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IF YOU have read this column over the past few years, you will know that the pandemic has had a huge impact on the video game industry, as titles have been delayed by supply chain shortages and by developers scrambling to work from home. The new generation of consoles – the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S – launched in 2020, but arguably it feels like we are still in the past, with few games taking advantage of the new hardware.

Could 2023 be the year this changes? Possibly. Looking ahead to some of the titles I am excited about, I could easily fill this list with games from my 2022 preview article. There is , set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which was delayed when its Ukrainian developers had to contend with Russia’s invasion, or , a sci-fi role-playing game set in the 24th century. Both are big, open-world games being released exclusively on PC and the new Xbox, so they should look pretty impressive, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more delays are on the cards.

There are other games I am looking forward to, though, even if they are also being released on old hardware. looks like a creepy opportunity to explore the deep sea in a submarine. The trailer doesn’t give much away, but I am intrigued by what looks like a flying drone inside an underwater base, given that the game is apparently going to be set in the 1970s.

Sticking with the retro-futuristic theme, is a first-person shooter set in an alternative mid-20th century Soviet Union, where robots allowed Stalin to defeat Nazi Germany earlier than in reality. I am slightly wary of how it will feel to play the game amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, however, since it is created by Russian developer Mundfish and is dripping with Soviet iconography.

Perhaps it would be best to move swiftly on to games set in the future, such as The Expanse: A Telltale Series. It is adapted from the sci-fi TV show of the same name, which, in turn, is adapted from a series of novels. I actually preferred the books to the live-action version of the story, which I found a bit of a slog at times, but I am interested in exploring the world of The Expanse for myself.

Another sci-fi game I have my eye on is Pragmata. Again, we don’t know much, but the trailer is intriguing: an astronaut-like figure explores a New York City street that seems to have been taken over by aliens. There is also a young girl and a cat that might both be holograms. Oh, and the whole thing takes place on the moon? I am keen to know more…

The first of two sequels on my list is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Sony used the 2018 original to demonstrate the power of the PlayStation 5 by letting you zip around Manhattan with almost no loading time, so I am expecting the sequel to be a technical marvel.

Finally, there is Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II. When I reviewed the first game in the series, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, I praised its approach to portraying the main character’s psychosis, in an unusual video game treatment of mental health.

Developer Ninja Theory has been working with psychiatrists to study whether games can be used to measure or modify people’s state of mental distress, and it will be fascinating to see if that research has made it into the sequel. All in all, there is a lot to look forward to.

Jacob Aron is New Scientist’s news editor. Follow him on Twitter @jjaron