--- description: Here's a look at the year's 10 most anticipated games for Microsoft's Xbox One console, including Halo and Tomb Raider. title: These Will Be the Hottest Xbox One Games of 2015 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Business](/section/business/) ## Business Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Tech](/tag/time-section-tech/) ## Tech Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # These Will Be the Hottest Xbox One Games of 2015 by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jan 16, 2015 1:00 PM CUT by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jan 16, 2015 1:00 PM CUT Here’s a look at the year’s 10 most anticipated games for Microsoft’s Xbox One console, excluding rumored 2015 projects with as yet indeterminate timeframes (hello _Crackdown_, _Gears of War_, _Scalebound_ and _Phantom Dust_!) ### Screamride _Screamride_ is how you take a boring-sounding (albeit popular) older franchise (_Roller Coaster Tycoon_) and transmogrify it into a madcap, stomach-upending, gravity-bending, structure-exploding jamboree. Want to cobble together jet-propelled rail rides so G-force intensive they eject shrieking riders mid-loop? Lob wrecking balls at towering structures that collapse in gloriously intricate detail on horrified passerby? This is the American Society for Testing and Materials’ worst nightmare. Available: March 3 ### Quantum Break Quantum Break is studio Remedy Entertainment’s next big thing after bringing us _Max Payne_ and _Alan Wake_: a third-person adventure about three characters who gain the ability to manipulate time in various ways, say examining the future to better inform present choices, or freezing temporal activity entirely. Available: Q2 2015 ### Halo 5: Guardians While the 2013 E3 trailer for “Halo on Xbox One” was about cinematically teasing _Halo 5: Guardians_, 2014’s “your journey begins” was all about the forwards-looking-backwards _Master Chief Collection_. Having remastered the series, Microsoft and developer 343 Industries will take the next inexorable step in Halo’s second trilogy, though experienced through the eyes of a new protagonist, Spartan Locke, searching for the missing-in-action Master Chief. Available: Holiday 2015 ### Fable Legends Like Turtle Rock Studios’ asymmetric shooter _Evolve_, _Fable Legends_ is a 4 (heroes) vs. 1 (villain) cooperative roleplaying game that borrows lightly from Bullfrog’s _Dungeon Keeper_. Up to four players tackle quests orchestrated by a villain (also optionally a player), including the battles, in which the villain can deploy creatures against the heroes in realtime. Available: TBD 2015 ### Inside Developer Playdead’s _Limbo_ was a lovely little chiaroscuro-friendly puzzle game that sort of collapsed the second you went probing for deeper import. Their followup, _Inside_, looks to be a far more elaborate vamp on the dystopian platforming trope, at times appearing to take cues from Delphine Software’s groundbreaking _Out of This World_. Available: TBD 2015 ### Ori and the Blind Forest Moon Studios’ otherworldly platforming adventure has so far trafficked exclusively on its sublime Miyazakian look, but if the sidewise leaping, clambering and puzzling live up to the set design, this could easily be one of 2015’s finest. Available: TBD 2015 ### Rise of the Tomb Raider Studio Crystal Dynamics’ followup to 2013’s _Tomb Raider_ is technically a timed exclusive (meaning it’ll eventually land on PC and PS4), but that may be all Microsoft needs to move systems in 2015 given the plaudits accorded the reboot. Available: TBD 2015 ### Cuphead And now, something totally different: a platforming game–emphasis on run-and-gun with elaborate boss battles–that looks like an early 20th century cartoon. _Cuphead_ sports hand-drawn visuals, mono-mastered (original) swing tunes and a protagonist with a candy cane drinking straw stuck in his porcelain brainpan. Who knows how it’ll play, but I could watch for hours. Available: TBD 2015 ### Below The characters and creatures in Capybara Games’ _Below_ seem awfully tiny, but assuming you can zoom in (so you won’t go blind playing this thing), exploring a new, highly dangerous, permanent death-threatening game world designed by the studio responsible for _Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP_ is more than enough to draw my attention. Available: TBD 2015 ### Space Engineers The glib-sounding pitch for _Space Engineers_ seems to be “_Minecraft_ in space.” That’s not my takeaway from the trailer (or the formal description, which sounds much narrower than _Minecraft_‘s freeform LEGO riffing, focused as it is on the “engineering, construction, and maintenance of structures in space.”) But I’ll grant this: it _does_ look considerably nicer than Mojang’s opus. 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