These are the games to look out for in 2022

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This twelvemonth sees nary shortage of post-apocalyptic games, but airy alleviation is disposable courtesy of Star Trek and a robot-loving cat, says Jacob Aron

Technology 12 January 2022

By Jacob Aron

The aboriginal weeks of the twelvemonth are traditionally a dilatory clip for video crippled releases, truthful I thought I would usage this month’s file arsenic a accidental to look up to immoderate of the titles I americium looking guardant to playing successful 2022.

First up is Horizon Forbidden West, retired successful February. It is the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, acceptable successful a post-apocalyptic aboriginal dominated by robot creatures that mimic everything from cervid to Tyrannosaurus rex. The archetypal crippled was each astir uncovering the root of the apocalypse portion hunting down machines for parts, and I americium intrigued to spot wherever the communicative goes next.

Next, successful April comes Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl, yet different post-apocalyptic sequel – but let’s beryllium honest, video crippled developers are precise keen connected apocalypses. This 1 is acceptable astir the Chernobyl exclusion portion successful Ukraine, successful a satellite wherever a 2nd detonation astatine the doomed atomic powerfulness works created unusual and invaluable artefacts, on with a clump of zombies and different monsters. You play arsenic a stalker, portion of a radical of radical who are hunting down these artefacts portion besides trying to marque it retired alive.

For a much hopeful future, I person my oculus connected Star Trek: Resurgence, owed successful the archetypal fractional of the year. It has been decades since we had a decent Star Trek video game, and with the franchise seeing a resurgence connected TV, I’m hoping this caller crippled volition lucifer up. You volition play arsenic 2 Starfleet officers aboard a Star Trek: The Next Generation-era vessel and it looks to beryllium a bully premix of enactment and diplomacy, conscionable arsenic you would expect from Star Trek.

One of the biggest releases expected successful November is Starfield, a caller role-playing crippled from Bethesda, the developers of the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series. These are immersive games with immense worlds to research successful a post-apocalyptic and phantasy mounting respectively, and are immoderate of the astir fashionable titles around.

In Starfield, Bethesda has applied the aforesaid look to a abstraction exploration communicative acceptable successful the 24^th century. It has described the crippled arsenic a some a “Han Solo simulator” and “NASA-punk”, meaning that the spacecraft and different technologies depicted successful Starfield tin hint their roots to those successful usage today. I tin spot myself spending dozens of hours exploring the star system. The lone imaginable alert successful the ointment is that Bethesda games are notoriously buggy astatine motorboat owed to their sprawling complexity. Time volition tell.

Another upcoming game, The Callisto Protocol, is besides acceptable successful the 24^th century, successful a situation colony connected Jupiter’s satellite Callisto. An Alien-like carnal is stalking the installation and you person to escape. Development is being led by Glen Schofield, co-creator of sci-fi fearfulness bid Dead Space, and this caller rubric seems similar a bully improvement of those erstwhile games.

Finally, connected a wholly antithetic tack, I americium truly looking guardant to seeing much of Stray, due retired successful October. You play arsenic a feline who befriends a flying drone portion exploring a cyberpunk metropolis populated by robots. Developer BlueTwelve Studio has revealed fewer details beyond that, but trailers released truthful acold suggest that the crippled volition contiguous a cat’s-eye presumption of the satellite arsenic it trots astir solving puzzles, looking endearingly nonchalant astir the full thing.