Introduction
Man, everybody’s talking about superhero fatigue in the movie business, but over here in video game time, I don’t think we’re tired of the Caped Crusaders just yet. So today, we have 10 upcoming superhero games that you shouldn’t miss. We’re sticking with the officially announced ones, but even with that, there are a few things you may have forgotten about. We got a lot of cool superhero stuff, so let’s get started.
Blade’s New Adventure
A pretty recently announced superhero game is a Blade video game. Yes, Marvel’s Blade was announced during last year’s Game Awards with just a very small tease. It’s Blade getting a haircut in France, gearing up to fight vampires. That’s frankly all we know, other than that it’s being developed by Arkane, specifically Arkane Leon. Now, if you don’t know, Arkane is a development studio split up between places and different teams. With Arkane Leon, they are the folks that madse Death Loop.
So while yes, Arkane as a whole did have a miss pretty recently with Redfall, at the very least, the studio as a whole are the people behind Death Loop, Prey, and of course, the Dishonored games. But what we do know is that Marvel’s Blade is going to be a narrative-driven third-person action-adventure title. So if you don’t know, all of Arkane’s games have been first-person, almost kind of immersive sim-style games, like detailed, more nerdy first-person shooters.
But Blade is going to be a bit of a departure for them because they’re going third-person, and you know what? I think that’s pretty sweet. I still don’t think we have enough third-person games and a lot of the time it feels like we end up getting a game that would have been cool in third-person, but then it ends up in first-person. I’m looking at something like Cyberpunk. I just want to see my character more, and a character as cool as Blade, I want to see all the time.
At least we got a good look at what he’s got going on in the trailer. Like, they showed a little bit of him, so there’s something to go on. It’s Arkane’s art style, but it looks absolutely sweet. We don’t know when this one is coming out. It is probably very much in the works. But the big question is, I wonder if we’re going to see this before we see that Blade movie that Marvel’s been working on forever. It seems like Bethesda and Arkane here have their act together much more than the MCU, believe it or not.
TMNT’s Last Ronin
Something that came out of left field last year was the announcement of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game unlike any we’ve had previously. This one is going to be based on The Last Ronin. If you don’t know, The Last Ronin is a bit of a different return for TMNT. It’s from the original creators, but it’s a little bit more of a downer. It’s a little more thoughtful, more graphic novel, specifically because it’s centered around one turtle in a kind of future, crime-ridden New York City where the rest of the turtles are dead. They’re out of the picture.
It’s a little vague as to which turtle is this, finally, but he’s out for revenge. And if you ask us, that idea, that concept, just makes for a cool video game because there’s probably so much we’re going to be able to do with combat and adventuring around this kind of different New York City than you usually see the Ninja Turtles in. This is published by THQ Nordic and developed by Black Forest Games, Black Forest Games is a European studio. They’ve been around for many years now. More recently, they worked on Destroy All Humans and Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed, the remakes of the original game, which were pretty good. So, this is a THQ Nordic studio, but with them working on TMNT: The Last Ronin, they get to do their own thing, and we’re excited to see what comes with this one.
Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra
Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra was shown a couple of years back and teased with a different title, but now it is a full-fledged thing, and we got to look at it at a graphical showcase for NVIDIA, highlighting just a gorgeous narrative-driven action-adventure game. That’s all we know about it gameplay-wise. But a lot of the gameplay that we see here, apparently, is in-engine, which I still think is too good to be true. But like, you have a real comic-accurate Captain America in World War II going on missions and getting entangled with Black Panther.
But this isn’t T’Challa or T’Chaka, it’s T’Challa’s grandfather Azuri. And so they’re in occupied France in World War II and dealing with Wakandan spies and probably Hydra spies and intrigue. And I just really like what they have going on here. The presentation and stuff are cool. It’s interesting. It feels different from the Marvel stuff we’ve seen recently. This kind of straight-up reminds me of an Ed Brubaker comic, and that makes me happy. Oh, and also like I buried the lead here, but Amy Hennig is behind this game, the legendary game developer who spearheaded the Uncharted series, also Legacy of Kain, so she knows storytelling and cool stuff. So we’re excited to see what comes of this one. No release date yet, but at least now we’re starting to get a glimpse of what this project is.
