2024 was a unique year for gaming, and I don’t mean to put that negatively. While 2023 was filled with the hype fests, anticipated games like Starfield and popular IP like Star Wars, 2024 had a mix of expected disappointments and surprise masterpieces!
The sequel to some obscure top-down shooter for last-gen PlayStations turned out to be one of the best live-service games ever in Helldivers 2; a full expansion of the silly tech demos for the PSVR and recent PlayStations won GOTY in Astro Bot; a poker-based Roguelike made by a single person won several awards at the Game Awards and overtook literal Minecraft on both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store in Balatro.
Several more games turned out to be fantastic, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, Black Myth: Wukong, too many to list here. Still, with such a strong year in some areas, what’s next? In all honesty, 2025 doesn’t seem like a great year for most, but if there’s at least one thing to look forward to, I have to say it’s the entertainment we’ll enjoy together.
To start, here are the expansions and DLC releasing in 2025:
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants – Not much is known about the DLC yet, but those who bought the Premium Edition will get a “story-driven” expansion to the first game. It is confirmed for early 2025, and I’d assume it will be released at a similar time to the game’s PS5 port in the spring.
- Unnamed Lies of P DLC – Even less is known about the future DLC for soulslike Lies of P, but we do know the developers are aiming for an early 2025 release.
- Fighting Game DLC – The upcoming DLC fighters for the main fighting games go as follows:
- Mortal Kombat 1 – Conan the Barbarian (self-titled film) and T-1000 (Terminator 2: Judgement Day)
- Street Fighter 6 – Elena (Street Fighter) and Mai (Fatal Fury)
- Tekken 8 – Clive Rosfield (Final Fantasy XVI)
- Guilty Gear -Strive- – Venom (Guilty Gear), Unika (Guilty Gear), and Lucy (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners)
And what we’re all waiting for, here are some of the top games releasing next year:
- Assassin’s Creed: Shadows – The next installment in the beloved Assassin’s Creed franchise, it takes place in Japan during the late 16th century and you follow two main protagonists. You can freely choose between Naoe, a shinobi that plays stealthy like classic Assassin’s Creed characters, and Yasuke, a samurai that is more direct in combat and plays closer to more modern Assassin’s Creed characters. Despite being delayed from December to February, and delayed again, it should be released on March 20th, 2025 for PC and current-gen consoles (meaning Xbox Series X/S and PS5) after a delay from the last date.
- Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves – After long last, SNK is finally releasing a new Fatal Fury game, the first in 25 years! The game will be like previous games in its playstyle and mechanics while introducing the new Rev System, seemingly similar to Street Fighter 6’s Drive Gauge. It will release on April 24th, 2025 for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
- DOOM: The Dark Ages – After DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal in 2020, Bethesda is releasing a third in the phenomenal new games. According to interviews, “If you were an F22 fighter jet in DOOM Eternal, this time around we wanted you to feel like an Abrams tank.” This means that the gameplay will be slower but heavier, and from the little gameplay we’ve seen, it seems so. It will be released in this year for PC and current-gen consoles, although no specific release is known.
- Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – It was ten years after Metroid Prime 3 was released that Nintendo announced a fourth in the series, and Metroid fans went another 7 or so with practically no news or updates. At last, the game got a trailer, and it already looks like it’ll be a blast. While I can assume it will be released for the Switch’s successor when that comes out, we do know it will be released in this year for only the Nintendo Switch (and likely the Nintendo Switch 2).
- Borderlands 4 – The original looter shooter has been through a rough patch since 2018, with Borderlands 3, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, New Tales From the Borderlands, and the Borderlands film being least to most hated in that order. Still, Gearbox has been hard at work and finally revealed the fourth main installment of the franchise (not including Pre-Sequel)! We’ll surely get more news on our story, Vault Hunters, and more later on, but for now we do know it’ll be released this year for PC and current-gen consoles.
- Ghost of Yōtei – Despite some controversy surrounding the inclusion of a female protagonist, most Ghost of Tsushima fans are excited for a sequel! It’ll take place much later in Japanese history, and we’ll most likely get an entirely new story and mechanics reflecting that; knowing the developer’s success with the original game, I have no doubt they’ll do great. More news is yet to come, but we know it’ll release sometime this year for the PlayStation 5.
- Elden Ring: Nightreign – A surprise move from Fromsoft after Miyazaki announced, “there are no plans for additional DLC or ‘ELDEN RING 2’,” they are developing a roguelike spinoff of the original game with 3-player co-op. They’ve never done anything even remotely close to this, but they’ve yet to make a bad game (that includes Dark Souls 2), and my trust is in them. Nightrein will be released this year for PC, current-gen consoles, and last-gen consoles (Xbox One and PS4), with a network test in February 2025.
- Grand Theft Auto VI – GTAV is the second best-selling game in history, only behind Minecraft, and players have eagerly awaited GTAVI for a decade now. It was the most anticipated game at the 2024 Game Awards, and it will most likely break records. Limited info is known at the moment, but we do know it should be released in Fall later this year for only current-gen consoles. Keep in mind that it is likely the release will be pushed to 2026, and a PC release will likely be sometime later than that.
Many more games are planned to be released next year, especially PC ports of popular games (Spider-Man 2, Last of Us: Part II Remastered, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth), but these are the main ones on everyone’s radars. Of course, if there are games you are excited about for this year, make sure to follow along with any updates; you can do this by keeping tabs on the developers or publishers of a game directly, usually through social media like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter (𝕏), or Reddit.
