10 Anticipated Games Coming Early 2017

It is the start of a new year and that means new games. While there is usu­al­ly a dry spell of releas­es after Decem­ber, this year is a bit dif­fer­ent. Plen­ty of games have been pushed back just enough to enter into 2017. So here is a list of 10 antic­i­pat­ed games com­ing out in the next three months.

Night in the Woods (Jan 10)

Night in the Woods is made for gamers who pre­fer a small­er and more sto­ry focused game. The game’s pro­tag­o­nist, Mae, is a 20-some­thing year old cat that is return­ing home after drop­ping out of col­lege. Mae begins recon­nect­ing with old friends and set­tling into a now crum­bling small min­ing town. Along the way Mae dis­cov­ers that some­thing strange and per­haps super­nat­ur­al is hap­pen­ing in the woods.

If any of that sounds inter­est­ing down­load the com­pan­ion game Lost Con­stel­la­tion for any price you want. Night in the Woods will be avail­able on PS4, Win­dows, Lin­ux, and Mac.

Gravity Rush 2 (Jan 20)

Grav­i­ty Rush may have start­ed on the PlaySta­tion Vita, but the sequel is being made the ground up for the PS4. Play­ers will reprise their role as Kat, a young hobo that fell from the sky with no mem­o­ries and the pow­er to con­trol grav­i­ty. After the events shown in the Grav­i­ty Rush ani­ma­tion, Kat and friends are trans­port­ed to a new unknown city. Now they must fight a new threat that will (hope­ful­ly) explain Kat’s origins. 

Cur­rent­ly there is a free Grav­i­ty Rush 2 demo on PS4 and the first game is avail­able for PS4 and PS Vita.

 Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (Jan 24)

After years of ever grow­ing over the top action, Res­i­dent Evil is final­ly going back to its sur­vival hor­ror roots. Lit­tle is known about the sto­ry oth­er than it will be on a much small­er scale than the past few games. What is known comes most­ly from the demo that hints at a much larg­er sto­ry and shows off the new game­play. This also marks the first major AAA title that will be playable com­plete­ly in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty. If done well Res­i­dent Evil 7 could prove that VR is here to stay. 

Res­i­dent Evil 7: Bio­haz­ard will be avail­able for Xbox One, PlaySta­tion 4, PC and will be VR com­pat­i­ble. A demo is also avail­able on the men­tioned plat­forms and has been updat­ed with more con­tent since its ini­tial release.

Yakuzu 0 (Jan 24)

Not many games do what Yakuza does. It will some­times seem a bit seri­ous to out­siders look­ing at pro­mo­tion­al images, but it is one of the most ridicu­lous games out there. Punch­ing tigers, boss bat­tles on top of sky­scrap­ers and a under­wear thief are just a few of the crazy things in the series. The series is also sim­i­lar to Shen­mue in that there is a lot of atten­tion put into the details and there is a lot to do that is not relat­ed to the main sto­ry. Some are lit­tle things such as read­ing man­ga, going to the arcade or eat­ing out. Oth­er things are more sub­stan­tial like side quest with side char­ac­ters that can lead to espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing situations. 

Yakuza 0 is a pre­quel to the first Yakuza and will be the first one on PS4, mak­ing it good place to start for new­com­ers. The game will release also release on PS3.

Nioh (Feb 9)

Nioh is one of the few attempts from a large devel­op­er to make Dark Souls like game. Unlike oth­er games in the same genre, Nioh makes seri­ous and most­ly suc­cess­ful effort to build on the com­bat of the Souls series. Nioh has three stances that each have dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties and com­bos. There are also var­i­ous weapon types that also have dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties and com­bos. Stances, Weapon moves, mag­ic and more can be upgrade to be bet­ter or pro­vide new abil­i­ties. There is also sta­mi­na recov­ery sys­tem that rewards well timed but­tons press­es with instant recov­ery. I could go on, but let’s just say there is a lot of choice and well thought out systems. 

There was a lim­it­ed beta how­ev­er it is longer avail­able. Nioh will launch exclu­sive­ly for PS4. 

For Honor (Feb 14)

For Hon­or is a pret­ty straight for­ward game. You play as one of three badass war­rior fac­tions: samu­rais, vikings, or knights. Each of these have three types of war­riors or class types. Ulti­mate­ly play­ers will stab things with their friends, stab strangers online or stab AI in the sin­gle­play­er cam­paign. There are of course var­i­ous game modes and a sto­ry, but the most excit­ing part is the new com­bat sys­tem.

For Hon­or launch­es on Xbox One, PlaySta­tion 4, and PC. A beta will be held before the game’s launch. Sign up for the beta at the offi­cial website.

Halo Wars 2 (Feb 21)

One of the few Microsoft exclu­sives con­firmed for ear­ly 2017 is the real time strat­e­gy spin off, Halo Wars 2.  The game is of course build­ing on top of sur­pris­ing­ly good orig­i­nal Halo Wars. That means more con­tent such as five online modes, new units, big­ger maps and of course a new sto­ry. This is undoubt­ed­ly reach­ing a small­er audi­ence than many games on the list, but it does fill a spe­cif­ic niche that will make some gamers very happy.

Halo Wars 2 launch­es for Xbox One and PC. 

Horizon Zero Dawn (Feb 28)

It would be dif­fi­cult to for­get about Hori­zon Zero Dawn. Although the game seems like anoth­er open world game, it unde­ni­ably has a unique set­ting. Some­time in the dis­tant future robot dinosaurs have reclaimed the Earth. Humans now live in small tribes sim­i­lar to life before large coun­tries were estab­lished. Play­ers take on the role of the young machine hunter Aloy as she dis­cov­ers the mys­tery of the world and her own destiny.

Hori­zon Zero Dawn launch­es exclu­sive­ly for PS4. 

Ghost Recon Wildlands (March 7)

Ghost Recon Wild­lands is one of the few AAA games that have a heavy focus on four per­son co-op. The entire­ty of the game can be played with four peo­ple online and each per­son can drop in or out at any­time. There also plen­ty of tools and dif­fer­ent ways to com­plete mis­sions which pro­vides some replaya­bil­i­ty.  As for the sto­ry it involves a small elite team try­ing to take down the San­ta Blan­ca Car­tel in Bolivia. More than like­ly this will be the game to turn towards when you want to play with a few close friends. 

A beta will be released which you can sign up for at the offi­cial web­site. Ghost Recon Wild­lands launch­es on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. 

NieR: Automata (Mar 7)

Nier: Automa­ta is the sequel to the cult hit Nier and expands on the uni­verse of the Drak­en­gard series. Although the set­ting is fair­ly unique, the real star is the game’s com­bat. Plat­inum Games, the cre­ators of Bay­o­net­ta, have struck bal­ance between their sig­na­ture style and the com­bat estab­lished in the orig­i­nal game. This cre­ates a sol­id com­bat sys­tem that encour­ages play­er dri­ven dis­cov­ery and experimentation. 

Cur­rent­ly there is a free demo avail­able on PS4. Nier: Automa­ta launch­es for PS4 and at a lat­er date for PC.