By Nelson Schneider - 08/12/16 at 01:50 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! I made a bit of a boo-boo last month and completely forgot to look at upcoming releases. Make-up time!
July is traditionally smack in the middle of the Summer Game Drought. While the drought may seem milder than usual, it’s really only because of the amount of bad behavior on the part of publishers making it look like there’s more new stuff than there is.
One new licensed shovelware released in July: A tie-in for the new SJW-branded “Ghostbusters” movie. Aside from that, two old pieces of Marvel shovelware got bundled together and released on PSN and Live as the “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Bundle.” Since half the bundle was already on Steam, instead of getting the whole thing, PC just got a port of “Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2.”
There was a lot of disgusting porting around in July. “Fairy Fencer F” got remastered on the PS4 (unsurprising), “MX vs. ATV: Supercross” finally got remastered on XBONE, “Carmageddon” and “Resident Evil 5” got remastered on BOTH, while “Rocket League” lost its PC exclusivity and is now all over the place. In exchange, PC got “Megadimension Neptunia 7,” “Aegis of Earth: Protonovous Assault,” and “Phantom Brave.”
Only two legit multi-platform releases showed their faces in July: First, the long awaited return-to-form from Square Enix’s new Tokyo RPG Factory, “I Am Setsuna,” and second, a new IP from ‘Ratchet & Clank’ dev, Insomniac, called “Song of the Deep.” Both of them, surprisingly, look good!
In exclusives, PC got an absolute butt-load of Indie stuff, as usual, but most of it was trash, as usual. Noteworthy amongst the new Steam exclusives are “Push Me Pull You,” a bizarre sort of wrestling game that was seemingly inspired by “Noby Noby Boy;” “Anthelion,” a new IP from Rovio (of the Angry Birds) and Sega (of the fast hedgehog); a sequel in the ‘Earth Defense Force’ franchise; and “Starbound,” a “Terraria” knock-off that has finally come out of Early Access. Sony got the exclusive releases of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13” and “N.E.R.O.: Nothing Ever Remains Obscure” on PS4 and a new ‘Shiren the Wanderer’ Roguelike on the Vita. XBONE got nothing, as appropriate, nor did the WiiU. Nintendo did manage to snag a couple handheld exclusives for the 3DS from third parties: A new ‘Monster Hunter’ title and the gibberish-titled “7th Dragon III Code: VDF.”
Overall, July wasn’t abjectly horrible. I’ll be adding “I Am Setsuna,” “Song of the Deep,” and the Steam version of “Aegis of Earth: Protonovous Assualt” to my backlog for sure. I might also take a look at “Starbound.” Not bad for a month in the middle of the Summer Game Drought!
Backlog Embiggened: +4
