One More Go

As I sit in the afterglow of Tears of the Kingdom, my eye is turning to what games we have coming up and what else there is to start getting excited about. TotK has set a particularly high bar, so I’m not sure there’ll be anything that will pinch it’s crown this year, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more games on the horizon to be excited about. With Gamescom happening over the next few days there may be more surprises announced, but as it stands, these are the games that I’m most excited to see more of.

Baldur’s Gate 3 (Console Edition)- September 2023

While everyone else is rolling 20 sided dice and roleplaying as vengeful spirits in Baldur’s Gate 3, I’m roleplaying a kid with his faced pressed up against the sweet shop window. I built my PC about ten years ago and have been neglecting it ever since, so while I save up for a total rebuild, I’m left waiting for BG3 to release on console in early September. Despite being a game that I associate with mouse and keyboard, I’ve heard some positive noises about the controller integration so fingers crossed the performance isn’t too bad when the console ports land in September. In the meantime I’ve absorbed the opening hours through the eyes of a few different streamers, which has only made me more excited to be let loose on Faerun to make my own decisions and cause my own mischief.

Baby Steps – 2024

Baby Steps was announced during Devolver’s E3 presentation, and easily delivered the best trailer of any other upcoming game. It looks like it’ll be following in the footsteps of Bennett Foddy’s previous games, GIRP and QWOP, where awkward controls are used to move the protagonist forward step by step. As the Steam store page proclaims, Baby Steps is a literal walking simulator, where you play Nate as he tries to make his way through the world one step at a time. If you’re looking for something to whet your appetite, then take a look at Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, a game where your goal is to climb to the top of an impossible obstacle course as a man in a cauldron holding a sledge hammer. You’ll swing, catch and propel yourself upward just as often as you’ll throw yourself back to the very beginning of the game all while Bennet Foddy taunts and encourages you to try again, as he says in the trailer “I created this game for a certain kind of person, to hurt them”.

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1 – October 2023

Oh Konami, please don’t mess this up. Pulling together the first few Metal Gear games into one package, should be the easiest of wins, but I have no doubt there will be some controversy surrounding this release. That being said, I’m still super excited to revisit these titles. MGS2 and 3 are some of my favourite games from the PS2 era, and I’ve never played the original Metal Gear games, so it’ll be fun to take a look at those too. The reference to Vol.1 is quite exciting as it suggests that we can expect a second collection with more MGS games. Presumably that would include MGS4, a game which to date is only available on PS3, and will hopefully include some of the spin off titles such as Metal Gear Acid, another game that I missed out on.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder – October 2023

I know I said Baby Steps had the best trailer of this year’s E3 offerings, but the Super Mario Bros. Wonder trailer is absolutely crazy. What seems like a fairly rote 2.5D Mario game twists at about the halfway point into some kind of fever dream. While I think Mario’s 3D platforming adventures (Galaxy, Odyssey, etc.) tend to be a little more creative, Wonder seems absolutely stacked with ideas that could put a fresh spin on the formula including new powerups, wonder flowers which transform the world, and a fully voiced narrator character – is this the first Mario character to be fully voiced? I’m sure more details will be revealed closer to release, but this is the kind of game where I would rather just discover it’s secrets for myself!