The major games still due in 2022, including a few potential dark horses

November and December are the prime reminiscing months, a time to give out GOTY awards and think about what the past year meant for PC gaming.  They’re also when we start looking more closely at the next year, namely at whichever huge game got delayed into it. This year, that’s Starfield, a pretty huge game.

None of that stops new games from releasing in late fall and early winter, though, and there are some potential bangers still on the 2022 release calendar. I think three of them in particular could turn out to be bigger than the gaming scene as a whole realizes right now:

• Marvel’s Midnight Suns is weird, but in a compelling way. That’s what I thought when I played a bit of it earlier this year, and I wasn’t sure others would agree, but now I’m feeling validated—Fraser called it “unusual,” but said he’s “loving” it. I could be pretty big if it manages to attract both Marvel-likers who wouldn’t normally be into a Firaxis tactics game and Firaxis-likers who wouldn’t normally be into a Marvel game.
• Space colony management sim Ixion isn’t a game I’ve heard a ton of chatter about, but the industrial space art is appealing, and Chris liked its brief demo. It could quietly become the strategy game that fills up our dark winter nights.
• Choo-Choo Charles looks like the kind of thing that could turn out to be a janky game streamers amuse themselves with for a week or a new horror phenomenon.