Video Game Chat

A brand-new Tomb Raider game is in development, and it sounds like it'll be closer to the original PlayStation games than the more recent - and divisive - reboot trilogy. Square Enix plans to mark Lara Croft's 25th anniversary celebrations all year long, with retrospectives, "nostalgic content", and other fun surprises. While all of this is going on, developer Crystal Dynamics will be beavering away on the next big Tomb Raider adventure, though we're unlikely to hear much about it for a while yet. For now, we have a slight idea of what to expect thanks to franchise game director Will Kerslake. He teased that upcoming project will blend the original games with the reboots, which were of course an origin story of sorts for the raider of tombs. "We envision the future of Tomb Raider unfolding after [the rebooted trilogy], telling stories that build upon both the breadth of Core Design and Crystal Dynamics' games, looking to unify these timelines," he explained in a 25th anniversary video (Push Square). "With Tomb Raider's extensive history, this is not an easy task, and we ask for patience as we go through the process." No big announcements in 2021 then, but old-school fans of the franchise will no doubt be glad to hear the Tomb Raider is at least partially returning to its roots. This blending of the old and new is unlikely to mean a return to the finnicky controls of the original games. It's likely more indictive of where we find Lara in her life and who she is a person, which will no doubt be interesting to see after three games of a much younger and more inexperienced adventurer.

Below you can find a list of the biggest games that don't have specific release dates but are confirmed to release sometime in 2021. We'll be moving each of these games into the release date sections above as soon as official release dates and windows become available. Game Platforms 12 Minutes Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Apex Legends Switch Aragami 2 PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Axiom Verge 2 Switch Braid: Anniversary Edition PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch, PC Chivalry 2 PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Chorus PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, Stadia Clockwork Aquario PS4, Switch Control: Ultimate Edition PS5, Xbox Series X|S Cris Tales PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch, PC, Stadia CrossfireX Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One Cyberpunk 2077 PS5, Xbox Series X|S The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes PS5, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Digimon Survive PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Dirt 5 Stadia Disco Elysium: The Final Cut Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny Switch Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch, PC Elden Ring PS4, Xbox One, PC Evil Dead: The Game PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch, PC Evil Genius 2: World Domination PC Far Cry 6 PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, Stadia Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach PS5, PS4, PC Ghostrunner PS5, Xbox Series X|S Ghostwire: Tokyo PS5, Xbox Series X|S New God of War Sequel PS5 Gotham Knights PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Goodbye Volcano High PS5, PS4, PC The Good Life PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Grand Theft Auto V PS5, Xbox Series X|S Gran Turismo 7 PS5 Griftlands PC, Switch The Gunk Xbox Series X|S, PC Halo Infinite Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Hogwarts Legacy PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Horizon Forbidden West PS5, PS4 Jett: The Far Shore PS5, PS4, PC Kena: Bridge of Spirits PS5, PS4, PC Little Nightmares 2 PS5, Xbox Series X|S The Lord of the Rings: Gollum PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch, PC Marvel's Avengers PS5, Xbox Series X|S Mass Effect: Legendary Edition PS4, Xbox One, PC MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One Metro Exodus PS5, Xbox Series X|S Microsoft Flight Simulator Xbox Series X|S Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin Switch NEO: The World Ends with You PS4, Switch No More Heroes III Switch Oddworld: Soulstorm PS5, PS4, PC Overwatch 2 PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Psychonauts 2 PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 PC Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PS5 Resident Evil Village PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC Ruined King: A League of Legends Story PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Sable Xbox Series X|S, PC SaGa Frontier Remastered PS4, Switch, PC Sam & Max: This Time It's Virtual PC Serious Sam 4 PS4, Xbox One Scarlet Nexus PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Shadow Man Remastered PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Shadow Warrior 3 PC Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster PS4, Switch Shin Megami Tensei V Switch Skatebird Xbox One, Switch, PC Solar Ash PS5 Spelunky Switch Spelunky 2 Switch S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Xbox Series X|S, PC Stray PS5, PC Temtem PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Quarantine PS4, Xbox One, PC Unknown 9: Awakening PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Xbox Series X|S, PC The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition PS5, Xbox Series X|S Windjammers 2 Switch, PC, Stadia Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World PS4, Switch, PC

I love buying games day one that I'm hyped for. I love following games development, finding out info, speculating and generally getting excited to see what it's like. If I really like the sound of a game, I want to play it as soon as possible. Sometimes I'll get burned but sometimes it will be great and all my time spent looking forward to it pays off. Yeah, these days games get so much better after a few months of patches and i should wait to get the proper experience but for some games i just can't wait. I look forward to a game, I want to play it ASAP.

