We’re officially out of the summer and into the autumn, which means two things: shorter, colder days, and more time spent indoors playing video games.
It won’t be long until Christmas enters the conversation too, and with loads of great-looking games still on the horizon, you might already be thinking about what to ask the big guy in red to bring down the chimney (or digital equivalent).
Here are three still-to-be released games you should be wishlisting for Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X/S or PC, as we roll into the back half of 2025.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
The long-awaited fourth instalment in Nintendo’s Metroid Prime series finally arrives on 4 December, and will see us once again enter the helmet of the impossibly cool bounty hunter Samus Aran.
Like its direct predecessor, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is a first-person 3D reimagining of the Metroid series that began on the NES in the ‘80s. As much about exploration as it is combat, you traverse a mysterious alien planet – this time one known as Viewros – scanning the environment for clues and rolling through vents while curled into a ball.
We still haven’t seen a huge amount of Prime 4, but we know that Samus has gained physic powers for her latest adventure, and in the latest trailer we saw her whizzing around what looks like a semi-open world environment on a motorbike.
The Metroid Prime series is known for its incredible atmosphere and world design, and given how long the latest entry has been in the oven for, I’m expecting big things.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion
Tribute Games’ 2022 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat ‘em up was both a fantastic game and an irresistible love letter to all things Turtles. So, I have every confidence that it will do just as fine a job with Marvel Cosmic Invasion, which lets you create a team from a choice of 15 Marvel heroes to save the universe.
In a campaign that takes you from the familiar streets of New York to the Negative Zone, you and up to three friends combine the various talents of classic characters like Spider-Man, Wolverine, She-Hulk and the Silver Surfer, with each player able to switch between two playable characters at any time to keep the side-scrolling brawler combat feeling fresh.
With the stunning pixel-art visuals likely to be catnip for ‘90s kids, I can’t see Marvel Cosmic Invasion being anything other than a very good time.
Lumines Arise
If you’ve ever played Tetris Effect, then you’ll know that it’s an incredible and genuinely emotional reinvention of what is arguably the most important video game ever made. And with Lumines Arise, developer Enhance is looking to do the same thing with the slightly less immediately recognisable (but no less fantastic) puzzler, Lumines.
This started its life as a PSP game in 2004 and, like Tetris, has you shuffling around falling blocks, although the aim here is to match up 2x2 blocks with others by rotating them to create same-coloured squares of increasing size. Once done so, theyare cleared from the playfield to earn you points.
Lumines Arise takes this simple concept and gives it a glorious audiovisual makeover, marrying soaring synths with psychedelic imagery designed to put you in a gaming trance. If anything, it looks even trippier than Tetris Effect, which is some feat.
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