By Nelson Schneider - 08/03/14 at 01:15 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. August brings us into the final days of the long, dry Summer. And while there might not be a singular hype-magnet releasing this month – the biggest mainstream draw is the Dudebro-approved annual release of a shovelware sports franchise – there are certainly a lot more games coming this month than came in pitiful July.
The shovelware as a whole is fairly light – I’m surprised! Only the 3DS is being saddled with a tie-in game for Michael Bay’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie, while the ‘grown-up’ consoles are getting MOAR “Madden NFL.”
While out-and-out shovelware is mercifully light in August, there are plenty of ports and compilations clogging the pipeline and preventing new stuff from flowing. “Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare” will finally be gracing Sony consoles, “Hyperdimension Neptunia” will move from stinking up the PS3 to stinking up the Vita as well… and so will “Disgaea 4.” Then there are multi-platform releases of compilations of ‘old’ ‘Metro,’ ‘Red Faction,’ and ‘Darksiders’ games (at least two of those have been delayed one or more times…). Finally, Capcom will continue doing what they do best and release “Ultra Street Fighter 4,” presumably with even more DLC than “Super Street Fighter 4.”
Surprisingly, the list of multi-platform releases in the realm of new, non-shovelware games is completely devoid of FPSes! In fact, all THREE of the big August releases are RPGs! Holy crap, how did that happen? … Oh, wait, they are Hack ‘n Slash click-and-grind-fest RPGs… my enthusiasm is tempered. But between “Sacred 3,” “Risen 3,” and the complete edition of “Diablo 3,” fans of the genre should be in hog heaven.
Speaking of hogs, Sony is chowing down on all the exclusives this month. There’s a spin-off ‘infamous’ game, “Tales of Xillia 2,” and the certain-to-be-bizarre “Akiba’s Strip,” which Chris informs me is about touring the Akihabara district in Tokyo and stripping women naked in order to prove whether or not they are vampires… I… I don’t know how to respond to that.
Steam does at least have a few exclusives for the PC Master Race (though Steam has a LOT of stuff that’s impossible to predict). “Blackbay Asylum” will provide some typical Survival Horror shenanigans, while “Eidolon” will provide some typical Adventure shenanigans. Really, there’s nothing to get excited about here.
Of course, the fact that the Xbox line of consoles and the Wii line of consoles are getting DIDDLY SQUAT is the real attention grabber in August. Hopefully WiiU owners can be content with “Mario Kart 8” for a while longer! I don’t know what XBONE owners are doing… watching TV?
Handhelds are almost in as dire of straits as the XBONE and WiiU. Aside from ports, Vita is getting nothing, while the 3DS is getting a bizarre mashup of two of the DS line’s signature IPs: “Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney.” The only way that could be weirder would be if ‘Trauma Center’ was involved as well.
Once again, it looks like I won’t be buying very many games in August… yet somehow my backlog doesn’t ever get any smaller (Thanks a lot, Steam!). I will be picking up “Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition” for PS3, since I enjoyed the vanilla version well enough as a co-op experience. Aside from that, “Akiba’s Strip” sounds absolutely insane, but I don’t know if it will be insane in a good way or a bad way.
Backlog Embiggened: +1.5