Due to COVID-19, Ubisoft has pushed back two of its upcoming titles: Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine. According to Ubisoft’s earning call for the first half of 2020-2021, the studio has run into some snags due to the pandemic. The news release nonchalantly mentions that Ubisoft will now release Far Cry 6 and Rainbow Six Quarantine in its next fiscal year, which runs from 2021 into 2022. While we don’t have a concrete release date for either game, we know we won’t see them prior to April 2021. Ubisoft announced Rainbow Six Quarantine at E3 last year. The spin-off is reminiscent of Rainbow Six: Siege’s special Outbreak mode, which has a Left 4 Dead vibe, despite the base game’s realistic tone. Ubisoft originally announced Quarantine as a 2020 game. Far Cry 6 stars, Giancarlo Esposito, as dictator Anton Castillo. It takes place in the fictional country of Yara, set in the Caribbean. It was originally slated for Feb. 18, 2021. Despite the setback, Ubisoft still has a pretty massive Q3 and Q4 in its current fiscal year, with Watch Dogs: Legion’s recent launch and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Just Dance 2021, and Immortals: Fenyx Rising only a few weeks away. The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake will also land in early 2021, with Riders Republic coming slightly later in February.

Ubisoft has unveiled Ubisoft Connect, it's new "ecosystem" that'll run through all of its upcoming games. Billed as the "unification" of services such as Ubisoft Club, Uplay, and the publisher's loyalty program, it's an attempt to bring everything together under one brand. In the long run, this change probably won't have much of an impact on how you play your Ubisoft games, but we can appreciate the more straightforward approach that the publisher appears to be taking. So Ubisoft Connect will feature in all of the company's upcoming software — but what about its old games? Well, it'll still track things like stats and leaderboards, but you won't be able to make use of the service's "challenge system" in order to unlock in-game items. Fortunately, to make up for this, Ubisoft has decided to simply give all of these rewards away so that no one misses out. The next time you boot up an already released Ubisoft title, all of those old Uplay or Ubisoft Club rewards should be unlocked. Anyway, you can read the full and official FAQ through this link. Did you ever make much use of things like Uplay or Ubisoft Club? Connect in the comments section below.

Xbox's Phil Spencer has said that the deal to acquire Bethesda wasn't done in order to "take games away from another player base." In light of Microsoft acquiring Bethesda Softworks and all of its studios only a few weeks back, ongoing discussions in the aftermath of the deal have largely centred around whether or not future titles from Bethesda would still come to other platforms outside of the Xbox ecosystem. After all, Microsoft spent a wild $7.5 billion on this acquisition, and considering how well titles like The Elder Scrolls VI would surely do on a platform like PS5 in terms of sales, the value proposition seems to be too much to pass up. According to Xbox head Phil Spencer, however, that’s not necessarily the case. Speaking to Kotaku in a new interview, Spencer was asked about the Bethesda deal and what it might mean in the future. Specifically, the notion of bringing Bethesda titles to platforms outside of Xbox was brought up. In terms of making back its investment, Spencer said very clearly that releasing Bethesda games on platforms other than those that Microsoft has at its disposal right now won’t be needed. “But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us,” Spencer said. Even though it has previously been said that Bethesda games might come to other platforms on a case by case basis, Spencer’s comments here makes it sound as though it might not be a common occurrence. Additionally, Spencer noted that the Bethesda acquisition in the first place was not one that was made to keep players from playing certain games from the publisher. “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games,” he explained. The notion of growing the larger video game market has been something that Spencer has talked a lot about over the years.

