Video game preview: fantastic upcoming games to look out for in 2024

Star Wars and video games don’t always make a good team, but we’re on a bit of a roll at the moment. 2022’s Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was a brickified love letter to all things lightsaber, while last year gave us the excellent Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. In 2024 Ubisoft will hope to make it three in a row with Star Wars Outlaws, an open-world game set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi. We haven’t seen a whole lot of the game in action but female protagonist Key Vess seems a likeable scoundrel, and one who could fill the Han Solo-shaped hole in our hearts.

Release date: Late 2024

If you own a PS5, you’ve probably spent some time in Astro’s Playroom, the wildly inventive pack-in game that brilliantly showcases the DualSense controller and its many features. This charming tech demo was so good, in fact, its robotic star is getting a full game for Sony’s console. Astro Bot is a joyous planet-hopping platformer with - judging by its announcement trailer - enough ideas to make a certain plumber take notice. Like its proof-of-concept predecessor, a lot of the gameplay will involve creative uses of the PS5 controller, and will feature cameos from over 150 PlayStation characters that span its 30-year history.

Release Date: September 6

The Assassin’s Creed series has been just about everywhere that is notable in history, but somehow it’s taken us 13 mainline entries to make it to feudal Japan, with Ubisoft opting to let countless other games have a go first. Assassin’s Creed Shadows, then, could be too late to the party to really make a splash, but letting you switch between playing as Naoe, a sneaky shinobi assassin, and the more combat-focused samurai, Yasuke, is an inspired move. It marries the series’s stealth origins with the action RPGs that came later. An open-world Japan should be the perfect setting for this more open-ended structure.

Release date: November 15

VR gamers are often starved of high-profile releases, but every now and then a headline-grabber comes along. Batman: Arkham Shadow is certainly one of those. This Meta Quest 3 exclusive is a brand new game in the beloved Arkham series, taking place before Rocksteady’s first game, Batman: Arkham Asylum. The Caped Crusader is up against the mysterious Rat King, whose cultist followers have been kidnapping senior Gotham officials. Batfans will likely be sold on the story, which will also show us the origins of the likes of Harley Quinn and Scarecrow. But developer Camouflaj also promises the true Arkham experience in VR, with free flowing combat, predator encounters and lots of detective work.

Release date: 2024

If you ask us, there are too few games set in small towns in Northern England. Luckily, Thank Goodness You’re Here! is out to fix that. Dubbed a ‘comedy slapformer’ by publisher Panic (of Untitled Goose Game fame), the game sees you explore the strange town of Barnsworth as a travelling salesman. You’ll give the locals a hand with the tatties, milk cows, mow the grass and listen to as many double entendres as the script dares to chuck your way. With its delightful hand-drawn animation and the likes of Matt Berry in the voice cast, Thank Goodness You’re Here! could be a standout indie in a year that has already been packed with them.

Release date: August 1

If games were judged on visual style alone, The Plucky Squire would surely be everyone’s most anticipated game of 2024. It’s an action-adventure game backed by indie titan, Devolver Digital, in which you play as the hero of a storybook able to leap from the pages he calls home into the real world. The game’s big magic trick is the way in which you hop between 2D and 3D worlds as you explore an unfamiliar land, solve puzzles and fight enemies. If it’s as fun to play as it is impressive to behold, this could be a classic.

Release date: 2024

Perhaps it’s a bit reductive to say Avowed is Skyrim but sillier and with a more vibrant colour palette. But that’s the impression we get from Obsidian’s Xbox and PC-exclusive first-person RPG. With the next Elder Scrolls game still a long way off, it has a good chance of making a splash too. Despite the obvious comparisons to the aforementioned Bethesda classic, Avowed won’t be truly open-world, and it will have a strong focus on story. That approach worked well with Obsidian’s last big RPG, The Outer Worlds, and we’re excited to see what it does with a fantasy setting.

Release date: 2024

This year has already seen Princess Peach get her own game, and now it’s the turn of Nintendo’s other famous royal. The first mainline Zelda game in which you play as Zelda is a big deal, and with Link missing, it falls to the princess to save Hyrule from its latest disaster. Rather than fighting with a sword like the hero we’re far more used to controlling, Zelda discovers a magical staff that allows her to create “echoes” (copies, essentially) of things she finds in the environment, both objects and living creatures. So an echo of a table can help you reach a new area, for example, while waving the rod at a monster lets you deploy it in combat to fight alongside you.

Release date: September 26

A ground-up remake of what many Metal Gear Solid fans would say is the best game in the series is clearly very exciting. While Metal Gear Solid 3 is arguably less in need of modernising than its two equally iconic predecessors, it’s the first in the famously confusing series’s chronology, acting as a prequel to everything that follows. That Konami is starting here could indicate that it has plans to remake every entry to attract new fans. The fact that Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima isn’t involved at all might put some hardcore fans off, but Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is said to be a faithful reworking of Kojima’s masterpiece that harnesses the power of modern tech. If done right, it could be the best way to play a certified all-timer.

Release date: 2024

We probably should have seen this one coming. Sony’s Horizon series has already inspired a real-life Lego set, so it’s no surprise PlayStation and Lego have teamed up again, this time on a Lego video game set in the (unsurprisingly more cheerful here) post-apocalyptic world of Horizon. LEGO Horizon Adventures takes us back to the beginning of series protagonist Aloy’s journey, and will offer a more light-hearted take on her quest to rebuild humanity while battling enormous robotic dinosaurs. The game is designed to be played in co-op, either locally or online, and interestingly will launch on Nintendo Switch as well as PS5 and PC later this year.

Release date: 2024