The games we’re hyped for in 2019

2019 is looking quite good. I suspect you’ll be starting today feeling a little worse for last night’s wear. Well, allow me to put the spring back in your step by detailing the upcoming video games. 

There’s lots of them, so prepare yourself.

Game: Judgment/Judge Eyes (I’ll be calling it Judge Eyes, and so should you.)
Release date: Summer
Platforms: PlayStation 4
Hype-o-meter: Judge Hype

A Yakuza game but you’re a judge that skips the judicial process, does away with robes and wigs in favour of becoming a detective, and gets down to street level. Oh, and the streets are those of Kamurocho? Well then I will, yes. Obviously.

Game: Shenmue 3
Release date: August 27
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4
Hype-o-meter: Mike Hype-adence

I sit near Mike Harradence in the office. When he starts speaking about Shenmue, he lights up with a Christmas-morning glow. It’s difficult not to be swept up in that (despite the bizarre graphics we’ve seen and the way Mike keeps talking about forklift driving).

Game: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Release date: March 22
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC 
Hype-o-meter: Shadows Hype Twice

Dark Souls is really good. Bloodborne is really good. If FromSoftware want to do similar stuff in Feudal Japan then I’m going to be going nuts until that comes out. What’s that you say? Nioh? What’s The Matrix got to do with anything?

Game: Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order
Release date: Winter
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC 
Hype-o-meter: Hype leads to Fear…  

A good game with lightsabers and Jedi is up there with Spider-Man in the “Well, how on earth hasn’t this been done, and done excellently” category. And I know the two Jedi Academy games were decent enough (I’m as enamoured with Kyle Katarn as the next person), but the Jedi need what Spider-Man finally got: they need it done properly.

Game: Doom Eternal
Release date: 2019
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch (but maybe not the same time as the others)
Hype-o-meter: Hype Me Plenty

It’s more Doom (the 2016 vintage), but this time it’s actually eternal. There’s a shotgun in it that has a grappling hook fixed to the bottom. Cheers.

Game: Resident Evil 2
Release date: January 25
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Hype Sandwich

The original Resident Evil 2 is one of the greatest survival horror games ever made. The remake cakes it in the makeup of the RE Engine and fixes the camera over-the-shoulder like RE4 did. I, for one, am prepared to once again enter the world of survival horror.

Game: In the Valley of Gods
Release date: 2019
Platforms: PC
Hype-o-meter: Campo Hypo

There was a really cool trailer for In the Valley of Gods, which didn’t reveal an awful lot, aside from being set in Egypt and featuring archeologists. If Campo Santo can do with that dusty profession what they did for fire lookouts, in Firewatch, then I’ll be pleased. For once, it would be nice to see an archaeologist wield some brushes and a spade instead of an AK47.

Game: The Sinking City
Release date: March 21
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: The Call of Hype

Call of Cthulhu was a soggy disappointment, and despite this other one being set in a half-flooded open world, it looks a little more buoyant. Developed by Frogwares, the makers of the Sherlock Holmes series, it looks to combine case work with tentacled ghouls. I’m up for that.

Game: The Outer Worlds
Release date: 2019
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Faster-than-hype travel

Well, look, if you’re mashing things together, then you could do a lot worse than mashing a Bioshock, Fallout, and No Man’s Sky into a sticky action-RPG paste. There’s a breath of chilly humour to what we’ve seen so far as well, and it’s Obsidian, who make good things.

Game: Control
Release date: 2019
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Hype helps control the fun

Jesse Faden, the hero of Control, isn’t one to succumb to such dull demands as gravity or physics. She sprints around firing a gun that looks assembled from tetrominos and freezing folk in time. It looks a little Quantum Break and a little Inception, but without a little series of naff daytime sci-fi channel episodes crammed in.

Game: Man of Medan
Release date: 2019
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Supermedium Hype

Man of Medan stars a slew of sexy youths, a creaking ghost ship, and a distinctly late-’90s slasher flick vibe. It’s made by Supermassive Games, who made Until Dawn, which had all the above, only with a log cabin instead of a ship. I mean I’m not going nuts about it, but I’ll play it, and probably chuckle as each is picked off.

Game: Crackdown 3
Release date: February 15
Platforms: Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Hypedown

I’m up for Crackdown 3, yeah.

Game: Anthem
Release date: February 22
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Be(io)ware of the Hype

I’ve never played a Mass Effect game. This looks a bit like Mass Effect to me. Why not make this the first floaty space marine shooty Bioware game I play. Aye?

Game: Twin Mirror
Release date: 2019
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Donthype

Twin Mirror is mental. It’s the equivalent of playing a game that you found at the bottom of a bargain bin, that you don’t remember the trailers for, and that you like more than you should – probably because of those things. I’m looking forward to it. and I’m looking forward to telling people about it who I know haven’t played it. And then I’ll claim that’s an unsung masterpiece. It won’t be, though.

Game: Devil May Cry 5
Release date: March 8
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: H Rank

Capcom are taking back the reins from Ninja Theory, who made the excellent DmC but obviously got Dante’s hair wrong. I had a go on Devil May Cry 5, and it was very good. It’s set in a city that looks a lot like London, and Nero was zipping about in a van – he’s a white van man!

Game: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Release date: 2019
Platforms: Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Will of the Hype

Ori and the Blind Forest was a charming metroidvania that took place in a forest filled with little glowing sprites and other loveliness. If this new one makes me love wisps as much as it made me love forests, I’m excited. (What is a wisp?)

Game: Sea of Solitude
Release date: 2019
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: Sea of Solid-hype

There’s enough about Sea of Solitude to make me equal parts excited and wary. It looks like a cross between Song of the Deep and Rime, with a little bit of Sunless Sea. It has the faint whiff of manipulative indie-darling about it, but it does look terrifying. Together with The Sinking City, 2019 might be the year of boats in gaming.

Game: Sable
Release date: 2019
Platforms: Xbox One, PC
Hype-o-meter: So hyped I wish I could have slipped a Sable under the tree, but I can’t because it’s out this year and not a few weeks ago.

Sable looks like a drawing by Jean Giraud with a twist of Tatooine from Star Wars. I’ve never seen a game quite like it, and with the puzzly chambers and hoverbikes shown off in the trailers, I’m hoping (and hyping) that it won’t be style over substance.

Game: Days Gone
Release date: April 19
Platforms: PlayStation 4
Hype-o-meter: Hypeston St. John

Look, I know that Bend Studio made Bubsy 3D, but they also made Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow, Resistance: Retribution, and Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Days Gone stars a biker named Deacon St. John. On top of that, he wears a backwards-facing cap, and he’s played by Sam Witwer, who played Starkiller in The Force Unleashed and was also in The Mist – that was a really good film, directed by Frank Darabont (Shawshank).

Game: Afterparty
Release date: 2019
Platforms: PC, Mac
Hype-o-meter: Highway to Hell

The premise of Afterparty is this: two teenagers, Milo and Lola, shuffle off their mortal coils and arrive, sinners that they are, in Hell. In a riff on The Seventh Seal – which had Max von Sydow playing chess with the Grim Reaper – the pair are allowed to escape, if they can outdrink the devil.

Game: Death Stranding
Release date: Who knows but let’s say 2019
Platforms: PlayStation 4
Hype-o-meter: Hypdeo Kojima

Fetus, Reedus, Kojima, del Toro, whales, Kojima, Mikkelsen, aliens, Kojima, mountains, stealth, guns, Kojima.

There you have it. What a year we have to look forward to. Whether you like your death stranded or your shadow dying twice, whether you like your mirrors twinned or your cities sunk, there’s something for everyone. Happy New Year 2019!