Other games expected in 2020 You’ve now reached the – as it currently stands – longest section of this entire list. Games that do not fit into any of the above categories will end up here, until they hopefully graduate with a proper release date, or get pushed back to the following year. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 World of Warcraft: Shadowlands (PC) – 2020 Touch Type Tale (PC) – 2020 KungFu Kickball (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Watch Dogs: Legion (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Stadia) – 2020 Gods & Monsters (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Stadia) – 2020 Rainbow Six Quarantine (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 Babylon’s Fall (PS4) – 2020 Omno (PC, PS4, Switch) – 2020 Cake Bash (PC) – 2020 Phogs (PC, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Spellbreak (PC, PS4) – 2020 Colt Canyon (PC) – 2020 Relic Hunters Legend – Steam Early Access (PC) – 2020 Boundary (PC, PS4) – 2020 Dying Light 2 (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 Bake ‘n Switch – Steam Early Access (PC) – 2020 Yakuza Kiwami 2 (Xbox One) – 2020 Raji: An Ancient Epic (PC, Xbox One) – 2020 Evil Genius 2: World Domination (PC) – 2020 Spiritfarer (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Encodya (PC) – 2020 Chicken Police (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Bravely Default 2 (Switch) – 2020 Ultra Age (PS4) – 2020 Partisans (PC) – 2020 Uragun – Steam Early Access (PC) – 2020 Sports Story (Switch) – 2020 The End of the Sun (PC) – 2020 Airborne Kingdom (PC) – 2020 Craftlands Workshoppe (PC) – 2020 Doom Eternal (Switch) – 2020 Humanity (PS4, PS VR) – 2020 The Settlers (PC) – 2020 More games in 2020 Gearshifters (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Art of Rally (PC) – 2020 League of Legends: Wild Rift (Mobile) – 2020 Knights of Honor 2: Sovereign (PC) – 2020 My Beautiful Paper Smile (PC) – 2020 Per Aspera (PC) – 2020 The Good Life (PC) – 2020 Gamedec (PC) – 2020 Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory (PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 After the Fall (PS VR, PC VR) – 2020 Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7) (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X) – 2020 Cris Tales (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Stadia) – 2020 Roller Champions (PC) – 2020 Way to the Woods (PC, Xbox One) – 2020 RPG Time: The Legend of Wright (PC, Xbox One) – 2020 Ghostrunner (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 No More Heroes 3 (Switch) – 2020 Star Renegades (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Twin Mirror (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 Chivalry 2 (PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X) – 2020 The Ascent (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X) – 2020 Mars Horizon (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Tales of Arise (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 Microsoft Flight Simulator (PC, Xbox One) – 2020 Crossfire X (Xbox One) – 2020 N1RV ANN-A (PC, PS4, Switch) – 2020 Creaks (PC) – 2020 Tails of Iron – 2020 Recompile (PC) – 2020 Little Nightmares 2 (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 The Eternal Cylinder (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 Yet more games (seriously) Transient (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 Sable (PC, Xbox One) – 2020 Digimon Survive (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 The Riftbreaker (PC) – 2020 Harvest Moon: One World (Switch) – 2020 Surgeon Simulator 2 (PC) – 2020 Minute of Islands (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Psychonauts 2 (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – 2020 Tribes of Midgard (PC) – 2020 Distant Kingdoms (PC) – 2020 Windjammers 2 (PC, Switch, Stadia) – 2020 Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (PC, PS4) – 2020 Shelter 3 (PC) – 2020 Kingpin: Reloaded (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Ready or Not (PC) – 2020 Lunacy: Saint Rhodes (PC) – 2020 Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – 2020 Mineko’s Night Market (PC, Switch) – 2020 Haven (PC, PS4, Switch) – 2020 HyperBrawl Tournament – Steam Early Access (PC) – 2020 Naraka: Bladepoint (PC) – 2020 Summer in Mara (PC, PS4, Switch) – 2020 Blood Bowl 3 – 2020 Crimson Desert (PC) – 2020