Hunter World, January 26 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
Monster Hunter titles have always had a big following in Japan, but struggled in the U.S. due to grind-heavy gameplay and extremely complex RPG systems that do little to hold your hand. That said, Monster Hunter World’s open beta was encouraging, showing a game that promises co-op fun for you and up to three friends, but with the rough edges from previous titles smoothed down, keeping the appealing core game loop alive: You gear up to hunt down some gargantuan bad guys, and then loot their corpses to fashion weapons and armor to hunt down even bigger and badder guys.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance, February 14 (PS4, Xbox One, and PC)
An RPG set in 15th-century Bohemia, Kingdom Come will see if the mechanics of an RPG can work in a world grounded in historical realism. You won’t cast any spells, talk to any wood sprites, or fight any dragons — you’re just the son of a blacksmith caught up in the nasty business of internecine warfare in the Holy Roman Empire. Expect a gritty, grounded take on a genre that all too often devolves into pure power fantasy.
Metal Gear Survive, February 20, (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
The Metal Gear franchise has lost series visionary Hideo Kojima, but Metal Gear Survive still piques the curiosity. The story is predictably batshit crazy: A wormhole sucks the mercenary army from Metal Gear Solid V into a world filled with crystalline zombies, and you and up to three other players have to build out a base and survive against them. It’s only about the 17th wackiest thing to happen in the Metal Gear Solid universe.
Sea of Thieves, March 20 (Xbox One, PC)
An exclusive for the PC and Xbox One, Sea of Thieves is a sandbox world where you crew a pirate ship and sail the seas, fighting off other players’ vessels, searching for treasure, and upgrading your clipper. At press events where I’ve played it, I dug the pure frantic fun of trying to fire a cannon shot toward an opposing ship on your port side, the joy in checking your compass, triangulating landmarks, and following that X on your paper map to find buried treasure.
A Way Out, March 23 (PS4, Xbox One, and PC)
Developed by Josef Fares, the developer behind the critically acclaimed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, A Way Out is a split-screen co-op prison-escape adventure, heavy on storytelling and set pieces. One of you plays the hotheaded Leo, one of you plays the smooth operator Vincent, but both of you are probably gonna have plans go badly, badly awry as you attempt to escape the long arm of the law. The split-screen action (even if you’re playing online) means that you can always see how well — or how badly — your partner is doing as you attempt to bust out.
Far Cry 5, March 27 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
The Far Cry series, to date, has mainly centered around feckless young Americans going to interesting places, meeting interesting people, and shooting them. Far Cry 5 brings the action back home to Montana, where a racist, doomsday militia takes over a town and you set out to liberate it. The gameplay doesn’t seem too different from the previous three Far Cry games, and whether what has traditionally been a pretty shallow open-world action series can tackle a thorny issue like the rise of modern neo-Nazis in light of real-world tragedies like Charlottesville is a looming question, but Far Cry’s run-and-gun gameplay and endless buffet of things to do keep the series wildly popular for a reason.
