Video games always want to innovate. Developers both need to make something that stands out from a crowd, and want to engage us in new ways. 2021’s games had outstanding examples of this – Unpacking made us rethink the puzzle genre and the stories contained in our possessions, Wildermyth showed us the power of procedural storytelling. 2022 is set to build on that, daring us to see the genres we like in different ways, and gaming will only be better for it.
Take Marvel’s Midnight Suns by Firaxis. The bombast of superhero movies likely immediately spells action-adventure to most of us, but perhaps now that we’ve got our Hulk-smashing out of the way in Marvel’s Avengers and unleashed the power of teamwork in Guardians of the Galaxy, a tactical card game is the very thing we didn’t know we wanted. Midnight Suns is going to introduce a lot of Marvel fans to what Firaxis is particularly good at, so I reckon a lot of people will discover a new passion, even if they’re on the fence about this particular combination now. Other big franchises are set to reinvent themselves, too. Yakuza has become a turn-based RPG, now run-and-gun bedrock Metal Slug will make its debut as a tactics game, and Final Fantasy reimagines its own beginnings as a dark sci-fi action adventure. While Final Fantasy has tried to make satisfying action-adventure combat for years now, the fact that Square Enix would relinquish the reins on it to finally make that happen seemed unfathomable to me just a few years ago.
