Guide to the games of 2017

 Last year saw an incredible number of games release on Steam and elsewhere. Welcome to 2017, where a new game will probably come out every time you blink. To map out what to look forward to this year, we've collected a giant list of games coming out this year. Buckle in, there's a lot to cover.



Ghost Recon: Wildlands

Release date: March 7, 2017
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Link: Official site 

Take a big open world, stuff it with 100 Far Cry-type outpost missions, and jump in with some co-op partners—
Tom Senior did just that back in Juneand found Ubisoft’s upcoming third-person tactical shooter full of enjoyable and emergent chaos. Ghost Recon: Wildlands takes place in a Bolivian landmass where four players comprise a military taskforce sent to disrupt a drug cartel and the government it’s aligned with. While players may have a specific missions—whether it’s to steal some intel or kidnap an informant—how they choose to tackle it is up to them. Guns blazing?
Stealth? Or, as often happens, failed stealth that leads to guns blazing?


The open world—the first in Ghost Recon’s ten-game history—promises diverse environments like mountains, forests, and deserts, explorable by ground vehicles, helicopters, and parachutes. The setting is close to modern day, so weapons and gear aren’t as futuristic as they have been in earlier Recon games. Ubisoft is also promising that player choice will affect the world, and that non-violent interactions with NPCs like rebels and civilians can have an impact on missions and goals. And, if your pals aren’t around, you’ll be able to play solo using AI teammates in place of real ones.

Prey

Release date: 2017
Developer: Arkane
Link: Official site
 
New Prey has nothing to do with the old Prey, or Prey 2, which was cancelled back in 2014. Now in the hands of Arkane’s Austin studio, Prey is only familiar in name. Set in
an alternate historywhere President Kennedy was never assassinated, the Soviets and the States continued their rivalry, until one took control of the Kletka Program, a space installation meant to control an alien threat. The project is eventually abandoned, and a corporation takes over (uh-oh), turning the station into “a cutting edge innovation center” called Talos 1. Big surprise, things don’t go well.


You play as Morgan Yu (with a gender of
your choice), who happens to be on board when the alien threat gets particularly threatening. From there, it’s a matter of survival and getting to the bottom of what went wrong. Expect plenty of shooting and exploration, and most interestingly, shape-shifting. You and the alien threat can take on nearly any form. An inconspicuous mug or trash bin might be an alien in wait, or if they’re hunting you down,
try the mug lifefor yourself.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Release date: Fall 2017
Developer: Rockstar Studios
Link: Official site

Rockstar has done it again:announced a highly-anticipated game
without mentioning whether or not it will come to PC. The original Red Dead Redemption never came to PC, but this feels more like a repeat of GTA V than that.

Assuming we’re right, we seem to be looking at a Magnificent Seven approach to the western—or at least, there are
seven riders conspicuously featured in the debut teaser. Rockstar is also touting multiplayer, which will presumably look something like GTA Online, but with people running you over with trains instead of cars.

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam

Release date: 2017
Developer: Tripwire
Link: Official site

We loved the asymmetry of Rising Storm, the authenticity-focused WWII shooter we named our
Multiplayer Game of the Year in 2013, and it's even more dramatic in the Vietnam-set sequel. The Americans are loud and fast, skimming the treetops with helicopters, while the Viet Cong spawn in squad tunnels, appearing behind capture points and ambushing LZs. More than being a good shot, strictly managed teamwork remains the key to success.
Tyler tried his handat both piloting helicopters and manning their guns, and found it nigh on impossible to hit anything without spotters and direction over comms.

The addition of modern, automatic weapons might be an even bigger shift for the series than helicopters, though, as part of the Red Orchestra and Rising Storm identity has been their demand for precision aiming with bolt-action and semi-auto weapons. But the quest for authenticity hasn’t changed here. Rising Storm 2: Vietnam’s guns aren’t easy to handle by any means, and scoring kills still sometimes means picking out specks on the horizon and taking cautious, well-planned shots. Read more about Vietnam’s helicopters, guns, and new mode in
our hands-on preview from August.

Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition

Release date: April 7, 2017
Developer: People Can Fly
Link: Steam page

A remaster of a wildly over-the-top, inventive FPS that asks you to electro-whip enemies into spike traps and explosions and your big-ass boot as often as you shoot them. It's still a blast if you missed it the first time around.

The old version's cheap on Steam, while the new Full Clip edition includes remastered graphics and audio, a campaign mode that gives you every weapon from the start, and more levels for the score attack Echo mode. Oh, and you can play the whole campaign as Duke Nukem, with new dialogue that probably includes a lot of cuss words.

Sniper Elite 4

Release date: February 2017
Developer: Rebellion Developments
Link: Official Site

If you don’t have a date for Valentine’s Day, no worries: you can
spend your the romantic holiday shooting Nazis in the nuts.

We got a look at
Sniper Elite 4 during 2016’s GDC, and the World War II third-person sandbox shooter featured stealth, melee kills, and a whole lot of disturbingly graphic slow-motion x-ray sniper shots the series is famous for. The maps look impressively large this time around, with its smallest still three times bigger than any map from the previous game.