to be a surprise favorite of mine, like almost top 10 of all time possibility and I could not truly explain why. The story is weird as hell, I can not explain most of it, I've played it through twice now, I will play it more, but the gameplay is just oddly satisfying to me, the world is interesting, Kojima's weird loves and quirks are plastered all over so it's cool getting this game where you see this one director's vision just bursting out of it in ways a lot of games don't. It's also a wildly polarizing game. If someone said they hate it, I fully understand and would never fault anyone for it, because that gameplay and the wacky as hell story is not for everyone, but I fell in love with it. It's questionable release is mostly why I'm putting it at the bottom and I wanted an excuse to just gush about Death Stranding for no real reason lol
