If we were to conduct a poll to find out the most popular leisure activities right now, there is a good chance that gaming would win. In 2022, many people even prefer playing games to watching movies or television.
The games industry has undergone remarkable growth during the past decade. That is down to improvements in technology making it more accessible and improving the quality of the games.
With gaming set to get even more popular this year, here are the must-play titles for the upcoming months, so you can get ahead of the crowd.
Elden Ring
This game can be played on the PlayStation and Xbox consoles, as well as on Windows PCs. It is a fantastically realized fantasy game that captures some of the same magic as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
It combines its fantastical aspects with testing challenges and graphics that plunge you into a world of mystery and danger. This is a landscape where you can lose yourself thanks to the high quality of the onscreen imagery and you will find that hours have passed without you even realizing.
Elden Ring is definitely one for those who like to spend serious time with a game, rather than players looking for something quick and simple to play.
Online Casino Roulette
Playing a game of roulette at a top online casino is not exactly a new option for 2022, but it is a classic that will remain popular this year. While these casinos generally feature lots of different types of game, including slots and card games like poker, roulette is the one to try this year.
What makes roulette so enjoyable, exciting and accessible to all is that it is purely about luck. By contrast, you can partly control the outcome of games like poker and blackjack through strategy.
With roulette you just pick numbers and either red or black and hope that the ball lands where you need it to on the wheel. Even someone who has never visited a casino before has a chance of winning and can savor the thrill of the gamble.
Dune: Spice Wars
The Dune franchise is on the minds of everyone right now, thanks to the hit movie from Denis Villeneuve. That means this title from Shiro Games is guaranteed to be one of the hottest of the year.
The developer is describing it as being a blend of 4X strategy and real-time strategy, which certainly makes it sound intriguing. It is expected to capture the world depicted in the movie, complete with all of its murky politics and motivations, so it should connect with all of the millions who loved the film.
Dune games have a history of raising the bar when it comes to real-time strategy gaming, so hopes for Dune: Spice Wars are extremely high.
Evil Dead: The Game
While the Evil Dead movie series has become a byword for darkly comic horror, somehow the various game spin-offs have struggled to capture that magic mix. Up until now that is, because Evil Dead: The Game is the one that finally delivers.
This is a great game to play with friends and it combines horror, action and laughs in pretty much the same way as the movies. You play as various familiar characters, including Ash, and your task is to wipe out the Deadites before they wipe you out.
Strange Horticulture
In comparison to some of the more complex strategy games on this list, Strange Horticulture is very straightforward. In it you are the owner of a plant store, but the plants you sell are distinctly weird.
Essentially they are either good or bad – with some giving their buyers new powers while others are lethal. The play develops through a map detailing the different plants and the whispers of the various customers which adds a unique twist.
Strange Horticulture has the feel of a Tim Burton movie and depicts its oddball little world through classy graphics. It can be completed in around four or five hours as well, making it one of the year’s most diverting little games.
Hogwarts Legacy
There have been plenty of Harry Potter universe spin-off games, but this is rumored to be more than just another standard one.
Hogwarts Legacy is expected to provide the open-world title that Potter-heads have been longing for. That will mean that they can enter the world of Hogwarts and explore it for themselves, rather than being tied to a set game structure.
None of this has been confirmed for definite yet, but Avalanche Software is certainly not denying it and the previews that have been released support the notion. That would make it one of the essential games of 2022.
Hogwarts Legacy is being developed for the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles as well as for the PlayStation 4 and 5 ones. It will also be available as a PC game, so everyone will get the opportunity to find out.
Harry Potter is still one of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world and a first open-source game based on it is sure to be a massive hit.
This year is already certain to be another banner one for gamers, with lots of exciting titles hitting stores. These are the games that will be at the top of the list for most of them though.