Fall Games Preview: The Best New Games to Play This Fall
Fall is still officially a few days away, but don’t tell that to the videogame business. The avalanche of huge new games starts alongside September, and so far this month we’ve already seen the releases of heavily hyped games like Starfield and Mortal Kombat 1. There’s way more to come over the next three months, though, including the latest installments in best-selling series, the return of cult favorites, and, yes, even some brand new games. (Shocking, right?) Paste‘s games team—assistant games editor Moises Taveras, games intern Maddie Agne, and, uh, me (hi, I’m Garrett, I’ve edited this section for like 12 years now, nice to meet you) have pored over 2023’s release calendar and come up with a list of the 10 games we’re most excited for over the rest of 2023. Pretty much all the current platforms are represented, even something called the “Amazon Luna” (?), so no matter what hardware you own you’ll find something you can play in our Fall games preview. So sit back and dig in to our guide to what you’ll be playing over the next few months.
Alan Wake 2
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC
Release Date: October 27
Wanna feel old? The original Alan Wake came out roughly 13.8 billion years ago, immediately after the Big Bang formed the universe. Okay, it was actually released in 2010, but the point stands: it’s been way longer than it feels since Remedy’s mind-bending horror-adjacent game about a writer trapped in his own creation first graced our Xboxes. It actually came out just over a week before the series finale of Lost originally aired, which is very fitting: Alan Wake owed a lot to the kind of serialized mystery shows that popped up in the, um, wake of Lost’s massive success, but was better written and more bewitching than almost any of them. The first game wore its influences on its sleeves—Twin Peaks, Stephen King—but still created something new and unique, and although its title character and primary themes were revisited in 2012’s spinoff Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, the true follow-up doesn’t arrive until October.—Garrett Martin
Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Amazon Luna
Release Date: October 5
Thank the Old Man of the Mountain: Assassin’s Creed is going short-ish again after years of punishingly long adventures. Assassin’s Creed Mirage promises to revisit the franchise’s roots, returning to the Middle East (Baghdad, primarily) for a story that should last maybe 20 hours, tops. Not only will it be a relief to not feel the weight of 100+ hours of play when you set off on your murderous hijinks, but it’ll be fascinating to see what modern tech can do with a setting that the series hasn’t really revisited since the 360 era. Set in the 9th century, a few hundred years before Altair’s original adventure during the Crusades, Mirage focuses on the early life of Basim Ibn Ishaq, a major character from 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. As reliably entertaining as Assassin’s Creed’s cocktail of stealth, parkour, historical fiction, and murder can be, its endlessly complicated and absurd meta-story about ancient aliens and a millennia-old hidden war between secret societies is just as much of a draw. Hopefully it gets even more ridiculous and confusing with Mirage.—Garrett Martin
Cocoon
Platforms: Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4
Release Date: September 29
Cocoon deftly carries the weight of LIMBO and INSIDE on its shoulders. Like them, it impeccably renders places both intimate and alien. It wordlessly ushers players across worlds, tasking them with steadily unraveling mysteries whose answers seem just out of reach. Curious orbs found throughout the game function at once as batteries as well as portals into other realms, and finding out how to nest these worlds within one another to navigate increasingly complex environments is just one of Cocoon‘s many surprising delights. To say almost anything else would meanspoiling the experience, and that would be doing Cocoon, a game that deserves to be seen and felt first-hand, an incredible disservice.—Moise Taveras
El Paso, Elsewhere
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PC, Xbox One
Release Date: September 26
El Paso, Elsewhere is both intimate and insanely propulsive. Its in-your-face action reminds me obviously of Max Payne, but also the kinetic griminess of Kane & Lynch 2. It’s not just a throwback to a genre of moody third-person shooters, it feels in step with a lineage of games with a deeply felt sense of place. That and the confident direction of the few bits of story I got to see assures me that this is the full-throated expression of a team firing on all cylinders.—Moise Taveras
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