2022 wasn’t exactly the most exciting year ever for shooter games fans, but 2023 might very well surpass it, thanks to several long-awaited releases.
Our pick of the top five most anticipated shooters includes a healthy mix of single player and cooperative multiplayer shooter games. Let’s dive into each of them.
Check out Wccftech’s other most anticipated games of 2023: Fighting, RPG, Multiplayer, Action, Adventure, Horror, Indie, Strategy & Simulation
Atomic Heart (February 21st – PC/PS4/PS5/XB1/XSS|X)
Nearly five years after we covered the first trailer of the game, Atomic Heart will be released to the public. The single player shooter takes place in an alternate version of 1955, where the USSR defeated Nazi Germany in World War II thanks to highly advanced robotics. Scientist Dmitry Sechenov endeavors to create a utopian world with his robots, but they eventually go haywire, requiring protagonist Major Nechaev to infiltrate facility 3826 and stop robot rebellion before it spreads to the rest of the world. Atomic Heart’s eerie atmosphere and gameplay formula of mixing weapons with powers like telekinesis, freezing, and electricity have drawn parallels to BioShock.
It won’t be long before we find out whether that comparison holds, but in the meantime, check out our most recent interviews with Mundfish.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl (TBA 2023 – PC/Xbox Series S|X)
Ukrainian developer GSC Game World is returning to its most prized IP fourteen years after the release of Call of Pripyat. STALKER 2 was actually announced for the first time in 2010 for a 2012 release, but that version of the game got scrapped, and GSC Game World even disbanded for a couple of years before reforming to make Cossacks 3. A new version of STALKER 2 was announced in 2018 and unveiled at E3 2021 with a stunning gameplay trailer, though later on, misfortune once again struck with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, forcing the studio to temporarily halt development and pushing back the release even further.
2023 should finally be the year shooter games fans re-enter the Exclusion Zone, which promises to deliver an epic, nonlinear story (with several endings) in a highly immersive, dynamic, and seamless open world filled with advanced AI.
Redfall (May 2nd Rumored – PC/Xbox Series S|X)
Arkane Studios continues diving into the shooter games genre after Deathloop. This time, the Austin office is adding open world and co-op elements into the mix, a first in the history of Arkane.
In Redfall, players will be able to choose among four different survivors (cryptozoologist and inventor Devinder Crousley, biomedical student and telekinetic Layla Ellison, combat engineer Remi De La Rosa, and sharpshooter Jacob Boyer) who are stuck on the titular fictional island located somewhere in Massachusetts. Here, science experiments have birthed a legion of vampires so powerful to block out the Sun and cut off Redfall from the rest of the world. Players will have to contend with both vampires and human cultists who support them.
If you’d rather play alone, be assured that you can absolutely do so while getting the signature immersive sim-inspired Arkane experience.
Remnant 2 (TBA 2023 – PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X)
Gunfire Games struck gold with Remnant: From the Ashes, a surprise hit action RPG that incorporated Soulslike mechanics into a third-person shooter game. Players roamed through a post-apocalyptic version of Earth and later traveled to other planets through the Labyrinth rift.
Remnant: From the Ashes was very successful in relation to its modest budget, selling over three million copies (without counting the free giveaway hosted on the Epic Games Store, where over ten million players claimed it) and warranting the recently announced sequel, Remnant 2. According to Gunfire Games, Remnant 2 includes an expanded Archetype system to provide a greater variety of play styles. Players will also find branching questlines and various stories dispersed throughout the dynamically generated worlds, encouraging strong replayability.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (TBA 2023 – PC/PS5/XSS|X)
Relic Entertainment’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine became a cult hit among fans of Games Workshop’s universe, remaining to this day arguably the best videogame rendition of the Space Marine experience. Ten years later, a sequel was announced at The Game Awards 2021, though it will be developed by another studio (Saber Interactive, the maker of World War Z and Evil Dead: The Game).
Exactly one year later, Saber Interactive presented the first Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 gameplay. We don’t know too much about the game itself besides the fact that Captain Titus returns as the protagonist, although his voice actor changed from Mark Strong to Clive Standen. We also know that the Space Marines will face a Tyranid invasion, with Saber Interactive promising endless waves of enemies thanks to its proprietary Swarm Engine already seen in World War Z.
Honorable Mentions
There’s way more than five promising shooter games coming in 2023, so we’ve compiled another list of ten shooters you should keep a close eye on.
