Here you will find the positions 20-11
(10) Alan Wake 2
It’s almost 13 years since we first visited Bright Falls trying to survive the nightmare Alan was forced to endure after his wife mysteriously disappeared and the darkness tried to corrupt him. Since then we’ve only seen him appear briefly in Alan Wake’s American Nightmare (which isn’t even canon) and in one of the expansions for Control. But for many years we doubted whether we would even see a sequel to Alan Wake, which was frustrating to say the least as we never got a clear end to the journey. Anyway, this year it’s time, finally. This time it’s about a ”survival horror” game, which will be the first time that Remedy is testing that genre. We can hardly wait to get our hands on the sequel and see what has really happened to the author since last time.
This is an ad:
(9) Forza Motorsport
Forza Motorsport 6 wasn’t very good. Forza Motorsport 7 wasn’t very good at all and that Microsoft-owned Turn 10 chose to take a break, tear down the mainstay of the game series and start from scratch for the first time in almost ten years – Is and never was very surprising. It was more or less what the fans demanded and there is plenty of room for radical improvement here and our hunch is that game number eight will offer just that. The graphics engine is new. Forza 8 looks better than anything else in the sim genre right now and the physics engine has been completely redesigned and according to the developers themselves, should handle more simulations and calculations per frame than all other games in the sim racing genre. We’re hoping for superb driving feeling that rhymes more with Forza Motorsport 4 than part 5/6/7, we’re hoping for lots of laser-scanned tracks and lots of racing cars (and definitely less tired minibuses, electric cars and other crap).
(8) Dead Space: Remake
Remakes in general shouldn’t be hotter than thawed leftovers, but in the context of games there is an insane amount of potential in improving and polishing classics to even greater heights and it is the new version of the old horror gem Dead Space that makes us salivate so strongly that we start to resemble those gaping slimebobs that Isaac Clarke has chopped for three games now. We really liked Dead Space veterans The Callisto Protocol, but that title also lacked a lot of what we loved about the insane space horror of Dead Space and just the idea of exploring desolate space stations with enhanced graphics, sharper lighting effects, heart-stopping sound effects and more more detailed flesh aesthetics make us deliciously nervous and cold sweaty. There aren’t enough horror titles that take place in the empty, cold space, and we love the idea of reliving one of our favorite horrors in a high-definition, newly renovated format.
This is an ad:
(7) Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
After Insomniac Games’ two phenomenal games with Peter Parker and Miles Morales, we really can’t stop thinking about the sequel. This time we will get to play as both spiders and Venom will (we assume) be the main antagonist of the game. If this also means that the symbiote will take over one of, or even both, the protagonists, it will be extremely exciting to see. Considering how delicious both games are, it will also be incredibly interesting to see how good the sequel will be, which will only be released for Playstation 5, and thus leave Playstation 4 behind. This will undoubtedly be one of the absolute highlights of the video game year, we think.
(6) EA Sports WRC 23
Persistent rumors throughout the last year have been overshadowed by the fact that Codemasters took a fully-developed Dirt Rally 3.0 and renamed it, throwing in 2023’s three hybrid cars from the ongoing WRC circus and adding a game mode where we’ll get build our own rally crew, from scratch. More and more indications are that all of this is true, and more and more indications are that we’ll be playing this as early as summer, which for us here at Gamereactor makes it one of the hottest upcoming games of the year. Dirt Rally 2.0, despite some release issues, stands firmly as the best rally game of all time, and getting more of that stuff with official WRC licenses makes us a little more excited.
(5) Hades 2
Hades came out of nowhere and took us by storm, playing as Hades’ son Zagreus we had a lot of fun hacking our way out of the old man’s underground kingdom. This time we will get to take on the role of Melinoë, who is Zagreus’ sister and take on her fight against Cronus, the Titan of Time. We can largely expect the same smooth and frictionless gameplay as in the first one, but it will of course have been refined further and Melinoë will have some new abilities that her brother did not have. New characters will also be introduced from Greek mythology, among others Apollo who was not in the first will be in this time. By all accounts, they have taken everything that made the first one so good and made it even better in the sequel. Hades 2 is certainly something to look forward to in 2023 and we believe without a doubt that this will deliver rock hard.
