Our Most Anticipated Games for 2024

Another year has gone by, and looking back, we’ve had the pleasure to experience a couple of excellent games this year. Baldur’s Gate 3 completely rocked the world of computer role-playing games, and Street Fighter 6 has evoked memories of the glory days of Street Fighter IV. It has also been a great year for us retro arcade fans, as we’ve seen numerous great classic arcade shmups released on steam, like Zero Wing, Hellfire, and Raiden III x MIKADO MANIAX.

But now, let’s once again take a look into the crystal ball, and what games we’re especially looking out for in the coming year 2024. Here’s the shortlist, in no particular order:

Earth Defense Force 6

EDF games have always been extremely addictive, and deeply enjoyable games. They’re all about no-nonsense action game play (and all-nonsense story). It’s the perfect co-op game that offers just non-stop arcade action with a great deal of strategy and tactics, as each weapon has its own advantages and disadvantages – and there are hundreds of weapons and pieces of equipment to experiment with! Just great fun and lots of great content, and this next iteration of the game appears to be bigger and better in every way… again.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Dragon’s Dogma is finally coming back, and we’re extremely excited for it. This franchise has a fairly grounded sword & sorcery-inspired setting (which is a rare thing nowadays!) with touch of darkness and horror, just as it should be! The concept of exploring dark dungeons, looting glimmering treasures, and slaying horrible monsters just never gets old, if you ask me, and this game appears to have it all in spades.

Tekken 8

Trust Bandai Namco Studios and Tekken to push the boundaries of graphics, blazing fast gameplay, stylized characters, and musical marvels. The Tekken games have been a staple in our fighting game collection ever since the PlayStation 2 era, and we’re extremely hyped for the next iteration. Just look at the trailer, you just have to love the over-the-top presentation and the intense weirdness of it all…

The New SEGA Games

In a completely unexpected twist of events, SEGA has just announced a return of five beloved classic franchises; Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Crazy Taxi, and Jet Set Radio. While there are no official release dates given yet, we’re fully expecting at least one or two of these games to release in the coming year… is that too much to ask? This announcement feels so unreal, because this is what we have been yearning for all these years, and even given up hope on, a long time ago. Now it’s finally looking like something exciting is on the horizon for us old school SEGA fans.

Path of Exile 2

Oh yeah, the prime action RPG that dethroned Diablo is doing it again; Path of Exile is getting a sequel! The game play looks a fair bit slower than the predecessor (which might be a good thing), but the promise of a brand new fantasy adventure in this style is just too good to miss. Admittedly, this sequel has high expectations to fulfill, and the design appears to have changed once or twice during development, which normally would be a red flag. But not in this case, we have faith in Grinding Gear Games to actually create an absolute banger with this one.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash

A crazy colorful, fast paced frantic, arcade style party game with insane mini-games and charming characters? This looks like a fun little side attraction game that we’ll easily spend hours upon hours playing.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink

A third-person hack ‘n slash game set in the gorgeous Granblue Fantasy world. This game has amazing presentation in terms of graphics and music, and the game play looks incredible as well. The development appears to have run into some bumps, but we’re sure that it will still come out on top. The Granblue Fantasy world is quickly becoming one of our favorite settings with countless incredible characters and epic story lines.

Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn

Retro-flavored ninja action old-school side-scrolling arcade goodness? Yes please! This game features gorgeous, dreamy nostalgia-infused graphics with super smooth animations, and it’s all about bad-ass futuristic mega structures, ninja powers, insane robots, and epic fast-paced action. This is one game all retro gamers need to check out.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

A new chapter in the long-running, epic, and excellent Yakuza saga is about to release in January 2024. The Yakuza games have always had an amazing level of immersion with its insanely detailed worlds and intricate character developments. There’s clever plot twists around every corner, and the atmosphere overall is as intense as it is absolutely engrossing.

Selaco

An absolutely insane action-overdosed first-person shooting onslaught set in a dark apocalyptic future infused with an 80s retro future vibe. The game looks fast paced and features an extremely striking graphics style with low-resolution texture, bright neon colors, and an abundance of particle effects. It has an epic story on deck, and the early access release is said to feature 25 levels and 11 different weapons to blast enemies with. We’re definitely keeping an eye out for this one.

Tempest Rising

The classic Real-Time Strategy genre with base building and controlling hundreds of units on an epic battlefield has basically been dead lately. The developers behind this game promises to bring back the golden age by making a spiritual successor of sorts to Command & Conquer, delivering a similar look and feel to the game and its artistic choices. Tempest Rising looks pretty cool, and I’m super-curious on whether this game will live up to the hype.

Toxic Crusaders

We’re admittedly not the biggest, most dedicated fans of Toxic Crusaders, but we can’t deny a retro style arcade beat ’em up with colorful graphics and an epic 4-player co-op mode! This game looks like an incredibly fun time, and we’re certainly going to check it out when it releases!

SPGP Super Polygon Grand Prix

This game has been on our radar for a while; it’s a retro style racing game that looks a lot like the original Virtua Racing, but with intensely eye-melting colors and incredibly fast speed. It’s being developed by a smaller studio, but so far they have really nailed the look and feel of the previews. It almost looks too good to be real; like a SEGA arcade-infused fever dream. Check it out and join the hype!

Earthion

A side-scrolling old-school arcade shoot em up that’s being developed for Sega Mega Drive (and PC!) by Ancient / Yuzo Koshiro. Everything about this game looks amazing; the graphics is bang-on excellent retro goodness and the music gives the Mega Drive’s sound-chip a run for its money. This is a day-one purchase for sure!