Happy New Year! We don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about accidentally typing "2017" every 10 minutes for the next couple of months, and that's not the only tantalizing thing on the horizon, because there are all sorts of exotic new games making landfall over the following 12 months. There are far too many to include everything - have a look at our 2018 video game release dates list if you want a comprehensive rundown - so here are 10 of the games that we're personally anticipating with breath most bated.
1. Monster Hunter World (Capcom, January 26)
Monster Hunter has built up an incredibly loyal fanbase across various installments on PlayStation Portable, Wii and 3DS, but paradoxically Capcom has always partnered with systems whose technical restraints meant players had to use their imaginations to give elaborate monster hunts the heft and gravitas they deserved. So Monster Hunter World is not only exciting in that it's another installment in a great series - it's also arguably the first time the game has appeared on systems that can do its concept justice. Judging by the recent beta with its screen-filling monsters and vast play spaces, this will be a sight to see.
2. Far Cry 5 (Ubisoft, March 27)
Having chosen Montana as the setting for its latest open-world shooter, Ubisoft has seemingly gone out of its way to avoid engaging with the political implications of Far Cry 5's fiction, which sees players enter the orbit of a doomsday cult run by a far-right religious fanatic. Perhaps this means the game hasn't much to say, but then neither did Far Cry 3 and 4, and both games were a hoot. Gameplay-wise, Ubisoft is beefing up close-quarters combat, and has a variety of systems to help you use local recruits and animals to take down enemies. Infiltrating camps and sowing chaos was always a high point of the previous games, so we're more than happy to do the same with new toys in a beautiful new setting.
3. Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream)
David Cage is a bit of an uneven storyteller, to put it gently, and recent footage of Detroit: Become Human featuring heavy-handed depictions of child abuse suggest the game will give his critics plenty more ammunition. Equally though, Cage has been doing this for a while and his games are always full of curious mechanics and ideas, even if he often loses his way, so we're interested to see how Detroit turns out. It's certainly on our list of games we want to play, although we can't decide if that's out of anticipation or just morbid curiosity.
4. Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar)
Do we need to write anything for this one? Rockstar's most loved game besides Grand Theft Auto, the original Red Dead Redemption transposed the open-world structure of the developer's criminal adventures onto the Wild West, ejecting the freewheeling nihilism of its stablemates in favor of heart and integrity. Everyone on the internet has written their own love letter to that crossing into Mexico, and the prospect of revisiting Rockstar's vision of the west on modern hardware, with the developer's usual extraordinary attention to detail given epic expanse to roam, is more than enough to justify our interest.
5. Spider-Man (Insomniac Games)
It will shock you to learn that there is no shortage of Spider-Man fiction in popular culture, but it's been a while since we had a really good Spider-Man game. Insomniac will try to change that in 2018 with its PS4 exclusive, which looks like it has nailed the wit and feel of the webbed wonder's adventures judging by demos at events like E3.
6. The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog)
Whereas the Uncharted series gave us wholesome (albeit rather voluminously murderous) Indiana Jones-style escapades through picturesque tombs and other exotic locations, The Last of Us gave us a moody trawl through the end of the world. Naughty Dog is a master storyteller, engineering genius and artist rolled into one at this point though, so TLOU was every bit as visually arresting, inventive and haunting. Having established its credentials, the sequel looks like it goes for broke - literally in the case of one unfortunate woman's arm in a recent cut-scene trailer - and it will be fascinating to see what kind of tale the Dog spins in the grim twilight of humanity.
7. Super Meat Boy Forever (Team Meat)
Eight years after Super Meat Boy gave us panic attacks with its nutty fast-paced platform violence, Super Meat Boy Forever pitches up with a revised development team (sans Edmund McMillen, who does his own thing now) and a revised premise. Forever is an auto-runner where you control Meat Boy's jumping and attack power, and judging by the PAX West trailer, it has learned plenty of lessons watching every mobile developer in the world plug away at this genre over the last decade. The last game to successfully morph into this genre was Super Mario Run, so we're excited for how this one will turn out.
8. Shenmue 3 (Ys Net)
We all thought it would never happen, and frankly we're still a bit sceptical about Yu Suzuki and his team's ability to pull off Shenmue in a world where people's expectations of things like graphical fidelity, game length and production values have skyrocketed in recent years, especially on a relatively modest Kickstarter-seeded budget. But there's also a part of us that will always be out on those docks looking for sailors, and if Shenmue 3 is somehow a disappointment, you'll have to carry us out of it on a forklift truck.
9. Crackdown 3 (Reagent Games/Sumo Digital)
Bounding around collecting agility orbs and then climbing the Agency Tower in Crackdown was one of the quintessential Xbox 360 gameplay experiences, and it's high time the series was brought up to date. Originally pitched as somehow tied into cloud computing in ways that made destructible environments ever more compelling, we currently know relatively little about Crackdown 3 besides that and the fact it will inherit a lot of its predecessors' sandbox elements. After a couple of delays, we're starting to wonder whether it will ever make it out of development, but whenever it does we'll be waiting. Please be good, please be good!
10. Code Vein (Bandai Namco)
When we first saw the trailer for Code Vein, we thought we might be looking at a new science-fiction themed game from Dark Souls creator From Software, and Bandai Namco certainly hasn't shied away from those comparisons. Set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia and drawing on various vampiric and supernatural ideas, this third-person role-playing game has fierce physical combat at its core and a distinctive anime-inspired art style. Can director Hiroshi Yoshimura deliver something with as much depth and invention as Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki? Hopefully we'll find out in 2018.