(4) Company of Heroes 3
Company of Heroes with sequels stand as great successes for Relic. They managed to offer us strategy with good precision and good dramaturgy at the same time. We got to follow a group of soldiers during World War II and experience their stories. In the first, we had to follow both American and German forces. In the third, we will visit Italy during the final stages of the war and follow Rommel’s Afrika Korps among the sand dunes of North Africa. What stands out about the third is the style of the campaigns. The one set in Italy will focus on the US, UK, German Wermacht. The map is an open one not unlike the one in the Ardennes Assault expansion from the second. You move around the map with your forces, make choices and perform actions, then see the results in real-time strategy skirmishes. The Africa Corps campaign is linear as in the first game. You do assignment after assignment with clear frameworks and focused storytelling. We don’t know if Italy as a faction is being saved for a future expansion. Company of Heroes 3 is a hotly anticipated sequel according to us at Gamereactor.
(3) Starfield
11/11/22 it was originally supposed to be released as a nod to Skyrim’s iconic 11/11/11 release date. As you know, that was not the case, but Starfield was postponed until the first half of 2023, but hopefully the delay will lead to Bethesda’s brand new IP being a space adventure completely out of the ordinary. Starfield has at times been described as a Han Solo simulator and a Skyrim in space, causing us at the editorial office to stare longingly up at the starry sky with swimmy eyes as we imagine all the adventures we’ll be in for as soon as Todd Howard decides to it’s time. We dream of sneaking aboard a rugged old spaceship, taking the helm and blasting off into the stars to experience new worlds, build relationships with a variety of aliens, and finally realize the image of our inner galactic hero. Starfield has never been closer than it is right now and we can hardly bear the thought of finding out what exactly our space odyssey will look like.
(2) Diablo IV
Diablo as a game series has a long and storied history. It pretty much founded its own subgenre and Diablo 2 stands for one of the world’s best games of all time. Diablo 3 and Diablo Immortal faced their fair share of criticism for their missteps in monetization and graphical styles. Blizzard seems to have understood the criticism and reloaded with the upcoming four. The first thing that meets the player is an aesthetically dark world. It resembles Diablo 2 significantly more than the third. After the events in the previous titles where evil is unleashed again, we will now also meet some new characters. Lilith daughter of Mephisto is the main antagonist. She is a central reason why the world we adventure in exists. The Sanctuary in which the adventure takes place now takes the form of a large open world where you can go wherever you want. It will work more like a big online game than before. You will still get to slaughter demons on an assembly line as one of five classes. All classes have been involved in some form since before. You can choose between Barbarian, Sorceress, Druid, Rogue and Necromancer. The most outstanding class is probably the Rogue which we haven’t seen since the first game in the series. The story is even more central with more cutscenes and characters to talk to. We at Gamereactor firmly believe that the four will be something out of the ordinary.
HOTTEST GAME OF THE YEAR 2023:
(1) The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
There are few games released in the last 5-6 years that have meant as much to the gaming industry as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. Zelda games are certainly usually a milestone in gaming history, but with the latest creation, Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma really succeeded in building a phenomenon that made the water rings stretch further than ever before. After 2017, everyone would try to copy Link’s Switch success, and when you could even find game-raising similes in titles like Halo Infinite and From Software’s celebrated Elden Ring, you understood that Nintendo’s green-clad hero had once again made the gaming industry stop and note his progress. Now that there is finally a proper sequel, expectations are of course higher than ever, and even the floating village of Skyloft from the Wii adventure Skyward Sword (a city that was perfectly located in the clouds) does not reach the same level that we here at Gamereactor have on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom. Because with around six years of development and with an already phenomenal foundation to stand on, Sigge and Eiji should once again be able to make us enchanted by the magical powers of Hyrule, and when the open game world has also developed even more on a vertical plane, the possibilities to explore almost infinite. The fact that Tears of The Kingdom finally looks like it will be one of the last big games to be released for Nintendo’s hit console Switch (because we coldly count on a sequel soon) so the dreams are turned up even more, and there really is no game we as the editors are looking forward to more this year than Link’s next grand epic. So forget your birthday, your booked holiday and the planned Christmas holiday – the date to mark in the calendars in 2023 is May 12 when The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom finally has a release.
Here you will find the positions 20-11
What does your list look like?