Capes: A Turn-Based Surprise
Capes is a turn-based superhero tactics game. You might be thinking something like Midnight Suns recently, but this is a little bit different, both gameplay-wise and also just what it is. You play as superheroes, but not licensed superheroes. These are created new superheroes that fit archetypes that we’ve seen before, but they are in a world that has already been taken over by the villains. The villains have won, so you’re playing as superheroes trying to take back their world.
And with that, we’ve had flashy character reveals in a cinematic trailer, but also glimpses of gameplay, and it does look like it has the potential to be a lot of fun. With Midnight Suns, like, as much as I didn’t like the card-based system, I thought the turn-based tactics worked well for superheroes because they all have so many different powers. So the potential is there for Capes to be pretty awesome. It’s being published by DataI, but it’s developed by Spitfire Interactive. Thankfully, we don’t have to wait too much longer to get our hands on it because it’s releasing May 29th, 2024.
Marvel’s Iron Man
Marvel’s Iron Man is being developed by EA and Motive behind the wheel. Motive, of course, is the EA studio that’s been doing good stuff. They did Star Wars Squadrons, they did the Dead Space remake, and now they’re on an Iron Man game. We haven’t seen anything of it other than a revealing image of Iron Man himself, and he looks cool. But as of right now, that’s all we’ve got. We’re probably going to be waiting a while for this one.
The Wolf Among Us 2
The long-in-the-works The Wolf Among Us 2, this follow-up to one of my favorite Telltale Games, has been so long in the works, you know, with the original Telltale as a sequel, then the newer reformed Telltale from the ashes of the old one. And that new Telltale has suffered some layoffs leading to a lot of people just wondering what’s going on with the project. We hadn’t seen or heard much from it until just recently when they released a new batch of screenshots.
So thankfully, the game does still apparently exist. It’s continuing the adventures of Bigby Wolf. I think at this point, what I’m going to use this platform for is to tell you to go back and play the original. It is so awesome. It’s a great adaptation of Fables, you know, the graphic novel comic series that it’s based on. But I think it’s one of Telltale’s best things and still kind of a little underrated. I know everybody loves that original Telltale Walking Dead season, but The Wolf Among Us just hits differently. It’s weird and cool, and I recommend it to any comic book fan. While the characters necessarily aren’t superheroes, I still think it just fits perfectly in this list.
Wonder Woman’s Uniting Quest
The Wonder Woman game, just called Wonder Woman right now, that’s all we know. You may have forgotten about this one. It was announced quite a few years ago, but this is a Wonder Woman DC game from Monolith Productions, the people behind Shadow Of War and Shadow of Mordor. Those were fantastic games, and it’s kind of a cool fit. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen much from this other than a reveal trailer that shows off a Diana, a Wonder Woman, and that you are going to be fighting to unite two worlds.
So I assume like the world of the Amazons and then also just the real world. We also know that it is an open-world action-adventure game. That’s how it was billed from the horse’s mouth directly. But we don’t know anything else. Are they going to use the Nemesis system like from Shadow of Mordor? We don’t know. That would be cool. I’d be curious to see how they’d implement that. But I do think there is some pressure on this one with Warner Brothers Games specifically having a couple of misfires lately with DC properties like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and for some people, Gotham Knights.
They need that next big thing, that next real good potent hit. I mean, other than Hogwarts Legacy, which was a massive hit, but that’s not a comic book thing. The Warner Brothers games, like, they need something like Arkham again, something like that. Maybe Wonder Woman can kick something off. We don’t know. We’re just spitballing here, but we’re hoping we hear something from this one soon.
Marvel Rivals
Marvel Rivals is a hero shooter, a multiplayer team-based PvP thing. It’s a collaboration between Marvel and NetEase. Some of you might see this and roll your eyes, but I think it’s a really good idea, especially with how Blizzard has floundered with Overwatch 2. People are looking for something else, so it doesn’t feel like it’s just a me-too copycat game because the thing that they’re copycatting is kind of losing steam. So here you get Marvel heroes doing their thing in big arenas.
