By Nelson Schneider - 01/05/14 at 02:09 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. The holiday rush has come and gone once again, leaving us with the leftovers that didn’t make it out in time to be purchased as Christmas gifts. With the spectacularly low number of pre-determined January releases reaching a mere 5 titles (Steam, of course, has already had some Indie releases, with more coming throughout the month, but these releases are nearly impossible to predict in advance), it looks like there won’t be very many reasons for gamers to open their wallets again so soon after Christmas.
The five non-Indie games coming in January consist of the following:
One licensed piece of shovelware based on that lowest common denominator of anime series, “Dragon Ball Z.”
One single-game ‘compilation,’ which is essentially a rehash of the “Tomb Raider” reboot, given the game-of-the-year treatment with regard to DLC, and packaged with a couple of e-comics to give the story a bit of a boost. I’m not convinced this release deserves a separate entry in the MJ database, to be perfectly honest.
Two PC ports, one of the already-multi-platform “Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance,” the other of the formerly Vita exclusive, “Assassin’s Creed: Liberation.”
One PC exclusive, in an annual sports franchise: “Basketball Pro Management 2014.” It’s amazing that the 2014 edition is out in the wild THIS early in the year! Too bad all annual titles aren’t as punctual.
In the land of Indie games, we already have “Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta,” “Gunman Clive,” the oddly-named “continue?9876543210,” and “Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle.” None of these Indie releases look particularly interesting, but with the entire month left, who knows what might come out of the woodwork?
Once again, I get another month of reprieve from embiggening in January. And the continued reprieve is quite necessary, considering that the Steam Winter Sale moved about 12 games from my wish list to my backlog proper.
Looking outside of my own perspective, however, it seems that both the PlayStation 4 and XBONE are still mysteriously suffering from the same plague of zero new launch window releases that stifled the WiiU last year. Of course, abysmal console launches are nothing new… they are more the norm than the exception. But in our modern marketing climate where everything is hyped to Hell and back, then expected to sell “Call of Duty,” “Grand Theft Auto,” or iPad quantities, few things live up to overinflated expectations. Fortunately, the 8th Generation is just beginning – there’s still plenty of time for all three of the major players to pull out of their collective downward spiral.
Backlog Embiggened: +0
Comments
dbarry_22 - wrote on 01/23/14 at 10:13 PM CT
Is there? I don't see it on the banners up top and since the search feature only includes games and members, I'm not even sure how to look for it. And, if it takes more the 15 seconds, I, like most people, will complain about it instead of trying to solve the problem.
But I see they're in the database now so that's good.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/19/14 at 03:33 PM CT
There is a game request form, you know.
dbarry_22 - wrote on 01/09/14 at 03:24 PM CT
I know you're WiiU is deceased and buried, but with that said you've failed to mention a couple of Nintendo E-Shop games that are worthwhile and came out in the latter half of December.
NES Remix and Dr. Luigi
I've been playing and enjoying both of these downloadable games the past couple weeks.
I can't even find either of these games on Melted Joystick. Perhaps you should resurrect your WiiU just so you can keep the database on this website updated!
