Most Anticipated Games 2022 (Part 1)

2022 looks to be an amazing year for gaming. With all of the scheduled and expected release dates for the year, 2022 could possibly be the best year in gaming…ever. Breath of The Wild 2, God of War: Ragnarok, Horizon: Forbidden West, an open world Pokemon, Starfield, and the list goes on. These are also only the games that we know about in some form. Obviously, throughout the course of the next few months, the gaming picture of 2022 will come into focus a little better with concrete dates and new announcements.

On top of all of these amazing potential experiences, there is also the possibility of some fantastic hardware including the speculated Switch Pro, which could come alongside Breath of The Wild 2 as well as the PSVR2, which is currently targeting a holiday 2022 release date. When you add up all of the hardware and software possibilities for 2022, it’s a great time to be a gamer. This leads us to the matter at hand and that is a list of the most anticipated games of 2022.

This list isn’t going to include the typical games you are going to find on every list like God of War: Ragnarok, Breath of the Wild 2, Metroid Prime 4 or Starfield because everyone is already anticipating those games. Everyone is going to play those games. The awareness for those titles is equal to the anticipation for them.

With that in mind we curated a list of the top ten games expected in 2022 that are mostly flying on the radar, with some exceptions of course. Here is games 10-6 in the first part of our most anticipated games of 2022 in order.

Most Anticipated Games of 2022

TMNT: Shredders Revenge #10

Out of all the games on this list TMNT: Shredders Revenge has the best chance and being the game that I play the least. Don’t get it wrong, I am very excited for this game as it is one of our most anticapted games of 2022, but obviously there is a concern for depth, which is why it falls at the bottom of the list.

I can still remember playing the arcade game TMNT in 1989 on a family trip to Disney in an RV we rented. I was young and don’t remember much but one of the highlights was stopping for lunch or dinner somewhere and having my mind blown by TMNT and its four player glory. The other memory is buying Double Dragon and memorizing the box and the manual until we got home so I could play it. Obviously there is the Space Mountain nightmares that a little kid kept with him for many years, but top of the pile is TMNT with my family.

The reason that this game is high on the list is because there is so much nostalgia tied to this title for me and many other gamers. The game is being developed by Tribute Games but the good news is that more importantly, it’s being published by DotEmu, who have shown a real knack for bringing back classics that don’t stray too far from the original including Streets of Rage 4 and WindJammers 2.

My concern for Shredders Revenge is that the game will lack depth and be fun for about an hour. The most recent comparable is Streets of Rage 4, which was another classic revival. Streets of Rage 4 art style took a more updated and modern approach, where Shredders Revenge looks to be a more pixel faithful revival. TMNT never had the deepest storylines but hopefully an above average plot and some modern game systems like upgrade trees would be a very welcome addition. Both seem very unlikely, but we still know very little about the game.

Sifu #9

One of the first games to be released out of all the games on our most anticipated list is the PlayStation exclusive Sifu. Sifu is being developed by Sloclap, who is the studio behind the 2017 martial art game, Absolver. While the game didn’t review overly well, what most agreed upon was that the combat system was visceral, but ultimately never reached the potential that it should have.

Hopefully with some experience under their belts and five years since the release of Absolver, Sloclap will be able to deliver a fantastic experience that doesn’t feel unfinished. Sifu looks to be more than just visceral combat as it features an aging and upgrade system upon death. Instead of the game being over, you age exponentially, but also learning new skills as you age. This combination of aging and levelling up could lead to a very fun gameplay loop

On top of the parry, balance, and attacking system, Sifu also uses the environment which can lead to a lot of moments that feel improvised by using everything and anything possible to defeat your enemy. Sifu hits the PlayStation system on February 8 at a reduced price, which does give me a bit of concern that it won’t be a full game. I appreciate a reduced price but hopefully its not an indication of length or quality.

Marvels Midnight Suns #8

Have you been waiting for a true sequel to Xcom 2? The bad news is that you will likely have to wait at least another 5 years, but the good news is that Firaxis is making a new turn based tactics game based in the Marvel Universe. The biggest headline is that this time around the combat is based around a card system, which will likely push away many but as someone who enjoys card based games, the change is welcome.

On top of being developed by one of the best strategy studios around, Marvels Midnight Suns features a roster of superheroes unrivalled in video games from the Avengers to the X-Men and many others. Still not convinced? Marvel’s Midnight Suns has you play as the Hunter, a fully customizable and original superhero. This is a pretty big thing for Marvel and their very protected IP to allow something like this.

