These probably mostly are the consensus most anticipated games of 2026, but I’ll throw a few of the ones I’m most excited for in here.
If you like fighting games, this is looking to be a great year. We’ve got Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game (which may still be a working title?), and the one I’m personally most excited for, Invincible Vs.
I love Batman Arkham combat, and if you do too, you should keep your eye on Dead as Disco.
The FPS genre has largely disappointed me in the past decade, but despite the absence of any multiplayer modes, Mouse: P.I. for Hire looks to be delivering what I haven’t been getting from this genre for years. We should also, finally, presumably, maybe, see a release for Judas.
Similar disappointment has followed racing games, but the indie scene has been trying to pick up the slack, and we’ve got a AA endeavor from racing game veterans that looks cool, complete with a story mode, called Screamer.
In the survival space, both Palworld and Enshrouded are set to leave early access in 2026.
For metroidvanias, I’ve got Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement and the beautifully animated The Eternal Life of Goldman on my radar.
And in the RPG space, I’ve got my eye on Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy and The Expanse: Osiris Reborn coming up, both from Owlcat. Like The Expanse, Exodus is also planning to fill the Mass Effect void, because it’s unlikely that a new game called “Mass Effect” will do so.
For arcade racing games, keep an eye on iRacing Arcade. It is a small roster of licensed cars and tracks, but seems to have a good single player mode(need to see more), and should have good online racing as well. Demo was excellent and I believe it is still available.
That might be a solid recommendation for others, but speaking for myself, licensed cars and tracks do nothing for me and in most cases will probably put some drag on my enjoyment, because real racing asks you to do things like “not checking the car next to you” that would put real people in harm’s way; and damaging licensed cars in video games is generally frowned upon by the licensors. And also speaking for myself, the store page says it has no local multiplayer, which is my primary use case for a racing game, so its omission is a deal-breaker. Most of the genre has gone this way in recent years, catering to the crowd that likes licensed cars and real tracks, and that’s why I haven’t had as many racing games to play of late. There’s still some stuff for me, though.
With all of that in mind then, I would also suggest keeping an eye on Super Woden: Rally Edge. Big list of cars to collect and upgrade, local multiplayer and the previous games are well received. There is also a Demo for Super Woden GP2 which should give you an idea for what to expect.
Thanks. A lot of rally games have come up over the years, but to my eye, surprisingly few of them have any multiplayer to speak of, let alone local, so I have yet to try one.
I played the demo for Cairn and genuinely can’t remember the last time I had a sense of accomplishment in a game that compared to teaching the top of the demo climb… And then the reveal of how much farther you’d go in the full game. It was very exciting for me. A very novel, interesting experience for me.
As for Witchbrook, I love Stardew Valley and magical fantasy, so that is looking like a no brainer.
It’s quite different from Jusant. I found Jusant to be to arcade racers what Cairn is to simulation racers. Jusant was like a puzzle game with a climbing aesthetic, whereas I found Cairn to be truly about the climbing.
I am interested in zero of these. Now granted, The Guardian is already on my nerves because of how devoid of actual intellectual writing for their articles are. There is obviously going to be way more games out there that are worth playing.
Unfortunately IO gave Conor McGregor, a grade-A asshole, a big bag of money for some dumb DLC appearance. So they never gonna get my money ever again. Who knows which asshole they are going to give it to next.
Sucks that the ONLY game on that list I’m looking forward to is a PS5 exclusive that won’t come to PC for years. I mean, I’ll probably also have to wait for GTA6, but I’m looking forward to that less and less as time passes.
This. Imagine being a company who suddenly has to do the right thing simply because they can’t afford the “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” approach any more.
Litigation may be an awful substitute for regulation, but at least its having some positive effect here.
Shame about the way they’re doing it, though. It’s a wet dream for politicians and activists in favour of age verification, and for the hackers who’ll inevitability get their hands on all of it.
Not even “can’t afford”. They’re rolling in money. They merely made the calculation that paying lip service to the problem (and farming their user base for even more data to leverage, count on it) could cost less than future lawsuits.
I don’t know if I would call mandatory facial recognition for children online “the right thing.”
I would say it is the parent’s responsibility to know what their child is doing and what platforms their child is using. If something horrible should happen, my first finger to point at would be the parents not doing anything to prevent it, usually out of negligence, not the Roblox company. A company can only do so much before they begin to assume control of responsibilities a parent has, and I would prefer governments and businesses have as little control over raising children as possible.
This is why many parents used to restrict children’s access to the internet to only when the parent can directly monitor it until they were an adult. Sometimes a “family computer” in a common room with the screen plainly visible was the one a child could use. Sadly, it appears this is no longer the case, and more and more parents are ignorant of what their children do.
If someone’s dog eats all the pills they left out on the counter and dies, it isn’t the fault of the dog and it isn’t the fault of the medical company that made the pills, its the fault of the owner for being negligent by not watching the dog and leaving the pills out. This is my opinion.
I don’t know if I would call mandatory facial recognition for children online “the right thing.”
I don’t think so either, which is why I didn’t say it. You skipped my final paragraph.
By “right thing”, I was referring to doing anything, which appears to be more than they’ve tried so far.
The parental responsibility argument was probably valid when there was 1-2 standard computers in a home and getting online was a Whole Thing in itself. Now we have supercomputers in our pockets that are permanently online. It’s a whole lot harder than a simple “parents should take responsibility” one-liner.
I’m not saying they bear no responsibility, but to hand wave that as the answer is not an answer.
Also: Thinking of myself at that age, though public internet didn’t exist until I was almost an adult, I know I’d have found ways around things. A digital equivalent to slipping out of your window to see friends or hiding your Brussels sprouts in a pocket.
The technical education required to correctly protect, monitor and configure the necessary hardware and software is unreasonable for the vast majority of people.
Though you could probably find a kid who’ll happily show you how to do it all…
I don’t agree. I think that the responsibilty a parent has to keep their child safe and teach them how to navigate reality has always been hard.
Parents in the 90s probably had as hard of a time with smartphones as parents do now with smartphones. When smartphones were brand new I remember many parents did not allow their children to have them at all, if the child even had a mobile phone. Not because they don’t love their child, but because they do. They want to protect them from having access to material children shouldn’t have. But children are smart, and they find a way around it with the iPod Touch or PSP that their friend has or other means. But in those cases the parents can say they did everything they could to protect their child.
The most fault obviously lies with the nefarious person grossly mistreating children. If they didn’t exist at all, none of this would even be necessary. Unfortunately, that cannot ever happen, because humans still do not know what causes them to be the way they are, or how to prevent it/treat it properly.
Now, Roblox certainly should be doing something about it, but the amount of fault they have in the issue is the least among other parties. But using mandatory facial recognition for that? I think that is way too far. I don’t see why DMs aren’t monitored. Seems like the perfect use case for AI: have an LLM scan DMs as they are sent and "flag"messages of potential suspicion for a human to then read the DM chain for context to verify. Or just remove messaging from the platform altogether.
theguardian.com
Aktywne