By Nelson Schneider - 02/01/15 at 02:52 PM CT
Winter is almost over, and the money-spending rush of Holiday Season 2014 is long behind us. It’s February, and gamers who even bothered to make New Year’s Resolutions have probably abandoned them by now. What about the developers and publishers, though? Well, if they resolved to make more crap, then they’re doing a great job of keeping up!
The shovelware is beginning to creep back into production. Fortunately, it isn’t quite in deluge amounts, yet. February is bringing the world both “Spongebob Heropants” (to tie-in with the upcoming live-action/CG ‘Spongebob’ movie) and a new ‘Dragon Ball Z’ game (because ‘Dragon Ball’ fans just never get tired of it, apparently).
In the realm of ports, “Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires” for PS4 and XBONE has been delayed until this month (who knows, maybe it will get delayed again!), PC is getting “MX vs. ATV: Supercross,” and Nintendo is porting one of the worst ‘Zelda’ games to the 3DS.
Coincidentally, in addition to those three ports, there are three multi-platform non-shovelware (hopefully) releases coming in February. Bouncing boobs attached to girls beating up on each other are coming to the PS4 and XBONE in a new ‘Dead or Alive’ game, one vs. four arena shooting is coming to PS4/XBONE/PC in “Evolve,” and a bunch of platforms are getting “Rugby 15.” Call me a hipster or Euro-trash if you want (you would be wrong on both accounts), but rugby is far more watchable than American football, largely because the ball is always moving and the officials don’t stop the clock every 20 seconds to mull over some inconsequential bit of nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, though, I still have no intention of EVER playing a rugby videogame.
There are a remarkable number of exclusives coming in February. Even more remarkable, most of them are coming to PC via Steam. Even more remarkable than that, we actually have scheduled release information for them before they just suddenly appear in Steam’s catalog! These PC exclusive include such… delights… as zombie-rhythm-thing (Chris would love it based on that alone) “Stay Dead Evolution,” city sim “Cities XXL,” weird Japanese loli thing “War of the Human Tanks – ALTeR,” war sim “Total War: Attila,” and train sim “Trainz: A New Era.” Man, PC is really getting back into its old sim wheelhouse this month!
Aside from Steam exclusives, the PS3’s corpse is getting a new ‘J-Fighter’ with the appropriately gibberish title, “Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late,” the PS4 is getting a new shooter/interactive movie in the style of “The Last of Us,” “The Order: 1886,” and the WiiU is getting a new ‘Kirby’ game in the style of “Kirby: Canvas Curse,” “Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.” The XBONE and its late predecessor are, appropriately, getting NOTHING.
In handhelds, aside from the 3DS port mentioned earlier, the 3DS is getting a new ‘Monster Hunter’ game. The Vita is, surprisingly, getting some attention in the form of two new RPGs. Unfortunately, they are both crappy loli RPGs, with NIS producing “Criminal Girls: Invite Only,” and Idea Factory producing a ‘Hyperdimension Neptunia’ TRPG. Boy, dem handhelds shore doo get all dem gud RPGs!
It looks like another embiggening-free month for me. I’m still waiting for the PS4 for prove itself worthy of all the love it has been receiving and for the WiiU to dig itself out of its shallow grave. It doesn’t really bother me that the 8th Gen consoles all suck so hard, since I do have a huge backlog of Steam and GOG titles to play. But I can’t help but feel that this kind of stagnation is bad for the public perception of these consoles. After all, it was bad public perception that killed off the entire industry in North America in 1983.
Backlog Embiggened: +0