When you add up the plot line, the amount of characters, the original superhero that will likely make your experience feel unique to you, and that this is being developed by Firaxis, it’s hard to see this game not being a massive critical success upon release. The big question is will commercial success follow, due to the card based system, as that seems to be repellent for many gamers?

On a Firaxis side note, why did Xcom: Chimera Squad never come to Nintendo Switch? Seems like a missed opportunity.

Originally, scheduled to be released in March 2022, in late 2021, the studio announced on twitter that they game needed to be pushed to the second half of 2022 to improve many aspects of the game. March would have been a great time as there is good space for the game to succeed but hopefully the game will create its own space in the fall.

Hollow Knight Silksong #7

Hollow Knight: Silksong is fairly low on the list for a few reasons, the first is that it still seems unlikely that the game will be released in 2022. Sure, Silksong has been in development in some form since 2017, when the team released the original Hollow Knight but there is just such a minuscule amount of concrete information about the game. Just looking at their website blog, the last official post was back in 2019, which was before the pandemic.

Hollow Knight Silksong is a full fledged sequel to the original but it also features a completely different character that appeared in the first game but as a difficult mini boss, the hornet. It seems that the game is also coming together as the days go by as even the team acknowledged that the game started out as DLC, but outgrew the scope of DLC and was pivoted into a sequel.

What most people forget is that Team Cherry, the South Australian developers behind the Hollow Knight series is only composed of a handful of people. At the start of the development the team was only three people and some other sources indicate that the team might be four now. Silksong gives me vibes of No Man’s Sky in the sense that people are putting this game up on a very high pedestal based on the quality of the first game and how long the hype has been building since it was first announced in February of 2019.

Team Cherry has only created one game so far. The chances are very high that this game won’t live up to the hype and anticipation that people are creating for Silksong. This will be a fault on the gamers but also Team Cherry does have some responsibility in the matter. The most important thing that any game developer can do is just to be transparent and honest.

The game features a completely new world to explore with all new game mechanics thanks to a new character. Silksong also features crafting in some variety, as well as quests that will task you with hunting down rare beasts, ancient mysteries, and lost treasures. Once you finish the game, you will unlock a new mode called Silk Soul mode that puts a spin on the game with unique and challenging experiences according to their official description. At around 30-40 hours to complete the original, having a new game plus mode that drastically changes the mechanics of the game would provide deep value.

Back in 2019, Hollow Knight had sold over 2.8 million copies, and likely by the cult elevation of the game, in the last few years, has sold somewhere in the area of 4 million. That is pretty amazing for a small indie game that began as a kickstarter backed by 2158 people and only developed by 3 people.

Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course #6

Has it been too long for Cuphead? By the time, Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course gets released at the end of June, fingers crossed, it will have been almost five years since the release of the trailblazing original game.

Cuphead was one of the few shining stars of the Xbox One era, and did extremely well for Studio MDHR. The success of the original game was so high that is got ported to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and even has a Netflix show currently in development with Wayne Brady starring as King Dice and slated for spring 2022. The Netflix show makes me fully believe that Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course will hit its target release date of June because there is synergy going on with the Netflix show as each entity will bring more attention to the other.

Cuphead was released on September 29, 2017 and within two weeks, had sold over one million copies. Keep in mind this is an indie game that was released exclusively for a failing console at the time that hadn’t yet turned the ship around. Cuphead was a breath of fresh air in a world of sequels and copycat games doing the exact same thing. Cuphead was a tough as nails platformer with excellent boss fights, wonderful audio score and obviously, the hand drawn art style that captured everyones attention. According to Venture Beat as of the time of launch on PlayStaton 4 in 2020, Cuphead had sold 6 million copies. Releasing on a system with well over 100 million users like would have boosted sales by one or two million at least.

There isn’t much that we know about Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course as of yet. Will there be enough changes to make people happy? If Studio MDHR just delivers more of the same, will that be enough to sell well and score high? On the surface, even if you just compare the original trailer for the DLC that was released back in 2019 to the trailer that was revealed at The Game Awards 2021, showing the exact same levels, the difference is night and day. The scenes are much more lively and look more like a fully finished version of Cuphead as opposed to an early prototype, which is what the original trailer looks like in hindsight.

Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course is not an Xbox exclusive this time around, which bodes well for greater success out the door with a greater potential audience. We have seen many times before that just more of the original doesn’t always work with many sequels failing and for all intents and purposes, Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course is a sequel but will it be able to succeed by doing what made the first game a massive success?

Thats all for the first half of the top ten most anticipated games, be sure to check out the rest of the list here