A weirdly consistent theme with this year’s lineup of releases, aside from too many racing games, has been the relatively large number of highly anticipated games, most of which we’ve been waiting for since 2017 or 18, sometimes even longer.
I have no clue how or why we got so many heavy-hitting sequels or new titles from developers we wanted to drop years ago, but at this point, I’m not going to question it; I’m just going to embrace all the good stuff coming my way.
All of these games had the seed of their existence planted into our collective consciousness in 2018 or even earlier, and they’re all finally being released out onto storefronts where we’re allowed to drop money on them for the first time.
They range from a variety of indie games that have simply been in development for 7+ years, to Triple-A titles that have finally decided to take up the task of making a sequel to a series that hasn’t seen a new game in ages.
8
Monster Hunter Wilds
World of Surprise
While the Monster Hunter series has been far from dormant these last few years, the last massive release in the franchise was Monster Hunter World back in 2018, featuring a gameplay style that wouldn’t see a return until this year, with Monster Hunter Wilds.
Wilds dodges a lot of the moving through molasses allegations the series has faced forever, being far better at onboarding beginners, and an excellent way for people to get into the series with tons of quality of life that really makes it shine.
The performance requirements may be an absolute atrocity that should make anyone with a half-decent computer shudder, but at the very least, it improves on World enough to feel like a worthwhile experience.
If nothing else, having a new, very open Monster Hunter is rather refreshing. Monster Hunter Rise felt more like a game made purely because World wouldn’t run on the Switch, whereas Wilds feels like the game they really wanted to make.
7
Kirby Air Riders
Riding High
You may think of Masahiro Sakurai when you think of Kirby games, but he hasn’t worked on the series in a very long time. That is, until we saw the announcement of Kirby Air Riders, a sequel to a 2003 GameCube game.
The original Kirby Air Ride was an incredibly underrated fan favorite kart racer, and it was absolutely bewildering to see it return out of the blue. We’ve hardly seen this game get referenced by modern Nintendo, and it’s never been re-released.
I absolutely adored getting to drive and fly around City Trial when I was younger, so seeing this thing appear at the Switch 2 direct was a jumpscare, especially alongside Kirby and the Forgotten Land getting DLC, and Mario Kart releasing this same year.
After 22 years, we’ll finally get to see a new generation experience what it’s like to ram your Air Ride into boxes, get a bunch of flying stat boosts, then get drafted into an arena where you’re absolutely useless against everyone else.
6
Mina the Hollower
Dug Deep
Somehow, Shovel Knight is over a decade old now, and I don’t know if I’m okay with that fact. It was an incredible game that made all eyes look towards Yacht Club, and finally, their newest game, Mina the Hollower, is seeing a release.
I’ve been backing this game on Kickstarter for years, twiddling my thumbs and waiting to get my hands on it for so long. The demo was released after what felt like an eternity, and I now have full confidence that this game will be a banger.
It’s a Zelda-like with an incredibly faithful Gameboy Color art style, and getting to run through that first level gave me the Ratatoullie moment that took me back to playing the first level of Shovel Knight on my Wii U.
The movement is fun, the different weapons make running through the game multiple times an absolute treat, and all the stuff you can find by digging around makes it a hella good time to mess around with.
5
Donkey Kong Bananza
Broken Free
For quite a long time, Donkey Kong has been a pretty inactive franchise. We’ve gone eleven years without a brand-new entry in the series, and that streak was finally broken this year, with Donkey Kong Bananza’s release.
On top of that, Super Mario Odyssey was released back in 2017, and just like Galaxy before it, the outcry for a sequel was maddening. Nintendo decided they had had enough and quelled both issues by making this new Donkey Kong essentially be Odyssey 2.
This game has Mario’s DNA, yet the same flair and personality that Donkey Kong has been grasping at for years, now turned up to eleven with a brand new model that makes the ape far more expressive. Everything feels perfect.
It’s easily one of the best platformers of the 2020s so far, and the massive praise it’s been getting has been more than justified. It delivered on years’ worth of hype and building expectations, and that’s no small feat.
4
Mario Kart World
Tricky Situation
Mario Kart 8 has finally died, and as someone who was there for the release of it in 2014, I couldn’t be happier. That game got old even before the Booster Course Pass was released, so seeing Mario Kart World is incredibly refreshing.
It’s completely new in terms of movement, tech, and especially in the world design, as it shifted to an open world with all the tracks on the same plane, which is heavily reminiscent of Mario Kart Double Dash’s somewhat connected world.
The intermissions might be really lame, but the track design is the best in the series, so it balances out. I cannot describe the feeling of making a great build, tricking onto a wall and riding it until you can trick onto a rail.
It flows far better than any other Mario Kart, and the parkour mechanics feel like such a natural fit that it’s wild they weren’t in the series sooner. The entire experience is refreshing, if nothing else, and a damn good game as a console pack-in.
3
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
No More Dread
One of the first games announced for the Nintendo Switch after the console dropped was Metroid Prime 4, a sequel to a game that was already a decade old at that point, and is now around 18 years old.
After years of silence, an announcement that the game was scrapped and being restarted from scratch with the original developer, Retro Studios, and even more years of silence, we finally saw it resurface this year.
It feels like Nintendo’s biggest unfulfilled promise is finally coming to light, and everything we’ve seen of Metroid Prime 4 makes it seem like a game that was worth waiting an entire adult lifetime for.
Games like Metroid Dread or Samus Returns were fine holdovers, but 2D and 3D Metroid are fundamentally different, and we haven’t seen anything in the Prime series even remotely worth considering mainline until now.
2
Deltarune – Chapters 3 and 4
Sheer Determination
I played Undertale back in 2015, and it changed my entire life. Fast-forward an entire decade later, and now playing Deltarune might just be doing the same thing to me, and I’m absolutely here for it.
According to Toby Fox, the idea for Deltarune was planted in his head back in 2011. Undertale was just a stepping stone game to prove he could make the game he really wanted to create, and given Undertale is one of the most influential games ever, I’d say he won.
The first chapter was released back in 2018, and I’ve been practically begging this man to let me throw money at him for his work, and now I finally can. It doesn’t hurt that Chapters 3 and 4 have been some of the most fun I’ve had with any game ever.
The story and characters are immaculate and so in-depth that people with little reading comprehension will barely understand them, and the music is so good that YouTube automatically decided to try and kill entire channels for using it.
1
Hollow Knight: Silksong
At Long Last
Hollow Knight fans may not have been waiting as long as Undertale or Metroid fans, sure, but they’ve sure been way louder about it. The original game was released in 2017, with a Kickstarter goal reached for a campaign featuring Hornet, and boy, did that evolve into an entirely new beast.
Now, with an entire full-fledged sequel with an added quest system, entirely new kingdom, and combat that looks far more fleshed out, Team Cherry has truly made something that looks like it took them 8 years to create.
Apparently, there were zero signs of development hell or slowing down throughout all that time. Given how Hollow Knight was made notoriously extremely quickly, I can only imagine how full to the brim with content and quality Silksong must be.
It may be one of the only games with this much hype surrounding it to actually live up to all the excitement, and I trust that we’ve got something truly special on our hands that was worth waiting for.
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