All the biggest video games (still) coming out in the second half of 2022

It’s been nearly a decade since Volition and Deep Silver released Saints Row IV, the absurdly maximalist final installment of its once just-a-Grand-Theft-Auto clone Saints Row franchise. Now the games are back for a (relatively) more grounded return, once again tasking you with the simple job of being a gang leader who has to shoot all the other gang leaders so they can take control of a mid-sized American city. (In this case, a riff on Las Vegas, as well as a few other environments.) Volition is promising fewer dildo bats, fewer superpowers, and, presumably fewer Jane Austen cameos than the previous Saints games; whether fans of the franchise want a more normal version of a game series where you famously hijack septic trunks to spray human shit all over buildings to lower property values, remains to be seen, but the “build your own criminal empire” part of the game’s design package sounds interesting, at least.

Everything old is new(ish) once again, as Sony and Naughty Dog gear up to release The Last Of Us for its third consecutive console generation. No mere HD port here, though; the PlayStation 5 take on The Last Of Us is a re-build from the ground-up of the groundbreaking game, including implementing tricks and ideas that originated in The Last Of Us Part II. We don’t know how many more iterations of Joel and Ellie’s cross-country journey we can handle at this point, personally, but fans of the franchise will presumably be happy to see the original game achieve some level of parity with its sequel.

Nintendo’s answer to the online shooter boom gets its second Switch installment, updating its brightly colored chaos for a new generation of ink-spraying combat. Splatoon 3 promises to play the hits for fans of the franchise, bringing back popular online modes, weapons, and the Salmon Run co-op mode that players loved from previous games. It’ll also bring in a freshly crafted single-player story mode—focused on the return of mammals to the games’ fish-y and squid-y worlds—and, we’re guessing, an injection of new life into the franchise as players flood into this latest return to the mess.

After originally showcasing their new game as part of this year’s Summer Games Fest, Metal: Hellsinger devs The Outsiders wisely refused to let the game run on strength of premise alone. Instead, a robust demo for the game—which combines Doom-esque shooting with elements of a rhythm game, tasking you with keeping your murder to the beat—let players experience exactly how fun it is to tear through the legions of hell. Especially the moment when you max out your combo multiplier, which is the point when the vocals on the game’s excellent metal soundtrack kick in, serenading your blood-soaked ascension. It’s the sort of thing that elevates a game from “Hmm, interesting” to “day one purchase.”

Sometimes all it takes is a pedigree and an IP: The idea of X-Com revival studio Firaxis putting together a strategy game focused on Marvel’s most Halloween-ready heroes is just too hard to say no to. Midnight Suns reportedly won’t be “Marvel X-Com”—more’s the pity—but it does sound genuinely fascinating, as Blade, Ghost Rider, Scarlet Witch, Wolverine, Spider-Man, and more of the company’s beloved stable of heroes blast their ways through the hordes of the villainous Lilith.

A Plague Tale: Innocence was a frequently harrowing story of sibling survival when it came out in 2019, tasking young French noblewoman Amicia with protecting her young brother Hugo as they traversed a landscape ravaged by violence, vermin, and disease. Its sequel, Requiem, doesn’t seem to be any more relaxing, as Amicia must now reckon with her own complicated feelings about killing—and with Hugo’s increasing mystical connection to the rats that frequently impede their progress. From what we’ve seen of the game, we can expect a similar “Dear god, how do we survive this” vibe from the first game, now married to a more expansive and proactive vision of staying alive in 14th Century France.

It’s been nine years since WB Games Montréal released Batman: Arkham Origins, its last official title. Now the studio is back with a very different take on bat-action, with a title that shares a premise (Batman’s dead and the kids gotta pick up the slack), enemy (the mysterious Court Of Owls), and name with an upcoming CW show—but which, the studio has hastened to explain, is its own whole thing. (It’s also not a part of the Arkham games, for whatever that’s worth.) Instead, Gotham Knights tasks you (and a potential co-op partner) with controlling multiple members of the bat family as they try to keep Gotham safe, picking up new equipment to power up your characters, and tussling with a whole host of Batman’s regular foes. We’d be lying if we said that the previews didn’t look a little messy, but we’d also be lying if we said it hadn’t been too long since a decent Batman game, so … fingers crossed.

A testament to the flexibility of video gaming naming conventions (which distinguish it from 2009's Modern Warfare 2 by adapting some fancy Roman numerals), Modern Warfare II is a direct sequel to the 2019 CoD: Modern Warfare reboot. In more practical terms, that means the franchise is back in the hands of original parent Infinity Ward, and that players will be back in the boots of soldier John Price, once again killing god-knows-how-many-terrorists in the name of lasting peace. Launching along with a revamp of standalone battle royale mode Call Of Duty: Warzone (and with both sporting a new version of Infinity Ward’s proprietary engine), Modern Warfare II promises the snazziest iteration of the franchise’s endlessly iterative approach to online military shooting to date.

After facing delays that nearly saw it knocked off the 2022 calendar altogether, Santa Monica Studios’ sequel to its critically acclaimed rebuild of the God Of War franchise is finally set to arrive. Ragnarok promises plenty of the stuff that has always made the God Of War games thrilling—i.e., the ability to hit large chunks of various culture’s mythologies in the face with a big fancy axe—as well as those more thoughtful and heartfelt aspects that made God Of War (2018) such a shocking improvement for the series. Which is to say that the story will once again focus on Kratos and his now-teenaged son Boy! Atreus, as they brave the dreaded Fimbulwinter to discover more about Atreus’ lineage, and why the Norse gods (including Thor) are now gunning for his head.

Nothing gets the collection urges itching stronger than the arrival of a new generation of main-series Pokémon game, and Scarlet and Violet are unlikely to be any different. Expanding the franchise’s sloooooow movement out into something approaching an open world (albeit not to anything like the extent of this year’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus), Scarlet and Violet have already started the process of colonizing our brains with the release of their new starter ’mons. And, look: We get if you feel you have no choice but to offer your allegiance to the grass cat or the fire croco. But seriously: If your heart doesn’t go out to dorky-ass-looking water duck Quaxly, what are we even doing here?

The Callisto Protocol doesn’t hide its desire to fill the Dead Space-shaped hole in our hearts: There’s the grungy aesthetic, the tools-as-weapon gameplay, and even the whole “health meter as a glowing bar on your player character’s back” conceit. (It doesn’t hurt that the game is being created by a whole team of old Dead Space devs, including series co-creator Glen Schofield.) Set on a prison colony under attack from gooey alien forces, Callisto promises a lot of gore, a lot of Sawyer from Lost, and at least some of the blend of action and horror that made Dead Space such a wonderful, and missed, part of the gaming landscape across the last several years.