What to Play in September: 17 Notable Upcoming Games

Action-adventure
Out September 14 for PC and PlayStation 5

Every month seems to bring a new game built around the concept of a time loop. (It's almost like we're caught in some sort of ... well, never mind. Oh wait—we said that last month—maybe we are caught in a time loop. Please help us.) This month's entry, which in a pre-pandemic world was supposed to come out a year ago, comes from Dishonored creators Arkane Studios. Blending stealth and action into what is effectively an elaborate puzzle, their latest is set on the mysterious resort island of Blackreef, a former army base and research center where your character, the assassin Colt, must take out eight different targets over the course of one day. At the end of each day, the island resets itself to the start of the previous day, and no character retains any memories of previous events—except you, which you can (obviously) use to your advantage, building on the knowledge you gain each playthrough.

Deathloop also includes a mutliplayer mode in which a second player can play as the rival assassin Julianna, who is tasked with killing Colt. Intriguingly, when playing as Julianna—who can't respawn after death like Colt does—you are dropped into another player's game at random to go head-to-head (though Colt players can disable this feature if they don't want to engage with other human opponents, which leaves Julianna under AI control). Also available on PC at launch, Deathloop is a timed console exclusive on the PS5 for a full year. That's a bit awkward now that Deathloop publisher Bethesda is actually owned by Microsoft, but at least Xbox gamers should feel somewhat confident that the game will head to the Series X/S at some point next fall.