Reboots, remakes, and sequels need not apply—Ars’ most anticipated games of 2016

The game industry is a quick-moving beast. Before you even have a chance to really dive into all the good games that come out in a year, another January is upon us with the promise of 12 more months of great titles. So almost immediately after we made our decisions on the best games of 2015, we started looking ahead to what games are worth paying attention to in 2016.

It's too easy to simply fill these kinds of lists with sequels, reboots, and remakes of the big-name game franchises you already know and love. That's not very illuminating, though. For the most part, if you liked the previous games, you'll look forward to the sequels. For our list, we'll instead focus on original games with the potential to start franchises of their own (with one exception that we felt justified itself as a comprehensive reboot).

As such, these are the completely new titles we'll be looking forward to most until 2017 comes along.

Cuphead

Developer: Studio MDHR
Platforms: Xbox One, Windows
Expected release date: TBA 2016

When I was a child, I imagined a day when I'd be able to take full control of a game that looked as good as the cartoons I saw on TV. A few games have come close in recent years (no, Dragon's Lair doesn't count), but Cuphead manages to capture that classic animated look better than perhaps any video game that has come before it.

The bright, bouncy characters in Cuphead are animated with what seems like impossible fluidity and detail, packing more frames of animation into a single second than many similar games have in their entire run. Each character and background is rendered with smooth, fluid line work that evokes the golden age of early film animation, rather than the cheap-looking Flash-based animation we've gotten used to in many recent cartoons and games (South Park, we're looking at you).

The amazing visual spectacle is in service of a game that plays like a co-operative Mega Man boss rush with the difficulty set to "ultra hard." Taking down each screen-filling enemy with your dinky pea-shooter weapon means reawakening old skills of pattern memorization and pixel-perfect dodging. You may not have flexed these muscles since the NES days.

It's not a game for everyone, but for that little kid who wanted a playable cartoon, relish the chance to dive into Cuphead all these decades later.
-Kyle Orland

Doom

Developer: id Software
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Windows
Expected release date: First half 2016

Yes, this breaks the "no sequels" policy we set pretty early. Yes, the new game still features Hell literally breaking loose on Mars, and there is still a "BFG." But the gameplay previews we've seen of the new Doom hint at a thorough re-imagining of the original 1993 game that defined the first-person shooter genre. For this reboot of a long-dormant series, we decided to make an exception.

The new Doom takes the core of what the original was—a fast-paced, tense trip through dark halls filled with horrific enemies waiting to tear you apart—and dials the ultraviolence up to 11. There's melee dismemberment, ripping hands off corpses to open biometric doors, and other aesthetic touches that expand the Doom arsenal.

When I saw the first gameplay demo of the new Doom, it evoked the same sort of twitchy tension as the original—and then some. The multiplayer alpha seems aligned with the best of fast-paced arena shooters like the Halo and Call of Duty games, but Doom brings its own sadistic edge—such as satanic power-ups and head-crushing melee. Best of all for a certain breed of gamer, there seems to be only the thinnest of stories to distract from the mayhem. This Doom promises to bring the kind of action that old-timers might remember from decades-old LAN parties.
-Sean Gallagher

Eve: Valkyrie

Developer: CCP
Platforms: Oculus Rift (Windows), PlayStation VR (PS4)
Expected release date: March 28, 2016

The main difficulty in controlling most first-person space shooters is that movement, viewpoint, and aiming are all locked together in a fixed position directly in front of you. Eve: Valkyrie takes advantage of virtual reality's unique properties to untie these elements, letting you experience the fullness of the battle surrounding you with nothing more than a tilt of your head.

Being able to look in a different direction from the one you're firing may seem like a small change, but it actually makes a pretty dramatic difference. Now, you can continue to track that ship that just zoomed past the front of your viewscreen rather than wondering where it went after escaping the edge of your monitor. If an enemy attack comes in from the corner, you can give a quick glance and assess the threat without having to drag your entire ship along with you.

Valkyrie comes with all the mythos and backstory of the intricate Eve universe, but this game seems set to be much more accessible and action-packed than the spreadsheets-in-space game it's based on (and is enough of a departure in genre and platform to get around our "no sequels" rule). As a pack-in title with the Oculus Rift, the pressure for this game to show off the potential for the new virtual reality headset is huge. We think it's up to the challenge.
-Kyle Orland

Fantastic Contraption VR

Developer: Northway Games
Platforms: Windows, Mac (VR headsets)
Expected release date: TBA

This year’s wave of new virtual reality hardware will include plenty of games that add a sense of "presence" to well-established genres like platformers, shooters, or space sims. We certainly look forward to some of those, but our VR anticipation is higher for games that simply don't work as well on a flat screen. Fantastic Contraption is one such title, and it shows off the potential of room-scale virtual reality immediately and accessibly.

Much like the 2008 game it's based on, Fantastic Contraption asks players to make robots out of wheels, pulleys, and other simple doodads. Arrange the pieces correctly, and the contraption will accomplish a simple task, such as moving an object from one side of the room to another.

It sounds incredibly basic, but the whole process becomes magical in VR. We couldn’t begin to imagine comfortably putting these robots together with a keyboard and mouse, but in VR it was simple to walk around, stretch and shrink support poles at will, and attach objects like motors and wheels with a snap. It felt like being warped to the most magical playroom we’d ever seen.

While other "room scale" VR games for the HTC Vive will be ported to sit-down systems, we can’t imagine this one working without at least full 360-degree rotation and a few feet of moveable space. If it’s half as good as its initial wow-factor feels, Fantastic Contraption might leapfrog past other titles to become the upcoming Vive’s first true, must-have game.
-Sam Machkovech

Firewatch

Developer: Campo Santo
Platforms: PS4, Windows, Mac, Linux
Expected release date: February 9, 2016

The only thing I needed to know to get me excited about upcoming first-person adventure game Firewatch is that it’s being made by Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, the lead writers behind season one of Telltale’s The Walking Dead game. It’s a good thing, too, because much of Firewatch is still shrouded in mystery.

We do know that you play a man named Henry, who retreats from his troubled life to work as a fire lookout in the mountains of Wyoming in 1989. Your only contact is with your supervisor Delilah, who speaks with you intermittently over a walkie-talkie. You’ll spend your time exploring your surroundings for clues about strange occurrences in the area while chatting it up with Delilah through a Telltale-style dialogue system. If the trailers and gameplay we’ve seen are anything to go by, something’s not quite right in the wilderness.

Developer Campo Santo has described Firewatch as a “mystery thriller,” focusing more on slow-burn suspense than in-your-face horror. Whatever the case may be, the game has a ton of talent behind it, including beautiful art direction from graphic designer Olly Moss and excellent voice work from Mad Men’s Rich Sommer and voice actor Cissy Jones. Pricing details aren’t available yet, but we’ll be front-row center when the game launches on Windows, Mac, Linux, and PlayStation 4 on February 9.
-Aaron Zimmerman