Credit to the hard work and craft put in by the studios, Nintendo has a great many highly anticipated sequels to several of its big-hit franchises. The sequel to Breath of the Wild and the next Metroid installment are both high on the lists of gamers, but one that will finally be released in 2022 is Bayonetta 3. Coming exclusively to the Nintendo Switch, the action-adventure title is eight years in the making.
Cereza – or rather, Bayonetta – is a shapeshifting witch who uses magic and firearms to fight anything that stands in her way. As well as this, she’s also a master of the demonic arts, being able to tap into devilish energy to summon and control demons. In Bayonetta 3, the summoning of demons will be cranked up a tier. As shown in its Nintendo Direct video, demons will play an even larger part in the gameplay.
You’ll also meet the new protagonist Viola, whose sword has its own demon imbued into it, but the big draw is the Demon Slave mechanic. During battles with equally massive demons, Bayonetta can summon a Demon Slave to engage in what is essentially a Kaiju fight. Her demonic battles look to have reached a whole new tier for this new game. When it finally releases on October 28, perhaps without knowing it, Bayonetta 3 will cement 2022 as a big year for demons in gaming.
Perhaps not usually seen as a sub-genre or even an overly popular theme, there’s been a distinct demonic presence in gaming this year. Some let you play as the demon, others have you be demon hunters, and others lean into devilish characters and items. Big hits and more novel, offbeat creations have found avid player bases, and there are even more demonic titles on the way.
Evil Dead: The Game makes you the tricky demon
On May 13, Saber Interactive launched its video game expansion to the Evil Dead franchise brought to life – or, perhaps more fittingly, back from the dead – by Sam Rami with Evil Dead: The Game. The co-operative and player-vs-player horror game has you play as survivors fighting to destroy the Necronomicon in various spooky settings. Well, that’s the usual way to play with others.
You also have the option to play as one of the game’s demons. You also want to obtain the Necronomicon, but as the Warlord, the Puppeteer, or the Necromancer, you can use different strategies to best the survivors. As the Warlord, you’ll be going all-in with muscle, unleashing Deadites to overwhelm the team. If you pick the Puppeteer, you’ll need to be more strategic, utilizing Deadites to disable foes. With Necromancer selected, you get to control and buff a whole army of skeletons to pile into the survivors.
It’s not long until a game given special permission to create a brand-new demon-slaying superhero will launch, too. On December 2, Marvel’s Midnight Suns comes with the special allure of giving you the first customizable Marvel superhero, The Hunter. You’ll get to develop the character as you see fit, going down the paths of the dark or light, and pick from over 40 abilities.
As a demon slayer, and with the task of stopping the resurrection of an elder god by the name of Chthon, you know that the game’s going to be teeming with demonic entities, dark powers, and even some possessed former heroes. There will be a bunch of other playable superheroes as well, with the gameplay itself centered around turn-based combat, role-playing elements, and card-based abilities.
While it’s been out since 2017 in the western market, the long-running Tekken 7 officially came to an end this year with the reveal of the Tekken 8 trailer. Central to the story of the fighting game has been the “Devil Gene,” which is still possessed by jaded father and son Kazuya Mishima and Jin Kazama. With Kazuya having just finished his conflicted father, Heihachi, Tekken 8 looks to draw an end to the Mishima Saga story; Jin needs to summon as much demonic power as he can to beat the incredibly powerful, devil-embraced Kazuya.
Demons thriving to the stretches of gaming
Demons make for a great draw across the realms of gaming, whether you’re tasked with facing them, being them, or summoning them and their incredible powers. Following up on the surprise hit Devil Daggers, in which you seek to survive, Hyper Demon tasks you with finishing the game as quickly as possible, but while you slay demons, the game increases in its difficulty. Plus, you need to power through its trippy FPS setting.
In another line of gaming, further flung from the indie corners of Steam, the grid-based game The Demon Code currently ranks as one of the top ten online slots for real money in Canada. In the game, four demons unleash the key features. The Ancient Alchemy adds mystery symbols, Cryptic Chaos pays for a random symbol anywhere, Dark Design adds wilds, and Fiery Fusion places a symbol block.
On mobile, there’s another big-hit, demon-imbued game that’s already wreaking havoc. Bloodline: Heroes of Lithas from GOAT Games caught a few headlines in July with its outlandish teaser trailer, showing a demon birthing another demon. In fairness, the game is all about uniting your various champions – be they demon, orc, or lycan – to create newer, more powerful ones.
So, you get to make your mighty demons all the more powerful by infusing the best elements of the other races in Bloodline. The unique mechanic has already earned the free-to-play game over 500,000 downloads and a 4.5-star rating on the Play Store. On the App Store, it boasts a 4.7-star rating, sitting 40th among the role-playing category that’s headlined by Pokémon Go, One Punch Man, Genshin Impact, and BitLife.
Demons are running rampant in gaming in 2022, with there being plenty of other new releases and upcoming releases tapping into the demonic arts this year. Still, of them all, Bayonetta 3 is bound to be the biggest seller featuring demons and devilish gameplay – even with a big Marvel title on the way.
