By Nelson Schneider - 01/03/15 at 01:19 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. The sad, sad year of 2014 has come grinding to a close. While I’m sure some deluded folks will look back on it fondly, the first year for the PS4 and XBONE (and the second year for the WiiU) featured a lot of blandness, rehashing, and no good reasons to commit to any of the three 8th Gen platforms.
Will 2015 change gaming’s current dismal tone? Maybe… but certainly NOT in January! In our 2015 month of missed deadlines and overdue holiday releases, we have a whopping SIX games to look forward to… and by ‘look forward to,’ I mean ‘completely ignore.’
January will be our second month in a row with no shovelware. That’s good! Shovelware never really does anything but pad release numbers with terrible licensed schlock.
Unfortunately, without the looming specter of shovelware, the entirety of the January 2015 lineup looks to be multi-platform releases and ports.
The three 8th Gen platforms that matter to the mainstream (PC, PS4, and XBONE) are getting a new Survival Horror thing in the form of “Dying Light,” while Sony’s non-handheld platforms and PC are getting a motorcycle racing game in the form of the creatively-named “Motorcycle Club” (In my mind, a Motorcycle Club should be a +1 motorcycle bane greatclub.)
And that’s it for new stuff! Everything else coming in January (not including abrupt Steam surprises) is a port or remake. PC, PS4, and XBONE are getting a port of “Saints Row 4,” PC is getting “Grand Theft Auto 5,” PS4 and XBONE are getting an “Empires” complete version of “Dynasty Warriors 8,” and Sony is ensuring that their most die-hard fans can experience the crappiness of the ‘Hyperdimension Neptunia’ RPGs on the go by porting the second one to the Vita.
Yes, January is never a particularly big month for game releases, but maybe it should be. Getting off to such a miserable start in 2015 could taint the entire year. The PS4, XBONE, and WiiU didn’t see ANY exclusives this month… which is becoming an all too common occurrence.
Backlog Embiggened: +0