We’ve seen some environmental destruction and just some cool character designs, nice little shakeups on Iron Man, Doctor Strange, and the gang, as well as Galactus’s daughter being featured, which is like a newer comic thing, but to see it implemented here is kind of interesting. I’m curious to see how far they’re going to take the comic books and how much it’s just going to feel like a free-to-play NetEase online game. I don’t know for sure, but Marvel Rivals might be something for some people addicted to hero shooters. And we know it’s getting a closed Alpha test in May, I believe, so this project is probably pretty far along, and maybe we’ll be checking it out soon.
Invincible’s Game Adaptation
You may have missed this, but there is an Invincible game in the works, yes, Robert Kirkman’s famous comic, now Amazon television show. It’s very popular. It’s been blowing up for a while now. It’s gotten a lot of things, but now it’s getting an AAA video game experience. This was announced by Skybound, the publishers, and we don’t know too much about it, to be honest. I mean, we’ve gotten Invincible mobile games. Adam Eve got a visual novel spin-off that was just interesting. But this is going for just like you playing as Mark, being Invincible, doing the whole thing.
Skybound has said that it is going to be focused on action. There is going to be gore, which has been heavily featured, as part of the appeal. But that’s all we know as of right now. They’ve been working on this for a minute, and we’re looking forward to seeing what can come of this because I think in the world and the characters, even if it isn’t focused around Mark, there’s just a lot of cool stuff there, a lot of stuff they can work with these worlds, the villains, the everything. There’s a lot of potential for this one. So I’d say remember this one, keep your eye on it. It doesn’t have like a title or release date or anything yet, but it’s out there now.
Marvel’s Wolverine
Finally, down at number one, we have Marvel’s Wolverine or as a lot of people have been calling it, Insomniac’s Wolverine. This is a big deal because it is the next collaboration between Insomniac Games, the first-party Sony studio, and Marvel. Of course, they hit it big making the Spider-Man games, 2018 Spider-Man, then Spider-Man Miles Morales, and then more recently, Spider-Man 2. But now they’re changing directions towards a Wolverine game.
Unfortunately, Insomniac was hit with a brutal ransomware attack where a lot of early game stuff was put out on the internet, so people have been able to get little glimpses of this game as a work in progress, and it kind of confirms what we did know about it. It’s going to be a third-person action-adventure game where you’re playing as Logan. What I’m really curious to see is, like, how far they push the gore, but also the storytelling.
What are they going for here with this Wolverine? They have a way to present a new Wolverine to the mainstream public, just like EA with the Iron Man game. Everybody knows Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. Not a lot of people know the Tony Stark comic Iron Man, and everybody knows Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, but not everybody knows the comic book or cartoon Wolverine. So Insomniac can do something a little different here and hopefully make it a lot of fun. That’s what I want first and foremost. As a kid who loved Wolverine since the original X-Men animated series, I am looking forward to this one, as I’m sure many people are at this point.
Bonus Game: Batman Arkham Shadow
Believe it or not, I also got a bonus game for you, one that we couldn’t squeeze into the main list. It’s the just-announced Batman Arkham Shadow. This is a game set in the Arkham verse. It’s not developed by Rocksteady, though, and it is a VR exclusive. It’s from Camouflage, the developers of the Iron Man VR game, which we did before Buy on it. It’s a pretty decent game. So we’re curious to see what they can do with Batman. Batman’s last VR game was pretty awesome too, so yeah, it’s not a full-fledged Arkham game that we all want, but this could be potentially a cool experience. Details are still slight, but we’ll probably talk about it more soon.
Conclusion
But those are 10 upcoming superhero games that you shouldn’t miss. There was a lot we talked about today, so I want to hear from you guys in the comments what you’re thinking about any of these titles, expectations, hopes, and dreams. Again, we’re only talking about games that were officially announced, so let us know what you’re thinking of these, and what other superheroes you want to get video games. This could be fun. But either way, thanks for reading, and we’ll see you guys next time.
