If you thought January was a quiet month for games, you’re about to wish you still only had a handful of games to play. February is here and it’s about to flood your backlog with enormous games that could take you the rest of the year to get through. Games like Civilization 7 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 would be enough to make for an unmanageable month, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With new Like a Dragon and Monster Hunter games on the horizon, plus a few new IPs, you’re going to have your hands full.
To help you prepare, here’s everything you can expect to play this month. Seven big games need to be on your radar for sure, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can expect a whole lot more when you factor in the indies that’ll fall between these bigger releases. Just be glad that Assassin’s Creed Shadows got pushed back to March. Can you imagine trying to work that into your schedule too?
February will start with a band thanks to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Warhorse Studios’ latest action RPG is a long awaited sequel to a Medieval classic. The historical epic tosses players into 15th century Europe and sets them on a good old fashioned quest for revenge. The main appeal here is its giant Medieval sandbox, which gives players plenty of opportunities to slash down rivals in first-person and shape their character in a deep RPG system. If that’s checking the right boxes for you already, you’ll probably want to check this one out come February. I’d just recommend staying as far away as possible from its online community.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will be available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
If rhythm games are more your speed, I can’t recommend Rift of the Necrodancer enough. The follow-up to the hit Crypt of the Necrodancer twists the Guitar Hero formula on its head by replacing music notes with monsters that need to be slain by pressing a button on the right beat. That sounds simple, but it paves the way for a complex hook where every monster has its own rhythmic rules to learn. With a fantastic soundtrack and full modding support available at launch, it might just be one of the best rhythm games of all time. I’ve been playing it for a week or two now, and I can’t get enough.
Rift of the Necrodancer will be available on Nintendo Switch and PC.
It’s hard to say what the biggest release of this month actually is, but Civilization 7 is a strong contender. The latest entry in Firaxis’ strategy series once again has players building a civilization from scratch and guiding it through three ages. Along the way, players will have to juggle diplomacy with other nations, build cities, and manage trade resources. It should all be familiar to long-time fans of the Civilization series. Our early impressions of it have been positive thus far, so we expect it to make a big splash when it launches on February 11. You can catch me going to war as Machiavelli around then.
Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 will launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
At first glance, you may mistake Lost Records: Bloom and Rage for a brand new Life is Strange game. That instinct would be warranted. The narrative adventure comes from Don’t Nod, the studio behind Life is Strange (which has since moved hands to Deck Nine Games). Lost Records looks like a return to the series’ heights, with a horror-tinged 90s story dipped in punk rock. You’ll be able to play the first half of it in February, with Tape 2 coming in April. If February feels too crowded, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to wait until the full game was out.
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage will launch on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Obsidian Entertainment is known for some of the best RPGs of all time, so any new release from it should turn heads. This month, the studio will return to the world of Pillars of Eternity with Avowed. The new release drops players into a magic-filled world fighting off a mysterious plague. We’ve gotten hands on with it a few times now and the prognosis is good thus far. It’s feeling like another solid fantasy RPG from a studio that has that formula down pat. Hopefully that’ll start Xbox’s promising 2025 out on the right foot.
Avowed will launch for Xbox Series X/S and PC.
It’s a little strange that Like a Dragon has become an annualized series like Madden at this point, but it’s hard to complain when developer Ryu Ga Gotoku keeps putting out such consistent games. This February, it’s taking its weirdest swing yet with Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, a spinoff starring Goro Majima. The title sort of says it all here. You can expect an over-the-top, swashbuckling adventure that ties into the events of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Expect everything you love about the series, but with some ship battling thrown in for good measure.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will launch for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
February is ending strong with what could be the biggest game of the entire year if Grand Theft Auto 6 winds up delayed. Monster Hunter Wilds is set to continue the action RPG series’ momentum with an even bigger sequel filled with fiercer monsters and a larger emphasis on story. Based on what we’ve played so far across a few demos, we’re already sold on the Monster Hunter World follow-up, which continues to build on everything that game did well. With better onboarding for new players and the power of current gen consoles to make it even more spectacular, this will be the month’s can’t miss game.
Monster Hunter Wilds will launch for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.