If you’re reading this, congratulations: You made it to 2022. It certainly wasn’t easy, but some of 2021’s best games helped us get through another 365 days of ups and downs.
While 2021 was another rough year for just about everything and everyone, many of us found refuge in games. While there were many, many delays — it was a year without an Elden Ring or a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — we took comfort in colorful stories like Chicory and Psychonauts 2, and enjoyed the spooks and scares of Resident Evil Village and Metroid Dread. There were a few surprises along the way, including Inscryption and another journey in the strange solar system of Outer Wilds.
The 2022 calendar is already jam-packed with big, blockbuster, triple-A game releases, including long-awaited titles like God of War Ragnarok, Starfield, Bayonetta 3, and the aforementioned Elden Ring. In fact, many of the games on Polygon’s 2022 most-anticipated games list were delayed from 2021 — and games like Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2, which appeared on last year’s list, aren’t on this year’s list due to even more extensive delays. There are also smaller but still exciting games, like Somerville and Cursed to Golf, to watch out for.
There are many games coming in 2022 that have yet to be announced, or that have not been given a release window. But as of now, here are the 50 games (listed alphabetically) that point to a brighter year.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp
Nintendo and Intelligent Systems’ addictive turn-based strategy military games, originally released for Game Boy Advance, are coming to Nintendo Switch with a glossy makeover. Re-Boot Camp includes both Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, with lengthy campaigns and Versus Mode multiplayer, when it launches on Switch sometime in spring 2022.
The Anacrusis
In a year already stuffed with Left 4 Dead-likes, how does The Anacrusis stand out? Well, it’s set on a funky retro-futuristic space cruiser, it features fantastical sci-fi weapons like a laser rifle and time-stopping grenades, it has a very weird collection of angry aliens, and it will launch in early access on Steam and Xbox Series X so its player base can help shape its development. Developed by Stray Bombay (ex-Valve developer Chet Faliszek’s new studio), The Anacrusis will be available Jan. 13, 2022 in early access, with a full release expected later this year.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Image: Ubisoft
It feels incredibly risky to imply that a new entry in James Cameron’s Avatar saga will release on time, but publisher Ubisoft and developer Massive Entertainment (Tom Clancy’s The Division) still have Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on their schedule for 2022. With Avatar 2 finally on the horizon (scheduled to hit movie theaters Dec. 16, 2022), Frontiers of Pandora will tell a stand-alone tale of a Navi fighting against humanity’s Resources Development Administration. The first-person action-adventure game is coming to PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox One, and it will be playable on Amazon Luna and Google Stadia streaming platforms. </…….